Let's look at two cities that have a great deal in common. Both were under British rule for extended periods. Both were, as recently as 1950, backward regions with little or no economic activity; one was a "barren island" whose 600,000 residents had been left stripped by four years of WW2 occupancy by Imperial Japan, while the other was part of a territory administered by Egypt for a period before being taken by Israel in 1967, part of a larger package with no real economy and only 120,000 residents.

Today, one of these cities remains (despite, not because of, being re-absorbed into China) an economic powerhouse, a major global banking center, a place with a fully modern technological society and a high standard of living. The other remains a Third World hell-hole, governed by maniacs, ruled by hatred.

These two cities, of course, are Hong Kong and Gaza.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/18/why-couldnt-gaza-be-another-hong-kong/

The 29-year-old defected from North Korea as a young teen, only to be human-trafficked in China. In 2014, she became one of just 200 North Koreans to live in the United States — and, as of last year, is an American citizen.

Now, three years after she graduated from Columbia with a degree in human rights, Park is raising alarm bells about America’s cancel culture and woke ideology.

In her book “While Time Remains,” out February 14, Park writes how she made it all the way to the United States only to find some of the same encroachments on freedom that she thought she left behind in North Korea — from identity politics and victim mentality to elite hypocrisy.

“I escaped hell on earth and walked across the desert in search of freedom, and found it,” she writes. “I don’t want anything bad ever to happen to my new home … I want us — need us — to keep the darkness at bay.”

She implores readers: “I need your help to save our country, while time remains.” //

In the first five years of her life, an estimated 3.5 million North Koreans died of starvation. Park recalls hunting for cockroaches on the way to school to quell her hunger — even as the Kim’s regime banned the words “famine” and “hunger.”

If you are a Common Sense reader, you are by now highly aware of the phenomenon of institutional capture. From the start, we have covered the ongoing saga of how America’s most important institutions have been transformed by an illiberal ideology—and have come to betray their own missions.

Medicine. Hollywood. Education. The reason we exist is because of the takeover of newspapers like The New York Times.

Ok, so we’ve lost a lot. A whole lot. But at least we haven’t lost the law. That’s how we comforted ourselves. The law would be the bulwark against this nonsense. The rest we could work on building anew.

But what if the country’s legal system was changing just like everything else?

Today, Aaron Sibarium, a reporter who has consistently been ahead of the pack on this beat, offers a groundbreaking piece on how the legal system in America, as one prominent liberal scholar put it, is at risk of becoming “a totalitarian nightmare.”

This is a long feature on a subject we think deserves your time. //

That lawyers could be tainted by representing unpopular clients was hardly news. But in times past, lawyers worried about the public—not other lawyers. Defending communists, terrorists, and cop killers had never been a crowd pleaser, but that’s what lawyers had to do sometimes: Defend people who were hated.

When congressional Republicans attacked attorneys for representing Guantanamo detainees, for example, the entire profession rallied around them. The American Civil Liberties Union noted that John Adams took pride in representing British soldiers accused of taking part in the Boston Massacre, calling it “one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered to my country.”

But that’s not how the new associates saw Boies’s choice to represent Weinstein. They thought there were certain people you just did not represent—people so hateful and reprehensible that helping them made you complicit. The partners, the old-timers—pretty much everyone over 50—found this unbelievable. That wasn’t the law as they had known it. That wasn’t America.

“The idea that guilty people shouldn’t get lawyers attacks the legal system at its root,” Andrew Koppelman, a prominent liberal scholar of constitutional law at Northwestern University, said. “People will ask: ‘How can you represent someone who’s guilty?’ The answer is that a society where accused people don’t get a defense as a matter of course is a society you don’t want to live in. It’s a totalitarian nightmare.” //

All of sudden, critical race theory was more than mainstream in America’s law schools. It was mandatory.

Starting this Fall, Georgetown Law School will require all students to take a class “on the importance of questioning the law’s neutrality” and assessing its “differential effects on subordinated groups,” according to university documents obtained by Common Sense. //

As of last month, the American Bar Association is requiring all accredited law schools to “provide education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism,” both at the start of law school and “at least once again before graduation.” That’s in addition to a mandatory legal ethics class, which must now instruct students that they have a duty as lawyers to “eliminate racism.” (The American Bar Association, which accredits almost every law school in the United States, voted 348 to 17 to adopt the new standard.) //

Stith, the professor who was lambasted for telling students to “grow up,” doesn’t see the pile-on as an isolated incident.

“Law schools are in crisis,” she told me. “The truth doesn’t matter much. The game is to signal one’s virtue.” //

“That’s hugely corrosive,” said a corporate lawyer in Virginia, who, like most attorneys contacted for this article, would not go on the record for fear of losing his job. “You see it in all of the worst things we see in Donald Trump. ‘The law means what I say it means. The election was stolen because I lost.’ Once you depart from the idea that we’re all people under the law, it really matters who is in power. That starts to feel like the rule of man, not the rule of law.” //

The problem, Strossen said, is that rights mean nothing without representation. “ANYONE who doesn’t have access to counsel in defending a right, as a practical matter, doesn’t have a meaningful opportunity to exercise that right,” the former ACLU chief told me in an email. “Hence, undermining representation for any unpopular speaker or idea endangers freedom for ANY speaker or idea, because the tides of popularity are constantly shifting.”

Ken Starr, the former solicitor general who led the 1998 investigation of Bill Clinton, agreed. “At a time when fundamental freedoms are under assault around the globe, it is all the more imperative that American lawyers boldly stand up for the rule of law,” Starr said. “In our country, that includes—especially now—the representation of controversial causes and unpopular clients //

Then there’s the erosion of the principle that one is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. “The Anti-Innocence Project,” one criminal-defense attorney in San Francisco joked.

​​Progressive lawyers have become more determined to turn a blind eye to certain defendants while cracking down with even greater than usual fervor on certain crimes. “The same people who are anti-incarceration for some defendants will support life plus cancer for others,” said Scott Greenfield, a criminal-defense attorney in New York. “Good people—which in practice means blacks and Hispanics, regardless of what they did—should be free. Bad people—which in practice means sex offenders and financial criminals—should go to jail.”

In 2019, for example, the American Bar Association nearly passed a motion urging state legislatures and courts to adopt a new definition of “consent” in cases of sexual misconduct that would flip the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused—despite fierce criticism of the standard from legal scholars, and despite some evidence that it has unfairly hurt black, male students on college campuses

Reagan didn’t put the Soviet Union on the ash heap of history by launching wars of aggression or by mimicking Soviet central planning. He did it by helping America get back to being what it was always meant to be: prosperous, powerful, peaceful.

I watched Reagan help turn this country around. I delighted watching him do it with that good humor and sunny disposition that drove the Left nuts. I still do.

Long story short — too late, right? — Reagan fought communism with capitalism.

So of course, it worked.

Communism can only win by default when its victims are too brutalized or too uncaring or sometimes just too ignorant to resist. //

Our country over the last two decades or so has taken a dark turn into what we might call “soft Communism.”

No walls, no barbed wire, no minefields keeping us locked in, but something even more insidious.

Wokeness, cancel culture, domestic spying, and social-credit-type controls from Big Tech and even the banking system …

… these things are the communism of my adulthood, just like the military might and propaganda efforts of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact were the communism of my formative years. //

But you can’t fight communism, whatever form it takes, with nothing but good wishes and some personal perseverance. You’ve got to fight communism with capitalism, just like Reagan taught me all those years ago — and that means first and foremost having a sustainable business model.

someone who comes from a country that knows something about Communist dictatorships, Romanian Member of the European Parliament Cristian Terhes, had a few things to say about Trudeau and his crackdown on the Freedom Convoy.

“What made us strong – and I’m talking about the Western world – were the values,” Terhes declared. “The respect for basic fundamental rights. The understanding that the government is there to serve you as a person, not for you to serve the government. The prime minister of Canada, the way he’s behaving right now – he’s exactly like a tyrant, like a dictator. He’s like Ceaușescu in Romania,” Terheș said during a speech to European Parliament in Brussels. “If you raise doubts about the vaccines, you’re outcasted. What’s the difference between what he does and what happened under The Inquisition?”

Ceaușescu was a communist Romanian politician and dictator.

“On one side they say well we should not believe in God,” Terhes continued. “But on the other, they say ‘believe in science. We don’t have to. Science is not about belief. Science is about measurements, conclusions, hypothesis, and arguments.” //“I hope this movement for freedom and for rights is spreading all around the world. Because at the end of the day, we have to make sure that all these elected officials understand that they were elected into those offices to work for the people. Not to behave like masters of slaves.”

‘If the prosecution wins, the ability of pastors to preach the gospel is effectively over in Finland, without criminal sanction.’

Two Christian leaders in Finland stood trial in Helsinki on Jan. 24 for publicly stating the Bible’s teachings on sex and marriage. Longtime Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola defended in court their decision to write and publish, respectively, a pamphlet explaining Christian teachings about sex and marriage.

In the trial’s opening arguments, which will resume on Feb. 14, Finnish prosecutors described quotations from the Bible as “hate speech.” Finland’s top prosecutor’s office essentially put the Bible on trial, an unprecedented move for a secular court, said Paul Coleman, a human rights lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom International who is assisting in the Finns’ legal defense and was present during Monday’s trial.

“The prosecutor began the day by trying to explain that this case was not about beliefs and the Bible. She then, and I’m not kidding, she then proceeded to quote Old Testament Bible verses,” Coleman said in a phone interview with The Federalist after the trial concluded for the day. “Trial attorneys, Finnish trial attorneys who have been in and out of court every day for years, said they didn’t think the Bible had ever been read out like that in a prosecution.”

Never before has a Finnish court had to decide whether quoting the Bible is a crime. Human rights observers consider this case an important marker for whether Western governments’ persecution of citizens for their speech and beliefs increases. //

“The majority of the day was about the role of the Bible in society,” said Coleman, an Englishman who listened with the aid of translators. “The prosecutor on more than one occasion questioned whether we in Finland follow Finnish law or the Bible, as if these things are so inherently contradictory that you have to choose one.”

The long day in court concluded with the prosecutor cross-examining Pohjola about his theology, Coleman said, “asking his interpretation of the Bible, just straight-up theology.” The prosecutor even asked the bishop, apparently without awareness of the historical import of this question, “Does he follow God’s law or does he follow Finnish law?” Coleman noted with astonishment.

“I would characterize the day as a modern-day Inquisition or heresy trial,” Coleman concluded. “And the heresy was that Paivi and Bishop Juhana were on trial against the new sexual orthodoxy of the day.”

What Jan. 6 showed us is that democracy really is delicate and bringing it to the brink has consequences.

Cable news anchors and other journalists in Washington act like that’s a truism only one side needs to hear and it’s not theirs, but the opposite is true.

History didn’t start on Jan. 6. The riot did not happen in a vacuum. And what preceded it wasn’t just Donald Trump telling his supporters that the election was rigged. It was months of discord and discontent instigated and inflamed by the very media who now swear that they’re the ones who understand just how sensitive our self-governance can be. //

Yeah, the riot in the Capitol building was disgusting and inexcusable. But in American democracy, recognizing the disgusting and inexcusable is supposed to go both ways. When it doesn’t, there are consequences.

Everyone has their breaking point. That’s not something that’s going to be only afforded to one side. Unfortunately, the media don’t want to learn that lesson of Jan. 6.

Last November, Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, testified before Congress that: “Content moderation rules and their potential effects, as well as the process used to enforce those rules, should be simply explained and understandable by everyone. We believe that companies like Twitter should publish their moderation process. We should be transparent about how cases are reported and reviewed, how decisions are made, and what tools are used to enforce.”

Dorsey’s claims are far from Twitter’s actual conduct. Upon appealing, I received a notification minutes later that “Twitter Support” verified I broke the rules, without any kind of reference to the text of my appeal.

As it wasn’t clear they had actually read it, I submitted it again. Then after not hearing back, I submitted another appeal. Over the course of two weeks, I submitted at least three appeals; the only reply I received throughout was the apparent auto-reply indicating Twitter Support verified I violated the “Twitter Rules.”

Dorsey also testified, “We have worked to build better in-app notices where we have removed Tweets for breaking our Rules. We also communicate with both the account that reports a Tweet and the account that posted it with additional detail on our actions.”

Again, I can vouch that none of this happens. I’ve explained in precise detail how my tweet fell well within the bounds of Twitter’s rules. Twitter refuses to explain why they believe otherwise. Worse, after forcing me offline, I had followers tell me Twitter had “unfollowed” them from my account.

In preventing people like me from accessing Twitter despite plainly qualifying under their own terms of service — and in failing to provide the kind of communication Dorsey testified under oath occurs in situations like mine — Twitter is arguably engaging in fraud, telling the public one thing while engaging in the opposite.

Much like the corporate news media, social media companies now operate as the communications wing of the Democratic Party, while continuing to be regulated like a public utility. This indemnifies them against content-related litigation even as they invest ever greater energy into carefully curating what appears on their platforms.

Ultimately this enables them to create a false sense of what’s “trending” or “viral” and what the “consensus” thinks, and protect notable personalities from criticism. It’s information warfare in service of progressive politics. Or, as Matt Taibbi recently put it, “What was supposed to be a historically democratizing technological tool [has] transformed into a dystopian force for censorship and control.”

Twitter’s demarcations around what’s allowed and what’s not are intentionally fuzzy, so that its faceless censors are empowered to decide for themselves. As conservatives like me know, that’s simply a pretext for carrying out shadow banning, frequent censorship, and permanent bans.

Recall that these enforcement actions come at the request of the Biden administration, which has made clear it wants social media companies to erase information they deem unhelpful. This enables the state to curtail our rights without amending the Constitution. It’s a disease rotting our republic, and it’s only getting worse.

The contrived and partisan battles that transpire in the Judiciary Committee do little to inform us as to what type of justice the nominee to the bench might be and instead serve as grotesque works of performance art for the individual senators who are merely auditioning for their eventual presidential campaign.

Hearing the nine justices actually quizzing the attorneys charged with arguing the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization enlightened us profoundly on their intellect, empathy, and abilities to carry out the critical job they've been given for the rest of their lives.

In some cases, the level of banal and insulting queries mixed with political pontifications left quite a bit to be desired (looking at you, wise Latina). However, some of the justices rose to the occasion of the historic day this may very well turn out to be.

Toward the very end of the arguments, Justice Brett Kavanaugh succinctly articulated exactly what today's discussion is really all about:

SCOTUSblog
@SCOTUSblog
·
Dec 1, 2021
Replying to @SCOTUSblog
Kavanaugh presses Prelogar about the argument that the Roe/Casey framework accommodates both the interests of pregnant people and the interests in protecting fetal life. Kavanaugh is openly skeptical that it's possible to balance both interests.

Kavanaugh: “You can’t accommodate both interests. You have to pick. That’s the fundamental problem. And one interest has to prevail over the other at any given point in time. And that’s why this is so challenging.” //

Hugh Hewitt
@hughhewitt
Justice Kavanaugh (doing great work for public and media here) reviews the interests of the fetal life. “You have to pick. one interest has to prevail over the other at a point in time. And the question becomes: What does the Constitution say about that. Why should Ct decide?” 👏
11:49 AM · Dec 1, 2021 //

There's no way to know how the Court will decide, and we will probably have to wait six excruciating months to learn of the decision. What we do know is this all boils down to the fundamental conundrum Kavanaugh articulated:

You have to pick one interest over the other; they can't both prevail. So... what does the Constitution say?

If they truly rule based on that simple question, they must come down on the side of life.

If not for international tennis stars and the World Tennis Association’s courage, we probably would never see Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai again. //

The [World Tennis Association's] CEO and stars have taught us several valuable lessons. First, China doesn’t have all the leverage, as some think. Too often, businesses, organizations, and well-known individuals in the west are unwilling to stand up to China because they believe nothing will happen because China has all the leverage. But the west has many things that China wants: western markets, financial systems, natural resources, and technology.

Like all dictatorial regimes, the CCP wants to be both “loved” and “feared.” It has invested millions of dollars in shaping global public opinion to “tell China’s story right” from the regime’s point of view, albeit unsuccessfully. It desperately needs foreign organizations’ participation in events hosted by Beijing to legitimize the regime and raise the party’s international profile in front of an increasingly sophisticated domestic audience. It will be a massive embarrassment for the CCP if a well-known organization such as the WTA pulls out of China right before the nation is ready to show off its power and prestige at the Olympics.

International businesses and organizations should recognize both the leverage they possess and the CCP’s limits. Suppose more organizations and corporations stand up to the CCP? Although the CCP would not give up oppressing the Chinese people altogether, it may not go as far as it wants.

One of the CCP’s most potent weapons is economic coercion. The party often uses market access to China to pressure international businesses and organizations to silence their criticisms and do whatever China demands. The WTA has shown that when an organization is ready and willing to bear the cost of standing up to the CCP, such an organization frees itself from the CCP’s coercion and puts itself in a powerful position. More often than not, the CCP will be more willing to compromise.

Last but not least, it’s time to realize that every interaction with China, be it a sporting event, a commercial transaction, or a cultural exchange, can quickly become a test of an organization’s morality. The CCP has taken on a “whole of society” approach and compelled all of society to follow the party’s orders. Sooner or later, all involved must choose whether to side with human rights and human dignity or an oppressive authoritarian regime.

Enes Kanter Freedom, center for the Boston Celtics and an outspoken human rights activist, wrote that freedom “must be defended at all costs.” We must “wake up and speak up. Change is coming, and no one can stop it. They can’t silence us all.” The WTA and its star athletes have shown us the way.

There’s so many athletes, so many actors, so many singers and rappers out there. They’re scared to say a word because they care too much about their money – the endorsement deals, what the teams they play for say," Kanter said.

"They should know one thing: It should be morals and principles over money. It shouldn’t be the opposite way. People’s life depends on this," he continued, noting that athletes in all sports are role models to young people around the world.

Kanter added that he feels alone in his efforts to call out China for its repeated atrocities.

"So many people care too much about the business side of it," Kanter said. "But to me, human rights are way more important than anything you offer me."

"If I were in Hong Kong, I think I'll probably be in jail," said Lin, the 33-year-old deputy secretary-general of Taiwan's governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

The recent events in Hong Kong have given Lin greater determination to defend Taiwan's sovereignty, he said -- and he is not alone.

As authorities in Hong Kong arrested pro-democracy supporters, including opposition politicians and newspaper editors, a growing number of people in Taiwan have reflected upon the island's future relationship with mainland China.

Since the Hong Kong protests broke out in 2019, more than 32% of respondents in Taiwan preferred a move toward formal "independence" -- twice as many as in 2018 -- according to a survey by Taiwan's National Chengchi University in June.

Via Kaiser Health News, a discouraging report by Lauren Weber and Anna Maria Barry-Jester: Over Half of States Have Rolled Back Public Health Powers in Pandemic. Excerpt:

Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry about lockdowns and mask mandates, are taking away the powers state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases.

A KHN review of hundreds of pieces of legislation found that, in all 50 states, legislators have proposed bills to curb such public health powers since the covid-19 pandemic began. While some governors vetoed bills that passed, at least 26 states pushed through laws that permanently weaken government authority to protect public health. In three additional states, an executive order, ballot initiative or state Supreme Court ruling limited long-held public health powers. More bills are pending in a handful of states whose legislatures are still in session.

“Now the nation no longer lacks what it has long needed, a slender book that lucidly explains the intensity of conservatism’s disagreements with progressivism. For the many Americans who are puzzled and dismayed by the heatedness of political argument today, the message of Timothy Sandefur’s The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty is this: The temperature of today’s politics is commensurate to the stakes of today’s argument.”
—George Will, The Washington Post

Now in paperback, this book provides a dramatic new challenge to the status quo of constitutional law and argues a vital truth: our Constitution was written not to empower democracy, but to secure liberty. Yet the overemphasis on democracy by today’s legal community has helped expand the scope of government power at the expense of individual rights. Now, more than ever, the Declaration of Independence should be the framework for interpreting our fundamental law. It is the conscience of the Constitution.

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

Senator Rand Paul
@RandPaul
We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children?

Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not. Not this time. I choose freedom. //

WATCH: Rand Paul Blasts Dem Tyrants and Mandates, Causing a Leftist Meltdown
By Nick Arama | Aug 09, 2021 11:30 AM ET

Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times via AP, Pool
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) put out a powerful video against any further lockdowns and it’s driving folks on the left wild.

Paul made it very simple, saying that we were done with any more lockdowns and if they tried to impose them again, “It’s time to resist.”

Paul ripped apart mandates, starting with the mandate on mask wearing on House members.

“They can’t arrest all of us. They can’t keep all of your kids home from school. They can’t keep every government building closed – although I’ve got a long list of ones they might keep closed or might ought to keep closed. We don’t have to accept the mandates, lockdowns, and harmful policies of the petty tyrants and bureaucrats. We can simply say no, not again. Nancy Pelosi — you will not arrest or stop me or anyone on my staff from doing our jobs. We have either had COVID, had the vaccine, or been offered the vaccine. We will make our own health choices. We will not show you a passport, we will not wear a mask, we will not be forced into random screenings and testings so you can continue your drunk-with-power rein over the Capitol.”

China is working aggressively to spread its influence and promote its interests throughout the globe, exploiting nations and flaunting individual rights and sovereignty as it does so. And it’s doing a pretty good job.

China invests huge amounts of capital into developing countries, with overseas investment and construction exceeding $2 trillion since 2005. Many of these projects fail to meet international standards and use illegal funds, according to The Heritage Foundation’s 2021 China Transparency Report. (The Daily Signal is the news and commentary platform of The Heritage Foundation.)

China uses these investments to influence voting at the United Nations. One William and Mary AidData research study found that “if African countries voted with China in the U.N. General Assembly an extra 10% of the time, they would get an 86% bump in official development assistance on average.” //

Despite its seeming successes, China lacks the most important ingredient for a thriving country, what the interim National Security Strategic Guidance calls “our most fundamental advantage”: democracy.

China lacks the basic freedoms that enable society and people to flourish. According to the Index of Economic Freedom, China remains a mostly unfree country with weak property rights and a protectionist financial system. New reports appear regularly about government interference stifling human expression in China. //

It is time to hold China accountable for such abuses. It is vital, however, that the U.S. and other Western nations not fall into the trap of countering the growth of Chinese influence by replicating authoritarian Chinese actions. It is the responsibility of democracies to work together to expose the corruption and authoritativeness of the Chinese Communist Party while emphasizing and staying true to their own values of democracy, respect for human rights, and economic freedom.

China isn’t invincible. Its regime lacks freedoms that people inherently desire. It is imperative that the U.S. makes it clear to other countries that cooperating with China means cooperating with a “regime that systematically violates the human rights of its citizens.”

For me, it’s all and only about freedom. For me without freedom, there is no point in anything. So take away all the numbers, all the statistics, all the models and predictions, all the promises and threats; all the steel hand in velvet glove coercion. Take all of that away. To me it all boils down into something simple.

I declare that I am a free man.

I was born 54 years ago into part of the world, just a relatively small part of the world, but I was taught that my freedom had been won for me by men and women who had fought and died to make it so. I was born just 22 years after World War II into a world, still full of those men and women who had fought for my freedom and lived to tell the tale and what a tale it was. It started with the sudden appearance of a force bent on tyranny. Of course the sudden appearance was an optical illusion. In truth that force had been on the rise and making plans for years before it was ready to pull the trigger. It’s worth remembering that that force believed it was poised to make the world a better place. A glorious place. When that force started moving it seemed nothing could or would stop it. In the beginning of the fight to prevent the victory of that tyranny it was a minority -a minority outgunned and shouted down by fellow citizens- who feared that deals might be struck with tyranny, that stood up and shouted no. English writer Mervyn Peake said “To live at all is miracle enough.” It’s a good line and I’ve quoted it for years, but but now I see merely to live at all is not enough, not nearly. A caged bird is alive but without the freedom to fly the Limitless sky, it is denied everything that makes a bird in the first place. To be alive is not enough. What matters is to live in freedom. A bird is such a fragile creature. It’s really all and only about movement. Take away a bird’s movement and it’s a handful of feathers and air.

Freedom is not negotiable. You’re either free or you’re not. Freedom is not even safe. Those who’ve been imprisoned are often terrified of freedom. All those choices, for all of our personal responsibility. This is why ex-cons often reoffend, to go back behind bars where it feels safer, out of harm’s way. I have three children. Teenagers all. Often I think I would like to keep them close by me forever, where I can stop them doing stupid things. Dangerous things. If I kept them in the house no stranger would hurt them, but that would be no life. Not for them and not even for me. I would be their jailer and they would be my caged birds. As it happens, this past year-and-a-half has let me see what happens to children kept safe in the house. It’s not good, not good at all. And so if I didn’t know it before, I know now that I have to let them go into a world that is full of all manner of things, danger included.

Here’s the thing is, if your freedom means that I might catch COVID from you, then so be it. If my freedom means you might catch COVID from me then so be it. That’s honestly how I see it. For the sake of freedom…I will cheerfully risk catching COVID. That is a chance. One among many that I am prepared to take and happily. Life is not safe, freedom is not safe. For the sake of freedom, yours and mine together, both freedoms being of equal value, I will cheerfully risk much else besides.

When host Maria Bartiromo asked if there was no way anyone else could have seen the emails, Carlson said the only other person was his executive producer.

He added that just before his show aired on Tuesday, he got a call from a reporter who read the email back to him.

“There is no possibility that anyone else could have known. And then again yesterday I get a call right before air, like 7:15, from a journalist I know and like, not many left, but I do like this person. He repeated back to me what’s in my email, he got it because the NSA leaked it, so, yes, entirely real,” Carlson said.

The NSA declined to comment. //

Jonathan Swan
@jonathanvswan
New: Tucker Carlson was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Putin shortly before he accused the NSA of spying on him. U.S. gov't officials learned of this outreach ... but that's where details get cloudy.

Tucker Carlson sought interview with Putin at time of NSA spying claim
axios.com //

None of these scenarios mesh with what Carlson has alleged. A legit unmasking would not result in his emails being offered to another reporter.