“Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”
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Will Rogers
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Gandhi Arrested
On November 6, 1913, Mohandes K. Gandhi was arrested for participating in a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
“President Biden, the federal government, social media, and the establishment media have conspired to rob Americans of their freedoms in the name of public health,” declares Jeremy Boreing, co-CEO of The Daily Wire. “They have broken faith with the American people through conflicting messaging, false information, and by suppressing data and perspectives with which they disagree.”
Quoted by Alex Swoyer in The Washington Examiner, Boreing is explaining why his company — best known for its platforming (as we say these days) of commentators Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh, but also for its burgeoning news service and mini-entertainment empire — will not comply with “the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private employers.”
It is “suing in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, the company announced Thursday,” Swoyer reports.
Though we’ve been hearing about these “requirements” for over a month, they were published by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) just yesterday. Folks at The Daily Wire had been talking up their challenge ever since Biden first dropped his bomb, and had their legal response ready.
OSHA’s mandate, Swoyer explains, “directs large companies to require employees to get vaccinated by Jan. 4, or else pay for them to get tested weekly,” and also requires those tested-but-unvaccinated employees “to wear a face mask.”
Note that the tests for the coronavirus are not reliable, tests for antibodies are not even mentioned (and also not reliable), and face mask utility has not been demonstrated to anything approaching certainty, as I’ve discussed.
Grounds for challenge are legion.
Other affected companies should join The Daily Wire with parallel lawsuits, or at least amicus briefs.
The president’s mandate must not stand.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Vaclav Havel
The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.
Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless”
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President John Hanson
On November 5, 1781, the second session of the United States in Congress Assembled began, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This “Second Confederation Congress,” as it is popularly known, ended on November 2, 1782.
And on that Fifth of November, 1781, John Hanson of Maryland (pictured above) was elected to serve as president of the United States in Congress Assembled. He would become the first president of Congress to serve a full one-year term as specified under the Articles of Confederation, for the second session of the Confederation Congress. Of course, this presidency was nothing like the presidencies under the Constitution. Hanson merely presided over Congress.
On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony defied the law to vote, and was later fined $100.
“The drama that played out in upscale Loudoun County, Virginia over the last year or so,” Matt Taibbi writes at Substack, “cost Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe the governorship. . . .”
McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and previously governor (2014-2017) under Virginia’s one-term consecutive limit, lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin by 2 percentage points in Tuesday’s off-year election. That’s big news because Virginia is a blue state where just a year ago Democrat Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump by a 10-point margin.*
“[T]he Loudoun County story,” notes Taibbi, “involves furious disputes between local parents and the school board over a variety of issues, including a pair of sexual assaults.”
Those two attacks involve a “skirt-wearing teen who raped a female classmate in [the] girls’ bathroom.” Convicted in juvenile court on two counts of sexual assault for the first incident, the lad has been accused of attacking another young female student — also in a school bathroom, but in a different school (having been transferred).
Yet, during a school board meeting discussion on transgender bathroom policies, one month after the assault occurred, school officials claimed there had been no incidents.
The lie was exposed only after the girl’s father, in attendance, became angry.
And was arrested.
“It was the woke cover-up that electrified the Virginia governor’s race,” declares the UK’s Daily Mail headline on their Election Day exclusive interview with the rapist’s mother.
That school officials would attempt to hide such incidents speaks to the crying need for accountability.
And for the right of parents to control their kids’ education.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Republicans triumphed across the board, sweeping all three statewide offices — which breaks a Democratic Party streak dating back to 2012 — as well as winning back the Virginia House of Delegates. The GOP Lieutenant Governor-elect Winsome Sears will be the first black woman in that position and the Attorney General-elect Jason Miyares will become the state’s first Latino AG.
NOTE: Decided is this question: “How much say should parents have in what their child’s school teaches?” In a Washington Post exit poll, a majority of Virginians answered, “A lot.” Of those, 77 percent voted for Youngkin.
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Aldous Huxley
One escapes into reminiscence as one escapes into gin or sodium amytal.
Aldous Huxley, The Genius and the Goddess (1955).
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Will Rogers
On November 4, 1879, American humorist Will Rogers was born. Aside from his cowboy act, and his work as an actor in Hollywood, he gained much fame for being a topical comedian “just reporting what’s in the papers.” Among his most famous quips? “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”
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Joseph Addison
I have indeed heard of heedless, inconsiderate writers that, without any malice, have sacrificed the reputation of their friends and acquaintance to a certain levity of temper, and a silly ambition of distinguishing themselves by a spirit of raillery and satire; as if it were not infinitely more honourable to be a good-natured man than a wit. Where there is this little petulant humour in an author, he is often very mischievous without designing to be so. For which reason I always lay it down as a rule that an indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for as the one will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently both friends and foes.
Joseph Addison, Essays and Tales (Henry Morley, editor; 1888).
Depending on the constitutional provision we’re talking about, probably every state is (or is at risk of becoming) a “Constitution-free zone.”
The present case: a court ruling that a dissident judge says is turning Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi into Constitution-free zones with respect to the crimes of federal officers.
On February 2, 2019, Texas mechanic Kevin Byrd was almost shot at by Ray Lamb, a Homeland Security agent. Lamb was not acting in self-defense. Byrd had been asking questions about a car accident in which the mother of his child was injured. A drunk driver was involved: Lamb’s son.
Called in by Byrd, the police initially detained Byrd, not Lamb. Fortunately, the assault had been videotaped, and Lamb was soon arrested instead. Unfortunately, the police let the matter drop.
Byrd sued in federal court. But he was stymied by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that federal officials like Lamb have absolute immunity, not merely qualified immunity, from prosecution for things like shooting at innocent people.
The Institute for Justice is now representing Kevin Byrd in the litigation. The hope is to get the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the case for review and then determine that, no, federal officers are not entitled to terrorize at will and without legal consequences just because they’re feds.
Fingers crossed.
The Supreme Court hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory lately when it comes to holding police and other officials accountable for wrongdoing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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