Feb. 28, 2020
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Trump travel restrictions on China slow down coronavirus, South Korea, Italy could be next
On Jan. 31,
after the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency from the
coronavirus, President Trump instituted screening and travel restrictions from
China to slow the spread of the virus that may have a higher than 2 percent
mortality rate, although the World Health Organization has a 1.5 percent
mortality rate outside of China and a 3.4 percent rate inside of China. With
such a high mortality rate, containment is critical. In the U.S., so far there
have been 60 cases with no deaths. And to keep it that way, the President may
be considering expanding the travel restrictions to other countries with
outbreaks like South Korea and Italy. “[I]f others aren’t taking care or we
think they’re doing it incorrectly… At a right time, we may do that,” President
Trump said on Feb. 26 at the White House from a reporter asking if the U.S.
would institute additional screening and travel restrictions on South Korea and
northern Italy, which have been hit with the Chinese coronavirus.
Cartoon: Clown Car
Dems politicize
the coronavirus outbreak, but is that wise?
Video: If Biden loses S.C., his political career is over and Bernie the socialist will be the nominee
If Joe Biden
loses in South Carolina, Bernie Sanders and his socialist platform may be
unstoppable to beat for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Video: Can S.C. Save Biden? Virus concerns and Latinos for Trump
After running
for President for 32 years, will Joe Biden finally win a primary?
Pence right man to lead U.S. response to coronavirus threat
Americans for Limited Government President Rick
Manning: “Democrats try to politicize everything, and their incredibly ignorant
complaints about the President’s putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of
coordinating the U.S. response to the coronavirus are beyond the pale. Pence is
not putting on a lab coat, he will be leading the inter-governmental response
including coordination with foreign nations. A potentially serious global
threat needs a global response that puts the gravity of the threat into
perspective and that cannot be done without civilian leadership involved. We need all the help we can get. Most people
do not know that each federal government agency has emergency preparation plans
that prepare for many worst case scenarios including a potential pandemic. The Vice President’s helmsmanship will ensure
that our government’s national and international preparation and response is
comprehensive without creating undo concern in the general public. To try to
proceed without White House leadership would be utterly irresponsible and could
lead to chaos as agencies pursue different and conflicting paths. Under the
Constitution, President Trump is ultimately responsible for the executive
branch response and he would not be doing his job if did not put the Vice
President who has the proven experience as a governor dealing with agencies and
their conflicts.”
Gene Schaerr: How widespread is domestic political spying?
“Attorney
General William Barr recently took the unprecedented step of requiring any future
investigation of a presidential campaign to get approval from him and the director
of the FBI. But recent statements from the intelligence agencies suggest that
political spying -- on members of Congress as well as presidential candidates
-- may be more widespread than Barr himself realizes.”
Trump travel restrictions on China slow down coronavirus, South Korea, Italy could be next
By Robert Romano
“[I]f others aren’t taking care or we think they’re doing it incorrectly… At a right time, we may do that.”
That was President Donald Trump, responding to a question on Feb. 26 at the White House from a reporter asking if the U.S. would institute additional screening and travel restrictions on South Korea and northern Italy, which have been hit with the Chinese coronavirus.
On Jan. 31, after the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency from the coronavirus, President Trump instituted screening and travel restrictions from China to slow the spread of the virus.
The Wuhan coronavirus may have a higher than 2 percent mortality rate, although the World Health Organization has a 1.5 percent mortality rate outside of China and a 3.4 percent rate inside of China.
With such a high mortality rate, containment is critical. Not to be alarmist, but if the entire world’s population of 7.7 billion got sick, more than 150 million could die globally. That’s more than 3 million dead here. It’s deadly serious, and not political.
So far, more than 2,700 have died in China with more than 78,000 cases. South Korea has more than 1,700 cases with 13 deaths, and Italy has more than 600 cases with 17 dead.
In the U.S., so far there have been 60 cases with thankfully no deaths. And to keep it that way, the President may be considering expanding the travel restrictions to other countries with outbreaks like South Korea and Italy — the only comprehensive measure he can take in his powers to prevent the virus from traveling across the border.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar credited the travel restrictions at his press conference for slowing the virus into the U.S.: “The President’s early and decisive actions, including travel restrictions, have succeeded in buying us incredibly valuable time. This has helped us contain the spread of the virus, handle the cases that we have, and prepare for the possibility that we will need to mitigate broader spread of infections within the United States. The President’s actions taken with the strong support of his scientific advisors have proven to be appropriate, wise, and well-calibrated to the situation.”
That is because, like sheltering in one’s home when you get sick, limiting human-to-human contact via international travel will limit transmission and prevent the virus from spreading further.
Deputy Director of Centers for Disease Control Dr. Anne Schuchat warned to avoid persons who are coughing and sneezing: “The coronavirus that we’re talking about is a respiratory virus. It’s spread in a similar way to the common cold or to influenza. It’s spread through coughs and sneezes.”
South Korea may merit additional consideration for travel restrictions, with the Shincheonji cult that “teaches illness is a sin, encouraging its followers to suffer through diseases to attend services in which they sit closely together, breathing in spittle as they repeatedly amen in unison,” according to Foreign Policy’s S. Nathan Park on Feb. 27.
Park added, “Shincheonji convinces its members to cover their tracks, providing a prearranged set of answers to give when anyone asks if they belong to the cult. Often, even family members are in the dark about whether someone is a Shincheonji follower. The net effect is that Shincheonji followers infect each other easily, then go onto infect the community at large.”
Which is already happening. Per Park, “Although Patient No. 31 ran a high fever, she attended two Shincheonji services which held more than a thousand worshippers each, in addition to attending a wedding and a conference for a pyramid scheme. She visited a clinic after being involved in a minor traffic accident, but ignored the repeated recommendations by the doctors to receive testing for COVID-19. In other cases, a self-identified Shincheonji follower who came to a hospital complaining of high fever ran off during examination when the doctors informed her she may be quarantined.”
That doesn’t sound like South Korea fully has the situation under control, Park notes: “Since the discovery of Patient No. 31, the number of COVID-19 cases in South Korea jumped from 30 to 977 in eight days. Nearly all of the new cases are Shincheonji followers, or traceable to them.”
The thing to watch in the coming days and weeks of course will be how many new confirmed cases there are in the afflicted countries. That will tell the tale if the virus is being contained, or if it’s still spreading and getting worse. Fortunately, President Trump doesn’t sound like he wants to take any chances, meaning if the virus keeps spreading in South Korea, Italy and elsewhere, watch for more travel restrictions until the outbreak is fully under control.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
Cartoon: Clown Car
By A.F. Branco
Click here for a higher level resolution version.
Video: If Biden loses S.C., his political career is over and Bernie the socialist will be the nominee
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzYjO1Yj4QU
Video: Can S.C. Save Biden? Virus concerns and Latinos for Trump
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArQ2zY6bv-I
Pence right man to lead U.S. response to coronavirus threat
Feb. 28, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement defending the appointment of Vice President Mike Pence to lead the U.S. response to the coronavirus outbreak:
“Democrats try to politicize everything, and their incredibly ignorant complaints about the President’s putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of coordinating the U.S. response to the coronavirus are beyond the pale.
“Pence is not putting on a lab coat, he will be leading the inter-governmental response including coordination with foreign nations. A potentially serious global threat needs a global response that puts the gravity of the threat into perspective and that cannot be done without civilian leadership involved. We need all the help we can get.
“Most people do not know that each federal government agency has emergency preparation plans that prepare for many worst case scenarios including a potential pandemic. The Vice President’s helmsmanship will ensure that our government’s national and international preparation and response is comprehensive without creating undo concern in the general public. To try to proceed without White House leadership would be utterly irresponsible and could lead to chaos as agencies pursue different and conflicting paths. Under the Constitution, President Trump is ultimately responsible for the executive branch response and he would not be doing his job if did not put the Vice President who has the proven experience as a governor dealing with agencies and their conflicts.”
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2020/02/pence-right-man-to-lead-u-s-response-to-coronavirus-threat/
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured oped from Real Clear Politics, Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability general counsel Gene Schaerr warns that political surveillance by intelligence agencies may be more widespread than Attorney General William Barr realizes:
How widespread is domestic political spying?
By Gene Schaerr
Attorney General William Barr recently took the unprecedented step of requiring any future investigation of a presidential campaign to get approval from him and the director of the FBI. But recent statements from the intelligence agencies suggest that political spying -- on members of Congress as well as presidential candidates -- may be more widespread than Barr himself realizes.
Barr’s laudable decision was in part a reaction to the report by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz, which detailed the lack of adequate institutional oversight of electronic surveillance within the FBI, even about an investigation touching on a presidential campaign. Some civil libertarians also worry that the government may be playing fast and loose with “unmasking” – the practice of revealing within the intel community the identity of an American citizen whose conversations are incidentally caught up in the National Security Agency’s trawler of international calls. Sen. Lindsey Graham, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, voiced concern that he might have been a victim of unmasking.
It would be easy to write off these stories as overhyped (if you dislike Trump), or proof that the intelligence community is out to get Trump (if you like Trump). But the threat of political surveillance should not be a partisan matter. After all, political surveillance hit a high point with the FBI and CIA in the (Republican) Nixon era, when both agencies were deployed to conduct domestic, political spying.
To determine whether such spying has recently occurred, our nonpartisan civil liberties group filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the prominent agencies in Washington’s intelligence community. We first asked about surveillance of members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in both parties.
The Office of the Director National Intelligence got back to us in just four business days. As often happens with FOIA requests, we received a boilerplate non-answer called a “Glomar response.” The agency said it “can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of records responsive to of [sic] your request. The fact of the existence or non-existence of the requested records . . . could reveal intelligence sources and methods information that is protected from disclosure.”
When we asked the same question about presidential campaigns going back to 1978, we got the same answer. Another FOIA request, about the possible targeting of members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, produced a Glomar response within two business days.
This method of institutional stonewalling originated from one of America’s most ambitious intelligence projects. In 1968, naval observers in the Pacific noticed a flurry of Soviet naval activity that could only have been a search for a missing submarine. The U.S. Navy located the wreck of the Soviet submarine K-129, capable of carrying nuclear missiles, 16,000 feet below the surface. Enlisting billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes to create an elaborate cover story, the CIA commissioned the state-of-the-art Hughes Glomar Explorer to recover the wreck. The project quickly generated rumors. Unwilling to acknowledge its project to the media, the CIA issued the first “Glomar” response.
In the intervening years, this non-answer meant to conceal a monumental intelligence project about a sunken Russian sub has become a standard response to inquiries about matters of broad public interest. One federal judge in 2004 rejected a request by the Department of Defense and CIA to conceal documents and photos pertaining to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. But the record of lower courts has mostly been to expand the reach of the Glomar blanket, and the agencies continue to hide under it whenever possible.
But where possible political spying is concerned, even a Glomar response is revealing: If the agency is not engaged in political spying, no “sources and methods” could possibly be exposed from a straightforward answer to the question – are you now or have you been spying on presidential candidates or members of Congress? The agencies’ Glomar responses thus imply that at least some “sources and methods” for spying on presidential candidates and members of Congress have, at some point, been developed and deployed.
Such political surveillance, if it is still happening, would be a greater threat than anything Russia might have done. It is one thing for Moscow to use social media to try to meddle in our politics and culture. Far worse would be for our own intelligence agencies to think and act like Russian intelligence agencies.
Moreover, surveilling legislators would give the executive branch a whip to hold over Congress. Similarly, spying on presidential candidates and campaigns would create a danger of the kind of blackmail in which FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is believed to have engaged.
And if our nation’s leaders are not safe from surveillance by our own government, do you really think you are?
