Tag: in-the-news

Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro has ordered the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, which licenses and regulates doctors in the province, to ban groups of doctors from withdrawing from practice at the same time. The move is aimed at stopping doctors from closing their practices or leaving en masse in response to the province’s recent cuts in health care funding. Shandro says doctors must be required to provide three months notice before leaving practice and required to “provide effective alternative resources and/or arrangements for patients if they choose to withdraw services.” If they can’t, the government would force them to continue to practice “until effective alternative resources and/or arrangements have been created.”

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I laughed when I saw The Washington Post headline: “Minneapolis had progressive policies, but its economy still left black families behind.”

The media are so clueless. Instead of “but,” the headline should have said, “therefore,” or “so, obviously.”

Of course, progressive policies failed! They almost always do.

“If you wanted a poster child for the progressive movement, it would be Minneapolis,” says Republican Minnesota Senate candidate Jason Lewis in my new video. “This is the same city council that voted to abolish the police department.”

The council, which has no Republicans, spends taxpayer money on most every progressive idea.

They brag that they recycle most everything. They have a plan to stop climate change. They tell landlords to whom they must rent. They will force employers to pay every worker $15 an hour. They even tell supermarkets what cereal they must sell.

Despite such policies, meant to improve life for minorities and the poor, the Minneapolis income gap between whites and blacks is the second highest in the country.

While that surprises the media, it’s no surprise to Lewis, who points out, “When you take away the incentive for work and savings and investment, you get less of it!”

Exactly. When government sends checks to people who don’t work, more people don’t work. Guarantees like a high minimum wage raise the cost of potential workers, so some never get hired. High taxes to fund progressives’ programs make it difficult for businesses to open in the first place.

Lewis says; ” I’ve been touring businesses that were burned. They did not mention global warming, recycling, or the environment one single time. You know what they say? Give me low taxes and give me public order.”

Lewis says Minnesota is now a “command and control economy….They’re not even shy about it. (Congresswoman) Ilhan Omar said we need to abolish capitalism!”

Not exactly. But Omar did call for “dismantling the whole system of oppression,” including America’s economic systems that, “prioritize profit.”

Lewis says she wants to create “equal poverty for everybody.”

No, I push back, “She thinks her ideas will lift everybody up.”

“Show us, Ilhan,” he responds. “Where has it worked? Everything that you’re proposing hasn’t worked!”

He’s right.

But Cam Gordon, a current Minneapolis councilman, tells me the city’s economic “disparities were caused by a long trail of historic racism.”

He tweeted: “Time to end capitalism as we know it.”

He says that would be good because “we could have more democratic control of our resources.” Cam Gordon is the kind of guy who gets elected in Minneapolis.

“Every alternative to capitalism brings stagnation and poverty,” I say to him.

Gordon answers, “I think we can take care of each other better.”

Lewis points out that before COVID-19, “the people gaining the most were at the bottom end of the wage scale. Women, Hispanics, African Americans were gaining the most. A rising tide truly lifts all boats.”

He’s right again. In the past 50 years, while progressives attacked profits, capitalism—the pursuit of profit—lifted more than a billion people out of extreme poverty.

When I point that out to Gordon, he simply ignores my point about fabulous progress around the world and says: “The problem with capitalism as we know it is this idea that we have to have constant growth….Capitalism got us the housing crisis right now and…climate change. It’s actually going to destroy the planet.”

Sigh.

His Green Party’s “community-based economics” would give the community control over private property. Seems to me like community-based economics is just another way to say socialism. That’s brought poverty and tyranny every time it’s been tried.

“When socialism fails,” says Lewis, “the apologists always say, ‘We just didn’t do it enough, just didn’t do it the right way.’ (But) it’s always failed.”

Sadly, today in America, the progressives are winning.

COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

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Donald Trump, whose 2016 presidential campaign was consciously modeled after Richard Nixon’s 1968 run, seems to think he can win re-election by emulating his predecessor’s appeal to a “silent majority” disgusted by raucous anti-war protests. Trump is offering voters a choice between his firm hand and the pusillanimity of “liberal Democrats” who let “violent anarchists” run wild in the streets.

Notwithstanding Trump’s pose as “your president of law and order,” his heavy-handed reaction to the protests triggered by George Floyd’s death represents neither. In response to largely peaceful demonstrations against police brutality that have been punctuated by criminal behavior, he has deployed his own brand of lawlessness, including arbitrary arrests and the disproportionate, indiscriminate use of force.

Billy Williams, the U.S. attorney for Oregon, is aware of the crimes committed by some of the people drawn to the protests Portland has seen every day since May 28. He notes that the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse has been vandalized repeatedly and that federal agents assigned to protect the building “have been subjected to threats; aerial fireworks including mortars; high intensity lasers targeting officers’ eyes; [and] thrown rocks, bottles, and balloons filled with paint.” Williams’ office is prosecuting seven people for participating in riots at the courthouse during the first week of July and has accused a Texas man of attacking a U.S. Marshals Service deputy with a hammer on July 11.

But Williams also understands that government officials charged with enforcing the law do not have a license to break it. Two weeks ago, he noted that the Justice Department’s inspector general is investigating a July 11 incident in which a protester was severely injured by “less-lethal munitions” that the Marshals Service allegedly fired at his head. Last week Williams asked the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general to investigate allegations that “federal law enforcement detained two protestors without probable cause.”

Williams was referring to reports that camouflage-clad federal officers, identified by nothing more than generic “police” patches, have been driving through the streets of Portland in unmarked rental cars, grabbing protesters for no apparent reason and detaining them without charge. Although that sounds like the sort of thing that happens in tinpot dictatorships, some of the incidents were caught on video.

“We cannot give up liberty for security,” Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) warned on Monday. “Local law enforcement can and should be handling these situations in our cities, but there is no place for federal troops or unidentified federal agents rounding people up at will.”

In a federal lawsuit filed on Friday, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, citing the accounts of protesters who said they had been subjected to such treatment, argues that the Marshals Service and several Homeland Security agencies thereby violated their First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights. “Every American should be repulsed when they see this happening,” she said. “If this can happen here in Portland, it can happen anywhere.”

Trump is in fact threatening to deploy federal agents, who are ostensibly in Portland to protect federal property, in Chicago and other cities “run by very liberal Democrats,” whom he equates with “the radical left.” Like Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who describes the Trump administration’s tactics in his city as “abhorrent,” local officials elsewhere do not want his “help.”

Partisan acrimony aside, that is hardly surprising. In addition to illegally detaining Americans who were exercising their First Amendment rights, federal agents in Portland—who according to an internal memo were not trained in controlling riots or mass demonstrations—have been accused of firing tear gas at peaceful protesters and shooting journalists with rubber bullets.

The officers who work for Trump have the authority to guard federal property and enforce federal law. But they do not have an open-ended license to “quell” protests, fight crime, or impose Trump’s idea of “order” while flouting the wishes of local officials and treating the Constitution as an optional obstacle to the re-election of an increasingly desperate president.

© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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As a general matter, federal judges will recuse if they have some sort of relationship with one of the named parties. Indeed, most clerks will screen cases, to avoid assigning a matter to a judge that would create a potential recusal. Occasionally, conflicted cases slip through the cracks–even at the Supreme Court. Sometimes the identity of all parties isn’t obvious, and a conflict only becomes clear after the case is assigned. But what happens when the conflict arises based on an amicus brief? Friends of the court may file briefs long after the panels are assigned. And these filings may give rise to conflicts of interest. What should a court do in such a case?

In 2018, the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure were amended to address this situation. Rule 29(a)(2) provides:

 Any other amicus curiae may file a brief only by leave of court or if the brief states that all parties have consented to its filing, but a court of appeals may prohibit the filing of or may strike an amicus brief that would result in a judge’s disqualification.

In short, if an amicus brief would create a recusal, the court can strike it.

The Fifth Circuit relied on this rule in Texas v. United States, the challenge to the Affordable Care Act. On April 1, 2019, Children’s Partnership and First Focus filed an amicus brief. They were represented by Stuart Delery of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. On April 8, 2019, the docket reflected a one-line, unsigned order:

COURT ORDER striking AMICUS BRIEF filed by First Focus and Children’s Partnership.

No explanation was given. But the conventional wisdom was that the brief was struck to avoid Judge Jim Ho’s recusal. (Ho had worked at Gibson, and his wife is currently a partner there). That strike also led some to speculate that Judge Ho might be on the three-judge panel. Ultimately, he was not on that panel. And he eventually recused from the en banc court, even though the Gibson brief was struck. (My uninformed speculation: Judge Ho recused based on his work on the original ACA challenge as Texas Solicitor General.)

Judge Andrew Brasher, a new member of the Eleventh Circuit chose a different approach. Today he recused from en banc consideration of Florida’s felon disenfranchise case. There was no conflict with any of the parties. Rather, he identified a conflict because the Alabama Attorney General, his former employer, filed an amicus brief. He explained:

Before joining the bench last year as a district judge, I worked as a lawyer at the State of Alabama Attorney General’s Office. Upon being nominated and confirmed to the position of district judge, I conferred with staff at the Committee on Codes of Conduct for the Judicial Conference of the United States about recusal-related issues. They recommended that I adopt a general policy of recusing from cases in which lawyers from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office represent a party for about two years. This policy would avoid any appearance of partiality by allowing a reasonable time period between when I worked with these lawyers as a colleague and when I might rule in one of their cases as a judge.

Other judges may reasonably choose different policies or different time periods. Some judges may not feel the need for a blanket recusal policy at all. But I thought the suggestion was a good idea, it was consistent with the recusal policies of other members of the district court on which I served, and I adopted the policy as a district judge.

I intend to continue following this recusal policy as a member of this court. In this case, lawyers from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office filed an amicus brief. Whether and how a judge’s recusal policies should apply to amicus participation is an unsettled area. But, with some exceptions that do not apply here, my policies apply to amici in the same way they apply to parties. For that reason, I am recusing myself from this matter.

Brasher could have asked the clerk to strike the Alabama amicus brief. But he instead chose to recuse. I appreciate this clarity. Judge Brasher explained, with candor, why he was stepping down. Far too often recusal orders are void of reasoning. I agree with his rationale.

As an ethical matter, I think it better for the judge to step down than to strike the unwitting amicus brief. FRAP 29(a)(2) permits that resolution, but it is eminently unfair to the parties. Put yourselves in the shoes of the attorney who spent time and money writing a brief, only for it to be invalidated. However, this practice sends a clear signal to the market: clients who agree with Judge Ho’s general jurisprudence may be hesitant to hire Gibson Dunn to file an amicus brief for the Fifth Circuit, lest their brief force a recusal. For similar reasons, the Alabama Attorney General, may be hesitant to file amicus briefs in Eleventh Circuit. For the next two years, Judge Brasher will be recused from any case in which the Alabama Attorney General’s office is a party, or serves as an amicus. I suspect we will see multi-state coalitions file in the Eleventh Circuit, with Alabama left off the signature block.

There is a unique situation where FRAP 29(a)(2) makes eminent sense: parties may deliberately try to force a specific judge to recuse by hiring her former firm to file an amicus brief. I think this possibility is rare, because most firms would not knowingly take a client who is trying to force the disqualification of their former colleague.

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Portland looks pretty normal the morning I roll into town, birds singing, fresh air. I head downtown to the Federal Building, locus of the narrative we’ve been seeing all over the world: federal forces tear-gassing demonstrators and pummeling the legs of a Navy vet apparently made of brick.

Good morning from #Portland2020 pic.twitter.com/FHYkH2bl2p

— Nancy Rommelmann (@NancyRomm) July 20, 2020

Driving toward the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse yesterday, the city appears relatively intact. Most stores are boarded up, but that’s mostly due to COVID-19, which is on the rise in Oregon. The courthouse, however, looks anything but normal. The building is unrecognizable, its face completely gone—it looks like a building under construction, albeit with no doors, no windows. At noon, workmen are disassembling the temporary fencing that’s been pulled down each night since the feds arrived. Asked whether they’re going to paint over the graffiti, a foreman looks incredulous.

Federal Building check-in #Portland2020 pic.twitter.com/8D8FSQ5qL6

— Nancy Rommelmann (@NancyRomm) July 20, 2020

“No,” he says. “They’re only going to be back tonight.”

By “they,” he does not mean the protestors, who’ve been at it 53 nights: the thousands of locals who march while chanting “BLACK LIVES MATTER” and “SAY HER NAME” and “HANDS UP, DON’T SHOOT” and “FUCK THE POLICE.” They are here again by 8 p.m., including a new contingent of women wearing yellow, women who have responded to social-media calls to create a Wall of Moms. There is some question as to whether this call started organically as a mom-group thing or, as a way to create an unimpeachably sympathetic faction, was covertly orchestrated by antifa. And while the question might seem an interesting or provocative one, it’s apparently not to the two moms I ask, they’re caught up in the moment, one goes off to speak with a news crew.

“I think she heard about it on Reddit?” responds one husband, before joining in 30 minutes of call-and-response, “FUCK TED WHEELER” and “FEDS GO HOME” and “ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS,” the last round punctuated by the booms of a drum corps and several thousand people who stream past the federal building, ready for more chanting, more gathering, ready to show the world that they are peaceful protestors.

Meanwhile, one block away on a dark corner, a half-dozen young men on motorcycles and bicycles assemble. These are civilians, self-appointed to block off the street. An overhead camera has been spray-painted so as not to capture, maybe, the groups of two and three walking past. They are dressed in black; their faces are covered; they carry or wear bike helmets; their militia-like garb is meant to impart, one imagines, an air of menace. They do not look menacing. They look young, ungainly, and unsure how to proceed. One problem: The fencing has not been re-erected, so there’s nothing for them to pull down. Instead they dance and skateboard and yell at each other. A burnt-out-looking white dude shouts, “I’ve spoken to a dozen black men! You don’t speak for them! What you are doing is not about Black Lives Matter!” A young Asian woman in full-black garb charges him and shouts, “YOU DON’T SPEAK FOR BLACK PEOPLE! SHUT THE FUCK UP!” The crowd cheers.

Citizen street closers, one block down from peaceful protest of maybe 3000. Meanwhile watching youngs in all-black with slightly more militant air quietly funnel up pic.twitter.com/4rXZZTKZHx

— Nancy Rommelmann (@NancyRomm) July 21, 2020

This is the “they” the foreman spoke of, the 200 or so that gather every night. They’ve been cooped up for months and now they’re ready to burn, to get some mayhem going, though they don’t see it that way.

“We’re just here to protect people and get their voices heard,” a 22-year-old guy tells me, as he and his crew each grab a plywood shield from a pile someone has dumped on the ground. His friend was here two nights ago and got hit in the legs with pepper bullets.

“This is some fascist shit,” he says. “This is not OK.” 

It’s now 11:30 and the larger group of protestors is making one last sweep through, shouting “FUCK TED WHEELER” over and over as the 200 install a #WallofMoms between themselves and the building. This seems to quell things a bit, neither the group outside or any feds inside seeming to have an appetite for mowing down a bunch of middle-aged women. But then the moms are let go and a new volley is launched at the building, people banging on it with their skateboards and scrabbling at it with their hands.

Shit show begins #Portland2020 pic.twitter.com/o9mRE0xrNY

— Nancy Rommelmann (@NancyRomm) July 21, 2020

“Did not one of them think to bring any tools, maybe a hammer or a crowbar?” asks my friend. While one imagines what kind of trouble this might bring from the cops, there’s no reason to worry about the Portland police, not one of whom I’ve seen in three-plus hours. There is zero police presence, the mayor having years ago instructed the police that protesters are not to be arrested, the definition of protestor apparently being fungible. And so the battering, the rave-like mania, carries on.

“What will we do if we do get inside?” a young woman asks her friend. I tell her that I don’t think people have thought that far ahead; that it’s about the show out here, not about carrying forth any particular plan.

“I think you’re right,” she says, looking a little relieved. She’s wearing a jumper and weighs maybe 90 pounds soaking wet; she won’t be ready for any physical confrontation.

But it’s coming for her anyway. Several young men have torn a hole in the plywood, one is banging on it with a fire extinguisher, and the shield-boys are banging on it with their shields. Instantly the air is filled with military-grade CS gas, there are loud flash-bangs, and the crowd is falling back, running, getting out of the way of the first volleys.

“Do you need your eyes rinsed out?” three people ask as we make our way to the car, coughing. It’s 1:45 a.m., and it does not look as though there is going to be the sort of violent direct clashes that happened the previous two nights. Maybe the feds have gleaned that the optics of this aren’t great.

If the lone motorcyclists and bicyclists stationed at intersections downtown, trying to block our way, have an agenda, I don’t know what it is. What I do know is, despite their telling us we can’t drive around them, we do, where we see, for the first time, a Portland police vehicle, driving into the night and away.

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In a free society, citizens should be able to easily distinguish between civilian law enforcement tasked with keeping the peace in our communities and the armed forces tasked with protecting our country from foreign adversaries.

Unfortunately, thanks to the federal government flooding our neighborhoods with billions of dollars of military equipment and property over the years, the line between peace officer and soldier of war has become increasingly blurry.

Police officers have an incredibly difficult and often thankless job where they lay their lives on the line every day. Without the rule of law, a civilized society cannot exist, and our officers deserve our gratitude. The horrific actions of a few bad actors should not erase all the good done by the vast majority of these brave and hardworking men and women.

But as the federal government has enabled our local police to become more and more militarized, it has placed them in greater danger by eroding the community trust crucial to doing their jobs well.

While I respect the determination to preserve law and order, sending in federal forces to quell civil unrest in Portland further distorts the boundaries, results in more aggression (including pepper-spraying and repeatedly striking a Navy veteran whose injured hand will need surgery), and has led to reports we should never hear in a free country: federal officials, dressed in camouflage, snatching protesters away in unmarked vehicles.  

Sending the feds into Chicago won’t make the situation there any better, either.

Nothing you’ll read here excuses the actions of those who have destroyed lives and property in a mockery of peaceful protest—actions I have condemned. But many of us have been inspired by seeing protesters confronting these rioters, making the difference between righteous cause and opportunistic destruction even more stark.

Restoring lost trust is essential to reducing the tension and returning to peace. This means stopping the federal militarization of our local law enforcement and keeping federal agents and troops on the national posts where they best serve our country. 

According to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which operates within the Department of Defense, “More than $7.4 billion worth of property” has been transferred to law enforcement through the Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO) program. DLA also reveals that “as of June 2020, there are around 8,200 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies from 49 states and four U.S. territories participating in the program.”

Back in 2014, NPR reported the federal government had sent out 79,288 assault rifles, 205 grenade launchers, and 11,959 bayonets from 2006–2014. 

Yahoo recently reported that “the California Highway Patrol received what appeared to be a drone worth $22 million in 2016. The Howell Township Police Department in New Jersey received an MRAP [mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle] worth $865,000 in 2016. An MRAP provided to the Payne County Sheriff Office in Stillwater, Oklahoma, cost $1.3 million.”

As the Senate debates the latest National Defense Authorization Act, I joined a bipartisan group of senators to introduce an amendment based on my Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, which I originally introduced with Sen. Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii) in 2015 and have reintroduced in each session of Congress since.

Our amendment would have limited the transfer of certain offensive military equipment including bayonets, grenade launchers, and weaponized drones—all without prohibiting the continued distribution of defensive equipment, such as body armor.

It would also have ensured that communities are notified of requests and transfers by posted notices throughout the area and on a public website, and it would have required that a jurisdiction’s governing body approves of the transfers.

Though the Senate voted against these common-sense changes, my standalone legislation goes even further to reform the system, and I will keep working to advance it through Congress. 

Our bipartisan approach takes seriously the idea that cops on the beat can only do their jobs well when they are well-known by their neighbors and trusted by their communities.

The Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act will help build that relationship, making our citizens, police, and neighborhoods safer. 

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As many legal observers have followed in the news, Judge Esther Salas–the first Hispanic woman to be appointed as a federal district court judge in New Jersey–and her family became the victims of a horrific crime on Sunday evening when a gunman shot and killed her twenty-year-old son and injured her attorney husband. The main suspect, who shot himself shortly after these events, was a self-described “anti-feminist lawyer” seeking to protect “men’s rights”. He left behind hundreds of pages of misogynistic and racist rants, some of which are detailed here.

The suspect seems to have had a particular distaste for Latina women, which provides potentially relevant background for his crime against a judge in front of whom he argued but who actually allowed some of his claims to proceed. He also appears to have been diagnosed with terminal cancer, which some speculate may have played a role as well when linked to his writings suggesting “Things begin to change when individual men start taking out those specific persons responsible for destroying their lives before committing suicide.”

While there has been previous violence against judges and their families, such as the 2005 murder of Judge Joan Lefkow’s husband and mother in Chicago, the attack on Judge Salas’ home stands at the intersection of two trends worth noting. One is the increased domestic terrorism threat posed by the involuntary celibate (incel) movement whose ideas seem to have resonated with the suspect here. The other trend is the generally rising number of threats against members of the federal judiciary, which has experienced an almost five-fold increase from 2015 to 2019. Query the effect of President Trump’s frequent inflammatory attacks on individual judges and courts, some of which are collected here. Endangering judges imperils democracy as a whole.

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Instead of “abolish the police” or “defund the police,” how about “privatize the police”?

In a June NPR interview, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D–N.Y.) said that “policing is not a marketplace. You can’t choose another police force to take care of you to watch over your neighborhood.”

In fact, private policing and protection is more common than most people realize, and it’s a proven way of making law enforcement more accountable to the communities they’re paid to protect.

Economist Edward Stringham, who is president of the American Institute of Economic Research and the author of Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life, says that “in history and even in modern times, there are plenty of private examples of people working to create order and safety in society.” He points to fully deputized private police departments like those of Harvard, MIT, and Massachusetts General Hospital. Stringham also cites the history of San Francisco during the gold rush, which relied heavily on private policing. The San Francisco Patrol Special Police, for example, were founded in 1847 and are still in operation today.

Another example is the for-profit protection service Detroit Threat Management Centers, which has been operating in the Motor City since 1995. Dale Brown, the company’s founder, says that while government police focus on prosecution, his focus is solely on protection.

“We don’t police people. We protect them. Police are law enforcement officers,” Brown told Reason, “so essentially their task is based on negative metrics, meaning rape, robbery, killing. And of course, most importantly, arresting people for drugs or violence that has already occurred, which is not protection.”

Detroit Threat Management Centers provides bodyguards, works with homeowners’ associations, and secures precious cargo delivery. But it also runs an educational academy in which graduates volunteer to provide free security to domestic violence victims and other vulnerable individuals who the Detroit city police don’t protect.

Stringham points out that one of the main problems with the government’s monopoly on policing is a lack of accountability. Brown and his employees, on the other hand, are private citizens who are not only accountable to their clients, they are legally responsible for all of their actions. Brown handles this with video surveillance of all his on-duty employees, extensive training, and an emphasis on nonviolent solutions to threats. And in their 25 years of operation, they’ve had no lawsuits and no injuries to any of their clients.

When comes to solving our problems with police, Edward Stringham says “we don’t need to dream up some abstract ideals and think about how things might be….We can actually look at how private security [and] private policing already exist, draw from best practices and say, ‘Look, we do have markets and we can rely more on markets and less on a coercive government monopoly.'” 

Produced by John Osterhoudt.

Photo credit: Private Security on Bike, Lannis Waters/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Defund the Police Sign 1, Elvert Barnes/CC Flickr; Abolish Police Sign, Lorie Shaull/CC Flickr; Defund Redistribute, Jason Hargrove/CC Flickr; ACAB Sign, Elvert Barnes/CC Flickr; Sign on NYPD Car, Peter Burka/CC Flickr; Bernard Public Safety, Jason Lawrence/CC Flickr; Security Guard, John Loo/CC Flickr; Allied Barton, Matthew Hoelscher/CC Flickr; Duke Campus Police, Inventorchris/CC Flickr; Camo Uniforms, Chase Carter/CC Flickr

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A Kentucky couple says they were placed under house arrest for refusing to sign self-quarantine documents after testing positive for COVID-19.

Elizabeth Linscott of Hardin County told WAVE that she got a COVID-19 test in preparation for a trip to visit her parents in Michigan. Linscott’s test came back positive. Shortly afterward, the Lincoln Trail District Health Department informed Linscott that she would need to sign a Self-isolation and Controlled Movement Agreed Order.

Linscott had no objection to quarantining herself. But she declined to sign, the Associated Press reports, because the order included this sentence: “I will not travel by any public, commercial or health care conveyance such as ambulance, bus, taxi, airplane, train or boat without the prior approval of the Department of Public Health.” If Linscott needed to go to the hospital, she did not want to wait for the health department’s permission. She would, however, take precautions, such as informing hospital workers that she had tested positive.

Last Thursday, the Hardin County Sheriff’s Office and a health department employee appeared at her home. There, Linscott’s husband was served three papers: one for his wife, one for himself, and one for their daughter. The Linscotts claim that they were told to wear ankle monitors to ensure that they remained within 200 feet of their home.

While the Hardin County Sheriff’s Office was unable to provide Reason with its protocols for enforcing quarantine, it did release a statement via Facebook about the case:

According to the sheriff’s office, any petition filed against the Linscotts was initiated by the Lincoln Trail District Health Department and any quarantine orders would be issued by a judge. The sheriff’s office also denied installing monitoring devices.

Linscott told WAVE that the health department director had claimed to the judge that the couple was refusing to self-quarantine. Linscott maintains that her decision was mischaracterized and that she merely disliked how the document was worded.

Under Kentucky law, the Louisville Courier Journal reports, county health departments have the power to isolate contagious people who don’t stay at home. The law does not state a penalty for objecting to or breaking quarantine orders.

If the Linscotts’ account is accurate, and the authorities not only ignored reasonable objections from citizens and placed them under house arrest, but also lied about it, this is a deeply troubling turn for civil liberties in Hardin County.

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When it comes to kids and camp this summer, for hiking, substitute sitting. For campfire, substitute Zoom. And for fun, substitute—well, here’s the thing: Some kids don’t like the online camps COVID-19 has foisted upon them. But plenty are having a good enough time, and some kids are loving their virtual camps. And if kids are busy and happy even for a short (blessed!) portion of the day, their parents are happy campers, too.

The American Camp Association doesn’t have an exact number of camps that have gone online for the summer, but they know of at least 230. That’s out of their 3,000-camp membership. It’s possible that many hundreds more are giving it a try without notifying the association.

Elina Furman, an author and digital marketer in Connecticut, has her 7-year-old son attending one. By the time Furman realized that some in-person camps were going to be open this summer, most of the slots had been filled. She managed to secure a place for her older son, but for her younger son she found an online toy-inventor camp. 

“It’s a very nice camp,” Furman says. But for her and her son, “It’s a complete disaster. I have to literally physically sit with him and help him construct everything.” What’s more, the camp sends some supplies home, but not enough, necessitating a Target run. By week two, the projects were getting lame: A spoon catapult. Her son’s interest started flagging. By week three? “He barely finished.” And now? “We’re going into week four and I’m hoping he’ll log on at this point.”

This experience contrasts pretty sharply with that of Virginia mom Marjorie Leong and her daughter Rachel, also 7. Rachel’s theater makeup mini-camp has been “a very good experience,” says Leong. If anything, the instruction “probably works better virtually” than in real life, because every kid can grab a relative to practice on. That said, Rachel has used her new skills to turn her mom into the Joker.  

However scary that may sound (“And it was scary,” says Leong), it beats the camp Rachel attended earlier in the summer, where the director announced that the kids would be performing (drumroll, please): A one-act based on Sophocles’ Antigone! 

Turns out that a Zoom Antigone starring 7-year-olds was not quite the smash hit it seemed destined to become. Go figure. 

While obviously part of the fun of any camp production is hanging out with the other kids (perhaps making fun of the director’s choices), there are some advantages to participating from the comfort of one’s own home. Que’Ana Morris Jackson, a performing arts teacher in Georgia, says her daughter, 10, really enjoys her virtual dance camp because once the instruction is over she can keep practicing. When camp was in real life, another group would always need the studio, breaking up the rehearsal.

Jackson’s 9-year-old son, on the other hand, is frustrated by his dance camp, because he misses tumbling around with his friends. (Jackson doesn’t allow a lot of wild romping in the house.)

Some of the most successful online camps seem to involve activities that are online to begin with. Adam McBride started Camp TikTok a few weeks ago and got hundreds of kids to sign up, half of whom live in Asia. Since much of the camp involves watching 2-minute instructional videos, the time difference doesn’t matter. The kids just tag their efforts with a special camp hashtag and everyone can see what their fellow campers are coming up with. 

How is this very different from kids watching a bunch of how-tos on YouTube? “I’m not exactly sure,” McBride confessed. “But this is a new modern definition of camp.” 

True. For this summer—and maybe for many summers, and after-school hours, and even in-school hours to come—online and offline are blending together. Dr. Sharon Jones, who runs computer science camps for girls through the Dottie Rose Foundation in Charlotte, North Carolina, says that at first the girls are quiet on their Zoom calls, “but then we break them out and watch them come alive.” Placed in small groups online, they’re making real friends.

Ben Wilson, a 13-year-old in California, is attending an online version of the one-week Camp Quest West that he attended in person last summer.  He misses the pool and the archery. But as for his camp buddies, he said, “You can see them, and talk with them.” Offline camp was better, he says, “but online camp is still fun.”

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