BY MARK TAPSCOTT | PJ MEDIA
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
It’s the day before Thanksgiving — that most American of
holidays — and among much else, I am deeply thankful for Judge Daniel Green of
Cole County in the Show-Me State.
Judge Green struck a blow for liberty and republican government earlier
this week when he wrote:
“This case is about whether Missouri’s Department of
Health and Senior Services (DHSS) regulations can abolish representative
government in the creation of public health laws, and whether it can authorize
closure of a school or assembly based on the unfettered opinion of an unelected
official. This court finds it cannot.”
In two wonderfully succinct sentences, Judge Green thus
captured the essence of the battle between the aspiring totalitarians on the
American Left using COVID and public health to displace government by the
consent of the governed and the legions of Americans across the political
spectrum who have had their fill of being told to shut up and do what we’re
told because we’re all bigots, oppressors, and reactionaries.
Missouri officials occasioned Green’s ruling by imposing
unreasonable mask mandates on indoor and outdoor gatherings even as the
vaccination rate continued to go up and the state’s per capita death rate due
to COVID was 0.006.
Judge Green’s decision is a small but notable development
in a gathering rebellion of everyday Americans against government by decree
brought to a head by bureaucrats and little dictators in public office hiding
behind the protection of public health.
Another blow was struck this past week when Robert Tyler
and Advocates for Faith & Freedom filed suit in the Superior Court of California for
Orange County seeking to force Gov. Gavin Newsom to comply with state law and
withdraw his long-running COVID-based state of emergency.
Plaintiffs in the suit — including the Orange County
Board of Education, Children’s Health Defense, and Children’s Health
Defense-California Chapter — declare in their opening paragraph:
“This action seeks to restore the checks and balances on
which American democracy depends. Governor Gavin Newsom eliminated those checks
and balances during the spring of 2020 when he declared a state of emergency
related to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.
“That may have been necessary at the time, to respond to
a virus that caught government officials off-guard. But a state of emergency
cannot last forever, especially when the government has used the emergency to
exercise vast powers, including an unprecedented “stay at home” order through
which the government told 40 million Californians what they could and could not
do for 18 months.”
The suit notes that Newsom conceded in June that citizens of
California had “successfully curbed the spread,” an admission which requires
that the state of emergency no longer exists and thus must be withdrawn.
At the federal level, so many suits were filed
challenging President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates that judicial officials were
moved to consolidate 34 of them into one court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Sixth Circuit.
Among the 34 is one filed by the attorneys general of a
dozen states challenging the Biden decree that healthcare facilities that do
not require employees to be vaccinated will lose federal funding.
“The lawsuit argues that the Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services (CMS) shot mandate on facilities that receive federal funding
for treating patients exceeds the agency’s statutory authority and violates the
Social Security Act’s prohibition on regulations that control the hiring and
firing of health care workers. It also violates multiple federal laws, the
Spending Clause, the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine and the Tenth Amendment to the
Constitution,” according to Liberty Counsel, the Florida-based public interest
law firm that has taken a leading role in bringing suit on behalf of members of
the U.S. military, civilian federal employees and thousands of private sector
healthcare workers.
“The Vaccine Mandate causes grave danger to vulnerable
persons whom Medicare and Medicaid were designed to protect—the poor, sick, and
elderly—by forcing the termination of millions of ‘healthcare heroes,’”
the lawsuit claims.
The mandate violates the Tenth Amendment of the
Constitution by seeking “to commandeer state-employee surveyors to become
enforcers of CMS’s unlawful attempt to federalize national vaccine policy and
override the States’ police power on matters of health and safety,” the suit
continues.
Another case was filed on behalf of 35 Navy SEALS who
seek a religious exemption from the vaccine mandate by First Liberty Institute,
the Plano, Texas-based public interest law firm that specializes in religious
liberty litigation.
“The fact that the government has not granted a single
religious exemption from the vaccine mandate shows that the Biden
Administration does not care about religious freedom. Instead, this
appears to be an attempted ideological purge. Forcing a service member to
choose between their faith and serving their country is abhorrent to the
Constitution and America’s values,” said Mike Berry, First Liberty’s General
Counsel.
“After all these elite warriors have done to defend our
freedoms, the Navy is now threatening their careers, families, and
finances. It’s appalling and it has to stop before any more harm is done
to our national security,” Berry added.
It will take time for the legal system to process this
issue, but it is difficult to see how the outcome would continue to give the
green light to the mandates. But it’s not just the mandates at work here in
prompting the Everyday Rebellion.
Progressive prosecutors who free chronic murderers,
rapists, and sexual predators to continue preying on innocent Americans are
also fueling the movement. Consider Darrell Brooks, who is charged with
multiple murders in the Waukesha, Wisc. Christmas Parade attack.
Brooks has a lengthy criminal record, but a Left-wing
prosecutor agreed to a minimal bail a month ago after he allegedly ran over his
child’s mother with his Ford Escape, the same vehicle seen mowing down parade
participants, including multiple seniors, little children, and spectators.
George Soros and other wealthy Leftist luminaries have
spent hundreds of millions of dollars to put dozens of such prosecutors in
office around the country. And every time one of them frees another murderer,
rapist, or sex offender, more everyday Americans say they’ve had enough. The
proliferation of organized mass shoplifting in malls and downtown shopping
districts does the same thing.
Then there is the Kyle Rittenhouse prosecution.
Rittenhouse was clearly defamed by legions of mainstream media figures, and he
is almost certainly headed toward litigation that will hold them accountable,
just as Nicholas Sandmann was able to do as a result of his
defamation following an incident at the Lincoln Memorial.
When Rittenhouse starts winning multi-million dollar
settlements, many more such suits will be filed by others emboldened by his
success, and sooner or later, the Left-wing ideologues who have turned the
mainstream media into the propaganda arm of the progressives who dominate the
Democratic Party will have to start looking for new jobs.
Considering John Malone’s recent revelation that there are no “actual
journalists” working at CNN, the ideologues who ruined Ted Turner’s formerly
admirable creation may be hitting the pavement sooner than they think.
Yes, it’s the day before Thanksgiving and everyday
Americans do indeed have much for which to be thankful.