Last week’s forum was a dud, but it was a holiday week, so I have hopes that this one will be more lively. I’m counting on you, since the previous post was written with great difficulty after my head exploded from reading that Barack Obama told an audience that using the criminal justice system against political foes was “crossing a line.”
I’m still wiping blood, bits of skull and brain off my computer screen and keyboard…
Ethics Alarms 
Is it ethical to give “pre-emptive” pardons?
There are multiple articles claiming that Biden is “considering pre-emptive pardons for Trump critics – sources”. “That is in a bid to shield them from potential retribution after Trump – who has vowed to take revenge against those who have opposed him – takes office.”
Has Trump “vowed” to take revenge, or, is this just the narrative?
How can you give a pardon to someone who hasn’t been charged with a crime? In giving “pre-emptive” pardons aren’t you in effect saying these people are above the law?
It just doesn’t seem valid to me that anyone can even issue a “pre-emptive” pardon.
It would seem to me that the broad power of presidential pardons requires the president to engage in some sort of vetting process of the individual and the crime for which the individual was convicted.
Preemptive pardons or blanket pardons would effectively eliminate Congress and the 14th amendment as a president could issue broad spectrum pardons for the purpose of weaponizing the DOJ against those not included in the pardon.
How can you give a pardon to someone who hasn’t been charged with a crime? In giving “pre-emptive” pardons aren’t you in effect saying these people are above the law?
That does seem entirely contradictory to the concept of the rule of law. You would think that a crime has to be at least identified (and maybe charged?) before it could be pardoned. Could one argue that a “crime”, in a legal sense, doesn’t even exist until it’s discovered? Who would have standing to challenge elements of Dementia Joe’s pardon of Cracky?
It is possible to have probable cause for a warrant, even if it turned out that the alleged underlying crime never even happened.
Well, I’d have to say that Ford’s pardon of Nixon is the most famous pre-emptive pardon.
As a general rule, I’d tend to agree with your position. However, I think the Nixon case was ethical — it prevented and was intended to prevent, just the sort of thing we’ve been seeing with Trump.
Nixon was never charged with a crime, to the best of my knowledge.
Here is an article worth commenting about.
This article considers the effectiveness of lockdowns, face masks and vaccination programmes vis-à-vis mitigating COVID-19, with an epilogue on excess deaths.
In the autumn of 2019 a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, began to circulate widely but at a low level. In March 2020, as the influenza season in the Northern Hemisphere subsided, due to a drop in viral interference SARS-CoV-2 surged and became the dominant respiratory virus. COVID-19 spread from China around the world, suppressing influenza, whilst leaving the other human-infecting coronaviruses undisturbed. The vast majority of countries reacted to COVID-19 by imposing non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as lockdowns and facemask policies and, later, vaccination programmes.
Whilst some epidemiological modelling studies give credence to the effectiveness of lockdowns, most studies based on empirical data concluded that lockdowns had little or no effect on COVID-19 transmission, cases or deaths. The collateral damage caused by lockdowns impacted health, economic, social, political, legal, policing and transport issues. Health issues included delayed and missed healthcare, immunity debt, accidents, deaths, mental health, reduced fertility, an increase in obesity, an increase in smoking and alcohol and drug abuse, higher taxes, higher inflation, more people on benefits, waste (test and trace, personal protective equipment and hotel quarantine) and fraud (Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme payments). Children missed school, which compromised their development, communication skills, education and physical and mental health. Lockdowns also generated a workshy workforce and normalised truancy. Lockdowns exacerbated inequalities, too, with the poor being the worst affected. In the Third World, matters were even worse. The United Nations reported that hunger led to the deaths of 10,000 more children per month over the first year of the pandemic. It also estimated that disruptions in South Asia in 2020 likely contributed to 228,000 deaths among children under five years old. The benefits of lockdowns included reduced air pollution, fewer road traffic collisions and a drop in suicide rates. Overall, lockdowns failed a cost-benefit analysis by orders of magnitude. Lockdowns were implemented by governments due to pressure from the WHO and a well-funded international pandemic preparedness lobby, overly pessimistic modelling, risk aversion and the desire to be seen to take action. Lockdowns were then sustained because the media spread fear, whilst the public became fearful, abandoned the care of public affairs to the government-media-education class, trusted leaders and assumed that because governments implemented lockdowns they must work, making them motivated to virtue-signal and support them. Meanwhile, politicians were motivated to retain or seek power, so keen to appease the median voter, and maintained lockdowns, despite the economic and health damage they caused. A vicious circle developed: fear sustained lockdowns and lockdowns sustained fear.
Face masks were not effective at mitigating COVID-19, but can cause dyspnoea, hypoxia, hypoxemia and hypercapnia, harbour pathogens, compromise communication, vision, exercise capacity, cognition and immunity, cause headaches, skin complaints, bad breath and particulate inhalation, facilitate crime and lead to pollution. The only effective use for surgical masks and N95 respirators is for splash and droplet protection in healthcare. P100 respirators are effective (but only for the wearer) against COVID-19. The sad thing is that we’ve not learnt anything new about masks. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, and with reference to an influenza pandemic, meta-analyses of RCTs on community masking published by the WHO and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed no benefit. During the pandemic there were various low-quality observational studies that appeared to show benefit. Then after the pandemic, in 2023, an update to the Cochrane review confirmed that there was no significant evidence that wearing masks in the community reduces the spread of colds, influenza or COVID-19. So we’ve gone full circle, and back where we started before the pandemic: masks don’t work.
In December 2020 COVID-19 vaccination programmes were introduced. The vaccinations failed to provide sterilising immunity or stop transmission. The vaccination exhibits negative efficacy for the first two weeks, probably due to immunosuppression, which increases cases, hospitalisations and deaths. The vaccine, in the pre-Omicron era, then may have provided some protection against hospitalisation and death for the not previously infected for several months, before it waned towards and below zero effectiveness. Because those with ‘breakthrough’ infections may exhibit lesser symptoms, but have a similar viral load to the unvaccinated, they may be more likely to inadvertently spread COVID-19 to others and become superspreaders. In May 2021 the Delta variant appeared triggering new waves and from December 2021 the less severe Omicron variant appeared. The variant displaced harmless cold-causing human coronaviruses, and influenza returned. Vaccination programmes led to the immune system, via original antigenic sin, being fixed for earlier strains, leaving it less able to provide effective responses during subsequent infections. This enabled the natural selection of immune escape subvariants that are highly infectious. We ended up with antibody-dependent enhancement of the disease, vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease and the rapid spread of Omicron among the vaccinated leading to more cases, hospitalisations and deaths. The constant reinfection from an evolving cloud of variants leads to immunosuppression, secondary infections and superinfections. SARS-CoV-2 and mRNA vaccines can both induce cells in various parts of the body to produce the spike protein for months, leading to inflammation and adverse events. Repeated mRNA vaccinations increase IgG4 antibodies, induce partial immune tolerance and weaken the immune system. Because the vaccines did not prevent transmission and may have increased infection rates, the unvaccinated did not impose a negative externality on others, meaning there were no medical or ethical grounds for making vaccinations mandatory or for vaccine passports.
The populations of East Asia, Southeast Asia and Australasia may have had greater pre-existing immunity (from other coronaviruses) against wild-type SARS-CoV-2 due to their closer proximity to the origin of COVID-19, leading to low infection rates until Omicron. Global excess mortality, earlier largely involving COVID-19 and iatrogenic (treatment-related) harm, and later often related to cardiovascular issues, has continued to be significantly elevated since COVID-19 appeared, largely due to both COVID-19 and the vaccinations (directly, indirectly, in combination and over the short and longer-term) and the collateral damage caused by lockdowns.
A seasonal influenza-like illness became a pandemic of governmental overreach and collective hysteria. Lockdowns turned out to be the greatest health economics mistake in modern history, face masks served no useful purpose in the community, in schools or in healthcare, whilst vaccinations were likely somewhat effective against severe COVID-19 in the not-previously-infected elderly in 2021, but ultimately probably did more harm than good. It seems likely that we would have been better off doing nothing. Next time, we really should keep calm and carry on.
Bravo.
In the Spring of 2020, COVID was being discussed. People were worried about young people spreading COVID to vulnerable populations, so they wanted to send all the students home.
I said that was the exact opposite of the right approach. It was already fairly certain that young people were no seriously affected by COVID. I suggested cancelling Spring Break, holding the students on campus (when possible), and focus on classes. I expected COVID to burn through the student population, resulting in a population of young, healthy, COVID-immune people who could go into the summer helping people who were more vulnerable.
Sending the students home would send the possibly-infected students into close contact with vulnerable, older relatives. Since the elderly were being told not to go out, who would do that? The college-age students. Wouldn’t it be better if they were immune and not likely to get infected and then infect their relatives?
This was obviously not well received. The main initial complaint was “What about the faculty?” I said that the faculty are adults, we need to maintain calm and put on a brave face. The kids are scared and we need to show courage to avoid panic. I was told this was too ‘macho’ and ‘male-toxicity’. They did send all the students home.
The next year, many of the faculty refused to come close to students, they wouldn’t even have in-person office hours. It was horrible what that did to the mental health of the students. Imagine if your faculty treat you as diseased to the point that they won’t come within 6 feet of you and insist on all meetings be on Zoom?
Before the vaccine came out, I thought of this idea.
Why not pay people under 30 years of age $3,000.00 in exchange for inhaling a concentrated sample of the COVID-19 virus and spend two weeks in an all-inclusive luxury resort such as Sandals)being rented out as a quarantine camp?
Advertise it as a taxpayer-paid two-week vacation with all amenities, just to incubate a virus.
Such a policy would have plenty of volunteers, and it would have ben cheaper and much less disruptive than basing pandemic policy on a 14-year-old girl’s science fair project.
I wonder why no one else in the whole world ever thought of this before.
“A seasonal influenza-like illness became a pandemic of governmental overreach and collective hysteria.”
And Trump was vilified when he downplayed the emergency and called it merely the flu.
That may be consequentialism but he may have had information that was withheld by the WHO and the others who wanted to test an exercise of power. We chose to trust the “scientists” and not the boy who said the emperor had no clothes.
The “scientist” who came up with the idea was a 14-year-old girl submitting a science fair project.
https://www.abqjournal.com/news/local/article_c8344f40-6c18-5c79-8b6f-3dbecb555053.html
Here’s some Holiday Cheer: The Naughty List: Former Obama Aides and Liberal Influencers Sell Antifa Line of Holiday Gifts – JONATHAN TURLEY
We can now purchase Antifa “merch.” Noting you can buy an Antifa onesie, the guy is quoted as saying “all children are Antifa, until they’re broken by capitalism.” I didn’t know that.
Isn’t that roughly equivalent to “All children are stupid, until life and learning makes them smart”…?
I see a much more ominous message.
“All children are our political pawns, except for those we deem tainted.”
Of course, unlike Trump! liberals respect institutions. They don’t want to tear anything down. They want to build things up!
Hard to believe that an Antifa sympathizer actually made it into the Obama White House.
Is it ethical to charge a sidewalk fee to residents or should that be covered by city sales and property taxes? Should they be able to call it a fee instead of a tax to get around voter laws?
https://kdvr.com/news/local/denvers-sidewalk-fees-will-begin-jan-1-heres-what-residents-need-to-know/
Looks like a modified property tax. A “fee” is something you pay for services you voluntarily engage with. Calling this source of revenue a “fee”, presumably for the sidewalk outside the home you build, seems to be stretching the definition to its breaking point.
Agreed. I believe “fee” and “tax” are almost indistinguishable in this context.
Re: The Penny trial in NYC. The prosecution can just say, “Never mind,” on a charge and then the judge can tell the jury to continue on to a lesser charge? EA defense counsel, prosecutors? The judge doesn’t have to declare a mistrial if the jury is hopelessly deadlocked on the primary (any?) charge? I’m confused. Shouldn’t the judge have simply declared a mistrial? If he’s convicted on the negligent homicide charge, won’t that be thrown out on appeal?
“I’m confused.”
You shouldn’t be, OB; with ruthless disregard, Penny cut short Jordan Neely’s…um…efforts to turn his life around.
In related news, Neely’s Father has FILED SUIT
PWS
I saw that story too.
It’s kind of like — keep deliberating until you can find something he is guilty of.
Is this a normal procedure?
Trump was convicted of 34 unspecified crimes not long ago. Giving the jury an Allen charge and allowing the dismissal of the top count, sending the jury back into deliberations until they reach a unanimous verdict for something seems to trending in New York prosecutions.
Alvin Bragg is the same District Attorney who charged an elderly man with murder when the elderly man defended himself from a guy who was brutally assaulting him.
Alvin Bragg is the same District Attorney who gave a light sentence to a mugger that knocked down his victim resulting in the victim’s death. The charge for First-Degree murder would’ve been an easy conviction. But Bragg didn’t seek an indictment…
Penny is white. The man that died was black. This makes Penny an extreme white supremacist who had been waiting for an opportunity to kill a poor, sweet, innocent black man with a family that loved him that had fallen through the cracks.
It’s an imperfect analog of Saint George. Floyd died while being restrained by a white cop; Penny is a retired Marine.
As with Floyd, the jury knows that there will be rioting if there’s an acquittal.
As a tangent, I think the just thing would’ve been to not prosecute Chauvin; he had no peers of which a jury could be formed, making due process unavailable.
At the least, a change of venue and sequestration of the jurors should’ve been attempted. Or a bench trial. Chauvin did not get a fair trial.
This is insteresting. It is almost as if Alvin Bragg simps for criminals who actually hurt people.
I lost a student this week.
A family is preemptively heading back to Mexico, leaving a couple of their kids here but the rest are heading back. My student, which I’ve only had since August, is a great kid – hard working, polite, helpful to others, great work ethic, overall a good student and one that I’d want to have in my class for the next two years.
I’m not and never was a proponent of open boarders, plus having lived through what unchecked immigration has done to my area, and specifically our educational system, that’s not going to change.
On every level the illegal immigration problem needs fixing. At the personal level, seeing the consequences of many years of bad policies and politics affect a student you know will benefit from being here sucks.
There are no easy answers to the undocumented children problem. I am sorry your student is caught up in the middle of it.
I great example of why the “Think of the children! lament is so effective.
(I’d say almost every child in the world would benefit from being here. No?)
I wonder — I presume the family was here illegally. If so, and if they left voluntarily (as opposed to being deported), does that give them a better possibility for now applying for legal entry?
My recollection is that if you’re deported, you are barred from reentry for quite some time.
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Comment of the Day! I’m sorry, I always ding these, but for some reason this one turning up in an open forum amused me. After all, is it really open, or not? I’ve even been thinking about leaving the open forums open to previously banned commenters…what do you think? It might be fun…heck, even ol’ Ablative Meatshield might drop in…Chris, Ampersand, Liberal Dan. The more I think about this idea, the better I like it.