Provo City Police Department officers took two local men into custody after one allegedly threatened a neighbor walking her dog.

According to the probable cause statements filed in support of the arrests, a woman contacted police after her downstairs neighbor began screaming at her through her vents.

The woman also told police that about an hour before contacting dispatch, a man began screaming and cursing at her from the window of the apartment under her while she was taking her dog out.

About half an hour later, the woman told authorities she heard footsteps outside her door and looked out the peep hole to see the same man standing outside her door. The woman provided a physical description of the man she had seen.

When officers arrived, they knocked on the door of the apartment the man was believed to have come from but did not receive an answer. The officers went to the complainants apartment to speak with her, and while the officers were standing outside, heard a man walk out of the downstairs apartment.

According to arrest documents, the officers heard the distinct sound of a gun racking before a mans voice said, Come knock on my door again. Come see what happens. I got a present for you.

Authorities called for other officers to respond to the area and establish a perimeter. While securing the perimeter, two men, one of which was walking a dog, approached officers.

The two men later identified as 36-year-old Curtis Nathaniel Stewart and 31-year-old Scott Vernon McElderly were walking from the area of the downstairs apartment, and one of the men had a defined bulge in his sweatshirt pocket, according to the probable cause affidavit.

Officers made contact with the men and detained them at gunpoint, placing them in handcuffs.

Authorities searched each man and allegedly discovered a 9-millimeter handgun in Stewarts sweatshirt pocket with a bullet in the chamber and a full magazine inserted in the gun. Officials asserted Stewart did not have a concealed weapons permit at the time of the search.

Stewart was discovered to be the tenant in the apartment below the complainants, and McElderly matched the description the woman had given police.

During an interview, Stewart said he had seen a marked, armed person knocking on the door, but advised officers he did not want to answer any more questions without a lawyer, according to arrest documents. McElderly invoked his fifth amendment right, refusing to be interviewed.

Stewart and McElderly were arrested under suspicion of third-degree felony aggravated assault threat with the show of force or violence necessary to injure and a class A misdemeanor threat of a dangerous weapon in a fight. Stewart also faces an additional potential class A misdemeanor charge for carrying a concealed, loaded firearm.

Both men are being held at the Utah County Jail. McElderly is being held on $7,500 bail, while Stewart is being held on $10,000 bail.

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2 Provo men arrested after alleged altercation with neighbor, police - Daily Herald

April 22, 2020 - SACRAMENTO California Attorney General Xavier Becerra led a multistate coalition in submitting comments to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Food and Drug Administration (FDA) supporting efforts to maintain an adequate national blood supply to aid the nations medical response during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the letter, Attorney General Becerra argues that while the FDAs guidance easing restrictions on blood donations from the LGBTQ population, specifically gay and bisexual men, is a step in the right direction, the guidance does not go far enough to meet the nations needs. The letter advocates moving toward a risk-based, gender neutral screening model and further revising guidance to make it easier for the LGBTQ population to donate blood and plasma in response to the nations needs during the COVID-19 public health emergency.

As Americans stay home to stop the spread of coronavirus, the nation is facing a shortage of blood donations, which provide critical medical support to hospitals and their patients,said Attorney General Becerra. During this pandemic, it is important to continue to evaluate and modernize blood donation guidance to be inclusive of LGBTQ Americans. A risk-based model not only protects the health and safety of our communities its the right thing to do.

In the midst of the COVID-19 health crisis, blood drives and donations have dropped significantly.Every day, the United States needs approximately 36,000 units of red blood cells, nearly 7,000 units of platelets, and 10,000 units of plasma to provide blood transfusions for major surgeries, treat patients and victims of trauma, and more. The American Red Cross, which provides about 40 percent of our nations blood and blood components, recently reported less than a five-day blood supply on hand. As of mid-March, over 4,000 blood drives have been canceled across the country due to coronavirus concerns and closures of schools and workplaces where these drives are usually held, resulting in over 100,000 fewer blood donations.

Recently, the FDA issued revised guidance related to blood donation policies for the LGBTQ community.This guidance reduced the wait period after sexual activity for gay and bisexual men from 12 months to three months.While this reform takes a step toward increasing blood donations made by healthy bisexual and gay men in a time when the nations supply of blood and blood products is at risk of collapse due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it does not go far enough.Data from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law Williams Institute indicates that lifting restrictions completely, as compared to a 12-month waiting period, would produce more than 2 million additional eligible blood donors, including nearly 175,000 likely blood donors, and would potentially produce nearly 300,000 pints of additional donated blood annually.

Attorney General Becerra also argues that moving toward a risk-based model, rather than one based on gender, is not only more appropriate to address the populations needs, but is also more in line with laws that protect against discrimination. A population-based policy singling out bisexual and gay men threatens the constitutional Equal Protection principles under the Fourteenth Amendment and Fifth Amendment. Over the long term, the FDA should instead look at risk behavior rather than sex for determining who should donate blood.

A copy of the letter is availablehere.Source: CA. DOJ

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As US Medical Facilities Face a Shortage of Blood as a Result of COVID-19, California Attorney General Urges FDA to Move Toward Risk-Based, Gender...

Blueberry Hill Public Golf Course & Lounge became a community institution almost the day it opened in western Pennsylvania in 1961, with one generation of players succeeding the next on the wooded, undulating course bordering the Allegheny National Forest.

It had its share of misfortune last spring a tornado roared through its 400 acres, leaving $100,000 in damages across its 18 holes. With spring now budding early, Jim Roth, the general manager, anticipated a boom year even as coronavirus fears escalated people still needed exercise, didnt they?

I thought I had a little bright light starting to shine, then somebody turned the light bulb off, Mr. Roth said.

That somebody, as far as he was concerned, was Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania. On March 19, Mr. Wolf introduced an initiative to categorize businesses as life-sustaining or not, shuttering golf courses among the latter.

So Mr. Roth sued, joining a lawyer, a realtor, a logger, a politician and a laundry owner in demanding that the governor not hold absolute power to open and shut segments of the Pennsylvania economy like a spigot.

I do not understand why Mr. Wolf is able to deem this business life-sustaining and this one not, Mr. Roth said. I think the governor might have overstepped his boundaries.

It is a growing refrain across the United States as more governors invoke their police powers to take extraordinary measures to protect public health. Some Americans, many hoping to protect their livelihoods and others suspicious of such sweeping powers, are turning to the courts.

What you will see are massive increases in the number of people who have problems that could benefit from some kind of legal assistance, said Rebecca Sandefur, a sociologist at the American Bar Foundation.

Because of sparse online records, it is not clear how many ordinary Americans have turned to state courts for redress, legal experts said, but there has been a wave of lawsuits as state governments extend the timeline for people to stay home and to shutter their businesses.

Various political leaders and civic organizations have criticized the measures as excessive and bound to hurt the American economy, a line abandoned by President Trump but still maintained by some allies.

We have to focus on keeping people employed, Devin Nunes, the California congressman and top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News this week. I will tell you this, if we dont start to get people back to work in this country over the next week to two weeks, I dont believe that we can wait until the end of April.

Some of those suing their state governments seek redress for specific, local grievances, as with the golf course or in a similar suit in Pennsylvania being pursued by a company that says it is the countrys oldest manufacturer of orchestra-quality bells and chimes. Those lawsuits and one in Arizona are rooted in the Fifth Amendment, which requires due process and guarantees compensation for property seized by the government.

Other constitutional amendments have been invoked in several lawsuits in recent weeks attempting to force open gun stores, or to argue that measures to curb the virus should not outweigh rights like freedom of assembly and religion.

Those may be serious, but they may also be part of an attempt to make an argument in the press about overreach, said Tom Burke, a political-science professor at Wellesley College who studies the politics of litigation.

History dating back to the time of 15th-century plagues shows that lawsuits typically plummet during pandemics, Mr. Burke said, for the obvious reason that courts are closed. But legal experts anticipate a tidal wave of court activity afterward especially in fields like insurance and debt collection because of the economic dislocation caused by the pandemic.

A smattering of those suits has already been filed. Thomas Keller, the chef behind upscale restaurants like Per Se in New York and the French Laundry in Californias Napa Valley, sued the Hartford Fire Insurance Co., asking a state court in California to confirm that the insurer must cover losses caused by the government-ordered closures.

In Oklahoma, the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations also went to state court to demand that their insurers cover losses sustained by their casinos.

Suits meant to preserve long-established rights often do not prove popular in times like this, with the public endorsing the need to make health a priority.

Dan Hynes, a lawyer and local politician in New Hampshire, was taken aback by the reaction when he sued Gov. Chris Sununu in state court, claiming that even the initial restrictions limiting the size of public gatherings like church services were an infringement on basic rights including freedom of religion and freedom of assembly.

Negative comments flooded into his social media accounts and those of the three other plaintiffs. Knock it off, wrote one woman on Facebook. You can harm others with your sheer ignorance. Or, you can be a good member of a community and society.

Merrimack Superior Court threw the suit out.

In Pennsylvania, Marc A. Scaringi, the lawyer for the golf course and others, said that the states Disease Prevention and Control Law, last amended in 1959, targets infected individuals. It does not refer to pandemics, nor grant the governor the extensive power he is claiming under other catastrophes, Mr. Scaringi said, especially without due process. Finally, the list of banned businesses seemed to change at random, with even some of his original plaintiffs removed, he argued in court papers.

At the golf course, Mr. Roth said he recognized that the measures were for the public good, but exercise was beneficial, too, and he was ready to modify the rules. He could limit golf carts to one per person, or even force players to walk, for example, and bar touching the flags.

Critics accused Governor Wolf, a Democrat, of playing favorites with the life-sustaining list. The governors former family business, which makes kitchen cabinetry, was initially deemed life-sustaining, the complaint said, then scratched off the list. There was also some public grumbling that the Dan Smith Candy Company, a chain in the family of State Senator Joe Scarnati, a prominent Republican politician, was operating.

The Wolf administrations highest priority is protecting public health and safety, the governor said in a statement when asked about the lawsuits. By Friday afternoon, Pennsylvania had more than 8,000 coronavirus cases and 100 deaths.

The statement denied that the governor was directly involved in the choice of which companies received waivers. Those requesting an exemption represent a fraction of the Pennsylvania business community and we are working to ensure that those exemptions are properly processed and align with our most current guidance, the statement said.

Confectionary businesses were not closed, the statement noted, while the Dan Smith Candy Company said on its Facebook page that it was life-sustaining because it also sold spaghetti sauces, pasta, oil and other goods.

When your neighbors house is burning down, though a burden, the law requires that you allow the fire engine to block your driveway for the protection of the entire neighborhood, the state said in a brief filed by Attorney General Josh Shapiro. A pandemic is burning across the world. The only effective tool we have to fight that fire is social distancing.

Across the United States, closing gun shops provoked a series of lawsuits arguing that the measure violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Critics filed lawsuits in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas and California, where the National Rifle Association was one plaintiff.

David Jensen, the lawyer in a New Jersey case, said his clients were not necessarily arguing that gun shops be allowed to open, but that a route be found to allow some gun sales. You cannot close off the ability of anyone to acquire a firearm, he said.

Representatives for Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action, allied organizations that lobby for stricter gun laws, countered that nothing in the Second Amendment suggested that gun stores enjoy special treatment during a public health crisis.

Governors should not be pressed into declaring gun stores essential, said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety.

Defending First Amendment rights led to lawsuits in various states including New York, Maine, Georgia, Texas and New Mexico.

In New Mexico, the president of the Albuquerque Tea Party, Leland Taylor, filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the emergency orders issued by the governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, violated the rights to worship and free assembly, among others.

Mr. Taylor initially claimed that the virus was not serious enough to warrant such emergency orders, calling it not as egregious an infection as reported and one with a 100 percent cure rate by using an inexpensive antimalarial. That echoed statements from Mr. Trump about the use of antimalarial drugs in combination with antibiotics that his own experts later denied.

This is a frivolous lawsuit based on extremely dangerous misinformation that, if widely disseminated, will do nothing but worsen this crisis in New Mexico and lead to more illness and death, Nora Meyers Sackett, the spokeswoman for the governor, said in an email.

With courts shuttered, plaintiffs usually hope that emergency injunctions or similar measures will win them a quick hearing on the phone. It is hard to prevail in any case, however, over government measures designed to protect public health, legal experts said.

The general pattern in the middle of a crisis is that courts are very deferential, said Mr. Burke, the political scientist.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

The rest is here:

Lawsuits Swell as Owners, From Gun Shops to Golf Courses, Demand to Open - The New York Times

Homeless people make shelters on the sidewalk in front of the Midnight Mission at Skid Row in ... [+] downtown Los Angeles, California on March 19, 2020. - The US government is now preparing for 18 months of the coronavirus pandemic, including multiple waves of illnesses. The ominous announcement comes after cases in the US spiked 40% in just 24 hours. (Photo by Apu GOMES / AFP) (Photo by APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images)

In many parts of the country, some of us have become so accustomed to seeing homeless people aroundin tents, begging at intersections, sleeping in downtown doorwaystheyve almost become part of the landscape, ever-present yet barely noticed.

Its time to notice. Because in the public health emergency created by the novel coronavirus, we truly are all in this together. And caring about what happens to a half million strangers with no place to go, whether out of compassion or pragmatism, must be part of the national response to this virus.Its not far-fetched to call helping the homeless get safely inside one of the keys to both physical and economic survival. Here's why.

Preliminary research suggests SARS-CoV2, the name of the virus that causes Covid-19, might linger in the air as an aerosol even after an infected person has left a room. Might that be enough to infect the next person to enter the room? Possibly. There isn't enough data yet to know for sure. It can hang around for days on the ubiquitous plastics that seem to define modern life. Keeping six feet away from others is better than nothing but not by much, which is one reason why governors of most states have told their residents to stay home.

Thats mandatory, in many places. But what about those who dont have homes? Beleaguered officials in places with huge homeless populations, like the San Francisco Bay area, and Portland, Oregon, have exempted homeless people from shelter-in-place orders. That doesnt, however, exempt them from getting and spreading the virus.

NEW YORK, NY APRIL 02: Medical workers wait for patients at a special coronavirus intake area at ... [+] Maimonides Medical Center in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn which has seen an upsurge of coronavirus patients on April 02, 2020 in New York City. Hospitals in New York City, which has been especially hard hit by the coronavirus, are facing shortages of beds, ventilators and protective equipment for medical staff. Currently, over 75,000 New Yorkers have tested positive for coronavirus (COVID-19). (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Miriam Komaromy, MD, Medical Director of the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center, which treats a significant number of homeless patients, says that to get Covid-19 under control, its essential to get the unhoused inside, where they, too, can self-isolate. That means on the other side of a door they can shut behind them. Not left on the streets. Not in tents. Not in homeless shelters.

People in shelters are typically crowded together and so are breathing aerosolized and droplet secretions from each other, she explains. They are also touching the same surfaces, and so are infecting each other via touching surfaces contaminated by respiratory droplets.

This virus spreads by stealthespecially in places where people gather in close proximity. In Washington state, 60 singers got together for choir practice. They didnt exchange their usual hugs and no one had symptoms. Within days, 28 had tested positive for Covid-19, another 17 became sick but werent tested, and two people died. After a late February funeral in Georgia, dozens of mourners fell ill with Covid-19. Here too, none had appeared ill at the time of the funeral. In Westport, Connecticut, which didnt have a single known case of the novel coronavirus before a socialites big, glitzy 40th birthday celebration, 85 cases were diagnosed within 11 days of the party. And again, no one had shown up noticeably sick.

So isolating people after fever, coughing, or other signs appear is too late. And that includes homeless people, who have been shown to be particularly susceptible to infectious diseases because of their living conditions.

Dr. Komaromy believes she has an answer. Because of the pandemic, the US has millions of vacated dorm rooms, offices, and hotel rooms. Use these empty spaces to house those without homes, and avert what could lead to ongoing disaster.

Its a brilliant solution, perhaps the only solution. The owners of the empty facilities may well be interested in gaining income if they agree to house people, says Komaromy. But we have found that there is a great deal of resistance from commercial entities such as hotel owners.

The government might not actually have to persuade hoteliers and others (although the federal government, itself, might be the toughest entity to convince). Under the fifth amendment, in time of war or public danger, a temporary taking under eminent domain is a potential option. The government would have to pay rent to take control of the properties needed without taking permanent ownership. Thats a big expenditure, but it just found $2.2 trillion to help save the country from the economic side-effects of the pandemic. How much is it worth to plug a hole in the plan to stop the pandemic, itself?

What might happen if the country decides to ignore that gaping holeas its ignored so many other longstanding issues that Covid-19 has exposed as needing immediate attention?

NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - 2020/03/28: Homeless person lays under blanket on street and reads Holy ... [+] Bible in Manhattan. (Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Hospitals in New York, the current center of the the US pandemic, are already overwhelmed. Elective procedures have been canceled or postponed indefinitelyeven those for cancer.Some hospitals are reported to have imposed do-not-resuscitate orders,without first getting consent, for certain Covid-19 patients.There is simply no way to save everyone.

Homeless people tend to have higher rates of the kinds of chronic conditions that make severe illness with SARS-CoV2and the need for greater medical resourcesmore likely.

The country cant afford to allow large swathes of the population to go unhoused and exposed. It endangers everyone.

Of course, there are other big questions: how does temporarily housing homeless people solve what might be an ongoing emergency? What if the virus mutates and produces variants? If so, could those whove recovered from it, and are presumed to be immune to the current strain, be re-infected? If this is the new normal, must the country fix all the problems its ignored for decades, at once, all while combatting an invisible killer?

It just might.

Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus

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Why Housing The Homeless In The Age Of Covid-19 Is Essential - Forbes

Appearing remotely on Sunday's Face the Nation, St Louis Federal Reserve Bank Chairman James Bullard indicated that the Fed has no idea, really, just how bad the Coronavirus Contraction is going to get. Asked by Margaret Brennan about his team's prediction that "47 million Americans could lose their jobs," bringing the unemployment rate up to 32%, Bullard said the "32 percent number is a compromise in the middle."

In the middle of what, you might ask. Bullard told Brennan that he and his economists at the St. Louis Fed estimate that the "unemployment rate could go anywhere between 10 percent and 42 percent."

So things could get Great Recession bad or blow past the 25% unemployment record set during the depths of the Great Depression in 1933. That's a bit like the doctor telling you that you either have a bad case of the flu or maybe caught a rare form of cancer that makes all your limbs slowly fall off.

I'm not picking on Bullard here. Not only does no one know what's going to happen to the economy, at this point nobody can know. The question is less "How bad is it going to get?" but "How quickly do we recover?"

The answer to that could be very nice, indeed.

An economy with plenty of liquidity and weeks of pent-up demand ought to bounce back almost as quickly as it sank -- like a big kid on a trampoline. Sharp economic downturns are usually followed by equally sharp recoveries. The 1981-82 and 1991 recessions come to mind.

What made the Great Depression and the Great Recession alike were anemic recoveries that took seemingly forever. As I noted back in March [VIP link]:

Coming into office on the heels of the 2007-08 financial panic (caused in no small part by Washington meddling in the mortgage markets), President Barack Obama indulged in a flurry of lawmaking and micromanagement unseen since FDR. As a result, Obama's recovery was the slowest since FDR's. In some ways -- Washington's addictions to spending and debt are the worst examples -- we're still dealing with the hangover from Obama's reaction to the Great Recession.

But back to Bullard on Face the Nation. Asked if there "will be somehow just a switch that flips on and the economy will come back roaring," Bullard said:

This is no bailout for big banks like we saw during the Great Recession. If anything, Congress is following the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth states that private property cannot "be taken for public use, without just compensation." If your labor isn't your property, then what is? If stopping a pandemic isn't public use, then what is? Relief checks aren't enough in my opinion, but they do represent at least some small amount of compensation for government orders to stay home and not work.

And as Bullard noted, "There's nothing wrong with the economy itself. The economy was actually doing quite well going into this health situation." If Washington can manage not to insert itself into the recovery, we ought to get right back to where we were before coronavirus in short order. The Democrat-controlled House is going to have a very strong itch to hobble the economy with a progressive wishlist of crap legislation, but the GOP-held Senate and White House ought to put the kibosh on any such nonsense.

There are some excellent indicators that the worst might soon be over. The White House noted on Sunday that there have been signs of stabilization in hospital rates, and New York enjoyed -- if that's the word -- its first daily decline in COVID-19-related deaths. Death rates are slowing in Europe, too, even in hard-hit Italy and Spain. Social distancing works, and as I reminded you three weeks ago [VIP link], "extreme measures at the start of a crisis can prevent extreme consequences later on."

For now we're stuck in the middle: We've taken the extreme measures, but the crisis persists. But it also looks like we'll avoid the extreme worst-case scenario, in no small part because of those extreme measures. Strangely enough, gridlocked Washington is kind of a best-case scenario for this particular crisis. The economy needs craploads of liquidity at a time when spending craploads of money is the one thing both parties can agree on. What the economy doesn't need is a bunch of new agencies and regulatory schemes hobbling the recovery -- and gridlock ought to prevent just that.

So hang in there. We're not off the bumpy road yet, but I think America and Americans are going to emerge from this thing stronger than ever.

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How About Some Good News on the Economy? | VodkaPundit - PJ Media

Stillwaters Shelter in Place order, which went into effect Monday at 11:59 p.m., will be enforced by municipal police if necessary.

The order was the latest in an escalating series of proclamations Mayor William Joyce has issued, aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the community.

According to the proclamation, all residents of Stillwater are required to shelter in place at their homes, excluding necessary trips for specific essential purposes. The order also closes playgrounds, gazebos, and public sports facilities, although walking trails and the city parks themselves remain open.

Previous proclamations closing certain businesses, and prohibiting gatherings of 10 or more are still in effect. Violations of these proclamations now carry a fine of up to $500 per violation.

Multiple city officials said despite the new order, residents will not be stopped and asked to show identifying papers, or other documentation of an essential reason to be out. Police Chief Jeff Watts said officers wont be instituting major changes to enforce the order, although they are authorized to issue citations if necessary.

Obviously our officers would use lots of discretion on how they would approach any situation, Watts said. But as far as the actual Shelter in Place, if people are out moving around, our officers are not going to contact them. We are not going to require that they provide documentation that shows they have a legitimate reason to be out. We will not be fining or citing people, or arresting people for not sheltering in place.

Watts said the most enforceable parts of the proclamation were the business closures and limits on large gatherings.

Other city officials said they hope people would comply with the order on their own. City Manager Norman McNickle at the city council meeting on Monday said people should take the threat of community spread seriously.

You just need to act like you have it, McNickle said. There is community spread, no ifs, ands or buts.

Social distancing measures are being enforced at many essential businesses throughout Stillwater, although shortened hours and panic buying have kept some stores crowded. Mayor Joyce said at the city council meeting on Monday that citizens should consider the necessity of a trip before they leave their homes.

Even if something is open, even if something is available for you to do, you should not go do it just because you can go do it, Joyce said. Just stay home unless you absolutely need to be out.

The measures taken by the city government mirrors those of other municipalities throughout the state.

These kinds of measures work best when they are done in conjunction with surrounding communities, Joyce said.

The only public commentator to speak at Mondays city council meeting said he is not a Stillwater resident, but all of his business and shopping takes place in Stillwater.

I understand people are afraid, and I dont blame them, Ali Sarsak said.

Sarsak said the proclamation was a violation of his First Amendment right to assemble, and his Fifth Amendment protection from unlawful search and seizure.

Their fears do not cancel my rights, Sarsak said.

Mayor Joyce said the measure had received both positive and negative feedback from the public.

news.ed@ocolly.com

The rest is here:

Shelter in Place order will be enforced by police if necessary - Daily O'Collegian

On March 13, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, President Donald Trump was asked if he took responsibility for the nation's lack of preparedness. Hisreply: "I don't take responsibility at all."

Where are impeachment and the Twenty-Fifth Amendmentthe two mechanisms provided by the Constitution for removing an unfit Presidentwhen we need them the most, as we do right now?

On February 5, Trump wasacquittedin his impeachment trial as a result of GOP cronyism and cowardice, so that door is shut. And theTwenty-Fifth Amendment, which requires action by the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet or Congress to initiate removal, is a non-starter, given the obsequiousness of Mike Pence and the intractable corruption of Senate Republicans.

Meanwhile, just when you thought Trump couldn't get any crazier or more incompetent in his handling of the coronavirus crisis, he took another wild leap into bizarro land with comments at Tuesday's White House press conference, and in remarks he uttered the same day on Twitter.

The press conference was called to update the public on the health emergency and to announce the administration's stimulus package to revive the economy, which is now likely inrecession. In anexchange with reporters, Trump was asked by NBC's Kristen Welker whether he had changed his once-dismissive attitude about the perils posed by the virus. Trump responded:

"I have seen that where people actually liked [my tone during a press conference held the day before], but I didn't feel different. I've always known this is a realthis is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. . . . I've always viewed it as very serious."

During the conference, Trump alsopraisedDemocratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, with whom he has often clashed over other kinds of policies and programs, stating that he and Cuomo had a "good talk this morning," and that he and the governor were "both doing a really good job."

But Trump delivered a very different message to his millions of social media followers just a few hours earlier, upbraiding Cuomo in aracist tweet: "Cuomo wants 'all states to be treated the same.' But all states aren't the same. Some are being hit hard by the Chinese Virus, some are being hit practically not at all. New York is a very big 'hotspot,' West Virginia has, thus far, zero cases. Andrew, keep politics out of it . . ."

By any rational standard, Trump's comments qualify as either some of the most egregious political lies of the twenty-first century or as yet another indication that he suffers from apersonality disorderthat allows him to dissociate from reality and disclaim responsibility for any of his actions. Instead, he blames others for any harm to the public, shocks to the stock market, or damage to the wider economy.

In truth, of course, the coronavirus isn't a Chinese disease, even if the initial outbreak occurred in China's Hubei Province and its capital city, Wuhan. The virus has since spread across the globe, fueled by community transmission, and is now firmly entrenched in the United States.

All Americans, regardless of race or ethnicity, are equally susceptible to the disease and equally capable of infecting others. And late Tuesday, belying Trump's tweet, West Virginiareportedits first coronavirus case. The disease is now in every state in the nation.

If anything, there is even less truth in Trump's press conference claim that he anticipated the pandemic before anyone else. To the contrary, Trumpdownplayedthe severity of the virus from the very outset, erroneously comparing it to the flu (which is far less lethal), denouncing media coverage of the malady as a "hoax," andpredictingthat "one dayit's like a miracleit will disappear."

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In arecent column,The New York Times' David Leonhardt catalogued many of Trump's most misleading statements. Here's a taste:

President Trump made his first public comments about the coronavirus on Jan. 22, in a television interview from Davos with CNBC's Joe Kernen. The first American case had been announced the day before, and Kernen asked Trump, "Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?"

The President responded: "No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine."

By this point, the seriousness of the virus was becoming clearer. It had spread from China to four other countries. China was starting to take drastic measures and was on the verge of closing off the city of Wuhan.

In the weeks that followed, Trump faced a series of choices. He could have taken aggressive measures to slow the spread of the virus. He could have insisted that the United States ramp up efforts to produce test kits. He could have emphasized the risks that the virus presented and urged Americans to take precautions if they had reason to believe they were sick. He could have used the powers of the presidency to reduce the number of people who would ultimately get sick.

He did none of those things.

Perhaps the most loathsome of all of Trump's lies was his oft-repeatedclaimthat test kits for the virus were widely available to anyone who desired one.

In fact, as other countries rolled out thousands of testing kits, the Centers for Disease Controlwas slow to act, and resisted using tests produced by the World Health Organization. Kits manufactured in the United States are only now being provided on a large scale to hospitals around the country, but at a pace that continues to lag that achieved by many other nations.

The paucity of kits prevented the United States from enacting early and effective containment initiatives, which in turn has resulted in undercounts of the U.S. infection rate, and no doubt will ultimately lead to a higher overall incidence of mortality from the illness.

If the first duty of a President is to level with the American people and tell the truth in times of crisis, Trump has been a colossal failure. Whether that failure is due to ineptitude, malfeasance, a psychological impairment or some combination of factors, the country needs to remove him from office.

In the absence of impeachment and the fortitude to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, we are left with one alternativeto oust him next November. That's provided, of course, that the coronavirus doesn't arm Trump with a pretext to suspend the election and declare martial law.

Think that couldn't happen? I would have thought so, too, but that was before the virus shut down life as we knew it in America.

Read this article:

Unequal Justice: Where Are Impeachment and the 25th Amendment When We Need Them? - Common Dreams

In general, I am a big supporter of strengthening protection for private property under the Takings Clause, and have written many works arguing the case for doing so. In this situation, however, it is unlikely that the Clause mandates compensation in all but a few cases. At the very least, there is no such requirement in current Supreme Court precedent, andon this pointthat precedent is unlikely to change in the near future.

While court decisions have long recognized that the Takings Clause requires compensation in at least some situations where the government restricts property rights without actually seizing the property in question, they have also long held that many exercises of the "police power"government's authority to protect public health and safetydo not qualify as takings. The most famous case of this type is the Supreme Court's decision in Miller v. Schoene (1928), where the Court ruled compensation is not required in a case where a state law required destruction of the owner's cedar trees in order to protect other trees in the area from the spread of a disease. Protecting large numbers of people from the spread of a disease is, of course, a much stronger police power imperative than protecting apple trees. This description is based on the conventional interpretation of Miller, which I have some reservations about. But, for present purposes, what matters is that the conventional view is the one embraced by courts.

Perhaps more relevantly, large numbers of businesses were forcibly shuttered by state and local governments during the influenza epidemic of 1918-19, the last time the US faced a public health crisis comparable in scale to this one. To my knowledge, none of them were ever held to be takings requiring compensation.

Not all exercises of the police power are exempt from the requirements of the Takings Clause. For example, a federal court recently ruled that compensation was owed in a case where the government deliberately flooded some property owners' land in order to protect others. I and a number of other commentators have been highly critical of another recent decision where an appellate court ruled that the government need not pay compensation in a case where the police virtually destroyed an innocent owner's home in order to smoke out a suspected shoplifter who had holed up inside.

But these types of cases differ from epidemic shutdowns in the important sense that they are not situations where the owner's use of the land in and of itself poses any threat to public health. Rather, the government decides to destroy a perfectly innocent property right in order to protect the public against threats emanating from elsewhere. By contrast, the continued operation of businesses that risk spreading a deadly disease during an epidemic do indeed pose a threat. The Takings Clause generally does not provide compensation in such cases. Doing so would risk creating a serious moral hazard by incentivizing owners to engage in dangerous uses of their property in order to get paid to stop.

Some state courts have interpreted their state constitutional takings clauses as requiring compensation when a local government changes zoning rules to forbid previously lawful businesses. But I doubt that these "amortization" precedents require compensation in cases like the Covid-19 shutdowns. Among other differences, amortization cases involve permanent rather than "merely" temporary bans on the enterprises in question.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that the plaintiffs in one of these cases somehow get past the police power issue. Even then, their prospects are likely to be bleak. Current Supreme Court precedent holds that only a few types of government actions qualify as automatic "per se" takings: most notably permanent physical occupation of property and regulations that completely destroy all of the property's economic value. Most other regulations are evaluated under the three factor test laid out in the 1978 Penn Central decision, which requires courts to consider 1) the economic impact of the regulation in question, 2) whether and to what extent, the owner suffered the loss of "investment-backed expectations," and 3) the "character" of the government action (if the government physically occupied or damaged the property in question, it is more likely to be a taking).

To make a long story short, the Penn Central test is often unclear and confusing, but is usually applied in ways that tilt the outcome in favor of the government. In this case, the fact that the shutdowns are "only" temporary and that there is no physical invasion of the owners' land are likely to be sufficient to enable the state to win most caseseven if the police power issue is set aside.

There might be some unusual cases where the impact of the government's actions is so severe that it does effectively destroy the entire economic value of a given piece of land, and therefore could be a per se taking. But such cases are likely to be rare, sinceagainthe restrictions are temporary and the owner couldin theorystill use the property for other purposes.

I am one of many takings scholars who have argued that the Penn Central test is a mess and that it should be replaced by something clearer and more protective of property owners' rights. So far, however, we have failed to persuade a majority of Supreme Court justices to agree with us. And that is unlikely to change in the near future, except in incrementally. If the justices do overrule Penn Central or revise its rules to provide stronger protection for property owners, a Coronavirus shutdown case strikes me as a highly unlikely vehicle for such a shift.

That gets me to final reason why courts are unlikely to rule that Coronavirus shutdowns qualify as takings: no judge will want to be seen as impeding an effort to save large numbers of lives in the midst of a grave menace to public health. As a general rule, I am not a "legal realist"a person who believes court decisions are primarily the product of judges' personal values and political commitments. But it would be naive to imagine that such commitments never play a role. And few if any judges want to be remembered for having endangered large numbers of lives. That might not matter if the legal arguments were overwhelmingly in favor of the plaintiffs. But, as we have seen, they are at best a stretchat least under current doctrine.

To be sure, a ruling that the government must pay compensation to owners of shuttered properties would not actually prevent the shutdowns, as such. It would merely require the state to pay for the privilege. I routinely make this point when critics argue that takings liability should not be expanded in other contexts, for fear that doing so would stop supposedly valuable government actions. But, in this case, the urgency of the crisis combined with the enormous scale of the compensation that would be required make it more likely that an adverse judicial ruling really would impede the government's policypotentially even shutting down the shutdown, so to speak.

The Takings Clause might still require compensation in situations where the government physically appropriates property in order to combat the epidemic. For example, it could potentially seize currently empty hotels or college dormitories in order to use them as temporary hospitals to treat Covid-19 patients. In such a case, there would be an actual physical occupation of property. And the police power exception would not apply, because the mere existence of an (unoccupied) hotel or dorm does not pose any threat to public health. But such cases are likely to be rare. If the need arises, owners of such structures would probably be happy to rent them to the government for fairly modest prices, given that they are unlikely to bring in much other revenue while the pandemic continues.

It gives me no pleasure to write any of the above. In an ideal world, I think at least some shutdown burdens should be compensable under the Constitution. But the Takings Clause is unlikely to be a vehicle for such compensation in all but a few marginal cases.

That said, I do think the principle underlying the Takings Clause points the way towards a moral rationale for compensation, even if such compensation is not legally required. As the Supreme Court put it in Armstrong v. United States (1960), "[t]he Fifth Amendment's guarantee that private property shall not be taken for a public use without just compensation was designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole." That is exactly what is happening in the coronavirus shutdowns: owners and employees of the shuttered enterprises are bearing a hugely disproportionate share of the burden of protecting the population as a whole against the virus.

Moreover, the people in question haven't done anything wrong. They simply own and operate businesses thatin normal timesare not only innocent but actually make important contributions to the community.

I am not sure what the best way to compensate them is. But I do think there is a strong case for providing at least some substantial relief. On that score, I agree with much of what co-blogger Keith Whittington says here. As he points out, "the government itself has ordered businesses to stop operating" and "[i]n such circumstances, the government should compensate individuals for the damage it has wrought and relieve individuals from the unforeseen burdens that they have been asked to assume."

But, if the shutdowns continue for any significant length of time, I am not optimistic that even the best designed relief program can compensate for more than a fraction of the enormous losses large numbers of people will suffer. The only truly effective relief would be to figure out a way to safely end the shutdowns as soon as possible, while moving to something like a South Korean-style regime, under which freedom of movement is restored, but the virus is kept in check by a combination of widespread testing and effective quarantines of infected individuals until the need for it is obviated by the development of a vaccine.

But I readily admit I lack the expertise needed to figure out how to achieve that goal. In this post, I have tried to achieve the much humbler task of explaining why the Takings Clause is unlikely to relieve the distress of property owners suffering enormous losses due to the coronavirus shutdowns.

See the rest here:

Does the Takings Clause Require Compensation for Coronavirus Shutdowns? - Reason

Editor's note: This letter is addressed to the Republican leadership and urges them to "stand up to the authoritarianism of Governor Murphy" and to assert constitututional rights.

To: Chairman Doug Steinhardt, Esq.; Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean, Jr.; and Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick, Esq.

Dear Republican Leaders:

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We are writing to you as both concerned American citizens and members of the clergy. We are circulating this letter to other citizens and clergy across New Jersey.

A civil rights attorney recently made the point that our founders were intimately familiar with pandemics, viruses and plagues, living at a time before the life-extending science that we benefit from today. Nevertheless, there is not one word in the Constitution about plagues or pandemics to exempt the government from any of our Bill of Rights. The founders of our Republic did not allow for a health crisis or medical emergency as an excuse to suspend our Constitutional liberties.

Our Bill of Rights is under attack by a number of misguided state executives including Governor Phil Murphy who are embracing authoritarian measures under color of law. Our Constitution is being quarantined as if a virus has made it irrelevant. Can a virus do that? Can a panic stoked by the media negate every protection we enjoy as citizens of a Republic? Is this the way democracy dies?

Every citizen should be concerned about how quickly and with gusto this Governor has moved to forcibly strip us of our freedoms. Where is the American Civil Liberties Union? Where are the liberal voices of good conscience in Governor Murphys own party?

As leaders of the opposition party in New Jersey, the Republican Party, we ask that you provide the checks and balances needed at a moment like this. We ask that you aggressively press Governor Murphy and hold him to account for his attack on the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States of America.

Governor Murphy has suspended the First Amendment by issuing lock-down orders and curfews that prohibit obtaining a petition for public protest or public assemblies. He has infringed on the free practice of religion. These are black letter violations of the Law of this Republic.

Governor Murphy has suspended the Second Amendment under the guise of a mandatory shut-down of all nonessential businesses and by barring citizen access to the online means to obtain legal permits. Worse still, he has done so while releasing thousands of convicted criminals from prison, at a time of food shortages, in the midst of a crisis that has stretched law enforcement readiness and increased response times.

Governor Murphy has suspended the Fourth Amendment by asking neighbor to spy upon neighbor and using taxpayer funds to create a system by which reports may be filed and acted upon outside the normal legal process, which has been severely curtailed. Under color of law, the Governor has employed his appointed Attorney General to threaten, coerce, and compel individuals and communities into ceding their protected liberties to the government. He has criminalized heretofore everyday private and peaceful activities, and has done so with the knowledge that every interaction between law enforcement and citizens carries with it the possibility of a fatality. Just ask Eric Garner.

Governor Murphy has suspended the Fifth Amendment the right to property without deprivation by due process of law, and the obligation of government to compensate for such takings. He has issued authoritarian mandates destroying the means of legal commerce, that close businesses without appeal, making workers redundant, and leaving families without the means of survival. Worse, he has done so while continuing to collect taxes on the property and extant funds left to those made unemployed and whose lives will soon be unsustainable.

As religious leaders who both suffer and who minister every day to those suffering, we urge the opposition party to stand up to the authoritarianism of Governor Murphy and to assert our rights under the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights. There must be checks and balances in place to the Governors reckless and ruinous abuse of power.

Please hear our prayer.

Respectfully,

Pastor Philip Rizzo

Rev. Gregory Quinlan

Original post:

Letter to the Editor: Will Republican Leadership Stand Up to Murphy in Wake of Coronavirus Crisis? - TAPinto.net

The Atlantic has just published my new article making the case for expanding protection for constitutional property rights. Here is an excerpt:

Alexander Hamilton said at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that "one great obj[ect] of Gov[ernment] is the personal protection and security of property." James Madison, similarly, wrote that "government is instituted to protect property of every sort." Madison tried to ensure that the new Constitution would honor that principle, in part by authoring the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, which restricts the government's power to take private property.

This should concern anyone who cares about protecting the rights of minorities and the poor. These groups are the primary victims when property rights are violated. They have seen the state condemn their homes for dubious private "development" projects. They have seen law enforcement seize their assets even when they have never been charged with any crime, much less convicted. And they have been shut out of housing and job opportunities by onerous zoning laws that block housing construction. These groups have the most to gain from stronger protection for property rights, which would enforce tighter constraints on government's power to take property and block development.

The article goes through several areas where protection for constitutional property rights remains weak, while also noting some recent improvements, and potential avenues for further progress.

This article was in the pipeline since before the coronavirus crisis. I understand why many readers might find it difficult to care about other issues right now. I sometimes feel that way myself!

At the same time, however, the crisis will end eventually, and it behooves to think about how to make a better society in the aftermath. Stronger protection for property rights can make a useful contribution to that task, and I hope my article can at least help stimulate further discussion on that point.

UPDATE: For those interested in property rights issues directly related to the coronavirus situation, see this post, in which I explain why courts are highly unlikely to rule that the Takings Clause requires the government to compensate owners of enterprises shuttered as a result of "shutdown" orders.

Go here to see the original:

My New "Atlantic" Article Making the Case for Strengthening Protection for Property Rights - Reason

Amicus Brief in Support of Appellants in Goldwater Institute v. U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services

Washington, D.C., March 25, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights organization commends todays decision of the Ninth Circuit in Goldwater Institute v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In a victory for NCLA, the Ninth Circuit concluded that the district court erred in allowing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to rely on its own regulations in withholding disclosure of the process it used in speedily approving the drug ZMapp for treatment of Ebola-infected patients in 2014. Instead, the Court concluded that the agency should be required to meet its burden of showing that a particular FOIA exemption applies to the records it withheld.

NCLA filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiff-appellant in this case calling out the district court for extending judicial Auerdeference to legal interpretations that federal agencies provide in affidavits to the court as one of the litigating parties.In its ruling the Court states, FDAs blanket refusal to produce any records from the IND file does not warrant summary judgment in its favor and that the agency has failed to meet its burden of establishing that the documents it withheld are exempt from disclosure under [FOIA] Exemption 4.

Deferring to the interpretations of federal agencies requires judges to abandon their duty of independent judgment and violates the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by commanding that the judiciary display systematic bias in favor of agencies whenever they appear as litigants.

The Supreme Court created a new Step Zero toAuerdeference last summer inKisor v. Wilkie, which requires courts first to use traditional tools of statutory construction and evaluate other factors to determine whether there is a need to resort toAuerdeference. UnderKisor, there should be no need to defer to agencies legal interpretations in most cases going forwardvery much including this one.

The FDA had refused to release records of the process it used to approve ZMappat the time, an experimental drugwithin days of hearing about the Ebola outbreak in Africa. The FDA drug-approval process usually takes years. The Goldwater Institute had asked FDA to disclose what process it used for emergency approval; knowing the fast-track process could help others seek emergency approval during future pandemics (like the one currently plaguing the world).

NCLA released the following statement:

While the court does not mention deference, its instruction to the district court to look to the FOIA and not the agencys self-serving regulations is clear and welcome. NCLA will continue pushing the courts to acknowledge their duty to provide independent judgment, to protect the due process of law for all litigants, and to bolster the confidence of the people in the courts. Adi Dynar, Litigation Counsel, NCLA

ABOUT NCLA

NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLAs public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans fundamental rights.

For more information visit us online at NCLAlegal.org.

Judy Pino, Communications DirectorNew Civil Liberties Alliance202-869-5218media@ncla.legal

Here is the original post:

NCLA Commends the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for Not Deferring to FDAs Attempt to Circumvent FOIA - Yahoo Finance

The story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, reads like something out of a John le Carr novel with its components of shadowy spies, corrupted trial proceedings and family betrayal.

It also captures the real-world dangers that were rife in these days of Cold War paranoia, the threat of a Red Scare powerful enough to bring about the controversial executions of the couple that left their young children orphaned.

READ MORE:Charlie Chaplin and 6 Other Artists Who Were Blacklisted in Hollywood During the Red Scare

Ethel Greenglass and Julius Rosenberg were both born into immigrant Jewish families in New York City during World War I. Their time at high school intersected briefly Ethel was nearly three years older but they became acquainted through their devotion to the Young Communist League and were married in 1939.

Julius became a civilian engineer with the U.S. Army Signal Corps and cut formal ties with communist organizations, but by late 1942 he was working with Soviet intermediaries to relay military secrets to the then-American ally.

By 1945, he had assembled an espionage ring of engineers, scientists and machinists that included his old City College classmate Morton Sobell. It also included his brother-in-law David Greenglass, who was then involved with the Manhattan Project the creation of the atomic bomb at a facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg following their arrest by the FBI in New York City for espionage, 1950.

Photo: Kypros/Getty Images

The first shoe to drop in the case came with the arrest of German-born British physicist Klaus Fuchs on February 2, 1950. Fuchs had also worked at Los Alamos and passed along information to the Soviets independently of the Rosenbergs, though they shared a crucial link with their courier, Harry Gold.

In May the FBI hauled in Gold, who pointed his finger at another common denominator, Greenglass. The dominoes continued to fall with Julius' apprehension in July and Ethel's arrest in August, with Sobell discovered to be hiding in Mexico at that time.

After Greenglass pleaded guilty, the trial for the Rosenbergs and Sobell began on March 6, 1951, in the Southern District of New York. Making little attempt to portray himself as impartial, Judge Irving R. Kaufman opened the proceedings by declaring: "The evidence will show that the loyalty and alliance of the Rosenbergs and Sobell were not to our country, but that it was to Communism."

The case against the Rosenbergs largely hinged on the testimonies of Gold and Greenglass. Gold recalled how he had met Greenglass in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in June 1945, with the passcode "I come from Julius." After each confirmed the shared allegiance by producing a "passport" of a cut-off Jell-O box top, Gold paid $500 for information on the atomic bomb.

Greenglass testified that the Rosenbergs began lobbying his wife, Ruth, to get her husband involved in the espionage ring by November 1944. He returned to New York City on furlough in January 1945, at which point he showed Julius his notes and a sketch of a high-explosive lens.

Even more damning, Greenglass described another meeting at the Rosenbergs' New York City apartment in September 1945, during which time Ethel typed up his shoddy, hastily scribbled notes.

To this point, the government's case against Ethel was largely nonexistent; now, her brother had portrayed her as a willing co-conspirator. Chief prosecutor Irving H. Saypol leaped all over this account, dramatically telling the jury how she "sat at that typewriter and struck the keys, blow by blow, against her own country in the interests of the Soviets."

Julius and Ethel took the stand in their defense, but other than denying the charges, they largely evoked the Fifth Amendment on matters of espionage and their involvement in the Communist Party, their silence amplifying the testimony against them.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg at the courthouse

Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

On March 29, 1951, the jury returned a verdict of guilty against the trio charged. Judge Kaufman imposed the death penalty on Julius and Ethel, telling them, "I consider your crimes worse than murder." He spared the life of Sobell, who was not involved in the passage of atomic secrets and sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

A death sentence, especially for the parents of two young boys, became a major source for debate, with Albert Einstein and Pope Pius XII among the influential figures who urged the U.S. government to show mercy. However, the legal appeals and requests for clemency, to President Truman and then-President Eisenhower, all fizzled.

After a last-minute stay of execution was overturned, on June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel were electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, making them the first American civilians to be executed for espionage during peacetime.

The case remained a source of intrigue for scholars who argued about the evidence against the Rosenbergs, the clear bias of the presiding judge and the harshness of the verdict.

But there were more twists to be uncovered. In 1995, the National Security Agency released a half-century-old trove of decrypted Soviet messages from the Venona Project which provided clear evidence of Julius' espionage.

Four years later, Sam Roberts' The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case contained new bombshells from the reclusive Greenglass, including the admission that his wife possibly typed up the notes during the infamous September 1945 meeting, and that he told a different story on the witness stand to protect his immediate family.

The release of grand jury testimony in 2008 seemingly confirmed that account, while also providing inconsistencies between what Gold said in private and in public. That year, Sobell also went on record to confess to his and Julius' involvement with the Soviets, though he insisted that his colleague's information was useless to the Eastern power, and that Ethel was guilty only of "being Julius' wife."

The various revelations have prompted the Rosenbergs' surviving sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol, to launch an effort to have their mother formally exonerated. They were unable to win over President Obama, but there may be more chapters to come in this long-running Cold War saga.

Originally posted here:

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: Their Case, Trial and Death - Biography

Warder Cresson was well strange. He was also the first American consul to Jerusalem. Seized with the evangelical fervor of the age, Cresson was convinced that the Second Coming was nigh, to come in 1847 to be precise. And Warder Cresson meant to claim a front-row seat.

Cressons main qualification for the job of counsul-general was his messianic zeal and his connection to then-Secretary of State John Clahoun, who prevailed upon President John Tyler to appoint him.

Cresson and his contingent arrived in the Holy Land with drooling passion along with great pompt and fanfare.Almost at once, he announced to the ruling pasha that he had come to witness the apocalypse.Dipolmats shortly informed the president that his delegate to Jerusalem was a religious maniac and madman.

By design, the United States Constitution takes a hands-off approach to religion. The operative part of the First Amendment provides that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof In time, in his own sort of thrashing way, Warder Cresson would test that most fundamental precept of the Constitution.

Born to a well-to-do Quaker family, before arriving in Jerusalem, Cresson had spent two decades trying on the coats of half-a-dozen different apocalyptic cults, along the way abandoning his wife and six children.At different times, he had been a Shaker, a Millerite, a Mormon and a Campbellite before, at last, he became convinced that return of the Jews to Jerusalem would assure the second coming. Cresson adopted this literally as an article of faith.His faith, though flighty, was deep, abiding and maniacally sincere.

Ultimately the president tired of Cressons schtick and relieved him of his duties.But that did little, if anything, to deter Cresson. For several years, he continued to issue visas for the protection of Jews, converted to Judaism and changed his name to Michael Boaz Israel (or, more formally, Michoel Boaz Yisroel ben Avraham).

This was too much for his beleaguered wife.

Elizabeth Townsend Warder sued to have her wayward husband declared insane.

The peripatetic Warder Cresson-cum-Michael Boaz Israel jumped on a boat and sailed back from the Holy Land to Philadelphia to answer to the inquisition of lunacy which soon took on the buzz of the O.J. Simpson trial of its time.

What was at stake in an admittedly roundabout way was the precept of religious freedom.What the long-suffering Mrs. Cresson was testing was the constitutional right of an American citizen to believe whatever he or she desired.Hers was a frontal assault on the First Amendment.Could Warder-cum-Michael slake his religious fervor with what Mrs. Cresson believed was any cockamamie thought that flitted through what was surely his deluded brain?Wouldnt her success in doing so stomp on the very essence of Jeffersonian liberty?

At the trial, Warder Cresson was found to be insane.

But that was not the end of it.

He appealed and a retrial was ordered.

In the second legal bout, which went on for six days and entailed nearly 100 witnesses, the woebegone Mrs. Cresson lost.Warder/Michael, the court ruled, whoever the heck he wanted to be, could be, think, or believe any religious thing he wanted.There was no restraint on thought or the pursuit of religious satisfaction.

Cresson returned, triumphant, to Jerusalem.He established a model Jewish farm, studied the Torah, divorced his wife and remarried a woman who was more aligned with the religious paroxysms that dominated his actions and his thoughts, and fathered three more children.

What the strange case of Warder Cresson affirmed was that the First Amendment meant what it said; that there could be no state-aided constraint on the exercise of ones religious convictions, however odd, or like the rebounding of a Pachinko ball it may appear to others.Every citizen was entitled to accord with his/her beliefs and conscience. The state would not and could not aid or abet one set of beliefs or systems to be superior to any other.

Law, like God, at times works in mysterious ways.What often seems at first blush like a plain vanilla dispute between two parties take the domestic woes between Mrs. Cresson and her errant husband (or Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat, or Earl Gideon establishing the Sixth Amendments right to counsel, or Ernesto Miranda affirming an accused Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination) can ripple out and have repercussions far beyond the nut of the initial dispute.In fact, at law at least, that is more the norm than the exception.It is the rare case where a party expressly sets out to make or challenge the law.

More often, what starts out as a private dispute swells with importance. Such then was the strange case of Warder Cresson who became a respected member of his adopted community and is buried on the Mount of Olives within easy view of the Old City of his beloved Jerusalem.

Rohn K. Robbins is an attorney licensed before the bars of Colorado and California who practices in the Vail Valley with the law firm of Stevens, Littman, Biddison, Tharp & Weinberg LLC. His practice areas include business and commercial transactions, real estate and development, family law, custody and divorce and civil litigation. Robbins may be reached at 970-926-4461 or at his email address, robbins@slblaw.com.

Read more:

Robbins: Freedom of worship and the strange case of Warder Cresson - Vail Daily News

Investment Opportunities

By Andy Snyder

Originally posted March 25, 2020 on Manward Press

Weve got bad news.

Despite all the ciphering, speculation and soon-to-be-crushed curves this crisis will never end.

Like a scar across the cheek from a blow we never saw coming, the effects of the coronavirus will last forever.

Oh sure, stocks will recover, the economy will come back and, yes, well even gain immunity to the nasty little bug.

But, as always, theres more to the story

A lot more.

We joined in on a conversation with a state senator Monday night. Hes one of the good ones a former Army officer and a staunch defender of freedom. (We fear he wont last long in politics.)

The chat was somber, with hints of optimism.

The topic was one thats on the minds of so many Americans these days the limits and powers of the government.

The message that this senator repeated over and over was quite simple: Let the people decide.

Right now, for instance, in many states throughout the Union, businesses have been forced to close. Jobs have been lost. Retirement plans are crushed.

Divorces will spike. Suffering will rise. And Trump isnt wrong suicides will come.

A 66-year-old woman shot herself in the head just down the road last night.

Its a hell of a thing.

Perhaps the thing thats gone most unnoticed, though, is the new presumption of guilt in the nation.

Were now guilty before proven innocent. Were now deemed to be riddled with the virus before the government tests us and tells us were not.

This is a nasty mindset that strikes at the core of American values.[mw-adbox]

Here in Pennsylvania, all nonessential businesses were told to shut down. The state police are handing out fines.

But, as anybody would guess, the governors definition of nonessential is different from yours and ours and the mans who is running the shop in town.

The state wisely set up a waiver system for the new rules. But businesses are deemed guilty before they prove themselves innocent.

Even if a guy is sure his business is essential, hes got to close it until the government reviews his application and deems him safe to stay in business.

Last we heard, there were 13,000 applicants waiting to hear the fate of their business.

And the bureaucrats are in no hurry.

Again, its a hell of thing.

Do they think were that dumb? our friend in the Senate asked. They cant trust the people to make the right decision?

Meanwhile the police patrol the streets with drones. The National Guard has moved into New York City. And kids throughout the country will miss months of school.

Perhaps scariest of all is the fact that the media is quickly weaponizing the idea that the cure for this virus may be worse than the disease.

It demonizes us for even pondering the question for even wondering whether life is life without Liberty.

Its a tough discussion that must be had with clear heads not with the November election fogging the view.

This is where our old, reliable pal Know-How enters the story.

And its where things get scary

Few folks know exactly how much power the government gave itself after our last big national emergency.

Oh sure, we see an army of bored TSA agents each time we fly (there are 44,000 of them now). We see an occasional officer from the Department of Homeland Security when we drive through the city. And our new drivers license has a shiny sticker on it telling whoever bothers to look at it that our background has been checked and were clean.

But few folks know 9/11 gave your state governor immense control over your health.

Worried about a biological attack, governments across the land penned a bevy of ideas that most Americans are only finding out about some 19 years after the fact.

Your governor, as you now know, has the power to quarantine you or the whole state. So does the president.

With an emergency declaration, he can ration vaccines and other medicines.

And if things get really bad, in states like Arizona, the governor can jab you with a needle of the serum of his choice. In the Grand Canyon state, the governor can force the vaccination of folks diagnosed with a deadly disease or, get this, simply those who are reasonably believed to have been exposed or who may reasonably be expected to be exposed.

This isnt some internet myth or hype. Its fact. You can read the bill here.

Its scary.

We sure hope any vaccines that hit the market arent rushed because theyd be sticking us all this week if they could.

And dont try hiding your cough or blaming allergies.

The same laws that let the governor vaccinate you also let his boys dig into your medical records to see if youve asked a doc about your symptoms and they let the government track your calls and movements just to verify youre not hanging out with large groups or other infected folks.

But before you go thinking were preaching some sort of anti-vax message, we beg you to remember that none of this comes along with the great protections that make America America.

This can all and has been ordered by just one man.

Theres no judge or jury.

Theres no Fifth Amendment that keeps your business open until your case is heard.

Theres no Fourth Amendment that keeps the man from looking in your shop windows.

Theres not even a First Amendment right to protest when the government tells us we cant gather in groups of three or more.

This a dangerous disease.

Its a hell of a time in America.

But we must not make it worse.

We must open our minds and see all that is going on.

Some of its good (weve reported it). Some of its quite bad.

But more folks must understand the decisions and precedents we set today will affect this country for good.

If we fail now, this crisis will never go away.

This is about to become a huge discussion across the nation. Please join it with an open and informed mind.

Note: Are our core values in danger? Send us your thoughts here.

Andy did what most of us can only dream of. He left our bustling society to rough it in the Alaskan wilderness no roads, no electricity, nothing but the outdoors and his sharp mind. While there, he met with top investors and entrepreneurs from across the globe, all seeking out his expertise. His experience inspired the idea for his unique publishing company, Manward Press. Not only does Andy dish out top-notch investment advice (after all, he spent a decade as an advisor at one of Wall Streets top brokerages), but his mission is to lead folks to richer, healthier lives through his science-backed Triad of Liberty, Know-How and Connections. His one-of-a-kind free daily e-letter,Manward Digest, is a true fan favorite.

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The Consequences of the Coronavirus Will Haunt Us Forever - Investment U

It is true that the public deserves a sense of a candidates physical and mental fitness, and that candidates have a moral responsibility to disclose serious conditions that could impair their ability to serve. Its just not clear that indiscriminate release of medical records gets us there.

If genuine concern persists about candidates health, we could consider creating an independent panel of doctors to perform a physical examination and offer impartial assessments of candidates ability to serve. Such a panel has been proposed by Jimmy Carter, among others, and could vet not only candidates health, but also when and whether the Twenty-Fifth Amendment should be invoked for an incapacitated president.

Read: The hardest job in the world

Indeed, a more important concern about whether a president can effectively govern is declining mental acuity over timesubtle cognitive changes due to nascent dementia or other neurological conditions. Unlike cholesterol levels and colonoscopieswhich are objective, diagnostic, and widely usedno single test determines whether a person has the mental or emotional deficits we might worry about with presidential candidates.

While screening exams exist, such as the one President Trump took in 2018, diagnoses of cognitive decline are made based on comprehensive assessments of in-depth interviews, laboratory data, and imaging tests. But a candidate who runs an effective presidential campaign is unlikely to arouse sufficient clinical suspicion for a doctor to actually pursue and document any significant cognitive impairment.

Moreover, not all patientsleast of all the powerful, high-performing patients running for presidentroutinely receive this type of cognitive evaluation. Doctors calibrate neurocognitive testing and treatment to the individual patient in front of themand even with the same patient, different doctors may consider different diagnoses and record different data. Doctors notes, then, are more like journal entries than tax returnsand thus dont allow for objective, meaningful comparisons of mental fitness across candidates.

And so, annual nonpartisan health evaluations, ones that include cognitive assessments, would be far more helpful than old medical records or letters from longtime doctors. This is partly because, as Carter notes, unlike candidates personal physicians, an independent panel wouldnt have to balance patient confidentiality and personal interest vis--vis the nations interest. But its also because most neurocognitive tests are more valuable as repeated measurements used to track trends in cognitive and behavioral functioning over timeas could be performed by annual evaluationsthan as snapshots of mental acuity available through old medical records.

Ultimately, however, no medical stamp of approval exists for presidential fitness. The best test of whether a candidate is fit to serve is their performance during the campaign (that is, if we ever get back to a normal campaign). Just as impeachment is a political processnot a legal onedetermining whether someone is fit for the highest office requires the publics judgment, not the doctors note.

Aside from a few rumors, Grover Clevelands maritime operation remained largely secret for nearly a quarter century, until the missions last surviving surgeon finally revealed what had happened. Cleveland, a cancer survivor who weighed 260 pounds, recovered swiftly and completed his second term without incident. He went on to enjoy more than a decade of post-presidency life, and died, according to one report, a perfectly natural death.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

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What Should We Know About the Presidents Health? - The Atlantic

A 21-year-old guy who was working the midnight shift at his job was bored with the lack of customers.

However, an encounter with a woman who stopped by with a seductive offer changed everything, but not in a good way.

Redditor "throwaway53018" prefaced his TIFU (Today I F'd UP) post by disclosing that he tends to "run into some really weird people" at his place of work.

He played right into this very narrative on this fateful night.

The Original Poster (OP) may have appreciated the company to occupy his boredom, but her services beyond that were not required.

But it wasn't the last he saw of her.

say it what GIF by SkyGiphy

Things took a turn, post-coitus.

see ya goodbye GIFGiphy

The OP's father shared an interesting anecdote regarding a woman who was arrested for drunk-driving.

Redditors gave their advice on what not to do.

its always sunny in philadelphia shut up GIFGiphy

Redditors warned that lying to authorities could have serious consequences.

This user suggested the OP plead the fifth amendment and attached a video in which a Regent University Law professor recommended not talking to the police.

Don't Talk to the Policeyoutu.be

This informed user suggested to say the following when cops put on the pressure.

The OP gave an update with some bad news.

He lied and forgot about the surveillance cameras.

This is how Redditor "Peaceful-mammoth" sees it.

The hotel got slammed for their intervention.

Maybe the OP will get off easy.

We have bigger fish to fry.

So much for social distancing.

Read more:

Guy's Decision To Hook Up With Woman After She Offers To Pay Him For Sex Blows Up In His Face Big Time - Comic Sands

When we tell the shop to close down for a month, it can cut its variable costs (including, unfortunately, through layoffs), but not its fixed costs. When the shop isnt earning that gross margin on each cup, its fixed costs keep accumulating and can quickly overwhelm any reserves it may have saved. Support that covers all the lost revenue would be excessive; what is needed is support in proportion to fixed costs.

Note, also, how this challenge differs from that of a typical debt crisis. Interest payments on debt are one form of fixed cost, and a firm that takes on too much debt can find that even a small downturn in salesor even no downturn at allleaves it without enough gross margin to cover the interest owed. But here, with revenue collapsing to zero, through no fault of the business owner, the crisis has nothing to do with excessive leverage. Even if the coffee shop borrowed responsibly, or didnt borrow at all, other fixed costs could still become crushing.

Peter Wehner: The Trump presidency is over

How to help businesses facing a total revenue collapse cover their fixed costs? A good place to start would be in the Anglo-American tradition of compensation for a government taking, best known in the United States from its appearance in our Constitutions Fifth Amendment: Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. We recognize that government must sometimes take private property, as when it uses eminent domain for the construction of a road or pipeline. But we also recognize that when it does, it must pay.

The shutdown of commercial establishments necessitated by our public-health crisis is, in a sense, such a taking. Not necessarily in the constitutional sensea complex jurisprudence has evolved on the question of when government regulation of a propertys use might rise to the level of taking, and my suggestion here is not that current conditions necessarily qualify or that our government is therefore compelled to provide compensation. Rather, in common sense: The coffee shop owner would like to operate his business and we, the public, need him not to. He has not failed in business; to the contrary he has succeeded and, but for public need, his shop would have customers. He is paying for property, the economic use of which we have entirely deprived him. Shouldnt he be compensated?

A Public-Health Takings Fund could, and should, reimburse business owners deprived of the profitable use of their real property by public-health imperative. Thanks to the widespread existence of well-documented mortgages and leases on which businesses have made regular payments, determining the amount of compensation will in most cases be straightforward. Compensation should be available to businesses closed by local, state, or federal regulation, for the duration such rules remain in effect. It should require continued maintenance and upkeep of the property. Importantly, it should be a grant, not a loanit is not a new resource, but rather compensation for a cost incurred. If businesses are saddled with additional loans that they cannot use for forward-looking investment, they will face higher fixed costs with nothing to show for it long after the present crisis ends, leaving them more fragile and with worse prospects.

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How to Solve the Fixed-Costs Crisis - The Atlantic

Within our constitutional framework, property rights have been relegated to second-class citizenship.

Take the Supreme Courts double-standard on the Fifth Amendments prohibition against the government taking private property unless its for public use. For alleged infringements of other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, the Court strictly scrutinizes government action. But with the Fifth Amendments property protections, the Court allows legislatures to interpret their own constitutional boundaries. If only property rights are at stake, then the fox may guard the henhouse.

Or consider the Courts amorphous review for substantive due process, a values-based inquiry into the constitutional legitimacy of state and federal regulatory laws. On this score, the Court candidly concedes that property rights and contractual freedoms enjoy less protection than other, non-economic liberties.

In his new book Property and the Pursuit of Happiness: Locke, the Declaration of Independence, Madison, and the Challenge of the Administrative State, Edward Erler shows how constitutional property rights climbed through the looking glass and came out topsy-turvy. From Americas founding era to the present day, property rights flipped from cachet to low-caste, and whats supposed to be up, well, is down.

Erler is a professor of political philosophy, so its unsurprising this books foremost contribution is its discussion of the vital role property rights played in the Framers constitutional vision. Tracing an arc of political thought from Aristotle through Locke on to the Declaration of Independence, Erler argues that the Founding Fathers put an inherently American gloss on pre-existing conceptions of property one that merged natural rights and moral obligation into a synthesis they called the pursuit of happiness.

For the Founders, the right to property was the comprehensive right that included all other rights. In this spirit, the Supreme Court in 1795 averred that the right of acquiring and possessing property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Erler explains the decline of property rights from these sanctified heights. As the economy advanced and governments grew, vested property interests came increasingly into conflict with public policy, and it fell to the courts to demarcate the boundaries between public and private spheres.

For much of our nations history, as courts wrestled with these controversies, they hewed to an understanding of property rights closer the Framers than what we see today. The practical result was that property rights enjoyed considerable constitutional protection from overbearing government.

But the scales of justice shifted early in the twentieth century, when the Progressive forces of history swept first into legislatures and then into the courts. Progressives rejected the Founders conception of property rights because it impeded the science of economic planning. As Progressive influence waxed, property rights waned.

Although Property and the Pursuit of Happiness overlaps in subject and tone with Richard Epsteins excellent 2008 book, Supreme Neglect: How to Revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property, the two books are complementary but not the same. Discussion of the Founding Fathers is largely absent from the latterarguably the only flaw in Epsteins seminal workand this topic is Erlers strongest contribution.

This is not to say that Property and the Pursuit of Happiness is flawless. In the introduction, Erler warns that he test[s] the patience of the reader on some occasions, and hes not lying. The book is needlessly difficult. Relatedly, he peppers his prose with awkward sentence introductions (e.g., In a statement that is not entirely hyperbolic . . .). Further, the books subtitle, which mentions the Challenge of the Administrative State, engages in a bit of false advertising, as Erler gives the topic only a cursory examination.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, Property and the Pursuit of Happiness is an important contribution to a growing body of scholarship pushing for a restoration of property rights to their original place among our individual freedomsparticularly with respect to the Fifth Amendments Takings Clause.

The good news is that these ideas are taking root. To wit, the Trump administration is reshaping the federal judiciary with a generation of judges affected by Richard Epsteins work. On the other side of the bar, dogged public interest lawyersmost notably those at the Pacific Legal Foundationhave advanced property rights in courts across the country. After decades, all this effort is paying off.

Consider the blowback to the Supreme Courts infamous holding 15 years ago in Kelo v. City of New London, which allows government to condemn peoples homes and give their land to a corporation in the name of economic development. As Ilya Somin explains in his book The Grasping Hand, many state courts reacted to Kelo by tightening restrictions on the use of eminent domain.

Last Summer, the Court handed down a watershed decision in Knick v. Township of Scott, which basically puts property rights (and Fifth Amendment takings claims, specifically) on the same procedural footing as other guarantees enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The Courts newest members, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, joined Chief Justice John Robertss Knick opinion. The holding is a bold step towards ending the inequality of our constitutional rights.

None of these welcome developments would have happened absent the toils of scholars and practitioners who laid the foundations for a resurgence of property rights. With Property and the Pursuit of Happiness, Erler adds a valuable voice to this worthy cause.

William Yeatman is a research fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

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Recovering A Strong American Conception Of Property Rights - The Federalist

The Department of Justice is investigating whether Boeing knowingly lied to Federal Aviation Administration officials while working to get approval for the 737 Max, according to The New York Times.

Over the past several months, The Times reported, prosecutors have questioned several Boeing employees in front of a grand jury. The prosecutors specifically focused on whether Boeing's former chief pilot on the 737 Max project, Mark Forkner, had intentionally lied about a new flight-control system on the plane called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).

MCAS was designed to make the 737 Max handle essentially identically to the previous version of the plane the 737 New Generation despite the Max planes having larger engines. Under certain conditions in which those larger engines could cause the plane's nose to drift upward potentially causing the plane to stall the MCAS software would activate and automatically adjust the airplane's trim, pointing the nose slightly down.

Design flaws in the MCAS software have been involved in two fatal 737 Max crashes that killed a combined 346 people.

Federal prosecutors issued a subpoena to Forkner last year for documents related to the plane's development, and Forkner invoked the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, according to The Seattle Times.

Forkner described "egregious" problems with MCAS in 2016 messages to another Boeing employee, Patrik Gustavsson, saying the software was "running rampant in the sim," in reference to flight-simulator tests.

In another message, he suggested that he had unintentionally misled the FAA about the issue.

"I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)," he said.

Earlier in 2016, Forkner asked the FAA for permission to remove mentions of the MCAS from the pilot manual for the 737 Max, saying it would activate only in rare cases and was designed to run in the background. The FAA approved the request.

"We are cooperating with the Justice Department's investigation," a Boeing spokesperson told The New York Times.

According to The Times, Forkner's lawyers have strongly denied that their client had misled regulators.

"Mark didn't lie to anyone," they said, according to The Times. "He did his job honestly, and his communications to the FAA were honest. As a pilot and Air Force vet, he would never jeopardize the safety of other pilots or their passengers. That is what any fair investigation would find."

The 737 Max has been grounded globally since the second crash, which occurred in March, as it works to complete and gain approval on a fix.

The grounding has led to a crisis at Boeing, which suffered its worst financial year in decades and saw CEO Dennis Muilenburg ousted over his handling of the situation.

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Boeing 737 Max: Prosecutors investigate whether company lied to FAA - Business Insider - Business Insider

Why havent they been arrested?

Its the question on the minds of many as Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell spend their days at Hawaiian resorts on the sunny island of Kauai. On Thursday the couple was spotted at Costco casually picking up groceries. A photo taken by a fellow shopper shows Lori leaning on the grocery cart as Chad smiles at her.

Recently released photos of their November wedding show the couple laughing near the ocean in Hawaii and Chad strumming a ukulele just a couple weeks after his wife of 29 years died in her sleep, according to Chads account to law enforcement.

The beach visits, the errand running, the happy photos all seem to have struck a nerve with the public. The story of Lori and Chad, their respective dead spouses, and her missing children has captivated the nation.

In the last 220 days, Loris brother Alex Cox killed her husband Charles following a family argument in July, Chads seemingly healthy wife died in her sleep in October in a manner police are calling suspicious, and Cox, also young and apparently healthy, died mysteriously on a bathroom floor in December.

And of course, Loris two minor children, Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow, have disappeared. No one has seen the children since September. Neither Chad nor Lori reported them missing. Shortly after Rexburg police questioned the couple in late November about the childrens whereabouts, Lori and Chad fled to Hawaii. Earlier this month a storage unit full of the childrens belongings the kind of things youd think theyd want in their new home was found in chilly Rexburg, thousands of miles from Hawaii where Chad and Lori have lived for more than a month.

As the public continues to learn about strange circumstance after strange circumstance surrounding the couple, many believe the deaths and disappearances were orchestrated by Chad and Lori.

If thats the case, why havent they been arrested?

The answer, according to legal experts, is most likely a lack of evidence. That lack of evidence is primarily due to law enforcements inability to locate Tylee and J.J. Until police can prove something criminal has happened to the children, Chad and Lori are looking at nothing more than misdemeanors for their failure to cooperate in the investigation. A judge may hold off on the arduous and expensive extradition process following Loris potential contempt of court charge until law enforcement finds evidence for more serious charges, said Samuel Newton, assistant professor of law at the University of Idaho.

Lori was ordered to physically present J.J. and Tylee to Madison County officials by Jan. 30 but failed to do so.

The Post Register looked to legal experts and past cases to try to figure out, should Tylee and J.J. remain unfound, what charges could Lori and Chad face in the future in a variety of possible scenarios and what evidence would police need to bring charges in those scenarios.

The disappearance of Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow:

Scenario 1: Chad and Lori were not actively responsible for the disappearance of Tylee and J.J., but they did not alert authorities when the children went missing.

Possible charges: Perjury for giving false information. Police say Vallow and Daybell indicated (J.J) was staying with a family friend in Arizona. Rexburg police said they investigated and did not find that to be true. According to Idaho law, this crime is considered a misdemeanor. There is no Idaho law requiring parents to alert authorities when children go missing.

Evidence police would need to charge Lori or Chad: Police likely have enough evidence to prove Lori provided false information concerning J.J.s whereabouts.

Famous similar case: In a case that received national attention, Caylee Anthonys mother, Casey Anthony, never reported her daughter missing. Caylees Law, which has been enacted in 10 states, makes it a felony for parents to fail to report their child as missing. Anthony was eventually acquitted of all charges except four misdemeanor counts of providing false information to law enforcement. Anthony was sentenced to one year and $1,000 for each misdemeanor count, for a total of four years in prison and $4,000 in fines. Caylees Law does not exist in Idaho.

Scenario 2: Lori and Chad have hidden the children.

Possible charges: Contempt of court

Evidence police would need to charge Lori or Chad: Police likely have enough evidence to prove contempt of court. On Jan. 25, law enforcement in Princeville, Hawaii, served Vallow with a court order demanding that she physically produce Tylee and J.J. to the Idaho Department of Welfare in Rexburg, Idaho, or to the Rexburg Police within five days of being served with the order. Vallow did not comply with that order and could now be found by a Madison County judge to be in contempt of court. Per Idaho law, a misdemeanor for contempt carries a penalty of an up to $5,000 fine, a maximum of five days in jail, or both.

Famous similar case: In Baltimore City Department of Social Services v. Bouknight, Jacqueline L. Bouknight, of Baltimore, was ordered to produce her child in court. She claimed to have left her son with a friend but would not reveal anything more. In a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Bouknight claimed that forcing her to disclose her sons location violated her Fifth Amendment right not to self-incriminate. The Supreme Court ruled the Fifth Amendment does not protect a custodian from refusing to produce his or her child pursuant to a court order. Despite this ruling, Bouknight refused to produce her son. A Baltimore judge continued to find Bouknight in contempt of court for seven years; she spent those seven years in jail. After that, she was released and has never been convicted for further charges regarding her son. Her son has never been seen since.

Scenario 3: Chad and/or Lori are responsible for the death of Tylee and J.J., but police cannot find their bodies.

Possible charges: Murder

Evidence: According to Thomas A. DiBiase, a former federal homicide prosecutor and expert on no body murder cases, in cases when there is no body but police believe a murder was convicted, evidence is most likely to come from forensic evidence such as blood, hair, or fingerprints, confessions to family or friends, or confessions to police. When none of those are available, Alton D. Kenney an attorney and former prosecutor who has gotten convictions on two no body cases, said it is possible to prove victims are dead through what he calls negative inference. This involves proving all expected normal routines are not being met. For example, a teenager may suddenly stop all social media activity, stop speaking to all friends and relatives, stop continuing to pursue life milestones such as getting a drivers license or applying for a job. These negative inferences may convince a jury that a missing individual has died. Then, the court can prove someone is responsible for that death. According to Kenney, however, cases involving negative inference take a long time to prove and police may wait a full year before bringing charges.

Famous similar case: More than 50 people have been convicted of murder without a body being found. However, when police lack forensic evidence or a confession, it becomes more difficult. When Susan Powell went missing in 2009, her husband Josh Powell claimed she had abandoned the family. Despite a mountain of strange circumstances surrounding Josh, he was never charged with her murder. In 2012, Josh killed himself and his two sons. Since Susans body has never been recovered, she has still not been declared dead.

Charges involving the deaths of Charles Vallow, Tammy Daybell, or Alex Cox: All three deaths are still under investigation. Authorities are still waiting on autopsy results for Tammy Daybell and Cox. The lack of charges may mean authorities have not found evidence as of yet to prove Chad or Lori were involved. Autopsy results may provide more information.

Continued here:

Why havent Chad and Lori been arrested? - Post Register