DL Open Thread: Saturday, May 30, 2020
Supreme Court Upholds Limits On Religious Gatherings. Chief Justice Roberts was the swing vote in the first challenge on COVID-19 restrictions to reach the Court. Federal judge for Delaware rules the same way.
Everything Falls Apart, Police Brutality Edition. You just know that Trump will do everything he can to fan the flames. For his campaign, you know. BTW, this Derek Chauvin had quite the history, most of which is being shielded due to ‘police rights’ protections. He has rights, his victims have no rights. Personnel matters, my ass. Hey, at least Trump got the pandemic off the front page. Plus, it almost certainly takes Klobuchar out of the Veepstakes, which is a good thing.
Everything Falls Apart, COVID Edition, Ctd. The latest carnage: 1,747,087 confirmed cases and 102,836 deaths in the United States. What better time for the US to quit the World Health Organization, even though it appears Trump can’t legally do this?
Same-Sex Couples Win Major Legal Victory:
Michael Ely and James A. Taylor were in a committed relationship for 43 years. They considered themselves married, but Arizona, where they lived, did not—until 2014, when a federal court invalidated the state’s same-sex marriage ban. The couple promptly wed. Six months later, Taylor died of cancer. Ely applied for survivors benefits from the Social Security Administration, but the agency turned him away. Federal law required a couple to be married for at least nine months in the state where they reside before a surviving spouse can receive benefits. It didn’t matter that Ely and Taylor were barred from marriage by a law later voided as unconstitutional. Ely could not receive a dollar in survivors benefits.
On Wednesday, a federal judge ordered the Social Security Administration to pay up—not just to Ely, but to every American denied survivors benefits because of same-sex marriage bans. His sweeping decision provides benefits to thousands of LGBTQ surviving spouses, tearing down one of the last remaining vestiges of federal discrimination against same-sex couples. It will also test the judiciary’s continued commitment to gay rights following a sudden infusion of anti-gay judges under President Donald Trump.
How The Supreme Court Lets Cops Get Away With Murder. It’s called ‘qualified immunity’, and it essentially places police above the law. An absolute must-read.
The Tensions Between Mayors And Their Police Forces. If we’re gonna have ‘police reform’, we’re gonna need different police. The police unions make themselves part of the problem.
What do you want to talk about?
The police kill about a thousand Americans per year, every year. In Europe or Japan they kill eight or nine. Why? Well, the police in other nations tend to have much more training, and deescalation techniques are a part of it. Suspect lack of the guns blazin’ mentality is another part of it. As noted the police largely do as they like here and rarely pay a price for it. I’ve know and worked with active and retired police over the years, one of my grandfathers was a NYC cop. They were all good people, but something must be done.
Every cop knows a dirty cop and thus all cops are dirty.
At first glance, the May 29 headline in the News Journal appears intended to herald the news that we are flattening the curve and winning the battle over the COVID19 virus: “Delaware sees 6-day decline in coronavirus hospitalizations.” To be fully aware of some of the more troubling information you have to read the full article. That very important data is, “But an additional 11 deaths were reported on Friday, increasing the death toll to 356 people.” Please note that a total of 11 new deaths in one day reflects a higher single day death total than reported in the last two weeks.
Another example would be the May 27 headline, “Delaware coronavirus hospitalization at lowest level since mid-April.” While the headline posits progress in the pandemic battle it is left for the reader to locate the very serious information that appears in the article. “Nine new deaths are the most announced for one day in 11 days.”
Headlines can inspire confidence that success is imminent or warn that serious problems still lie ahead. Good headlines that accurately summarize most aspects of an ensuing article can be very effective in capturing the attention of the reader and setting the tone for the information being provided. Headlines that are lacking can mislead the reader and set a tone that may cause a subtle disregard for important information contained in the article.
This particular headline mimics the flaws in recent headlines that have appeared in the News Journal and the Delaware State News trumpeting the progress made against the outbreak measured by only one set of data. I believe it could be a very serious setback in our efforts to combat the spread of the contagion and safely reopen Delaware’s economy if we ignore other sets of statistics and data and accept spiraling death tolls as merely collateral damage.
Representative John Kowalko
Tom Carper was briefly detained by protesters blocking I-95.
but his ass is cushioned by many special interests.