Earlier, I brought you the news that the Supreme Court struck down New York’s cap on attendance at places of worship.
From that decision, NBC News published this:
In Covid-19 regulations case, Sotomayor dissent claps back at Supreme Court majority
I fucking hate the phrase clap-back.
According to Merriam-Webster:
Not to be confused with a garden-variety diss, a clapback is deemed by most as a targeted, often viciously acute comeback intended to place someone in much-needed check.
AOC is the “clap back queen” because she’s snarky on Twitter. Generally with factually innacruate statemnts that are as deep and well thought out as a puddle of piss on a men’s room floor. But that’s modern politics for you. It’s not the legislation you pass, it’s the likes you get on Twitter that matter.
I’m not sure how Sotomayor’s dissent claps back at Supreme Court majority, because what I read was pure bullshit.
“Free religious exercise is one of our most treasured and jealously guarded constitutional rights. States may not discriminate against religious institutions, even when faced with a crisis as deadly as this one,” she wrote. “But those restrictions are not at stake today.”
“Justices of this Court play a deadly game in second guessing the expert judgment of health officials about the environments in which a contagious virus, now infecting a million Americans each week, spreads most easily.”
The Court’s ruling, she noted, “will only exacerbate the Nation’s suffering.”
Sotomayor’s dissent can be viewed as a strong clapback to the Court’s conservative majority; in a footnote, she mentioned that “ironically” the plaintiff diocese is no longer subject to Cuomo’s numerical caps on attendance, “due to the success of New York’s public health measures.”
What she is saying here is that if the experts – who have been consistently worng on everything – tell her it’s necessary to totally restrict our rights to save lives, she’ll side with the experts over our rights.
Moreover, the ends justify the means, and while there is no evidence that stopping church attendence had any effect on curbing the spread of the virus, since the nubers did go down, the restriction on rights was worth it.
“The Constitution does not forbid States from responding to public health crises through regulations that treat religious institutions equally or more favorably than comparable secular institutions,” wrote Sotomayor, “particularly when these regulations save lives.”
That was the heart of the case.
Essential businesses were restricted to 50% capcatiy, so a Target big-box retailer could have 500 people in it at a time.
But a Church or Synagogue was limited to 10, no matter the square footing.
That is clearly disperate and unfair treatment of a religious insitution.
If a health crisis requires a 50% capcapity reduction, that must be equally applied.
Here is where this line of thinking ultiatley leads.
North Korea Executed Coronavirus Rule-Breaker, Says South Korean Intelligence
North Korea is taking increasingly harsh measures to stop the coronavirus from entering the country, including executing an official in August who violated anti-virus rules, South Korean intelligence officials told lawmakers on Friday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “has been expressing emotional excess, anger and signs of stress, and increasingly giving unreasonable orders,” Ha told reporters.
So if the experts agree your rights are null and void because of a health crisis and the ends justify the means, if Fauci decided that lockdown violators should be shot, bagged, tagged, and their bodies incinerated to stop the spread of a virus with a 99.97% survival rate, your right to life doesn’t matter if the spread is curbed.
Don’t forget how the Left has been screaming that poeple who violate mask orders shoud be denied medical care and left to die for breaking the rules.
The obvious next step will be along the lines of “if you violate the rules, you are putting someone else’s life at risk (‘killing grandma’), ergo it’s justified to kill you to prevent that.”
Sotamayor and the other justices that dissented have made it pretty clear that when the experts say that lockdown violators should be shot on sight, they will say that is Constitutional.
Do as I say. Not as I do.
…or else.
“If you violate the rules, you are putting someone else’s life at risk (‘killing grandma’), ergo it’s justified to kill you to prevent that.”
If thems the rules then it won’t be long before it backfires on the DemoKKKrats, as usual.
You’d think by know they’d learned their lesson from getting bitch-slapped constantly by the-law-of-unintended-consequences when they create monsters they cannot control.
But Scalia’s stinging rebuke in his dissent in the ACA case wasn’t a “clap-back”?
Huh. I guess harsh criticisms — and personal attacks — are only good when Leftists issue them.
I adamantly, completely, 100% totally disagree with this:
“Justices of this Court play a deadly game in second guessing the expert judgment of health officials about the environments in which a contagious virus, now infecting a million Americans each week, spreads most easily.”
Second guessing is just another term for asking questions. Just because someone is an “expert” does not mean they should not be questioned in any way. First if all, experts can be wrong. Secondly, even if they are not wrong, does it hurt in any way to ask the questions, and (GASP! The HORROR!) maybe get a differing opinion?
As to the rest of it. The argument is that restrictions on building capacity should be consistent. If a restaurant can be at 50% capacity, there is no reason a place of worship has to be limited to 10 or less. It is the disproportionate application of the restriction that is being challenged.
I would expect a Supreme Court Justice to understand the underlying legal matter.
Bingo.
The other quoted passage from her dissent: Free religious exercise is one of our most treasured and jealously guarded constitutional rights. States may not discriminate against religious institutions, even when faced with a crisis as deadly as this one […] But those restrictions are not at stake today.
She is correct that “states may not discriminate against religious institutions, even when faced with a crisis as deadly as this one”. (We can debate over how “deadly” a virus with a 99.98% survivability is — at most, I’d label it “potentially deadly”, like the seasonal flu or varicella [chicken pox] — but that’s beside the point.)
She is also correct when she says “those restrictions are not at stake today.”
But she set up a very neat straw-man — and very neatly knocked it down — when she conflated the discriminatory application to religious institutions with restrictions in general.
The restrictions in general, right or wrong, are not being challenged; the disparate application is. It’s not even disputed that religious institutions were under stricter limits than any other type of building. That’s a pretty textbook violation of the First Amendment, accepted as fact by both sides, and the challenge was simply whether those stricter limits are allowable.
With that straw-man, she entirely missed the barn. The new question is, did she miss it out of ignorance and/or stupidity unbecoming a SCOTUS Justice, or did she miss it intentionally (equally unbecoming a SCOTUS Justice)? Since she has historically been hostile to individual rights, including religious rights within the scope of the First Amendment, that’s a valid question.
Remember that when she was testifying before Congress after her nomination to the Supreme Court, she was specifically asked about the Second Amendment, and she basically lied about her interpretation of 2A. So, she was approved to be Justice in the Court. And has voted anti 2A ever since.
A lying sack of shit.
“The Constitution does not forbid States from responding to public health crises through regulations that treat religious institutions equally or more favorably than comparable secular institutions,”
Yes, that is exactly what Article 1 of the Bill of Rights does. The State cannot get around the First Amendment by calling it something else.
I think your first error is assuming there’s a “thought process” to be found. There’s no “process” or pattern evident–it’s whatever pops into the mind (assuming presence of one) to achieve the goal of the moment. THAT is the essence of the problem of leftist “thought.”
As for “experts,” it’s instructive to review von Mises’ comments on rule thereby. Or, to summarize (with tongue firmly in cheek), if “x” equals the unknown, and a spurt is a drip of liquid under pressure, then an expert is simply an unknown drip under pressure.
YMMV….
An expert is an ordinary person more than 50 miles from home giving advise
Personal point- I despise the “clapback” clickbait headline about as much as I despise the “X destroys Y” clickbait headline.
Inevitably, the body doesn’t live up to the flashy promise.