Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Theodore McCarrick illustrates the problem, but he is not the only problem

I have said it before: the Catholic priesthood must be changed, and restricted to married, heterosexual men.

Mandatory celibacy for priests was not established until the Second Lateran Council in 1139, and reaffirmed by the Council of Trent in 1563. That means that, for 1,100 years, the majority of Church history, priests could be, and were mostly expected to be, married men.

With humans being naturally inclined to mate, the Church is expecting the priest to live an unnatural lifestyle. Human beings need to mate, they need to be married, and the celibacy discipline denies to Catholic priests that most basic normalcy in human life. Even St Paul, who stated that he was celibate, noted that marriage was the natural condition of life,[1]I Corinthians 7:1-11. And St Paul also set down the conditions that a man must meet to be a deacon, priest or bishop:

The saying is sure: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way— for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church?[2]1 Timothy 3:1-5

St Peter, regarded as the first Pope, at least had been married at one point: Matthew 8:14-15 refers to his mother-in-law, though there is no reference to St Peter’s wife in the Bible.[3]1 Corinthians 9:5 has also been interpreted as confirming that not only was St Peter married, but that his wife accompanied him as he traveled with Jesus. Cephas, in the cited passage, refers to … Continue reading

The conditions for priests and deacon are similar. But clearly, St Paul expected those in Holy Orders to mostly be married.

Ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick pleads not guilty to child sex assault; some in crowd outside yell, ‘Shame on you!’

By Kurt Shillinger  and Michelle Boorstein | September 3, 2021 | 9:55 a.m. EDT

DEDHAM, Mass. — Disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 91, in street clothes, stooped and using a walker, was arraigned Friday in a suburban Boston courtroom on three counts of criminal child sex abuse.

It was the first time the former Catholic archbishop of Washington had appeared in public since 2018, when his fall began amid a wave of sex abuse allegations. Some in the crowd outside, including survivors of other assaults, screamed at the former global power-broker: “Shame on you! Prince of the church!”

Inside, McCarrick was charged with sexually assaulting a teen in the 1970s, the first time a U.S. cardinal has faced a criminal charge of abuse. He pleaded not guilty during the hearing that lasted less than 10 minutes. Judge Michael J. Pomarole ordered McCarrick to give up his passport and to stay away from people under the age of 18, as well as the victim.

There’s much more at the original, but the story of the former Cardinal is well-known: after scads of evidence, Pope Francis took away his title as Cardinal, and eventually he was laicized. Let’s be honest about it: Mr McCarrick was a predatory homosexual, using his power and position to abuse not just teenagers, but seminarians and subordinate priests.

We need to tell the truth here: while it is wholly politically incorrect to say, the sexual abuse of minors in the Church has been a problem of homosexuality: the vast majority of sexual abuse by Catholic priests has been against boys rather than girls. Several different Google searches have failed to turn up any notation concerning the number of victims in the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report divided by sex, something of obvious interest, because such would reinforce the rather obvious fact that most victims of an all-male clergy have been boys. The John Jay report noted that sexual abuse cases studied between 1950 and 2002 indicated that, rather than prepubescent children, abusers targeted older children:

The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.[4]The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, 1950-2002, page 12.

A celibate priesthood is a sexually immature priesthood. Sorry to tell the truth here, but if you have never, or only rarely, had sexual relations, you have simply not had time to mature in those relations.

There is no way that the Catholic Church could find a way to accommodate the sexual desires of its homosexual priests, when the Church holds that homosexuals cannot be married, that sexual activity outside of marriage is sinful,[5]Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2353 that homosexual activity is “gravely depraved”,[6]Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2357 and that homosexuality itself is “objectively disordered.”[7]Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2358 This can mean only one thing: that Catholic priests must be heterosexual, and that they must be married.

This is a celibacy problem, in that priests are forced to live unnatural lives, but while it might be politically incorrect, it is also intellectually dishonest to deny that this is a homosexuality problem as well. We have a priesthood of sexually immature men who are far more heavily than the population homosexual in orientation. The statistics we do have indicate that they were preying on boys just entering puberty, not prepubescent children, and that is an indication that sexual orientation as opposed to pedophilia is the primary motivation.

We need a priesthood who understand and participate in normal, adult sexual relationships, and, given that the Church does not, and cannot, recognize homosexual marriages as legitimate, that can mean only one thing: a priesthood in normal, heterosexual marriages.

That will not eliminate all sexual abuse; Jerry Sandusky, were he available for comment — and cared to tell the truth — could tell us all about men in stable, heterosexual marriages who still had a preference for underaged boys. Nor will it prevent the inevitable, some priests being divorced by their wives, and some children or married priests turning out badly.

But it has to be better than what we have now, a priesthood with an out-of-proportion homosexual cohort, and all being denied the most natural of human impulses, that of mating.

This is what we must have, this is what the Catholic Church needs in order to survive to serve the faithful into the future. Denying it, because it is politically incorrect, is denying the truth.

Back to The Washington Post:

While shocking, due to the popularity and power of the sprightly, charismatic McCarrick, his case came two decades after the Catholic sex abuse scandal exploded in Boston and spread everywhere from high-level sports to the Boy Scouts. Forty-six U.S. bishops have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct with minors, according to BishopAccountability. Many thousands of complaints have been filed and multiple dioceses have filed for bankruptcy to cover costs of attorneys and settlements.

But McCarrick is one of only two U.S. bishops who have been criminally charged. The charges against former Springfield bishop Thomas Dupre were dropped the same day, in 2004, with prosecutors citing the statute of limitations.

Forty-six bishops, forty-six bishops! They might not all be guilty, and must be proven innocent until proven otherwise, at least legally.

Pope Francis has recognized the problem:

Pope Francis warned Italian bishops this week to vet carefully applicants to the priesthood and reject anyone they suspected might be homosexual, local media reported on Thursday.

‘Keep an eye on the admissions to seminaries, keep your eyes open,’ the pope was quoted as saying by newspaper La Stampa’s Vatican Insider service. ‘If in doubt, better not let them enter.’

The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the remarks, which Vatican Insider and Il Messaggero said were made at a closed-door gathering on Monday.”

Had the Pope’s admonition been put in place by Pope Pius XII, who was the Bishop of Rome when Mr McCarrick entered the seminary, perhaps he would never have become a priest, perhaps all of the disastrous behavior he exhibited while under Holy Orders would have been avoided. Had we a married priesthood, perhaps we would not have the shortage of priests we have now, and perhaps, just perhaps, we would not have had the scandals which have rocked the Church.

Mr McCarrick is an infirm, old man, who might not spend a minute in jail, who might not even survive until the end of his trial. Quite frankly, I don’t really care what happens to him at this point; his punishment is the disgrace he has suffered, and that will probably have to be enough.

But Mr McCarrick is the symbol of what has gone wrong in the Catholic Church, and tells us, if we are willing to look honestly at the problem, what the solution is: while not all homosexuals are predators going after minors, while some truly can remain celibate, their continued presence in the Church has been a persistent problem, and one which will not go away by simply ignoring it. Those who have done nothing wrong should not be somehow kicked out of the priesthood, but we must open the seminaries to married men, as we already have with permanent deacons, and restrict them to mature, married men.

References

References
↑1 I Corinthians 7:1-11.
↑2 1 Timothy 3:1-5
↑3 1 Corinthians 9:5 has also been interpreted as confirming that not only was St Peter married, but that his wife accompanied him as he traveled with Jesus. Cephas, in the cited passage, refers to Peter.
↑4 The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, 1950-2002, page 12.
↑5 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2353
↑6 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2357
↑7 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2358
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The unintended (?) consequences of being #woke

The left have been slamming police departments across this country ever since the death of George Floyd while he was resisting arrest in Minneapolis. Had Mr Floyd just gotten in that police car when he was arrested, he’d be alive today, or at least he would be if he didn’t overdose on the fentanyl he was using at some point. The left and the #woke and antifa all led Mostly Peaceful Protests™ against the police and doing radical things like obeying the law.

In the City of Brotherly Love, the rioters burned and looted:

Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?

That’s the question that has been raging on the streets of Philadelphia, and across my architecture-centric social media feeds, over the last two days as a dark cloud of smoke spiraled up from Center City. What started as a poignant and peaceful protest in Dilworth Park on Saturday morning ended up in a frenzy of destruction by evening. Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire.

Their chances of survival are slim, which means there could soon be a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia, in one of its most iconic and historic neighborhoods. And protesters moved on to West Philadelphia’s fragile 52nd Street shopping corridor, an important center of black life, where yet more property has been battered.

The very first line by Inquirer architecture writer Inga Saffron asked whether the destruction of buildings in the riots in the city after the killing of George Floyd mattered. She claimed that the anger of the protesters was justified, but also noted that yes, those buildings did matter, too.

“People over property” is great as a rhetorical slogan. But as a practical matter, the destruction of downtown buildings in Philadelphia — and in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and a dozen other American cities — is devastating for the future of cities. We know from the civil rights uprisings of the 1960s that the damage will ultimately end up hurting the very people the protests are meant to uplift. Just look at the black neighborhoods surrounding Ridge Avenue in Sharswood or along the western end of Cecil B. Moore Avenue. An incredible 56 years have passed since the Columbia Avenue riots swept through North Philadelphia, and yet those former shopping streets are graveyards of abandoned buildings. Residents still can’t get a supermarket to take a chance on their neighborhood.

The “Buildings Matter, Too” headline got Stan Wischnowski, then Executive Editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer fired to resign, with published Elizabeth Hughes writing that she’s transforming that once-great newspaper into “an anti racist news organization,” and telling readers that the Inquirer was now:

  • Producing an antiracism workflow guide for the newsroom that provides specific questions that reporters and editors should ask themselves at various stages of producing our journalism.
  • Establishing a Community News Desk to address long-standing shortcomings in how our journalism portrays Philadelphia communities, which have often been stigmatized by coverage that over-emphasizes crime.
  • Creating an internal forum for journalists to seek guidance on potentially sensitive content and to ensure that antiracism is central to the journalism.
  • Commissioning an independent audit of our journalism that resulted in a critical assessment. Many of the recommendations are being addressed, and a process for tracking progress is being developed.
  • Training our staff and managers on how to recognize and avoid cultural bias.
  • Examining our crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media.

Translation: the Inquirer would censor the news if it might show black or ‘brown’ people committing crimes. We noted the Sacramento Bee’s description of their policy:

Publishing these (booking) photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

As we have pointed out, Representative Ilhan Omar Mynett (D-MN) and state Attorney General Keith bin Ellison (D-MN) are supporting a ballot measure to eliminate the Police Department in Minneapolis, and while Philadelphia hasn’t been that stupid — at least not yet — it’s clear that the chickens are coming home to roost:

Police struggle to hire officers and 911 dispatchers as homicides and shootings increase

The Police Department is struggling to find enough officers and 911 dispatchers to hire, amid a surge in violence that is on pace to make 2021 the deadliest year in history.

by Mensah M Dean | Sunday, September 5, 2021

An Overbrook man called 911 last week after hearing breaking glass outside his house and looking out to see a teen breaking into his next-door neighbor’s car, then running off.

Realizing he had just witnessed a burglary in progress, the man raced to his car to give chase. Along the way, he said, he repeatedly called 911 for help — and the phone rang and rang with no answer.

Far from unique, his experience of reaching for help by dialing 911 — to no avail — is being played out across the city as the Philadelphia Police Department grapples with a vacancy crisis among officers and 911 dispatchers.

Finding enough officers and dispatchers has been a challenge, according to department officials, as interest in such jobs declines amid calls for police reform and the national racial reckoning sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. In Philadelphia, city and police union officials say, the decline in interest in policing can also be attributed in part to District Attorney Larry Krasner’s stepped-up prosecution of police misconduct.

There’s more at the original

The Philadelphia Police Department, authorized to have 6,380 officers, is 371 officers below strength. There are only 252 dispatchers, out of an authorized strength of 353, 101 vacancies, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw stated that the city has imposed mandatory weekend overtime for 911 dispatchers to make up the shortfall. The story notes that Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Soros’ stooge Larry Krasner, has made prosecuting police ‘misconduct’ a priority.

Would you want to be a police officer in the City of Brotherly Love, with far-left idiots like Mr Krasner just salivating at the chance to catch a mistake and prosecute yet another police officer?

It seems that Philadelphia doesn’t even need to dismantle the Police Department, the way the #woke are trying to do in Minneapolis; instead they’ve inflicted a festering wound of a hundred cuts, one which is slowly dismantling the department, because the #woke simply do not believe in law enforcement.

At least, not until one of them is the victim.

The real divide in America is not between Republicans and Democrats, conservative and liberals, or even urban and rural. No, the real divide is between civilized and barbarian. The problem for the left is that, as barbarians, they have surrendered to the wants and mercies of the strongest, and most of them are weaklings.

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Philadelphia sports writers might just explain Philly’s murder rate The Inquirer wants to influence the city's culture, but their sportswriters might be going about it the wrong way.

In the city that booed Santa Claus, and which piled heaps of scorn and abuse on Carson Wentz and Ben Simmons after every bad game, Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer Marcus Hayes wants to blame 76ers point guard Ben Simmons and (former) Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz for wanting to leave.

    Ben-edict Simmons, Carson Wentz deserve Philadelphia’s fury as they abandon Eagles, Sixers

    They should have spent the summer on their knees, begging forgiveness, promising to improve. Instead, they sabotaged their trade value and put your teams in peril. They completely warrant your wrath.

    By Marcus Hayes | September 4, 2021

    Philly can be an angry place. Just ask Santa.

    Sometimes that anger is misplaced, as Jayson Werth can attest. But, in this moment, every ounce of Philadelphia’s fury directed at Ben Simmons and Carson Wentz is justified.

    Wentz forced a disastrous trade this spring to the Colts after logging one of the worst seasons in NFL history. Simmons, gun-shy in the playoffs, is trying to trump that unholy departure by strong-arming the Sixers, according to an Inquirer report Wednesday.

    They should have returned to the Eagles and Sixers, rehabilitated their images, and enhanced their trade values. They could not, and cannot. They fear competition. They abhor accountability. They see themselves as victims. So, instead, they sabotaged their trade values, which crippled the Eagles, and which probably will cripple the Sixers. That, on its own, should infuriate fans, even if the pair’s dismissiveness didn’t.

    Wentz and Simmons should have spent the summer of 2021 down on their knees, begging for your forgiveness, working on their flaws, willing to accept whatever role their bosses decided would best help the team. They should have apologized to their teammates for their shortcomings and for the distractions they caused. They should have pledged to, in the future, actually earn the millions of dollars that you lavish upon them — paying to watch them on TV, online, or in person; parking your cars and buying beers at the stadiums; purchasing their jerseys and shoes online.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Simmons grew up in Australia, where people aren’t treated the way Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, treat sports stars. Mr Wentz grew up in North Dakota, where people aren’t, you know, [insert plural slang term for the rectum here], yet somehow, some way, people there expect them to have Philly thick skins.

Of course, there are a lot of Philadelphians who don’t have such thick skins, which is why people keep getting shot in the City of Brotherly Love, but I digress.

Mr Simmons is an incredible athlete, but he has one glaring weakness as a basketball player: he just can’t shoot. So, with all that he can do, Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, had to jump on his biggest weakness, and forgot about all of the good things he can do. Philly fans, and sports writers, wanted him to play beyond his skill set, and trashed him when he couldn’t. Even before the playoffs, there were plenty of articles in the Inquirer about him taking very few three point shots. (I remember one in which it was noted that, at the time, Shaquille O’Neal had more career three-pointers than Mr Simmons.)

The pressure got to Mr Simmons, and he had a terrible series against the Atlanta Hawks, shooting just 33.3% . . . from the free throw line! Then, with just 3:30 left in the game, and the 76ers trailing by two, Mr Simmons, who is 6’11” tall, passed up a wide-open dunk over 6’1″ Trae Young. The game, as the announcer said, had gotten in his head.

Mr Simmons was rightly criticized, but Philly fans, and sports writers, went way, way overboard.

Mr Wentz? He was well appreciated, until last season, when he played behind a destroyed-by-injuries offensive line, had no rushing game, and second-quality receivers. His top target, Zach Ertz, was out for five games, yet Philly fans, and sports writers, expected Mr Wentz to be Superman anyway. I wasn’t a particularly good football player, but even in high school I knew that there were eleven guys on the field, all of whom are necessary to make plays, and it doesn’t matter how good your quarterback is, if his receivers aren’t getting open, and his line isn’t keeping the defensive rush off of him, he’s not going to have a good game. Even Tom Brady can’t make great plays when he’s underneath a 260 lb blitzing linebacker.

The article was all about Messrs Simmons and Wentz having no loyalty to their Philadelphia teams, but, in reality, Philly fans, and sports writers, had no loyalty to those players. Mr Hayes is like the abusive husband who gets all urinated off and blames his wife for filing for divorce.

When I think of the homicide rate in Philly, which actually has been coming down of late, it seems to me like the Inquirer sports writers, writ large. People getting pissed off, for reasons that really aren’t that important, and overreacting in the extreme. Mr Hayes, of course, is being paid to overreact, even by the very #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Inquirer, but, in his own small way, he is contributing to the attitude which so frequently spills out onto the city’s mean streets. Through the end of August, 357 people had been murdered in Philly, which means that there were more murders there than any entire year from 2008 through 2019.

Is that fair to Mr Hayes? He might not think so, but the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love is, in the end, an issue of culture, and the Inquirer is, and wants to be, both an element of, and contributor to, the culture of the city. When published Elizabeth Hughes wrote that the newspaper was trying to become “an anti racist news organization,” she was saying that she wanted her newspaper to become a leader in the community, to make the city a better place in which to live. Thus, it has to be asked: do columns like Mr Hayes’, in which he wrote of Messrs Simmons and Wentz, “So yes, this pair warrants your wrath,” lower the rhetoric, dampen down the anger, reduce the tendency to violence? When he wrote, “Ben-edict Simmons and Ginger Jesus are Philly sports’ version of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,” wasn’t he asking for an extreme reaction? If players like Messrs Simmons and Wentz, who have virtually nothing to do, personally, with the vast, vast majority of people in Philly, deserve the “wrath” and “fury” of Philadelphia fans, then doesn’t the guy down the block, who stole your girl, or dunked in your face on the playground, or cut you off in trying to grab a parking space, or sold drugs on your corner, deserve your “wrath” and your “fury” even more?

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Lies, damned lies, and statistics Shading the truth does not help your case

The Centers for Disease Control reported, as of August 22, 2021, that of the eligible population in Fayette County, Kentucky, 80.6% had received at least one dose of one of the COVID-19 vaccines, with 68.3% being fully vaccinated. The chart on the right is from Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, downloaded September 3, 2021. You can click on it to enlarge the image.

So, with such a significant part of the population in the Bluegrass State’s second largest city, wouldn’t you expect COVID-19 cases to be lower than prior to the availability of the vaccines?

    300 new cases, 5 new deaths. Lexington’s COVID-19 numbers continue to spike

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | Updated: September 2, 2021 | 4:27 PM EDT

    Lexington reported five new COVID-19 deaths Thursday, making August the deadliest month for coronavirus since April.

    The five deaths all occurred in August but were newly confirmed as being caused by COVID-19. The Lexington-Fayette County Health Department has confirmed a total of 10 coronavirus deaths from August. There were only three deaths in July, four in June and six in May, according to health department data.

    The local health department has asked residents to wear a mask in crowded public areas, avoid close contact with people who are sick, cover coughs and sneezes and wash their hands often. The health department advises everyone should follow those guidelines, whether they’re fully vaccinated or not.

    Lexington also reported 301 new COVID-19 cases Thursday morning. The city’s rolling average of new cases has jumped up to 232, the highest it’s been since early January.

The chart at the left is from the article, which has free access; it’s not behind the Lexington Herald-Leader’s paywall. You can click on the chart to enlarge it, but this is a screen capture; the one at the original is interactive.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases, on September 1, 2021, was 232, the highest it has been since January, and only four previous weeks, December 6, 2020 (253), November 22, 2020 (244.3), December 13, 2020 (237.6) and January 10, 2021 (242.4), have seen a higher rolling seven day average . . . and all of those weeks were before COVID-19 vaccines were generally available. (A few health care workers began receiving vaccinations in December.)

The death rate from COVID-19 has declined significantly since the vaccines were available, with 14 recorded in August, compared to 12 in each March and April of this year, just as the vaccines started to become available, but 29 in February and the county record of 61 in January. Mr Chisenhall’s story had a graph indicating just 10 COVID-related deaths, but the chart at the right is from the Health Department. I note that, with 14 COVID-related deaths in August of 2021, in which we had no mask mandates, other than in schools, which had just opened at the end of the month, no businesses closed, and no real restrictions on activities, it was one more death than in August of 2020, with similar weather, masks required everywhere, some businesses closed and other of Governor Andy Beshear’s restrictions in place.

There were more than 300 new COVID-19 hospitalizations reported in August, with only two previous months having exceeded 300.

Mr Chisenhall’s report did not tell us what percentage of the new cases, hospitalizations and deaths were among partially or fully vaccinated people, but digging through the Health Department’s charts, the information begins to come together. The hospitalizations chart shows — though, admittedly, not quite ac clearly as it might — that hospitalizations among the non-vaccinated clearly exceed those among vaccinated patients. But that is skewed by the fact that other charts indicate that the number of cases has greatly increased among 5 to 17 year old and 0 to 4 year old patients. Since none of the 0 to 4 year old, and only half of the 5 to 17 year old, groups are even eligible to be vaccinated, those cases will very much skew the breakthrough cases percentages.

The Health Department tell us that, in one of the few charts accompanying the graphs, that in August there were a total of 5337 cases, 3775 of which were among the non-vaccinated and 1562 are ‘breakthrough’ cases among the vaccinated, 29.27%.

But when you eliminate the roughly 220[1]Even enlarged, the charts are difficult to read; I have done my best in looking at the charts to get the right number, but could be off by a few. cases among the 0 to 4 year old group, none of whom are vaccinated, and half of the cases of the 5 to 17 year old group, to get the 5 to 11 year old group, none of which are eligible to be vaccinated, from total cases, we’re down to 4680 total cases among the vaccine eligible. All of a sudden 1562 ‘breakthrough’ cases among a total of 4680 eligible to have been vaccinated, we see a ‘breakthrough’ case rate of 33.37%.

In other words, one out of three is the actual breakthrough rate in Fayette County.

Vaccination clearly helps, but not at nearly the rate that the advocates claim that it does. Actual numbers published by the Health Department, rather than hard-to-read graphics would help nail the breakthrough percentage down more directly. But, if the full truth were told, there would be plenty of evidence that people should get vaccinated, but that a vaccine mandate should not be imposed.

References

References
↑1 Even enlarged, the charts are difficult to read; I have done my best in looking at the charts to get the right number, but could be off by a few.
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I completely support this measure in Minneapolis Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. -- Galatians 6:7

Representative Ilhan Omar Mynett (D-MN) and state Attorney General Keith bin Ellison (D-MN) have endorsed a November ballot initiative that would abolish the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a new Department of Public Safety.

The initiative would remove language in the city charter that requires Minneapolis to keep a police department with a minimum number of officers based on population.

The city would then create a new agency responsible for ‘integrating’ public safety functions ‘into a comprehensive public health approach to safety.’ The new agency could have police ‘if necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of the department.’

Mrs Mynett argued, in an OpEd in the Star Tribune:

Charter change on Minneapolis public safety is needed

The amendment on November’s ballot lets citizens choose a more humane system.

By Ilhan Omar | August 31, 2021 | 11:41 AM CDT

Minnesota and the entire world watched in horror last May as George Floyd, a resident of my congressional district, had his life taken from him by the very officers who had sworn an oath to protect him. One of those officers is now in prison. But as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said at the time, that verdict represented accountability, not justice, because justice implies restoration. “Now,” he told us, “the cause of justice is in our hands.”

What many don’t know is that the murder of George Floyd was not a one-off event. I remember witnessing my first police shooting as a teenager, where the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) put nearly 38 bullets into the body of a mentally ill man who was just released from an institution, didn’t speak a word of English, couldn’t respond to commands and was not of any imminent threat. Many of us, particularly people of color, have witnessed those kinds of killings in front of civilians far too often.

The truth is the current system hasn’t been serving our city for a long time. Right now, we expect the MPD to respond to all types of emergencies, from mental health crises, to domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and simple noise complaints and traffic stops. But the department simply is not equipped to deal with all these issues, which can lead to escalating tensions and even violence at the hands of police.

One of the biggest impediments to change is the Minneapolis Police Federation. Led by far-right Donald Trump supporter Bob Kroll until recently, the union routinely shields bad cops from any discipline. A recent Reuters investigation found that 9 out of 10 accusations of misconduct resulted in no punishment or intervention aimed at changing the officers’ behavior. The union also openly championed violent “warrior-style policing,” which treats any interactions with civilians like a war zone. These were the very tactics used against protesters in the wake of Floyd’s murder.

It looks to me like Minneapolis has become a war zone: with 61 homicides through the end of August, there have been two more murders in the city than at the same time last year, and last year saw a real spike due to the death of George Floyd. Robberies are up, 1,245 to 1,156, as are aggravated assaults, 1,975 to 2,030.

So, what would Mrs Mynett and Mr bin Ellison do about these killings, these crimes? Why, they’d send a social worker, or a crisis intervenor, or have some other #woke reaction. Of course, the number of reported crimes would actually decrease, because the people of the city would throw up their hands and say, “What’s the use?”

But murders would increase, because murder is a crime of evidence, not a crime of reporting: unless a killer has planned very well, it’s very difficult to dispose of a body, 100 to 300 lb of blood and tissue and bone, something which will start to stink in relatively short order. Bodies almost always get discovered.

Still, if that’s what the idiots good people in Minneapolis want, I say, let them have it, let them show us what an absolutely brilliant idea it is. After all, I don’t live there, so why would I care when they reap what they sow?

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University of Cincinnati Medical Center, already 11% understaffed, could lose 30% of its nurses due to #VaccineMandates

Sometimes trending stories have multiplied so much that continuing to add links to older ones clutters them up, as it was with my earlier story about mask and vaccine mandates causing people to either quit or get fired from jobs which already have a shortage of people. We aren’t taking about hamburger flippers at McDonald’s, where replacements can be trained in a day — assuming those replacements do something really radical like show up for work — but school bus drivers, who have to have commercial driver’s licenses with a school bus or passenger endorsement, and certified nursing assistants (CNAs), who take several weeks to train, and who must pass a criminal background check, or registered nurses (RNs), who require at least a two year, Associates degree, or four year baccalaureate degree, before passing their boards.

But the hits keep on coming, and even the credentialed media have begun to tell the truth. From the Cincinnati Enquirer:[1]Hat tip to William Teach for the story.

    COVID-19: Union says 30% of UC Medical Center nurses could quit over vaccine mandate

    Terry DeMio | September 1, 2021 | 2:33 PM EDT

    Pushback against area hospital systems’ mandates for employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 continues with the latest coming from more than 100 nurses who say they’d quit before complying.

    A number of UC Medical Center nurses, responding to a union survey, indicated they would leave their jobs if the hospital system’s vaccine mandate is finalized.

    The Ohio Nurses Association survey was conducted immediately after UC Health and other area hospital systems announced they would mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for their employees. The survey, done Aug. 5-12, was made public Wednesday. Results show that 136 of 456 nurses who responded – balked at the mandate. The medical center has more than 1,500 nurses.

    The survey underscores the ongoing controversy over the region’s health systems requiring vaccinations, which at one point landed all six of them in local courts. A recruiter with St. Elizabeth Healthcare, another of the six health systems, recently told The Enquirer that the vaccine mandate had led some nurses to quit.

    “This places the medical center in a very difficult position, and it places the nurses in a very difficult position,” said Dominic Mendiola, labor representative for the nurses association. He said that UCMC has been at capacity on and off since July, and currently, 187 nursing positions are posted.

There’s a good deal more at the original, but the math is simple: if the University of Cincinnati Medical Center has 1,500 nurses[2]The article did not give the exact size of the nursing staff, so I have used the minimum, 1,500, in all of my calculations., and 187 open positions, that means UCMC is slightly over 11% understaffed. Add another 136 who say that they would quit if a vaccine mandate was put in place, and that brings UCMC to 19.15% understaffed.

But there’s more. If only 456 out of 1,500 nurses responded, a 30.4% response rate, that means we do not know what the percentage of vaccine resistant nurses is overall, but statistics allows us to assume, with a margin of error, that the sample is representative of the whole. If it is representative of the whole, and the 29.82% resistant rate is true throughout the entire staff, UCMC could lose 447 nurses, for a 37.58% job vacancy rate.

Of course, the hospital has medical care staff other than just doctors and nurses: there will be CNAs, respiratory therapists, X-ray technicians, pharmacy techs, custodians, lab techs, food service workers, etc, but the Enquirer story covered only RNs.

Now, I suspect that the 1,044 nurses who did not respond to the survey did not respond primarily because they didn’t really care, and the vaccine resistance level among them would be much smaller, but UC Health decided to piss off a lot of the staff:

    UC Health spokeswoman Amanda Nageleisen said that she doesn’t have data on employee vaccination rates. But she added: “We are proud of the thousands of our nurses, physicians and other employees who have been fully vaccinated.

    “The science supports their decision, and we applaud their willingness to step forward and advance the safety of our patients, staff and community,” Nageleisen said. “These survey results do not reflect the views of the majority of our 10,000 employees, including our 2,600 nurses across the UC Health system.”

Way to tell the staff who aren’t vaccinated that you are not proud of them and their work. Yeah, that’s going to make them happy with their jobs. Maybe, just maybe, it isn’t the smartest thing to do, when you are an already understaffed company, to show disrespect for, and try to run off, the people you do have.

Nurses are not stupid people. People can, do, and have washed out or flunked out of nursing school. People who have been graduated from nursing schools can, do, and have failed their boards. They can see when their employers are showing disrespect for them, they can see that they do have job opportunities, plenty of job opportunities with other employers. And the nurses who get vaccinated grudgingly, unwillingly, just to keep their jobs, are going to become poorer employees, because they will be angry with their employers.

This push for vaccine mandates will not end well.

References

References
↑1 Hat tip to William Teach for the story.
↑2 The article did not give the exact size of the nursing staff, so I have used the minimum, 1,500, in all of my calculations.
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The #MaskMandates and #VaccineMandates are causing more problems than they would ever solve.

We have previously noted, many times, that people all over the country are resisting vaccine and mask mandates, and that these have, and will continue to have, the effect of creating a serious shortage of citical workers. From Newsweek:

1 in 8 Nurses Say They Haven’t Been Vaccinated and Don’t Plan to

By Katherine Fung | August 31, 2021 | 5:06 PM EDT

As the nation continues its efforts to ramp up vaccination rates, figures seem to lag not only among the public but also in hospitals, where one in eight nurses say they have not been vaccinated and aren’t planning on doing so.

A survey conducted between July 8 and 29 by the American Nurses Association (ANA) and American Nurses Foundation (ANF) found that among nearly 5,000 nurses, a quarter said they didn’t trust the vaccines or were unsure about the safety and effectiveness of the shots.

Of those who don’t intend on getting vaccinated, the main concerns included lack of information about long-term effects and vaccine safety, as well as mistrust in the information surrounding the vaccines’ development and approval.

Although the majority of nurses, 88 percent, are vaccinated, the proportion of vaccine-hesitant staff could present a problem for hospitals if vaccine mandates are issued for all healthcare workers.

Hospitals across the country are facing severe nursing shortages—an issue that existed before the pandemic but has been exacerbated by many leaving the field over the last 16 months due to burnout from caring for COVID patients.

The Biden administration has already required that nursing home staff be vaccinated in order for long-term care facilities to receive federal Medicare and Medicaid funding—a mandate that some in the industry have warned will pose “disastrous workforce challenges.”

There’s more at the original, but the article concludes with an absolutely laughable idea. It states that hospitals mandating vaccination could solve staffing shortages by raising pay, but with the already existing shortage of nurses, luring RNs from one hospital to another with higher pay just makes other hospitals raise their pay, and it still leaves shortages of nurses, though it might redistribute the shortages. If there aren’t enough nurses period, that’s just rearranging the deck chairs.

Then we have this, from NPR:

Chicago School Bus Drivers Have Quit In Droves Over COVID Vaccine Mandate

August 31, 2021 | 4:39 PM EDT

Chicago Public Schools says 10% of their school bus drivers quit on Friday as they’re unwilling to get mandated vaccines. The district is now offering cash to parents who drive their kids to school. . . . .

Chicago public school officials apologized for the cancellation (of bus routes), but say they were forced to do it for 2,100 students. That’s because in just one day, 70 bus drivers quit. The reason – according to district officials, these drivers didn’t want to get vaccinated, and the district was mandating it. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot backs the school district’s decision.

Much of the credentialed media reports have avoided noting why there are shortages of bus drivers, because the media know that publishing that undermines the arguments for the mandates, but there have been a few that told the truth. Note that the sources above are from Newsweek and National Public Radio, not exactly known as evil reich wing sources.

Finally, there’s this:

Mu COVID Variant, Which Scientists Fear is Resistant to Vaccines, Detected in 39 Countries

by Samantha Lock | September 1, 2021

A new coronavirus strain has been declared a variant of interest by the World Health Organization (WHO) with mutations that may be resistant to vaccines.

Mu, or B.1.621, was first identified in Colombia and cases have since been recorded in 38 other countries, predominantly in South America and Europe.

“Since its first identification in Colombia in January 2021, there have been a few sporadic reports of cases of the Mu variant, and some larger outbreaks have been reported from other countries in South America and in Europe,” a weekly epidemiological update released by WHO on August 31 read.

Over 4,500 sequences (3794 sequences of B.1.621 and 856 sequences of B.1.621.1) have been recorded in 39 countries as of August 29, the report said, citing information uploaded to the GISAID Initiative, a global science initiative that provides open-access to genomic data of influenza viruses.

Although the global prevalence of the Mu variant has declined and is “currently below 0.1 percent” the prevalence in Colombia (39 percent) and Ecuador (13 percent) has “consistently increased,” the report reads. . . . .

The variant is listed as one of five “of interest” by the WHO, including Eta, Iota, Kappa and Lambda.

Four other variants “of concern” and considered as having potential to make the pandemic worse are listed as the Alpha variant (first recorded in England and seen in 193 countries), the Beta variant (now seen in 141 countries), Gamma in 91 and Delta in 170 countries.

I wonder when they are going to run out of Greek letters for new variants. But as stories crop up about the Lambda and Mu variants being resistant to the vaccines, the arguments for a vaccine mandates fail as well.

It seems pretty obvious: we are going to have some forms of COVID with us for years and years, and destroying our freedom and our society to fight it is the worst thing we can do.

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Jill Filipovic is just hopping mad!

It was March 3, 2016, when uber-feminist Jill Filipovic published Dear Everyone Who Said Ruth Bader Ginsburg Should Retire: You Were Wrong: The Texas abortion case before the Supreme Court is just further proof that the justice knew what she was doing. Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt was before the Supreme Court, and, in the end, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan formed the five member majority which invalidated some restrictions the Lone Star State placed on abortion.

Well, Justice Kennedy retired and Justice Ginsburg departed this mortal vale, and the seat left vacant when Justice Antonin Scalia died have been filled, by Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, all appointed by President Trump.

Miss Filipovic wrote:

Ginsburg, who many pundits were calling on to retire a little over a year ago, may be the justice who offers the best chance not only of overturning the law, but of writing a coherent and fair opinion laying out a detailed standard for challenging future abortion laws.

The argument for Ginsberg’s retirement was fairly straightforward: She was old, there was a midterm election looming in which Republicans were set to potentially take control of the Senate, and it was Obama’s last chance to appoint a liberal. And what if a Republican won in 2016? And again in 2020? Ginsburg, in her 80s, could be replaced by a conservative.

Ginsburg’s refusal to retire hinged on a few points: She still had all of her mental faculties, she was good at her job, and even the pre-midterm Senate wasn’t liberal enough to appoint someone as progressive as her. Besides, she’s a Supreme Court justice — have some respect and let her make the call.

“Who do you think President Obama could appoint at this very day, given the boundaries that we have?” Ginsburg told ELLE. “If I resign any time this year, he could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court. [The Senate Democrats] took off the filibuster for lower federal court appointments, but it remains for this court. So anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided. As long as I can do the job full steam…. I think I’ll recognize when the time comes that I can’t any longer. But now I can.”

So, Justice Ginsburg was concerned not the President Obama couldn’t get a liberal through, but that even if he tried with a stealth liberal like he did with Merrick Garland, the nominee wouldn’t be liberal enough for her.

When Miss Filipovic wrote, it was becoming clear that Donald Trump was in the lead for the Republican presidential nomination, and of course he could never defeat Hillary Clinton in the general election. The seat once held by Justice Scalia would be filled by someone nominated by incoming President Clinton.

This recent case offers the court an opportunity to clarify the “undue burden” standard, or craft a new one. Before Scalia’s death, there were fears the conservative wing of the court could use this case as a vehicle to overturn Roe v. Wade and dismantle abortion rights generally. Now, there is virtually zero chance of that happening; instead, the best-case scenario is that the liberal wing of the court triumphs and publishes an opinion making it more difficult for state legislators to cut off women’s access to safe, legal abortion, protecting abortion rights for at least the next generation.

The most likely candidate to write that opinion is Justice Ginsburg. And that should be enough for a clear ruling: She was absolutely right when she ignored the mostly male peanut gallery imploring her to hang up her robe, relied on her own supreme wisdom, and refused to retire.

I’m sure that the then-Miss Filipovic never, ever thought that it would be President Trump who would nominate the replacement for Mrs Ginsburg after she went to her eternal reward.

To the right is a screen capture of the now Mrs McCormick’s angry tweets of this morning. I chose a screenshot just in case she either deletes them — which is unlikely — or blocks me from seeing them, which she might do if she sees this article. The links to the original are for the first, second and third.

What has her so bitterly angry? From CNN:

Texas 6-week abortion ban takes effect after Supreme Court inaction

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter | Updated 2:32 AM ET | Wednesday, September 1, 2021

(CNN) A controversial Texas law that bars abortions at six weeks went into effect early Wednesday morning after the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court failed to rule on pending emergency requests brought by abortion providers.

The lack of judicial intervention means that the law — which is one of the strictest in the nation and bans abortion before many people know they are pregnant — goes into force absent further court intervention.

The law allows private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who assists a pregnant person seeking an abortion in violation of the ban.

No other six-week ban has been allowed to go into effect — even briefly.

“What ultimately happens to this law remains to be seen,” said CNN Supreme Court analyst and University of Texas Law School professor Steve Vladeck, “but now through their inaction the justices have let the tightest abortion restriction since Roe v. Wade be enforced for at least some period of time.”

The case comes as the justices are poised in the upcoming term to rule on the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that bars abortion at 15 weeks.

There’s more at the original.

Mrs McCormick, in the last of the three tweets I listed, complained about an “authoritarian court,” which leads me to ask: at what point would she favor authoritarianism herself? In her article The Importance of Being Honest: Sometimes we have to sacrifice for public health. But don’t deny the sacrifice itself, she expresses understanding that being forced to wear a facemask, something Republicans and libertarians see as an authoritarian dictate, is a burden, is a sacrifice, but sometimes that burden must be borne. She calls “proponents of stricter anti-Covid measures,” “a group I’m generally a member of,” and says:

The impulse to downplay inconvenient outcomes of one’s own position has been in full force throughout Covid, and with the school reopening + Delta, it’s gotten even more extreme. I keep hearing, for example, that wearing a mask is no big deal and anyone who complains about masking is probably a Covid denialist reactionary. This is pretty weird, because it seems to me to be obviously, demonstrably true that wearing a mask is an inconvenience and a personal and cultural sacrifice — it means you can’t fully read other peoples’ facial expressions, it impedes basic human interactions, it makes you break out, it irritates your face, it fogs up your glasses, and I find that when I wear one I start to feel a little disoriented after a while, especially inside under bright lights. Wearing a mask sucks! But it sucks far less than giving someone else Covid, or getting Covid yourself. And so of course, in scenarios where people are not all fully vaccinated and infection rates are high, we should continue wear masks inside. I wear masks inside and I think indoor mask-wearing for essential activities should be mandatory (I also think vaccines should be mandatory for inessential activities, like dining out).

She is, by her own words, willing to force people to bear the burden of mandatory vaccinations and mandatory masking. She recognizes the burdens being put on people, but believes that not getting vaccinated and not wearing a mask is a greater danger than being burdened by doing so, even against your will.

So, apply that logic to abortion. A woman gets pregnant, and does not want to be, does not want a child.[1]It is completely legal, in every state, for a mother to take her unwanted child to a police or fire station, or hospital, and leave him there, surrendering her parental rights, with no questions … Continue reading That is a burden to her, no doubt about it. Her solution: abortion.

But abortion is a burden as well. While it’s a financial burden, though not a great one, on the woman, it also places the burden of ‘relieving’ her burden onto the unborn child. His burden? A death sentence!

So, which is the greater burden: nine months of an unwanted pregnancy, or death for the child? Because, whether Mrs McCormick will admit it or otherwise, that is the exact comparison.

We have placed even greater burdens on people in the past; the United States has had a conscription system under which, though no one has actually been drafted since the 1970s, millions of men have been drafted in the past, and hundreds of thousands of them paid the ultimate price, in World War I, in World War II, in Korea and in Vietnam.[2]Full disclosure: though I was of draft age at the tail end of the Vietnam war, I was not called up due to a high lottery number. The burden of an unwanted pregnancy is far, far less than that of a soldier bleeding out his life’s blood in the rice paddies of South Vietnam.

We do not know how many children will be saved by the Texas law, though surely some will. Some pregnant women will travel to New Mexico or Oklahoma or Louisiana to be ‘relieved’ of their burdens, though hopefully fewer than would otherwise have had abortions in Texas clinics.

How will the Supreme Court rule on the Mississippi case? It is absolutely certain that the three justices appointed by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will vote to overturn it. The left are deathly afraid that Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett will uphold the law, at least in some form. The Chief Justice? If he is going to be in the minority with the three liberal justices, he might just vote with the majority, so that he can assign the opinion, rather than Justice Thomas, assigning it to the Justice he believes will write the most restrictive opinion . . . probably himself. But predicting Supreme Court decisions has rarely been a money-winning game.

References

References
↑1 It is completely legal, in every state, for a mother to take her unwanted child to a police or fire station, or hospital, and leave him there, surrendering her parental rights, with no questions asked. Having a child she does not want does not mean that the mother must keep the child.
↑2 Full disclosure: though I was of draft age at the tail end of the Vietnam war, I was not called up due to a high lottery number.
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Remember: you cannot trust Democratic governors. The left say they are for democracy, right up until the will of the voters goes against them

I lived in the Keystone State for fifteen years before moving back to Kentucky for my retirement, and I can assure you that I did not vote for Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA)!

    Gov. Tom Wolf will require masks in Pa. schools, sources say

    The governor could outline the proposed requirement at a 2 p.m. news conference about coronavirus measures in schools.

    by Justine McDaniel, Erin McCarthy, Andrew Seidman, and Maddie Hanna | Tuesday, August 31, 2021 | 2:11 PM EDT

    Masks will be required in all Pennsylvania schools, Gov. Tom Wolf said Tuesday, announcing a mandate days after the Republican-led legislature rejected his call to pass one via legislation.

    Aiming to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in schools, the order issued by the Department of Health requires face coverings indoors in all K-12 schools, both public and private, and licensed child care centers beginning next Tuesday.

    The mandate is a reversal for the Wolf administration, which had previously said it would leave decisions about how to reopen up to individual districts. In announcing the decision in a statement, the governor cited misinformation about mask-wearing that he said was “pressuring and intimidating school districts to reject mask policies.”

    It comes as many are already back in session, some with masks required and some without, and the rest are poised to start within days. Certain districts have already spent months battling over the mask question, which has stirred heated conflict among some parents.

There’s more at the original. But the issue is pretty simple: the people have rejected the mask mandates, but the Governor wants it, and he is going to use every means at his disposal to overrule the will of the public.

In May, Pennsylvania voters approved two constitutional amendments:

    The first proposed constitutional amendment will make it so that the state’s General Assembly could terminate or extend a disaster declaration at any time without approval from the governor. The Pennsylvania Constitution will have to be amended so that the disaster declaration power will be shared by the governor and the General Assembly.

    Previously, only the governor could declare the end of a disaster. According to state law, the General Assembly has the option to pass a resolution that would terminate the declaration, but the governor can still veto. If the assembly could gather support with a two-thirds majority, they could overturn the governor’s veto.

    This exact scenario played out last summer over the COVID-19 pandemic disaster declaration, when the state Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature could not overturn the governor’s declaration without his ability to then veto it.

    The second question proposed that the time limit on a disaster declaration be shortened from 90 days to 21 days unless the General Assembly votes to extend it.

As we have noted previously, Governor Wolf was very upset that local school boards, people elected by the voters, were choosing a different course than the one he favored.

    The Wolf administration implemented a school mask mandate last year without legislation, as it also did for a statewide masking requirement. But with this year’s reopening helmed by districts, Wolf said earlier this month that he would not mandate masks. The new mandate would be done under authority of the state’s disease control and prevention law, said one source.

In other words, the Governor believes he has found a legal loophole to get around what the state legislature and a majority of the voters wanted to do: restrict his executive authority to issue restrictions.

The people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have spoken, but that doesn’t matter to petty dictators like Tom Wolf.

And in the Bluegrass State, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) hopes to impose some restrictions himself, though the decision of the state Supreme Court requires that he work with the General Assembly this time:

    Beshear plans to call special law-making session soon to fight COVID-19

    By Jack Brammer | August 30, 2021 | 6:05 PM EDT

    Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday his goal is to call state lawmakers into a special session as soon as legislative leaders and he reach “a general consensus” on what steps to take to fight the raging coronavirus pandemic.

    He said it needs to happen soon but did not mention a specific date. Only the governor can call a special law-making session and set its agenda

    The Democratic governor and Republican legislative leaders are in negotiations over what actions should be taken to fight COVID-19, which Beshear said continues to hit the state “harder and harder.” He said a record 2,198 Kentuckians are now in the hospital with the virus, with a record 615 in intensive care units and a record 384 on ventilators. . . . .

    Asked about a rumor that he plans to call a special session to begin next week, Beshear said a session is needed to keep in effect the state of emergency for the pandemic he declared in March 2020.

    He said he will be pushing “for some other things.”

    He noted that schools that are shutting down now because of the virus need more flexibility on having non-traditional instruction days when students can do online work from home.

    The state education commissioner now can waive up to 10 so-called NTI days to count towards student attendance days in the school districts’ calendars.

    “I’m going to seek all the tools I can,” said Beshear. “I’m not going to hold off on calling a special session if I don’t get all of them.”

Some things actually make sense, such as allowing an exception to the NTI limit. Since the regular session of the legislature is just three months away, a special session could authorize some gubernatorial actions for up to 120 days, and then the regular session would take them up if the Governor wanted to continue them.

But one action the legislature will never approve is the odious mask mandate. If there was any one thing that the Governor forced last year that pushed the voters toward the tremendous surge for the GOP, it was the hated mask mandate. The Governor has already said that he would impose it again, if he could.

Technically, he could again . . . for thirty days. If he does, I will not comply, and I would guess that a bunch of other Kentuckians wouldn’t either.

Nevertheless, there’s a danger. As we have previously noted, despite being ordered to do so by the state Supreme Court, Phillip Shepherd, the Governor’s toady judge has not yet lifted him injunctions, and has ordered the Governor and Attorney General to present their arguments to him, on September 7th, on the Governor’s lawsuit seeking to have several of the restrictions placed on him by the General Assembly declared unconstitutional. The state Supreme Court left him very little room to do so, but Judge Shepherd makes up things as he goes along, and appears to be inclined, personally, to take Mr Beshear’s side on everything.

It really doesn’t matter whether you think mask or vaccine mandates are a wise idea; what ought to matter is that the voters have rejected politicians who have tried to impose authoritarian restrictions and regulations on a free people.