Opinion
By Jeff Childers
03-20-21
Good morning, C&C family, it’s Wednesday! We’re closing in on the end of March, ten more days, which will then leave only seven months till the election. Expect the extreme political weather to get even more wild and unpredictable, like a kind of political climate change. Your Supreme Court-heavy roundup today includes: bad news as the Supremes ask horrible, elitist questions at the Missouri v. Biden oral arguments; New York Times grudgingly concedes, at long last, closing schools might have, maybe, been a bad idea; Shark Tank guy tells some home truths; another European domino starts to fall as France considers anti-trans legislation; Supreme Court upholds right to sue against no-fly list designations; Supreme Court green lights Texas to round up illegal immigrants, partly; and self-gratifying CNN anchor clip agrees that Fani Willis order helps Trump.
🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞
🔥 Nevermind the Ides, whatever they are, Beware the Bad Ideas of March. NBC-4 Washington ran a gloomy story yesterday headlined, “Can the government work with social media companies to combat disinformation? Supreme Court to decide.” On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the most important civil rights case in our lifetimes, Missouri v. Biden, and the judges’ questions telegraphed bad news for free speech.
It used to be conventional wisdom that Justices’ questions in oral argument do not predict how they will rule. But in the post-pandemic era, nobody seems to think that anymore, and maybe for good reasons. While I remain stubbornly optimistic, Monday’s hearing was about as encouraging as a freezing-cold fried-cheese appetizer. Gnawing dejectedly on a chilly cheese stick, you realize you probably should have listened to those bad Yelp reviews.
Anyway, the Justices’ questions to the lawyers — especially the squishy center-right justices’ questions — stank of elite superiority and arrogant paternalism. Being themselves a part of government, the Justices seem to think that “government knows best,” especially in emergencies.
In spite of all the manifest evidence to the contrary.
In other words, all but the three reliably conservative Justices asked questions suggesting they would rather trust the Nation’s future to CISA’s 32-year-old “Disinformation Expert” — with zero medical training — over accomplished, recognized medical professionals who made epidemiology their lives’ work, like Martin Kulldorf (at the time, Harvard), Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford), and Sanjay Gupta (Oxford).
What I’m wondering is, even if Kulldorf, Bhattacharya, and Gupta did represent a minority view among scientists, who is Nina Jankowicz to decide which scientists are “spreading misinformation” and should be suppressed?
That’s not even how science works.
Specifically, several Justices pressed the States’ lawyers to explain: why is it so bad for government officials to just pick up the phone and call a social media company to discuss a potentially problematic post? Three of the Justices even referred to such calls as “common interactions.” The liberal Justices were even worse, signaling they expect the government to paternalistically protect citizens from encountering misinformation.
I wonder where the liberal Justices think all these unelected but wise government bureaucrats come from? Eggs maybe? Outer space? They don’t seem to understand we are all citizens. Even bureaucrats. Bureaucrats are just citizens who applied for a job with the federal government. Being a federal bureaucrat does not imply having any better knowledge or wisdom than any other citizen does.
Elected officials are even worse. As Exhibit A, watch smug Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Ca.), explain recently that the best way to combat disinformation is for people to watch MSNBC. I did not make that up:
CLIP: Ted Lieu picking winners and losers in the information war (0:08).
It’s too early to panic over the questions. The Justice’s questions might not represent where the final decision is headed. And at this point the Justices are only deciding the preliminary injunction issue; the case itself will proceed to trial either way. Things might look a lot different after the evidence is presented. And, if the Court finds no Constitutional problem for government to lay its grotesque, oversized thumb on social media’s scales, then Congress will just have to outlaw that practice.
Ted can watch MSNBC all he wants. I hope he marries it and they live happily ever after. And good luck to them both. Just don’t make me watch that fake news, misinformation super-spreading nonsense.
🔥 I think it would be super helpful if all nine Justices could read Monday’s remarkable New York Times article headlined, “What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later.” That data says nothing good, that’s what. Nothing good about government experts.
Now they tell us. Four years later. Getting the painful part over with, right up front, early in its article, the Times’ quoted its government-sanctioned expert who grudgingly admitted what is now painfully obvious to everyone. Everyone except government bureaucrats, that is:
“There’s fairly good consensus that, in general, as a society, we probably kept kids out of school longer than we should have,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who helped write guidance for the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommended in June 2020 that schools reopen with safety measures in place.
No duh, Sherlock. But O’Leary didn’t go far enough. It’s not about whether we kept kids out of school longer than we should have. Schools never should have closed, at all. In its article, the Times crept behind that obvious truth, wondering where was the balance — or, just how much harm to students can be justified by the political joys of “doing something?”
Anyway, the article reported on a study, and it pretty fairly walked through the study’s awful conclusions. The longer a school was closed, the more students were harmed. Poor kids were harmed more than kids with resources and presumably, better educational options and more parental attention. Even where schools only closed a short time, loss of attainment, anxiety, and chronic absenteeism are statistically measurable.
Worst of all, Closing schools did not measurably slow covid’s spread.
But all the government experts pushed school closures and, most important, unelected, unqualified deep state bureaucrats bullied social media companies into shutting down anyone who argued that school closures would not slow the spread and would just hurt kids.
“Misinformation” is not even a scientific term. It’s a political label.
Maybe kids would have been hurt less if the government wasn’t pushing its ridiculous “misinformation” censorship? The Supreme Court should think carefully about that.
🔥 Speaking of O’Learys, Fox News ran a terrific story yesterday headlined, “Kevin O’Leary warns ‘extraordinary’ NYC civil fraud penalty against Trump is ‘an attack on America’.” Truer words were never spoken.
O’Leary seemed outraged about Trump’s historic $464 million dollar fine — over an offense for which officials who can’t speak proper English are still searching for a victim. Kevin properly pointed out that the problem has nothing to do with Trump. It’s about due process and property rights. In other words, if this works against Trump, everybody knows they’ll do it again, and again, and again.
They literally can’t help themselves. They are like bureaucratic termites. Their nature is to eat up and hollow out anything good and normal.
The article included more great stuff O’Leary said. But in my view, Kevin’s most important point was his call for everyone — regardless of political persuasion — to look at this case as an attack — not on Trump — but on America itself:
“This is an attack on America and I don’t know how you can look at it any other way. And I know plenty of investors who are completely disturbed by this … no one is going to put any money to work in New York in these amounts until this thing settles down. The whole world is watching, and everybody’s waiting for one thing we haven’t got yet: adult supervision. Where is it? Where are the adults in this crazy narrative? Certainly there’s got to be adult supervision at some point. And I understand, you know, the war going on here and all the political yada-yada, woof-woof-woof. But we need an adult in the room now. This is the United States of America under siege.”
All true. Where are the adults? Because the children are unsupervised and they are tearing up the house.
🔥 National Review published an encouraging story yesterday headlined, “Will France Be Next to Ban Puberty Blockers?” France. That goofy country is thinking about literally genociding trans people.
Following the gobsmacking WPATH disclosures last week, France’s upper house (its “senate”) introduced a bill yesterday to ban puberty blockers in that country. Increasingly, the U.S. is becoming an outlier, fueled almost entirely by liberal politics. (In December, Forbes ran an article arguing that in Europe the trans issue is ‘fact based’ whereas in the U.S. it is a party-line split.)
Remember, cutting off access to puberty-blocking hormones also mostly stops the surgical train from running toward genital mutilation “affirmations.”
How do we account for vast numbers U.S. liberals who support inflicting these horrid and insane things on children, in spite of all the evidence of harm? If we could solve that problem, we’d solve a lot of other problems too.
🔥 It wasn’t all bad news from the Supreme Court this week. The New York Times ran a non-paywalled story yesterday with the goofy headline, “Supreme Court Rules for Muslim Man in Challenge to No-Fly List.”
His being Muslim had nothing at all to do with the legal case; why the Times stuffed his religion in its headline is anybody’s guess. It was a good result, but honestly all the facts in this case were weird. Very weird. Yonas Fikre is a Sudanese-American citizen and apparently a frequent international business traveler. He was put on the government’s no-fly list, and nobody knows why. It’s a secret. Still.
Oh. And Yonas lives in Portland. Of course.
It all started in 2009 when, like happens to all of us from time to time, Yonas got an invitation to lunch at the Somali U.S. embassy. Yonas apparently accepted the invitation without giving it much thought. He claims that at the meeting, FBI agents surprised him by revealing he’d been put on the U.S.’s no-fly list. They said if he wanted off of it, he’d have to become an undercover informant infiltrating a Portland mosque.
Then — I am not making any of this up (the Times reported it all as straight news) — a few weeks later, while next visiting the UAE, “on business,” Yonas was arrested, detained, interrogated and tortured. It’s not clear by whom. The UAE’s government? And why? What did they accuse him of doing?
After a remarkably exact 106 days, Yonas “was flown” — by whom? — to Sweden. Yonas lived in Sweden until 2015, when the Swedish government flew him back to Portland by private jet, making Yonas our problem again.
The Times reported these facts like governments fly random people around the world in private planes all the time. Actually, it sounds more like the Swedes badly wanted Yonas out of town. Out of country. Far out of country.
The useless Times didn’t explain or even wonder about any of these salacious facts, even though the answers would have made the story 1,000 times more interesting, rather than just puzzling and darkly sinister.
Anyway, after Yonas sued the FBI for violating his rights to Constitutional due process, the government caved and took him back off the no-fly list, and then tried to dismiss his lawsuit as moot. He could fly wherever he wants, so. The case somehow stretch up to the Supreme Court, and Monday, in a 9-0 decision, the judges agreed that the government’s ploy to moot the case by relenting right after Yonas filed suit didn’t work.
From just what little we do know, this guy seems incredibly sketchy. I’m not surprised the FBI was keeping tabs on him; they probably have troubling answers to a lot of those unanswered questions. Who knows? We assume Yonas is innocent until proven guilty, if someone would charge him with something. Otherwise he just has a lot of weird stuff happen to him all over the world.
But still. The Supreme Court’s decision is great news for regular folks like us. If a suspicious character and potential terrorist like Yonas can challenge his opaque, top-secret, no-fly list designation, then all the poor J6ers might have a chance of getting off it too. Or at least some due process.
🔥 But that was just the warm-up act. The best Supreme Court news yesterday was reported in the Wall Street Journal under the headline, “Supreme Court Won’t Block Texas From Arresting, Deporting Immigrants.”
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court overturned a trial court stay and allowed the State of Texas to start arresting illegal immigrants for breaking state law. Right after that, the Fifth Circuit, in a split panel (2-1), scheduled an emergency hearing for today, suggesting the stay might be reimposed on other complicated, procedural grounds.
Depending on what happens today, the case could be headed right back to the Supreme Court. Still, it was progress, as Governor Abbott acknowledged:
The Supreme Court must decide whether or not we can commit national assisted-suicide at the border. And quickly.
🌭 Finally, enjoy this clip making the rounds yesterday from what I presume is an Anderson Cooper 360 panel last week. In the clip, Onanist Jeffrey Tubin — back from time off after accidentally choking the chicken on screen during a public Zoom meeting — do not try imagining that — Toobin opined about Judge McAfee’s Fani Willis decision that, “Today was a very good day for Donald Trump. This case is going nowhere.”
CLIP: CNN Anchor Jeffrey “Hot Dog” Toobin agrees Judge McAfee order was good for Trump (0:45).
There was something ironic about this I can’t quite put my finger on. Toobin is a disgraced sex pest. Fani Willis has been exposed as a homewrecking sex pest too. They are both currently down, but not out.
Anyway, in the clip, CNN’s Wankerman pointed out that, at this point, there is exactly a zero percent chance for the democrats’ best hope to “Get Trump.” The case will never get to trial this year:
“This case is going nowhere. Even if in the extremely unlikely event that this somehow staggers to trial in August or in the fall, think about this: There’s another racketeering case in Georgia where jury selection — not the trial — just the jury selection has taken a year. This case is never going to trial before the election. It’s an embarrassment.”
Now, I’m not thrilled that it was Jeffrey Toobin who agreed this time with my take on the Fani Willis order. For sure, I’d never shake that guy’s hand. It would be awkward and rude, but I mean, come on. It would be for obvious reasons. Probably sticky. And hairy. Eww.
Have a wonderful Wednesday! I’ll see you guys back here at the C&C hot dog stand tomorrow for more restrained (but still sarcastic) commentary.
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© 2022, Jeff Childers, all rights reserved
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
