GOOD: Supreme Court Will Soon Decide Whether To Reconsider Qualified Immunity. It should abolish it. It’s a judge-created doctrine with zero basis in the Constitution.

CHINA SYNDROME: India Clashes With China After Returning Order of Half a Million ‘Faulty’ Coronavirus Antibody Test Kits.

JAMES LILEKS ON THE WUHAN FLU:

Daughter made a point of asking why I referred to the Wuhan Flu as, well, the Wuhan Flu — are you trying to make a point?

Yes, that it’s the Wuhan Flu, and that’s what everyone called it until there was a general agreement amongst our chattering betters that we should call it COVID-19, as if we’d always used technical scientific terms instead of colloquial names based on origin, right or wrong. I used the term because it horrified people who seem to think that the term will make dumb-bubbas go cruisin’ around lookin’ for Asian people to beat up. I use the term because China would prefer that I not to. Want more?

Plus some thoughts on a sober, rational Washington Post headline: “Georgia leads the race to Become America’s No. 1 Death Destination,” and the equally calm response of the police across the pond on Airstrip One to picnickers.

#JOURNALISM: RealClearInvestigations: The NY Times Used to Correct Its Whoppers. But Not These Two. Here’s Why.

A fuller accounting by the Times is especially necessary because the media’s pushing of Trump-Russia conspiracy theories was central to an unprecedented and possibly criminal effort to subvert or remove a president under false pretenses. Unless the Times and other sources come clean about who was feeding them misleading and partisan information, we may never understand this momentous chapter of history.

Protecting confidential sources is, of course, one of the bedrocks of journalism. The free flow of information depends on people being able to share hard truths without jeopardizing their careers or lives.

But not when sources lie or mislead. When that happens, the confidentiality deal is off and “your responsibility would be to set the record straight,” Lynn Walsh, ethics chair of the Society of Professional Journalists, confirmed to me recently in a general conversation about SPJ’s standards for anonymous sourcing.

When sources engage in gross deception on a matter of such import, even committing national security crimes in the process, the news media involved should honor their higher duty – to their readers or viewers – to expose the malfeasance and correct the record.

There’s a less exalted incentive for the Times to revisit its reporting: damage control before the Justice Department releases the findings of prosecutor John H. Durham’s criminal probe of Trump-Russia’s origins.

The auguries, however, are not good.

Think of them as Democratic Party — or perhaps Chinese — operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.

WORD CHOICE: Joe Biden: Travel Bans Prevent ‘Economic Intercourse Around the World’

I guess Biden is saying that people should have to engage in intercourse whether they want to or not.

SPENGLER: Should America Split Apart? Coronavirus Reveals Stark Divisions.

MAKING A FEDERAL CASE OUT OF IT:  In the brave, new, progressive world, every case of school discipline can give rise to a federal lawsuit. Of course, it can work both ways.

HANNAH COX: Only one thing can steer us out of the coronavirus crisis.

Clear communication from leadership is never more important than during times of uncertainty. But from the very beginning of the coronavirus crisis, our politicians have systematically failed in this realm — and now, it’s coming to a breaking point.

Agencies that should be reliable sources of information such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent people mixed messages on key issues such as the effectiveness of masks and other protective wear. Too, our political leaders have profoundly failed when it comes to the lack of coronavirus testing capacity, not to mention the general confusion over how and when to obtain a test. Meanwhile, medical matters aren’t looking much clearer, with ongoing confusion over antibodies and herd immunity.

In short, the lack of clarity and information has left us all paralyzed during this pandemic. Most people want to do the right thing for themselves and for their communities, but the lack of leadership and clear guidance has left even the most well-intentioned people grasping at straws. Our leaders have yet to provide an adequate road map out of this mess, and without one, people will begin to rebel.

Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis memorably said, “If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.” Many of our governors have fallen far short of this simple goal by implementing authoritarian, petty policies that have little to nothing to do with protecting their constituents from the coronavirus and much more to do with exercising or expanding their own power. Now, they’re failing again by neglecting to provide direction on our next steps. . . . In the beginning, the “flatten the curve” message was successful because it was clear both in its goals and in its requests of citizens. It was necessary to take extreme steps to give our healthcare workers a fighting chance of combating this disease and to prevent mass deaths, and most of us readily complied. But this goal has largely been achieved. . . . People will not respect these shutdowns for much longer because they no longer make sense. We need clear communication from our leaders on how we are going to get back to some semblance of normal life with safety protocols that are easy to follow and clear in their goals.

Yes, one thing I like about the Knoxville/Knox County reopening plan is that it’s very clear about goals and metrics. And that’s rare.

IN ITS PRESENT FORM, AT LEAST, MASS TRANSIT KILLS: Will Covid19 Sound The Permanent Death Knell For Public Transit?

BATTLESWARM BLOG: Gov. Abbott Unveils Plan To Reopen Texas. “Outdoor sports with four people sounds like a pander to the golf set, although I suppose tennis, boxing and mixed martial arts would all qualify if it occurs outdoors, but five people playing Frisbee? Verboten!”

There’s going to be more new silliness before we get completely back to the old silliness.

AL SHARPTON APPROVES THIS MESSAGE: De Blasio blasts Jewish community for massive Brooklyn funeral.

A spokesperson for the NYPD said officers on scene did not ticket or arrest anybody.

Jewish community activist Isaac Abraham said the mayoral criticism rang hollow after large crowds congregated across the city earlier on Tuesday to watch the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds fly overhead.

“The crowd for the fighter jets today were around longer than the funeral,” Abraham said.

He also noted that the funeral was not a last minute event that the city was unaware of.

Several NYPD precincts and their community affairs teams helped organize and control the event — setting up five blocks of barricades in advance to help with crowd control.

“There’s an old saying. Don’t rain on our parade,” Abraham said. “To run back to City Hall and send a tweet – this is kicking your friend when they’re down. Way down.”

“Bill de Blasio Is Bringing the Hammer Down on NYC’s Jewish Community,” Beth Baumann writes at Townhall:

De Blasio shouldn’t be calling out a single religious group, especially the Jewish community who has seen an uptick in anti-Semitic attacks lately. It’s why Jews have had to continually arm themselves against anti-Semites. And here we have the mayor, the guy who claims to be all-inclusive, wanting to persecute the very community that he claims he wants to protect.

On top of it all, de Blasio has the nerve to say this is about stopping the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus yet he broke his own stay-at-home order and traveled to Brooklyn for a walk. And he had a resident confront him over his hypocrisy.

New Yorkers deserve better leadership.

That’s an understatement, as this juxtaposition by Stephen Miller illustrates:

As Seth Barron writes at City Journal, de Blasio is “The Out-of-Tune Mayor — Presiding over a city spiraling into crisis, Bill de Blasio relies on the same old themes about unfairness and inequality.”

#JOURNALISM: FT suspends journalist accused of listening to rival outlets’ Zoom calls.

A Financial Times reporter has been suspended after the Independent accused him of listening in on sensitive Zoom meetings held by its senior managers telling staff about salary cuts and furloughs.

Mark Di Stefano, who joined the FT from BuzzFeed in January, has been accused of listening to the audio feed of video conference calls held by the Independent and its sister title the Evening Standard about responding to the financial impact of coronavirus.

In each case Di Stefano, a prolific tweeter with more than 100,000 followers, broke the news of the meetings on Twitter at the same time as staff were being informed.

A story on the measures being introduced by the Evening Standard, which is edited by the former chancellor George Osborne, was subsequently published by the FT. A summary of the cuts at the online-only Independent was published in the FT’s daily live blog.

The Independent claimed Zoom log files showed an account registered to Di Stefano’s FT.com email address joined the video call for Independent staff last week for 16 seconds.

The caller’s video was disabled, but some journalists apparently saw his name flash briefly on screen before he left the meeting.

Minutes later a separate account joined the call, this time unnamed, the Independent said. It claimed the caller remained in audio-only mode with a black square displayed to journalists on the video call.

The anonymous user account, which remained in the meeting until the end, was later shown to be linked to a mobile phone used by the same FT reporter.

Well, this is what you get when you hire from Buzzfeed. Still this is potentially criminal.

SQUEEZE TIL IT HURTS: Trump adds pressure on Adam Schiff to release Russia investigation witness transcripts.

“ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE IS OVERWHELMINGLY POSITIVE”:  Plasma treatments for COVID-19 patients may be working.  I hope so anyway.  We have a lot more potential donors now than we did in March.

WELL, GOOD: Mnuchin Says No Bailout for States With Badly Managed Budgets.

Earlier: States Should Not Receive Bankruptcy Protection.

MEAN GIRLS GO GLOBAL: At Home and at Harvard, Communist China Runs the Ultimate Cancel Culture.

#JOURNALISM AND “PACKED CROWDS:”

THIS HAS BEEN ROBBING ME OF SLEEP FROM THE BEGINNING:  “What Happens If We Break the Pencil?”

SPEAKING OF CENSORSHIP:  Was it something he said?

WHAT’S THAT SOUND, BOYS AND GIRLS? IS IT THE MASKS FALLING OFF?  Censorship China Style Is Great Idea Says The Atlantic.

WELL, SHE’S USED TO DEFENDING PREDATORY MALES. IT’S PRACTICALLY HER WHOLE PURPOSE IN LIFE, ISN’T IT?  Hillary Endorses Biden With So Much Energy.

YES, IT’S VIP. IF YOU DECIDE TO SIGN UP, USE DISCOUNT CODE HOYT:  Unless Our Intended Destination Is Venezuela, It’s Time to Open Everything and Get Back to Work.

NOT CONTENT WITH SMITING US WITH CONGRESS, HIMSELF ABOVE HAS NOW AFFLICTED US WITH:  A Plague of ‘Credentialed’ Experts.