Tag Archives: civil liberties

Does The Coronavirus Make Our Constitutional Freedom Of Assembly Obsolete? by Brandon Smith

Not for lack of effort, but nobody has yet found a public health emergency exception written into the Bill of Rights. From Brandon Smith at alt-market.us:

Over the past couple of weeks a trend has become apparent in the state of Idaho, specifically in Moscow, Idaho in Latah County. The city council of Moscow has issued a mandatory mask order, and they are using police to enforce it. Bizarrely, the city had ZERO deaths from Covid at the time the mask order was instituted, meaning their action was in response to…nothing.

Idaho has had a total of 500 deaths from Covid since the beginning of the outbreak. To put this in perspective, the state also has around 400 deaths from diabetes every year, and 250 deaths from the flu/pneumonia according to the CDC. Perhaps they should ban sugar, and make masks mandatory for the flu as well, just to be safe…

The residents of Moscow are not too happy with the city council attempt to unilaterally enforce such mandates. Church congregations in particular are fighting back by holding outdoor services without masks. The city has responded by ARRESTING the pastors of any church that dare to defy mask laws.

I bring up this specific instance of coronavirus enforcement because the circumstances surrounded it are disturbing…

First, it is not surprising that Latah County is one of the ONLY counties in Idaho that leans to the far-left politically, and the majority of the city council of Moscow is made up of leftists. Moscow is also the home of the University of Idaho. It seems wherever the political left sets up shop, constitution violating mandates on the coronavirus are prevalent. Even if a state government is predominantly more conservative and less antagonistic on lockdowns, left leaning city and county officials have decided they are going to enforce their own restrictions anyway.

Second, the mask rules are being used against people who held meetings outdoors, and this is something I am seeing all over the world right now. Why is the science of virus behavior in outdoor open air environments not being discussed AT ALL in the mainstream? Why is no one talking about the fact that open air and UV rays from sunlight KILL microorganisms? The chance of contracting the coronavirus outdoors is next to zero, yet mask rules are being strictly instituted from Melbourne, Australia to New York, New York to Moscow, Idaho.

Continue reading→

Saudi blogger Badawi ‘flogged for Islam insult’, from the BBC

Our best friend in the Middle East’s version of civil liberties, from the BBC:

A Saudi Arabian blogger has been publicly flogged after being convicted of cybercrime and insulting Islam, reports say.

Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail, was flogged 50 times. The flogging will be carried out weekly, campaigners say.

Mr Badawi, the co-founder of a now banned website called the Liberal Saudi Network, was arrested in 2012.

Rights groups condemned his conviction and the US appealed for clemency.

On Thursday state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki urged the Saudi authorities to “cancel this brutal punishment” and to review his case.

In addition to his sentence, Mr Badawi was ordered to pay a fine of 1 million riyals ($266,000; £175,000).

In 2013 he was cleared of apostasy, which could have carried a death sentence.

Last year Mr Badawi’s lawyer was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being found guilty of a range of offences in an anti-terrorism court, the Associated Press news agency reported.

To continue reading: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-30744693