"South Dakota is not New York City." A seemingly innocuous statement, made last Wednesday by Governor Kristi Noem in response to calls for her to issue a coronavirus shutdown across a state with the motto "Under God the People Rule." South Dakota, after all, is one of the least densely populated states in the vast American West. Surely local circumstances should inform local responses to a communicable disease? Not so, according to Noem's scolds at Change.org. They want the same "theory"...

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House “coronavirus response coordinator,” said on Saturday all plebs must stay out of grocery stores. She didn’t offer an alternative. Instead, she repeated the hand washing and 6-foot “social distancing” mantra. “This is the moment to not be going to the grocery store, not going to the pharmacy, but doing everything you can to keep your family and your friends safe and that means everybody doing the 6-feet distancing, washing their hands,” said the life-long...

Over the last few weeks, politicians at the local, state, and national levels of government have been increasingly asserting extraordinary power in the name of fighting coronavirus. As the power exercise continues to ramp up, and as the time people suffer lost liberty and lost income runs on, expect the crackdown to increasingly involve physical violence. The longer the crackdown continues at its present or an increased intensity, the more the situation will look like a war between the...

My posts on social media lately have focused on national and international issues related to COVID-19. I occasionally cruise through posts from my neighborhood's Facebook page and Nextdoor.com and just throw up my hands. The local "Karens" are condemning people for traveling, looking for offending groups of >3 people they can narc on to the local hotline, and calling for increased police patrols of the neighborhood, etc. The most fundamental of civil rights mean nothing to these people. We...

We’re told by government and media talking heads that we’re in a war with the Covid-19 virus. The threat from said virus is supposedly so potent that famine, poverty, suicide and utter dependence on government is preferable to contracting the illness. We’re told to huddle in our homes and social distance ourselves from other humans at least six feet. Now we’re told it’s advisable to wear a mask when one is shopping for necessities like food and medicine. Every day the news media appears to...

The State Department released what it called its “democratic transition framework for Venezuela” this week; a 13-point plan for the removal of Nicolas Maduro and a radical overhaul of the country’s political system. The principal and most fundamental change Washington proposes is to “restore all powers to the National Assembly,” the one branch of government the right-wing pro-US opposition coalition currently holds. This would place the entire country under the control of political groups that...

The former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption, QC, has denounced the police response to the coronavirus, saying the country is suffering 'collective hysteria'. This is an edited transcript of his interview with BBC Radio 4's World at One programme earlier today. BBC interviewer Jonny Dymond 'A hysterical slide into a police state. A shameful police force intruding with scant regard to common sense or tradition. An irrational overreaction driven by fear.' These are not the accusations of...

The Justice Department’s securing of a criminal indictment of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro reminds us that when it comes to the US government’s regime-change operations, coups, invasions, sanctions, embargoes, and state-sponsored assassinations are not the only ways to achieve regime change. Another way is through a criminal indictment issued by a federal grand jury that deferentially accedes to the wishes of federal prosecutors. The best example of this regime change method involved...

I'm not sure which is more sad, that American pastors are being arrested for having public worship services or that most Christians seem to be perfectly fine with that travesty. While I always assumed the American “church” would fold at the first sign of persecution, it turns out that many have folded far easier than that. They didn't have to be beaten, shot, or tortured; they merely had to be commanded by the government to stop meeting; and most squeamishly complied. The First Amendment has...

The shutdown of the American economy by government decree should end. The lasting and far-reaching harms caused by this authoritarian precedent far outweigh those caused by the COVID-19 virus. The American people—individuals, families, businesses—must decide for themselves how and when to reopen society and return to their daily lives. Neither the Trump administration nor Congress has the legal authority to shut down American life absent at least baseline due process. As Judge Andrew...

Public attitudes about the coronavirus outbreak increasingly exhibit features of a collective panic. That development creates the danger that government measures designed to deal with a very real public health problem may lead to enormous collateral damage both to the economy and the freedoms that Americans take for granted. Governments at all levels have taken ever more extreme (even outrageous) actions in an effort to stem the outbreak. The governors of New York, California, and other states...

The US Justice Department unsealed an indictment on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other government officials last week, accusing them of "narco-terrorism." The move is reminiscent of the 1988 indictment of former CIA asset and Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega. The Noriega indictment resulted in a US invasion of Panama that left hundreds – possibly thousands – of dead civilians in its wake. Attorney General William Barr took to the podium to announce Maduro’s indictment. Barr happens...

September 17, 2019 was a significant day in American economic history. On that day, the New York Federal Reserve began emergency cash infusions into the repurchasing (repo) market. This is the market banks use to make short-term loans to each other. The New York Fed acted after interest rates in the repo market rose to almost 10 percent, well above the Fed’s target rate.The New York Fed claimed its intervention was a temporary measure, but it has not stopped pumping money into the repo market...

As a social, cultural, and medical episode about a virus becomes more surreal each day, Congress passed a law to spend massive amounts of money the federal government does not have to assist a badly damaged economy the government itself caused -- along with mass media -- by their frantic, fear-generating publicity that emboldened state governors and local mayors to illegally give orders to restrict and shut down the very movement of people and their participation in personal, family,...

Amidst the coronavirus lockdown, some of the claims of governments and media have been shown to be exaggerated. Ten years ago, they tried the same thing with swine flu. They haven’t learned their lessons — has the public? On Wednesday, RT picked apart the sensationalist mortality rates that media and governments have been using to terrify the public. These figures are the product of some transparently weak statistics, and cast the true threat from Covid-19 into doubt. There is a saying among...