The Dallas salon owner who was jailed for refusing to close her business during the coronavirus pandemic has described her two-day stint in lock-up as ‘not pleasant’ – but says she doesn’t regret the decisions that landed her there.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s extension of the order, which took effect Friday and lifts May 30, allows for worship limited to groups of 10, along with other social distancing measures.
But Pastor Stephen Cassell has continued to lead meetings and services, with the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based law firm, taking up the church’s case on First Amendment grounds.
COVID-19 has shined some important light on the tendency of government to do as Founding Fathers warned — stretch and reach and overreach, and tread into places it doesn’t belong. And as the executive orders come fast and furious from governors’ mansions around the nation, it’s high time for a reminder: Orders are not laws.
They should be challenged by the people. They should be held to constitutional muster. They should be challenged and debated and fought over because they threaten the very foundation of America’s free society.
hen Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation he was criticized by abolitionists for not issuing a more sweeping order. He refused to do so, asking “If I take the step, must I not do so . . . without any argument, except the one that I think the measure politically expedient, and morally right? Would I not thus give up all footing upon constitution or law? Would I not thus be in the boundless field of absolutism? Could this pass unnoticed, or unresisted?”
A Democratic super PAC filed a lawsuit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials on Monday, challenging voting laws it argues could limit turnout in the nation’s biggest swing state this fall. The lawsuit joins a persistent and ongoing legal battle over voting in a state that will be key to President Donald Trump’s reelection.
The agreement in Nevada also applies to the primary only, although similar issues could resurface if the public health crisis persists in the state this fall.
Election officials in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and is home to 72 percent of the state’s people, announced several changes to make voting easier in the primary — issues raised in a lawsuit also filed just three weeks ago.
Due to fears over continued spread of the novel coronavirus, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Friday the entire state will be asked to vote by mail in November.
The governor signed an executive order that will ensure every registered vote in the state is sent an absentee ballot prior to election day, and those who choose to vote in person will have to comply with strict physical distancing measures at polling sites.
With the worst jobs report in history under our belt, which saw a record 20.5 million jobs lost in April, and the stated unemployment rate at 14.7%, some cities have been hit worse than others by the economic fallout from the pandemic.
To wit, after steadily increasing 2-3% every week for the past two months, the unemployment rate in San Diego county is at an all-time high of just under 27% – exceeding the previous record from 1933 set during the Great Depression, according to a report by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG).
During the current coronavirus lockdown, I’d pay good money to see just one public official be asked:
“How many lives are you willing to sacrifice to prevent one coronavirus death?”
Thomas Sowell has repeatedly written that in a world of scarcity there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. The lockdown debate has thus far focused on that tradeoff as one between saving lives versus a temporary blip in the economy.
In the weeks since the unprecedented multi-state lockdowns, the US Healthcare system has been left with an opaque patchwork of the very same ‘arbitrary directives’ against which the AHA cautioned. The lockdown orders and elective procedure bans were instituted with the intent to save lives. However, our failure to pivot on the bans once lockdowns helped blunt the impending crisis has financially crippled our hospitals and private practices, led to mass furloughs, and essentially denied healthcare to those who need it most.
As politicians argue over whether or not to bailout decades-long bad decisions on the basis of a sudden virus/lockdown-driven drop in revenues, California has stepped up to the plate with what appears to be a direct request for a bailout to fund the benefits for millions of newly-unemployed residents (and illegal immigrants).
As we reported on Sunday protesters gathered in Chicago for an “Open Illinois” protest on Friday.
At the same time the communists came out for the annual May Day protests nearby.
