DEEP BLUE URBAN JURISDICTIONS SEEM INTENT ON SUICIDE:Los Angeles prosecutor plans to seek release of thousands of criminals. As a friend on Facebook noted in a related context, Americans under 40 or so think relatively orderly, low-crime cities are a natural phenomenon. Those of us who came of age in the 70s and 80s know better. Unfortunately, a lot of young urbanites are about to learn how easy it is for a hip, “edgy” neighborhood to turn into a hellhole of crime and disorder.

THIS CALLS FOR A LAWSUIT AND MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: Stars and Stripes: Minority veterans to receive priority for coronavirus vaccines. What do I mean by civil disobedience? White and Asian veterans should sign up for vaccines as Native American, Hispanic or African-American. It’s hard to think of anything more un-American (and unconstitutional) than the government favoring one group of veterans over another based on race.

UPDATE: When the possibility of distributing Covid vaccines by race first reared its head over the Summer, I wrote:

There are obvious dangers to allocating medical resources by race … especially in a politically sensitive an area such as vaccines, where the public is already all-too-prone to accept various conspiracy theories and quackery that leads them to oppose vaccination. Instead of expanding the use of race in this way, science and medicine should be moving away from considering race and ethnicity at all.

SCHOOLS CLOSED, MINORITIES HARDEST HIT: Seriously. In my county, Arlington, schools closed in March and the geniuses in the public school administration told the teachers not to do online instruction, and not to teach anything new (lest there be some kid, somewhere, who couldn’t log in despite free county-provided Ipads and Internet, because that would be inequitable). Below is a chart showing how kids did on the test they give at the beginning of each school year. As you will notice, black and Hispanic kids have been really hurt, white and Asian kids not so much. I suspect you would see similar, maybe even more inequitable results if you just went by income status. Yet, oddly (not really), it’s the progressives in the county who have been shouting “equity, equity, equity” from the rooftops for the last several years and their allies among the teachers who have been most vociferously lobbying to keep the schools closed.

The gray line is Fall 2020, the lines before are 2019 and ’18, respectively.

I’VE GIVEN UP ON GOVERNMENT MAKING RATIONAL DECISIONS: Long-Term-Care Residents and Health Workers Should Get Vaccine First, C.D.C. Panel Says. Comment from my friend Kate Litvak:

This is unbelievably stupid. What is the point of prioritizing nursing home residents? They are stationary. They aren’t going anywhere. We should not spend vaccines on them, but instead, we should create safe bubbles around them by prioritizing the people with whom they have contact. That means all workers of nursing homes (not just medical workers). These workers are not only bringing disease into nursing homes, but after work, get on public transit to go home and spread the disease through the community.
We should prioritize people who have the highest number of (necessary) interactions with others — health workers, transportation, supermarket, police, workers of meat processing plants, etc.
And among the first should be TEACHERS!! This will destroy the excuse that the teachers’ unions use to justify not working while getting paid in full. Once we vaccinate all the teachers, we must open the schools. Teachers who will then refuse to show up should be fired for cause. Kids aren’t much at risk and are in low probability to spread the virus. Families who don’t want their kids to attend live classes can continue online, but that will be their choice — not the choice of the teachers’ unions.
When the kids are out at schools, we preserve their education and sanity, and also preserve the ability of their parents to actually work and get the economy back on track.
But instead, we are giving the vaccine to nursing home residents. Who are stationary, can be effectively isolated, and have little impact on the economy, education of kids, and our sane future. Sheer idiocy.

UPDATE: I’ve received some feedback that nursing home residents should be vaccinated early so they can receive visitors after months of isolation from their families. But do we think that the homes are going to let visitors in unless and until those visitors are also vaccinated? The vaccines are 90-94% effective, so given the liability issues involved, the odds that they would allow unvaccinated visitors to see vaccinated residents when a month or two or three later the visitors will also be vaccinated seem low to me. Not to mention that if staff aren’t vaccinated, the visitors could infect the staff.

UPDATE: The CDC has published the underlying report that their panel approved. The report suggests that “health care personnel” is defined very broadly, which means that nursing home staff will be vaccinated–which raises the question as why residents also need to be vaccinated quickly. A dissenting panelist raised an additional objection: Nursing home residents tend to be elderly and unhealthy, and generally safe vaccines might not be safe for that population, and we have no data on that. It’s also not clear to me why pharmacy staff are more of a priority than any other retail worker, unless they work in a medical facility.From the report:

Approximately 21 million U.S. health care personnel work in settings such as hospitals, LTCFs, outpatient clinics, home health care, public health clinical services, emergency medical services, and pharmacies. Health care personnel comprise clinical staff members, including nursing or medical assistants and support staff members (e.g., those who work in food, environmental, and administrative services) (8). Jurisdictions might consider first offering vaccine to health care personnel whose duties require proximity (within 6 feet) to other persons. If vaccine supply remains constrained, additional factors might be considered for subprioritization.*** Public health authorities and health care systems should work together to ensure COVID-19 vaccine access to health care personnel who are not affiliated with hospitals.

Approximately 3 million adults reside in LTCFs, which include skilled nursing facilities, nursing homes, and assisted living facilities. Depending upon the number of initial vaccine doses available, jurisdictions might consider first offering vaccination to residents and health care personnel in skilled nursing facilities because of high medical acuity and COVID-19–associated mortality (6) among residents in these settings.

OUR BUSINESS ELITES ARE BECOMING AS ABSURD AS OUR ACADEMIC ELITES: NASDAQ proposes illegal racial quotas for corporate boards ACLU applauds. One interesting aspect here is that the requirement is for “self-identification.” I’ll self-identify as anything a NASDAQ company wants if it will get me a lucrative do-nothing board position.

AMERICA’S RIDICULOUS “RACIAL” CLASSIFICATIONS: Speaking of East Asians and Covid, it would be useful if we could compare Covid rates among Americans of East Asian descent to other Americans, to see if there is an indication that genetics plays a role in infection rates. But the U.S. gathers health and medical data via the same unscientific categories it uses for civil rights enforcement and affirmative action programs. So we have an “Asian” category, but 40% or so of that category is made up of people with origins in the Indian subcontinent or the Philippines; both groups are genetically distinct from East Asians. I address the implicit racism and stupidity of the U.S. government requiring researchers to use racial rather than genetic classifications in medical research here, and I have a forthcoming article on the origins of our official racial and ethnic classifications. Want to know how Indian-Americans got lumped into the same category as Chinese-Americans? Read on.

WHY HAVE EAST ASIAN COUNTRIES FARED SO WELL WITH COVID-19?: Maybe it’s genetics: An ancient coronavirus-like epidemic drove adaptation in East Asians from 25,000 to 5,000 years ago. A lot of commentators, including one I heard on the radio this morning, have suggested that China, Japan, South Korea, and so on have had few deaths from the Coronavirus because of some combination of an obedient, public-regarding culture and good government. But in China, the virus was raging undetected for two months or more, and during peak holiday season. Culture and government can’t respond to a pandemic that no one yet knows exists. In fact, back in the winter I was optimistic about how bad Covid would be, in part because the Chinese, even accounting for state censorship, didn’t seem to be hit that hard even though they had many weeks where the virus was silently spreading. So, a higher level of genetic or other immunity makes intuitive sense, and here’s a study that backs that theory up.

DISARMING MINORITIES RARELY ENDS WELL: Private Arms and Civil Unrest: Lessons from the Black Freedom Movement.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Buy a Pulse Oximeter in Case You Catch Covid. I was looking into why having a pulse oximeter at home in case you get Covid for the reasons discussed in the link isn’t strongly recommended by the public health establishment. Having read a bunch of articles that acknowledge the potential benefits but stop short of recommending purchase, medical professionals are afraid people with low levels for other reasons (like sleep apnea) will become convinced they have Covid, that people feeling really, really awful with Covid who may need medical attention won’t call them them if their blood oxygen levels are okay, and so forth. I.e., some people are too stupid to use it wisely/properly. Some people may in fact be, but why refrain from recommending it for everyone on that basis? I think it’s the same with Vitamin D–fear that instead of taking a reasonable dose to ensure no deficiency, people will conclude that if 2000 IUs daily is good, 200,000 (which is toxic) is better. We really shouldn’t be making medical policy based on the (perceived) lowest common denominator

HISTORIANS HEAL THYSELVES: There is perhaps nothing crazier in the modern historical profession than the refusal of people who really should know better to acknowledge that Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist, murdered JFK for political reasons. (He was also unhinged, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.)

Let’s review. Oswald was a Communist. He had previously defected to the USSR, but was allowed to return after growing disillusioned. He then became a partisan of the Cuban Revolution, and visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico, trying to defect to Cuba. He was very angry about hostile U.S. policy toward Cuba, and before he killed JFK tried to kill well-known anti-Communist Edwin Walker.

Yet somehow, every November, instead of reminding us of these facts, “mainstream” historians gaslight us with stuff like the tweet below, implying, and sometimes explicitly stating, that JFK was the victim of “right wing hate.” They then complain in other contexts about how conservatives purportedly won’t accept “reality.”

I have a theory about why liberal historians do this re JFK. The left spent the 1950s and early 60s decrying McCarthyism as a “witch hunt,” i.e., not just that McCarthy was a lying demagogue (which he was), but that there was no domestic Communist threat, whatsoever. Acknowledging that a domestic Communist, albeit a lone nut apparently acting on his own volition, assassinated a beloved Democratic president ruins the witch-hunt narrative. That narrative has been a huge propaganda advantage for decades, and they don’t want to let it go.

SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS AREN’T SECOND-CLASS RIGHTS: Lawprof John McGinnis: Gun Rights Delayed are Gun Rights Denied.

CONSERVATIVES ARE GOING TO REGRET BUYING INTO NONSENSICAL CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT THE ELECTION: Kevin Williamson: The Dumbest Coup. Please note that no amount of past Democratic lies, distortions, conspiracy theories, or refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election justifies buying into bogus conspiracy theories. Let me put this as simply as possible: Trump lost. There is no plausible set of facts based on any evidence that anyone has presented that would reverse the results in several states and give him a victory in the electoral college. If you want the lawsuits to continue to ferret out whatever fraud might have occurred to improve things for the future, fine. But if you actually believe, as Sydney Powell has publicly claimed, that “President Trump won by a landslide,” you are being a sucker for a con man.

HOLD ON TO YOUR SEATS: From a very informed source, not affiliated with either party–Trump wins Ohio, election comes down to Pennsylvania and Arizona.

NATE COHN CALLS FLORIDA FOR TRUMP and gives DJT an 85% chance of winning Georgia based on current data. So it looks like it’s going to be a lot tighter than the pundits were generally predicting. However, from what I can tell early results from the Midwest are not looking that promising for the Republicans.

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KEEP AN EYE ON MINNESOTA: Two new polls today out from Minnesota, which has been barely polled this cycle. Biden ahead 47-42 and 48-45. Even more interesting, the former poll, by Survey USA, shows Biden and Trump even in favorability, 44-44, with Trump way ahead in “extremely favorable,” 27% to 16%, suggesting greater enthusiasm for Trump. Seems to me these numbers put Trump in striking distance, and if I were going to expect any big surprise this year, it would be in the state that saw the worst summer rioting. Turnout is a huge wildcard, and Minnesota always seems to disappoint Republicans, but this is one to keep an eye on.

NPR–LYING LIARS WHO LIE:

Really? Then how do we explain these NPR stories, which were not just unverified at the time, but turned out to be outright lies?

STANDING UP TO STAND DOWNS: Me in the Washington Examiner: The Second Amendment is as necessary today as it has ever been. “In 2020, riots and looting broke out across the US. In cities from Seattle to New York, police were ordered to stand down. The lesson: You can’t rely on the police to protect your life and property from criminal aggression, writes @ProfDBernstein.” And read the academic article the op-ed is based on.
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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE GOVERNMENT TAKES THE SIDE OF RIOTERS AND LOOTERS?: The Second Amendment as a Guard Against Government-Sanctioned Tyrannous Factions

This is the seventh in the Scalia Law School Liberty and Law Center’s ongoing series of ten articles on the Second Amendment in a time of social disorder. I’m executive director on the Center, and if you’d like to support our work you can click here. We’d sure appreciate it, we have one of the very few liberty-oriented academic centers in the United States, much less at law schools. If you are interested in supporting our free speech clinic, new donations are currently being matched 1-2 ($25 gets us an extra $50), just make a note when you donate.

GOVERNMENT MONOPOLIES ARE THE WORST MONOPOLIES: From my colleague Robert Leider: The State’s Monopoly of Force and the Right to Bear Arms

I’M NOT SHOCKED, I’M REPULSED AND DISGUSTED: Bari Weiss: Stop Being Shocked American liberalism is in danger from a new ideology—one with dangerous implications for Jews. Telling quote: “Young Jews who grasp the scope of this problem and want to fight it thus find themselves up against two fronts: their ideological enemies and their own communal leadership.” I’ve had Jewish college students call me, begging for advice on how to deal with leftist antisemitism on campus, explaining that their Hillel (Jewish student group) professional, their Hillel rabbi, or whomever else they would normally turn to is telling them to sweep the problem under the rug, less it harm their relationship with the woke groups on campus.

RIGHTS DELAYED ARE RIGHTS DENIED: Professor John McGinnis:The Right to Prompt Access to Guns in a Time of Unrest. Another in the Scalia Law School Liberty & Law Center’s series of papers on the Second Amendment in a time of civil unrest.

I KNOW LOTS OF KIDS WHO ARE DOING FINE AT PRIVATE SCHOOLS THAT ARE OPEN DAILY, WHILE OUR LOCAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS REMAIN SHUTTERED. Hans Bader: Reopen the K-12 Schools Now Based on New Studies.

LOSING THE WAR OF IDEAS: Jewish (and Other) Schools Shouldn’t Assign Ibram Kendi’s Stamped: A Remix. My question for our conservative intellectual establishment: Putting ideological objections to one side, Kendi’s book is replete with errors that a competent historian could likely enumerate with citations in a couple of weeks. That wouldn’t extinguish the current ardor for the book, but it could dampen it as parents would have an objective, non-ideological basis for objecting to it being assigned in public and private schools. So why hasn’t anyone solicited such a takedown? I can think of dozens of much-less-important matters that flood my in-box daily from various right-leaning groups.

HOW DID THE BABYLON BEE GET SCOOPED BY THE TIMES?:

LIKE SCALIA, AMY CONEY BARRETT SHARES AN ‘ORIGINALIST’ VIEW ON SECOND AMENDMENT: At the Hill, from my colleague Nelson Lund.