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* Alan M. Dershowitz: Emergencies Make Awful Law: Why are Casinos Treated More Favorably than Churches During a Pandemic?
* Amir Taheri: The Threat of Orphan States to World Order


** Emergencies Make Awful Law: Why are Casinos Treated More Favorably than Churches During a Pandemic? ([link removed])
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by Alan M. Dershowitz • September 13, 2020 at 5:00 am
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5809191749&ct=1&title=Emergencies+Make+Awful+Law%3A+Why+are+Casinos+Treated+More+Favorably+than+Churches+During+a+Pandemic%3F [link removed] [link removed]
* [T]he government may not discriminate against religion in general or any particular religion in particular. It need not exempt religious institutions or practitioners from rules that are generally applicable to similarly situated institutions or citizens, but it may not impose especially onerous rules on religion that limit its free exercise.
* Under the first amendment, churches hold a higher protected status than comparably sized and ventilated businesses. So, as an initial matter, it would appear unconstitutional for a state to prohibit church assemblies of more than 50 congregants, regardless of the size of the building, while allowing a casino to host up to half their usual number of gamblers, which in some cases can exceed 1,000. But Chief Justice Roberts introduced a judicial consideration that went beyond that initial consideration, namely the right of governors not to be second-guessed by judges during a pandemic emergency."
* "Where those broad limits are not exceeded, they should not be subject to second-guessing by an 'unelected federal judiciary,' which lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people. See Garcia v. San Antonino Metropolitan Transit Authority, 409 U.S. 528, 545 (1985)." — US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
* "But Covid-19 is not a blank check for a state to discriminate against religious people, religions organization religious services. There are certain constitutional red lines that a state may not cross even in a crisis. Those restrictions include racial discrimination, religious discrimination, and content-based suppression of speech." — US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

No state should be allowed to impose more onerous crowd restrictions on churches than on casinos. Under the first amendment, churches hold a higher protected status than comparably sized and ventilated businesses. Pictured: Rev. Brian X. Needles prepares for Easter Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church, empty of worshipers, on April 11, 2020 in South Orange, New Jersey. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

If hard cases make bad law, emergencies make even worse law. Our case books are littered with awful judicial decisions authorizing presidents and governors to violate core constitutional rights in the name of coping with crises. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's decision to intern more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent following the attack on Pearl Harbor was upheld by liberal justices. President Abraham Lincoln's decision to detain citizens and deny them access to the writ of habeas corpus was upheld during the Civil War. Now that that we are experiencing a pandemic crisis, if history is any guide, we can expect some bad decisions.

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** The Threat of Orphan States to World Order ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • September 13, 2020 at 4:00 am
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* The Third Reich and the USSR could not behave as normal nation-states.... Their prime interest was "exporting" their ideological brand, by war if necessary.
* Regardless of the obvious differences of belief systems and discourse, all ideology-driven movements from Lenin and Hitler to Khomeini and Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi aim at replacing the biological human with an ideological one, ostensibly to complete the work of nature or providence.
* Lenin seized power in a Russian state that had become an orphan with the fall of the Tsarist state. Hitler inherited the orphan state left by the failed Weimar Republic. Khomeini came to power when the Shah simply left Iran as an orphan state.
* At first glance, the same fate may look as if it is threatening Lebanon. A state manned by discredited elites seems on the verge of disintegration, with an armed group backed by Iran poised to seize control, just as the Taliban did in Afghanistan with Pakistani backing.

In Lebanon, a state manned by discredited elites seems on the verge of disintegration, with an armed group backed by Iran poised to seize control, just as the Taliban did in Afghanistan with Pakistani backing. Pictured: Hezbollah members in Baalbek, Lebanon on November 12, 2019. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

Remember 9/11, the catchphrase that was seen as a wake-up call for a world lulled into sweet slumber by "The End of History"? Nearly two decades ago today, the twin terror attacks on New York and Washington propelled a new threat to world order at the top of international concerns: the threat of non-state groups seizing territory for use as a base for advancing ideological aims through terror and war.

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