This will resonate with some.
[snip]It is not sustainable for government to combat the disease by ordering communal and commercial activity to cease, then trying to compensate increasingly destitute citizens by borrowing and printing money to throw at them.
This is, and has to be, the pattern of political determinations: Err on the side of safety, but abate if, with the context of better information, living more realistically with the threat begins to appear less dire than the alternatives. Here, the coronavirus shutdown may have been an understandable first reaction, even a justifiable one. But it has to be weighed against the catastrophic consequences. And it has to factor in our improving understanding of the threats and the behaviors that mitigate it — hand washing, other rudimentary hygiene, social distancing, avoiding large crowds for now, extra safeguards for the elderly and people with preexisting health problems, and so on. If we do these things, many fewer people (especially vulnerable people) will be exposed.
Even with all that, and even if we can minimize the number infected and eventually reduce the fatality rate, it is entirely conceivable that thousands more people will die from COVID-19 than die from flu. But tragic as that outcome would be, it would pale in comparison to the ruin that looms if we do not resume a semblance of normal life.
No matter what happens, the law — i.e., the Trump administration’s conclusions about its DPA, Stafford Act, and constitutional authorities — will have little to say about it. The history of this country is one of ceding authority to the chief executive, to an extent commensurate with the public’s sense of real threat, particularly lethal threat on a mass scale. Later, Congress and the courts push back, but only once the perception of peril ebbs. They push back with law. Yet, the extent to which law is a real barrier against to future presidential muscle-flexing, for good or ill, depends not on what the statutes and opinions say, but on how scared we are.
Politics, not law.[/snip]
On the Limits of Law - National Review
The extent to which law is a barrier against to future presidential muscle-flexing, for good or ill, depends not on what the statutes and opinions say, but on how scared we are.
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