More Action from Barr

It's encouraging to see the Justice Department actually attempting to restrain unconstitutional acts by the governors.

‘There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.” That, yet again, was the Justice Department’s message as it intervened on Sunday on the side of a Virginia church, which is suing Governor Ralph Northam’s lockdown against communal worship.

That's right, and it's crucial to fight for that principle. Far more Americans have died in wars to defend our freedoms than are at risk today even under the plausible worst-case scenarios. We cannot simply lay down what they won and preserved at so costly a sacrifice.

I'm not opposed to constitutional, sensible acts to limit the damage. Even where religion is concerned, it's reasonable for the government to issue warnings, advice, even attempt persuasion that people ought to voluntarily choose to forgo communal worship. It's not acceptable to simply ban it.

Smoking Guns at the FBI

Had the Department of Justice (DOJ) released the newly disclosed documents related to Gen. Michael Flynn three years ago, instead of fired FBI Director James Comey improperly leaking his “memos” on President Trump, there definitely would have been a special counsel — only it would have been investigating the FBI for gross abuse of power, not the Trump administration.

The new documents are in effect the “smoking gun” proving that a cabal at the FBI acted above the law and with extreme political bias, targeting people for prosecution rather than investigating crimes.

Sovereignty Resurgent

The Spectator USA published a collection of reflections arguing, inter alia, that borders work.

A Georgetown University public health expert confidently tweeted that ‘germs don’t respect borders’. If this is true, it is true only in the sense that respecting borders is a human trait. Viruses don’t write novels or read Playboy or develop gambling addictions or say ‘for all intents and purposes’ until it gets on your nerves, either.

This viruses-don’t-respect-borders business is a perfect globalist slogan. It conveys absolutely nothing but aggressively enough so as to cow others into swallowing any inclination to stand up and disagree with you. It is what is called in zoology ‘display’.

But in fact, the scientist is wrong. This virus happens to travel on people. If people can be made to respect borders, viruses will ‘respect’ them too, in the sense that they will not cross them. If this is true of households, then it is true of nations.

I think his point about the patience of working people like delivery drivers with more privileged classes being limited is valid, as well.

Transformative hermaneutics

Hey, where'd y'all go?

Where are the usual attacks on white male-dominated science? Where’s the “standpoint epistemology” to tell us how different is the knowledge intersectionally-appropriate feminist scientists would bring to this crucial problem? How many of those labs fiercely trying to find a treatment, a vaccine, a path forward, have a demographically appropriate number of women researchers? Not to mention racially and sexually “diverse” ones? What can possibly explain the lack of attention to this terrible problem of marginalization of the already oppressed?

Security theater

From Jim Geraghty's interview with a hospital honcho:

“Go out to the supermarket or the hardware store or wherever else people are being instructed to wear a mask or other facial covering, and you’ll see about half of them have pulled the mask down off their nose because it’s uncomfortable to breathe,” he said. “That totally defeats the purpose. There are people spending stupid amounts of money to buy N95s, and then wear them with big gaps around their mouth because they don’t take the time to learn how to use them properly — and they keep using them, even after they’re physically broken down and can’t seal properly. If I wanted to be one of those Karen scolds, I could get my [thrills] all day lecturing those folks, but since this is the epidemiologic equivalent of TSA Security Theater, and the typical American puts personal comfort and convenience first, it’s not worth doing. Then again, I’m not one of those persons who gets their [thrills] bossing others around.”

The man could turn a phrase

I don't when I've ever read such a brief, deadly letter, especially the devastating use of the "Yours" convention in the closing:

Philadelphia, July 5, 1775.

Mr. Strahan:--You are a member of parliament, and one of that majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns, and murder our people. Look upon your hands! They are stained with the blood of your relations. You and I were long friends:--you are now my enemy, and I am

Yours, B. Franklin.

Good if True

ROK scientists believe that you develop a firm immunity from recovering from the virus.  Of course it’s too early to know if it lasts from year to year, and of course there are frequent mutations; but good if true all the same.

Week in Pictures is up

Gotta be a spoof

Can't be serious.

John Keats, 1795-1821

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is–
I hold it towards you.

I fall to pieces

Wake up, Jonah, and pray

The fog of medical war

WIRED so often runs annoying agitpop articles that it's a pleasure to find another piece there without an axe to grind, this time examining the continuing confusion over whether chloroquine is effective in COVID-19.  The author manages to point out that the opponents of the drug aren't yet in any more position to be sure that it's a failure than its advocates are in a position to know that it's a success.  All this without taking more than a few tiny potshots at President Trump.

I admit, however, to some disappointment.  I hoped by now we'd have clear evidence, and obviously it would have been nice to get confirmation that the drug works.

Georgia Leads the Way

Governor Kemp, scoundrel though he is, has been making some strong moves lately. Georgia has scrapped driver's license tests for teenagers, leaving it to parents to determine when skills are strong enough to justify the state issuing a license. They're pursuing the most aggressive re-opening plan in America. And they've ordered state agencies to plan for $3.5 Billion in cuts to balance out extra spending from the emergency.

Maybe being the most aggressive isn't the right road; maybe a middle path is wiser. The state is definitely showing commitment to individual liberty in a time of crisis, though, which is praiseworthy. I hope it works out well, and that the harm is as minimal as possible along the path they've chosen. One harm or another is unavoidable, whichever path is chosen.

May Day

God send us a merry month of May.

Here also are some of Tex's favorites, nominated in years past.

Armed Protesters Swarm Michigan Statehouse

The armed protest in Virginia a few months ago was friendly, peaceful, and completely failed to prevent the governor and legislature from enacting unconstitutional laws. In Michigan, today, a much smaller but much angrier protest is likely to encourage a governor with proven disdain for the Constitution and its norms to call out the National Guard. Of course, sentiment in the National Guard probably runs against her; and the President can always call the guard into Federal service and overrule her orders if he decides to do so.

Interesting times.

UPDATE:

She's calling the thunder.

Karen

You're probably aware of the development of a new stereotype called "Karen," a middle-aged white woman who acts from a position of tremendous cultural privilege. She's rude to workers, demands to see the manager and then chews them out because she isn't satisfied with the service, demands freebies and discounts and generally to be satisfied by someone else doing more for her.

I noticed today that both sides of the American virus discussion think that Karen is on the other side.

If you're on the keep-it-closed side, Karen is a woman who is ridiculously pushing for business to re-open even though it will endanger workers, because she wants those businesses to provide her with hairstyles and manicures and other luxuries, and to use shopping as an escape from her horribly-behaved children.

If you're on the open-it-up side, Karen is privileged enough to work from home or have a husband who supports her, and she is unconcerned with suffering and ruin being brought on business owners or workers put out of a job. Instead, she's calling the cops on you for letting your kids play at the neighbor's house, and leaving aggressive notes on your door if she noticed someone delivering groceries 'because quarantine means no visitors!'

Of course there are probably many tokens of both types in the real world, but it's amusing to me to see the disconnect. Both sides are sure Karen is a bad person, but they both think she's the other kind of person.

Overconfidence

A military AI outperforms humans in correctly lowering its confidence when judgments are made on limited information:

They couldn’t explain why they were overconfident; they just were. Overconfidence is human and a particular trait among highly functioning expert humans, one that machines don’t necessarily share.

It's worth remembering that, especially if you happen to be a high-functioning expert human. At least some of you are.

Go North From Jupiter

A fascinating article explores some new findings in the world of physics.

“And it seems to be supporting this idea that there could be a directionality in the universe, which is very weird indeed,” Professor Webb says.

“So the universe may not be isotropic in its laws of physics – one that is the same, statistically, in all directions. But in fact, there could be some direction or preferred direction in the universe where the laws of physics change, but not in the perpendicular direction. In other words, the universe in some sense, has a dipole structure to it.

“In one particular direction, we can look back 12 billion light years and measure electromagnetism when the universe was very young. Putting all the data together, electromagnetism seems to gradually increase the further we look, while towards the opposite direction, it gradually decreases. In other directions in the cosmos, the fine structure constant remains just that – constant. These new very distant measurements have pushed our observations further than has ever been reached before.”

In other words, in what was thought to be an arbitrarily random spread of galaxies, quasars, black holes, stars, gas clouds and planets – with life flourishing in at least one tiny niche of it – the universe suddenly appears to have the equivalent of a north and a south.

He goes on to say that these findings are so new and so weird that he's skeptical of them for now, even though it's his own work. That sounds like a real scientist to me.

Ethics and Re-Opening

Here is a proposal by an author you know well for approaching the problem of re-opening given that all options entail highly undesirable consequences.  It may be right or wrong, but it does at least lay out clear principles.

There is no option that does not entail extra deaths. Medical professionals seem to think that we will experience thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of extra deaths if we re-open quickly. The UN has produced two reports lately on the effects of the shut down, one of which says that hundreds of thousands of extra children will die of starvation; the other of which says that over a hundred million people will be pushed to the edge of starvation by the economic lockdowns.

So we have to choose between dark roads. That's the problem the model tries to address.