Many say the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot is one of America’s darkest episodes. Others say the nationwide protests last summer over George Floyd’s murder were worse. Here’s data about both — you decide.

Article VI of the Constitution describes what qualifies as the law of the land.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land…

The only national laws are the Constitution, congressional law, and treaties. Conspicuously missing are Supreme Court decisions. While the court is known for deciding the constitutionality of laws, its decisions are not themselves laws. In the strictest sense, the opinions rendered by the Supreme Court are binding only on the parties before it. //

The Supreme Court is just that, a court. It was established to adjudicate cases and controversies before it. Courts cannot make general pronouncements of law; they exist to settle disputes.

In fact, the Supreme Court is prohibited from issuing advisory opinions or ruling on laws that do not arise through litigation. Justices are not consultant scholars but arbiters in the limited setting of a legal case, not general legal or public policy matters. Courts issue their rulings in the form of judicial opinions, laying out the holding and the rationale. //

We assume when the high court rules, it is articulating what the Constitution says. The Constitution is the supreme law, but it is also a plain text. That text is the law, the ruling is not. As Justice Story said of judicial opinions in Swift v. Tyson, “They are, at most, only evidence of what the laws are, and are not, of themselves, laws.”

It profits a man nothing to gain the world if he loses his soul—and the deal is even worse if the earthly gain is just a chance at the fleeting respect of a few law professors. Nonetheless, that is how the left is hoping to tempt Brett Kavanaugh as the Supreme Court considers a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.

Writing at National Review Online, Ed Whelan observes that such a sales pitch from Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman “isn’t subtle.” //

The justices should do their duty and follow the law and Constitution to the best of their abilities. In the case at hand, this means overturning Roe and Casey, which are legal abominations, exercises of raw power divorced from the text and history of the Constitution. //

The most important consideration is the wickedness of the radical regime of abortion on demand established by Roe and confirmed by Casey. In the age of ultrasound, we know what abortion is, and who it kills. The images eagerly shared on social media and stuck to the fridge condemn the atrocity of our abortion regime, in which the child whose features can be seen on the screen, and whose movements can be felt in the womb, has less legal protection than livestock.

This acceptance of, and reliance on, the violence of abortion poisons society. It turns what ought to be the loving, primordial union of mother, father, and child into a battleground of selfish interests. Abortion hardens the hearts it doesn’t stop.

Overturning Roe will not in itself end these evils, for the justices are unlikely to extend 14th Amendment protections to the unborn, although there is an originalist case for doing so. Abortion policy would therefore return to the states, leaving the pro-life movement to face a grueling state-by-state fight. But at least our democratic victories will no longer be overridden by the caprice of federal judges. //

Millions of voters have supported the conservative legal movement on the promise that it would fight to get courts out of the abortion business. Thus, if the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 Republican-appointed majority, voted to uphold Roe and Casey, the decision might well blow up the conservative legal movement for good. Most of the voters who care about the courts are not interested in Chevron deference or other (to a layperson) esoteric legal doctrines. Rather, they want Roe overturned.

What is in this bill that is supposedly so “restrictive” that the left is up in arms about it? It is a long bill with many different provisions, but here are some of the most important ones.

Texas Republicans added a requirement that registrars who receive notice from a voter who has moved must forward that notice to the registrar of the new county where the voter now lives. Opponents, like the American Civil Liberties Union, apparently don’t want registrars to keep accurate and up-to-date lists, which is why they keep suing to stop states from trying to clean up their voter lists.

A similar provision requires the Texas secretary of state to use Department of Motor Vehicles records—driver’s license information—to “verify the accuracy of citizenship status information previously provided on voter registration applications.”

In other words, if an individual provides documentation showing he is not a U.S. citizen when he obtained a Texas driver’s license, he obviously should not be registered to vote since both state and federal law bars aliens from voting.

Why would the Democratic legislators who fled the state oppose this? The only possible motive is that they want noncitizens to be able to illegally register, vote, and not get caught. I guess you could call this “restrictive,” but then restricting the voting of ineligible aliens to prevent them from diluting the votes of eligible citizens is what states should be doing.

The bill allows the secretary of state to go after any county registrar who refuses to comply with state law, such as removing aliens who are illegally registered to vote. //

The bill also increases the security of the election process by requiring large counties to implement an internal video surveillance system of all areas where voted ballots are handled, processed, and counted. Do opponents of this bill not want that kind of transparency to ensure nothing untoward is being done with ballots?

The bill requires “randomized audits” in four Texas counties in every even-numbered year. Audits ensure that all the laws governing the voting process are scrupulously followed, that voters can register and vote, and that voting equipment functions properly. What is wrong with wanting to periodically check to make sure that all eligible voters can vote and that elections are conducted fairly and securely? //

The Texas bill makes it clear that election officials cannot remove observers unless they are interfering in the voting process. Again, why would liberals and the media object to transparency? Shouldn’t observers be able to see what is actually going on in precincts?

Texas also added something it has not had before, which is an opportunity for voters to correct defects in their absentee ballots. Many absentee ballots are rejected because voters make mistakes. For instance, they forget to sign the ballot or they don’t provide all the required information.

This bill requires election officials to give voters the opportunity to correct any such problem. This expands voting opportunities in the state. It’s certainly not “restrictive.”

This man lost nearly $87,000 for the crime of having cash on him.

In the latest instance of an Amazon-related venture attempting to use regulations and legal routes to suppress competition, Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite internet venture wants the FCC to dismiss SpaceX’s application for the next generation of Starlink satellites.

In a document filed with the FCC in late August, Project Kuiper took the significant step of asking the regulatory body to entirely dismiss a SpaceX request to modify plans for the next generation of Starlink satellites. As previously discussed on Teslarati, SpaceX submitted that modification request on August 18th with one clear focus: optimizing Starlink satellites and the constellation’s orbital ‘shells’ to best take advantage of the imminent capabilities of the next-generation Starship launch vehicle. //

Nominally capable of launching at least 100 metric tons (~220,000 lb) to low Earth orbit (LEO) in a fully reusable configuration, Starship would boost the mass of Starlink satellites SpaceX could orbit with one launch by a factor of 5-6 or more relative to Falcon 9. In other words, with Starship, SpaceX could feasibly fill out its Starlink constellation at least 5-6 times faster than with Falcon 9. //

In turn, while not unprecedented, SpaceX chose to modify its license application for the second (or third) phase of Starlink satellites – a constellation made up of almost 30,000 spacecraft – to include two distinct options: a constellation where Starship is ready on time and one where it is not. Amazon’s Project Kuiper project, Effectively a Starlink clone helmed by former senior managers and engineers that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk personally ousted in 2018 for being slow and overcautious, Amazon’s Project Kuiper was apparently not happy with the changes its competitor made. //

Published six days later, SpaceX pulls no punches in its response to Amazon, raking the company through the coals for an incessant number (dozens) of filed objections to Starlink while simultaneously failing to address crucial FCC questions about the nature of the Project Kuiper constellation. Bizarrely, SpaceX’s response also accurately points out how Amazon’s legal team seemingly fails to understand SpaceX’s modification request, which poses two mutually exclusive constellation layouts with mostly marginal differences. Amazon’s central argument appears to be that SpaceX actually hasn’t submitted enough information by meticulously detailing two constellation layouts instead of one, claiming that it left “every major detail unsettled.”

The US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, which has been overseeing the slow and painful bankruptcy of the remains of SCO, announced that the TSG Group, which represents SCO's debtors, has settled with IBM and resolved all the remaining claims between TSG and IBM "Under the Settlement Agreement, the Parties have agreed to resolve all disputes between them for a payment to the Trustee [TLD], on behalf of the Estates [IBM], of $14,250,000."

In return, TLD gives up all rights and interests in all litigation claims pending or that may be asserted in the future against IBM and Red Hat, and any allegations that Linux violates SCO's Unix or Unixware intellectual property.

Why is TLD, the former SCO, finally agreeing to let this drop. Because, as some of us knew 18 years ago, they never had a case. Or, as TLD's legal representative, Blank Rome bankruptcy attorney Stanley B. Tarr, put it in a motion, "succeeding on the unfair competition claims will require proving to a jury that events occurring many years ago constituted unfair competition and caused SCO harm. Even if SCO were to succeed in that effort, the amount of damages it would recover is uncertain and could be significantly less than provided by the Settlement Agreement."

You think?

America's next trip to the moon may suddenly be delayed bit thanks to...PDFs?

A U.S. federal judge has granted the Department of Justice a week-long extension in its lawsuit with Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin. The reason? Large PDF files. //

According to Blue Origin, there are "fundamental issues" with NASA's decision. The company also claims that the agency was supposed to provide multiple awards.

However, the process has been delayed due to PDF problems. PDFs are a proprietary file format created by Adobe used primarily for documents. Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice say there have been a myriad of issues related to the PDF format.

According to the DOJ, there is more than 7 GB of data related to the case. However, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims' online system allows for only files of up to 50 MB in size to be uploaded. //

Instead of using the online file system, the U.S. government will transfer the documents for the case to DVDs.

Both Blue Origin and SpaceX agreed to the extension. NASA's contact with SpaceX is currently on pause until Nov. 1 due to the lawsuit. This latest development would seemingly extend that for another week.

Space exploration is currently on hold thanks to a lawsuit and a slew of pesky PDF files.

In the end, it took less than 25 days. In a 6-3 ruling, the CDC’s order was blocked. Even Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority this time, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh keeping his word that he could flip sides if this issue came up again.

Steven Mazie
@stevenmazie
BREAKING: Supreme Court blocks Biden’s moratorium on tenant evictions by 6-3 vote.

Conservative majority says it "strains credulity to believe" that the statute under which the moratorium was imposed "grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts".
9:23 PM · Aug 26, 2021 from San Diego, CA //

Meanwhile, the liberals on the court did what they always do, which is dissent based on things that have nothing to do with the law.

Arguing that taking illegal action is fine because it might be less forceful than other (probably illegal) actions is nonsensical on its face. The question was always whether the eviction moratorium itself passed muster. It clearly does not. Yet, the liberals continue to act as if the Supreme Court is a place for social experimentation and not interpreting the law.

The landlord association, understandably, has pulled no punches in immediately returning to the Supreme Court for relief. They argue that; “[a]s five Members of this Court indicated less than two months ago, Congress never gave the CDC the staggering amount of power it claims … the unqualified power to take any measure imaginable to stop the spread of any communicable disease.” In discussing the equities, they note that, in the past three months since the district court’s order was originally stayed, “the government has … distribute[d] rental assistance; health care providers have administered roughly 65 million additional vaccine doses; and the total cost of the moratoria to lessors, amounting to as much as $19 billion each month, has only increased.” The landlords emphasize that, due to the government’s sovereign immunity and the judgment-proof nature of the tenants, the massive wealth transfer accomplished by the moratorium will never be fully undone.

The landlords conclude by focusing on the larger issues at play. They properly highlight that the Executive Branch is taking advantage of the inherent delay that litigating matters before the Judicial Branch entails in order to cynically buy time to achieve policy goals in a way the courts think is unlawful. They note that it took 26 days for the Supreme Court to resolve the previous appeal in June and that it has now been 17 days since the CDC decided to extend the moratorium past July 31. They warn correctly that, unless the Supreme Court promptly vacates the stay, “Congress will know that it can legislate through pressure campaigns and sit-ins rather than bicameralism and presentment, the Executive Branch will know that it can disregard the views of a majority of Justices with impunity, and this Court will know that its carefully considered rulings will be roundly ignored.” This result is far more damaging to our nation than even the staggering financial losses suffered by landlords, in truth. Hopefully, the Supreme Court – or at least some of the Justices – will speak clearly to this issue as well in the course of bringing down the curtain on the moratorium.

The rhetoric around the First Amendment tends to be incredibly misinformed. On one side are the First Amendment absolutists who act like proscribing any speech—even hate speech, or even when the prohibition is made by a private company—is tantamount to an assault on the very concept of freedom and liberty. Usually, these absolutists are screaming at people on the other side who haven’t actually thought through how wide-reaching government restrictions on speech—“Ban Fox News!” “Ban people who lie!”—would lead to an utter dystopia.

Invariably someone shows up to say, “You can’t shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater” (which is not true—you absolutely can shout fire in a crowded theater, so stop quoting this line), and everybody turns off the television less informed than when they started.

The reality of our First Amendment freedoms is altogether more boring, and more nuanced. The government does and must have the authority to regulate speech in all kinds of situations. But that authority is and should be treated with deep skepticism. The government should always be challenged to come up with the least restrictive means to achieve its legitimate ends. But when courts adhere to that principle, when judges issue practical rulings that balance the right to free speech against the government’s legitimate interest in restricting certain kinds of speech, the cases don’t make the news.

That’s why the decision at the end of the Supreme Court’s term in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.—better known as the “cheerleader case”—garnered comparatively little attention, even though the underlying controversy was widely publicized. At issue was a Snapchat post from Brandi Levy. As a first-year high school student, Levy failed to make the varsity cheerleading team. Disappointed, she posted a picture of herself with the caption “Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.”

Students who made the squad saw Levy’s post and showed it to the cheerleading coach. The coach then suspended Levy from the junior varsity team. Levy sued the school. //

It’s not hard to imagine an off-campus Snapchat post that could require in-school discipline. Most people would probably agree, for instance, that the school could punish Levy if she had joked about doing violence to her coaches, even if the message did not rise to the level of “true threat” required to get law enforcement involved. Other, more subtle forms of intimidation also might warrant punishment from the school. And yet Levy’s particular post was clearly not that, and schools should generally be prohibited from policing students after hours. That is the job of their parents, not the state.

The current federal standard for school restrictions on speech was set in Tinker v. Des Moines, in 1969. The Supreme Court ruled that students do not lose First Amendment protections simply by showing up to school, but they do not enjoy absolute freedom of speech either; schools can punish students whose speech “materially and substantially” interferes with school business. In the years since, Tinker has been extended to things like field trips, but it has never been applied to fully off-campus speech like Levy’s. And it has never contended with the age of social media.

In Mahanoy, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 8-1, ruled to protect Levy—and declined to extend the Tinker standard all the way off campus. In his majority opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer issued a limited and exceedingly pragmatic ruling that made clear that Levy’s conduct is constitutionally protected and sent a signal to schools that their authority to police off-campus speech is much more limited than their authority to police speech within their buildings. //

Breyer disagreed. Instead, he listed a number of instances in which a school may have cause to regulate off-campus speech, including when a student uses social media to bully or harass other students.

(2)Activities described in paragraph (1) include—
(A)the evacuation when their lives are endangered by war, civil unrest, or natural disaster of—
(i)United States Government employees and their dependents; and
(ii)private United States citizens or third-country nationals, on a reimbursable basis to the maximum extent practicable, with such reimbursements to be credited to the applicable Department of State appropriation and to remain available until expended, except that no reimbursement under this clause shall be paid that is greater than the amount the person evacuated would have been charged for a reasonable commercial air fare immediately prior to the events giving rise to the evacuation;

Generally, individuals evacuated on a U.S. government-coordinated transport, including charter and military flights or ships, even if those transports are provided by another country’s government, must sign an Evacuee Manifest and Promissory Note (Form DS-5528) note prior to departure. The Department of State uses the Form DS-5528 to document who got on which transport, and it lets us know how to contact evacuees for billing purposes.

U.S. law requires that departure assistance to private U.S. citizens or third country nationals be provided “on a reimbursable basis to the maximum extent practicable.” By taking a U.S. government coordinated transport, evacuees are obligated to repay the cost of their transportation. The amount billed to evacuees is based on the cost of a full fare economy flight, or comparable alternate transportation, to the designated destination(s) that would have been charged immediately prior to the events giving rise to the evacuation.

https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2017-title22/USCODE-2017-title22-chap38-sec2671

In Jeff's world, it's not 'you snooze, you lose', it's 'you lose, you sues'

The court’s unsigned order will remain in place while a legal challenge plays out in a New York-based federal appeals court. In it, the majority wrote that the New York policy appeared to violate landlords’ due process right to a hearing in the face of a tenant’s claimed inability to pay rent.

“This scheme violates the Court’s longstanding teaching that ordinarily ‘no man can be a judge in his own case’ consistent with the Due Process Clause,” they wrote.

Dear Boss,

Compelling any employee to take any current Covid-19 vaccine violates federal and state law, and subjects the employer to substantial liability risk, including liability for any injury the employee may suffer from the vaccine.

Many employers have reconsidered issuing such a mandate after more fruitful review with legal counsel, insurance providers, and public opinion advisors of the desires of employees and the consuming public. Even the Kaiser Foundation warned of the legal risk in this respect. (https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/key-questions-about-covid-19-vaccine-mandates/)

Three key concerns: first, while the vaccine remains unapproved by the FDA and authorized only for emergency use, federal law forbids mandating it, in accordance with the Nuremberg Code of 1947;

second, the Americans with Disabilities Act proscribes, punishes and penalizes employers who invasively inquire into their employees’ medical status and then treat those employees differently based on their medical status, as the many AIDS related cases of decades ago fully attest;

and third, international law, Constitutional law, specific statutes and the common law of torts all forbid conditioning access to employment upon coerced, invasive medical examinations and treatment, unless the employer can fully provide objective, scientifically validated evidence of the threat from the employee and how no practicable alternative could possible suffice to mitigate such supposed public health threat and still perform the necessary essentials of employment.

At the outset, consider the “problem” being “solved” by vaccination mandates.

The previously infected are better protected than the vaccinated, so why aren’t they exempted?

Equally, the symptomatic can be self-isolated. Hence, requiring vaccinations only addresses one risk: dangerous or deadly transmission, by the asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic employee, in the employment setting.

Yet even government official Mr. Fauci admits, as scientific studies affirm, asymptomatic transmission is exceedingly and “very rare.”

Indeed, initial data suggests the vaccinated are just as, or even much more, likely to transmit the virus as the asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic.

Hence, the vaccine solves nothing. This evidentiary limitation on any employer’s decision-making, aside from the legal and insurance risks of forcing vaccinations as a term of employment without any accommodation or even exception for the previously infected (and thus better protected), is the reason most employers wisely refuse to mandate the vaccine.

This doesn’t even address the arbitrary self-limitation of the pool of talent for the employer: why reduce your own talent pool, when many who refuse invasive inquiries or risky treatment may be amongst your most effective, efficient and profitable employees?

First, federal law prohibits any mandate of the Covid-19 vaccines as unlicensed, emergency-use-authorization-only vaccines. Subsection bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III) of section 360 of Title 21 of the United States Code, otherwise known as the Emergency Use Authorization section of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, demands that everyone give employees the “option to accept or refuse administration” of the Covid-19 vaccine. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/360bbb-3)

This right to refuse emergency, experimental vaccines, such as the Covid-19 vaccine, implements the internationally agreed legal requirement of Informed Consent established in the Nuremberg Code of 1947. (http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/nuremberg/).

As the Nuremberg Code established, every person must “be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision” for any medical experimental drug, as the Covid-19 vaccine currently is. The Nuremberg Code prohibited even the military from requiring such experimental vaccines. (Doe #1 v. Rumsfeld, 297 F.Supp.2d 119 (D.D.C. 2003).

Second, demanding employees divulge their personal medical information invades their protected right to privacy, and discriminates against them based on their perceived medical status, in contravention of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (42 USC §12112(a).) Indeed, the ADA prohibits employers from invasive inquiries about their medical status, and that includes questions about diseases and treatments for those diseases, such as vaccines.

As the EEOC makes clear, an employer can only ask medical information if the employer can prove the medical information is both job-related and necessary for the business. (https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/questions-and-answers-enforcement-guidance-disability-related-inquiries-and-medical). An employer that treats an individual employee differently based on that employer’s belief the employee’s medical condition impairs the employee is discriminating against that employee based on perceived medical status disability, in contravention of the ADA. The employer must have proof that the employer cannot keep the employee, even with reasonable accommodations, before any adverse action can be taken against the employee.

If the employer asserts the employee’s medical status (such as being unvaccinated against a particular disease) precludes employment, then the employer must prove that the employee poses a “safety hazard” that cannot be reduced with a reasonable accommodation.

The employer must prove, with objective, scientifically validated evidence, that the employee poses a materially enhanced risk of serious harm that no reasonable accommodation could mitigate.

This requires the employee’s medical status causes a substantial risk of serious harm, a risk that cannot be reduced by any another means. This is a high, and difficult burden, for employers to meet.

Just look at all the prior cases concerning HIV and AIDS, when employers discriminated against employees based on their perceived dangerousness, and ended up paying millions in legal fees, damages, and fines.

Third, conditioning continued employment upon participating in a medical experiment and demanding disclosure of private, personal medical information, may also create employer liability under other federal and state laws, including HIPAA, FMLA, and applicable state tort law principles, including torts prohibiting and proscribing invasions of privacy and battery. Indeed, any employer mandating a vaccine is liable to their employee for any adverse event suffered by that employee. The CDC records reports of the adverse events already reported to date concerning the current Covid-19 vaccine.(https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/vaers.html )

Finally, forced vaccines constitute a form of battery, and the Supreme Court long made clear “no right is more sacred than the right of every individual to the control of their own person, free from all restraint or interference of others.” (https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/141/250)

With Regards,
Employee of the Year
XXX

Joe Biden certainly isn’t the first president to violate his oath of office, but he might be the first in memory to openly brag about doing it.

As Biden announced a new “eviction moratorium,” he informed Americans that the “bulk of constitutional scholars” would say the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eviction moratorium is “not likely to pass constitutional muster.”

Not likely? It already failed.

In June, Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with the majority Supreme Court that the CDC “exceeded its existing statutory authority,” even though he allowed the order to sunset. The president admitted as much, noting that the new moratorium is meant to give the administration time to act on “rental assistance” before the court again shuts it down. What stops Biden from stalling and trying a third time? A 10th time?

Biden admitted to the media that he would be circumventing the courts, the law, and his oath of office, in which he promised, to the best of his ability, to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,” not to infringe on the property rights of Americans to placate crackpot socialists in his party.

When asked today about the discrepancy, White House press secretary Jen Psaki promised, “This is also going to be a temporary solution.” Because, as Article 2, Section 5, apparently states, the executive can make laws irrespective of Supreme Court rulings, as long as he also crosses his heart and promises it’s only going to be temporary.

When pushed further on the matter, Psaki could not recall the moment when Biden was convinced there was solid legal ground to move forward. Probably because no such moment exists.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was far more honest, noting that this was “a huge victory for the power of direct action and not taking no for an answer.”

Not taking no for an answer—in this case, not taking no for an answer from the Supreme Court—is lawlessness. The process—the sacred norms that Democrats pretended to care about over the past five years—is irrelevant to engaging in “direct action” within government. It’s been clear from their efforts to delegitimize the Supreme Court to their effort to undermine faith in federalism and countermajoritarian institutions.

In Troxel v Granville, 530 US 57 (2000), the Supreme Court declared, “The liberty interest at issue in this case—the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children—is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court.”
Parental Rights Demand Strict Scrutiny Protection

Because parental rights are fundamental, they cannot just be pushed aside at the whim of government actors. Rather, they must be accorded “strict judicial scrutiny.”

“Strict scrutiny” refers to the level of judicial review, the legal burden, placed on any law that would restrict a fundamental right. It is often defined as requiring that a law be “narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest by the least restrictive means.”

We expect this standard to apply, not only because of the Supreme Court’s (repeated) declaration that parental rights are fundamental, but also because it is called for in the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and in the DC code.

In this case, the government failed to establish any compelling governmental interest, the law is not narrowly tailored, and it does not employ the least restrictive means to accomplish the government’s goals.

The law allows children as young as 11 to grant legally binding consent for any vaccination the government has approved, as long as the medical provider giving the shot decides the child is mature enough to make an “informed decision.” The law also requires that everyone involved in the act—the medical provider, the child’s school, and even the parent’s insurance carrier—keep this information away from the parent.

Far from being the least restrictive means, this limits the parent’s exercise of their fundamental rights in every possible way. This law will keep parents (and, not insignificantly, a lot of primary care physicians) completely in the dark regarding their child’s medical history. This will greatly increase the risk of physical, medical harm to the child now and into the future, as parents will not know their child’s full medical history.

Fortunately, this call for strict scrutiny is also firmly established. As recently as July 23, the Ninth Circuit declared, “Because California’s ban on in-person schooling abridges a fundamental liberty interest of these five Plaintiffs that is protected by the Due Process Clause, that prohibition can be upheld only if it withstands strict scrutiny.”

This DC law, though it covers a completely different area of decision-making, abridges the same liberty interest cited in that Ninth Circuit case.
Parental Rights Protect Children

Ultimately, parental rights protect children.

DC’s law places children at risk of manipulation or coercion, while those naturally placed in their lives to protect them from bad decisions—their parents—are taken out of the way.

Keeping parents in the dark will also make it impossible to properly monitor a child for a possible negative reaction. And it will put the child at risk of receiving other treatments that may be contra-indicated with the vaccine, because they do not know the child had the vaccine.

Landlords are not evil. They are often middle-class Americans who chose to invest their money wisely. The government has chosen to target them financially with no constitutional right to do so. Further, the repercussions of this are widespread. Fewer people are now going to invest in housing that people could then rent because it’s not worth the risk. And because there are so many people squatting in current rentals, there are people with the money to pay rent who can’t find a place to live. //

No “emergency” gives the federal government the right to steal from citizens, at least outside of full due process regarding criminal activity. The Supreme Court needs to take this seriously, including Justice Kavanaugh pulling his head out of his backside, so as to offer immediate relief if Democrats push through another eviction moratorium.

whether one believes what the FBI did crossed any lines or not is ultimately going to be in the eye of the beholder. If someone is more pro-FBI, they’ll no doubt insist these are standard tactics and that there’s nothing wrong with the FBI quite literally orchestrating a crime in order to nail people willing to participate.

For others, the question of whether the FBI should be going this far to set up and goad people into crimes in order to catch “terrorists” is going to be paramount. The story confirms that the initial meeting that got Adam Fox, the supposed radicalized person in question, involved in the plot was sponsored by an FBI agent. That’s going much further than just implanting informants in an already existent situation. //

azright
an hour ago
This is way beyond line. Basically the FBI set up a scenario that did not exist to see who would join in to commit a crime. I can't think of a more obvious entrapment case. I have no confidence or respect for the FBI anymore. I can trust my local cops but not the feds