Let me get this out of the way from the getgo:
I was a soldier for 14 years. I took the oath of enlistment and commissioning several times. It states:
And at no point was that document ever meant to be a death warrant.
We're told by many that the restrictions in place art "unconstitutional." We're told that Inslee, who has the sense of a board fence and who really could screw up buttering toast, as no authority to do the things he's done under these circumstances.
It appears the question was addressed by the US Supreme Court awhile back:
I was a soldier for 14 years. I took the oath of enlistment and commissioning several times. It states:
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.I support this Constitution. I studied it for years in college. And I've worn this country's uniform to protect it.
And at no point was that document ever meant to be a death warrant.
We're told by many that the restrictions in place art "unconstitutional." We're told that Inslee, who has the sense of a board fence and who really could screw up buttering toast, as no authority to do the things he's done under these circumstances.
It appears the question was addressed by the US Supreme Court awhile back:
Regarding personal liberties VS state-issued stay-at-home and other pandemic orders, the US Supreme Court addressed this issue over 100 years ago, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts 197 U.S. 11(1905)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-constitutional-guide-to-emergency-powers-11584659429
“The Constitution,” Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote for a 7-2 majority, “does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.” Instead, “a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic.” Its members “may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.”
States also have the power, beyond criminal law enforcement, to make quarantine and isolation effective. If presented with widespread noncompliance, governors may call National Guard units to put their orders into force, to safeguard state property and infrastructure, and to maintain the peace. In some states, individuals who violate emergency orders can be detained without charge and held in isolation."
The authority of the State to enact this statute is to be referred to what is commonly called the police power -- a power which the State did not surrender when becoming a member of the Union under the Constitution. Although this court has refrained from any attempt to define the limits of that power, yet it has distinctly recognized the authority of a State to enact quarantine laws and "health laws of every description;" indeed, all laws that relate to matters completely within its territory and which do not, by their necessary operation, affect the people of other States. According to settled principles, the police power of a State must be held to embrace, at least, such reasonable regulations established directly by legislative enactment as will protect the public health and the public safety. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 22 U. S. 203; Railroad Company v. Husen, 95 U. S. 465, 95 U. S. 470; Beer Company v. Massachusetts, 97 U. S. 25; New Orleans Gas Co. v. Louisiana Light Co., 115 U. S. 650, 115 U. S. 661; Lawton v. Steele, 152 U. S. 133.
It is equally true that the State may invest local bodies called into existence for purposes of local administration with authority in some appropriate way to safeguard the public health and the public safety. The mode or manner in which those results are to be accomplished is within the discretion of the State, subject, of course, so far as Federal power is concerned, only to the condition that no rule prescribed by a State, nor any regulation adopted by a local governmental agency acting under the sanction of state legislation, shall contravene the Constitution of the United States or infringe any right granted or secured by that instrument. A local enactment or regulation, even if based on the acknowledged police powers of a State, must always yield in case of conflict with the exercise by the General Government of any power it possesses under the Constitution, or with any right which that instrument gives or secures. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 22 U. S. 210; Sinnot v. Davenport 22 How. 227, 63 U. S. 243; Missouri, Kansas & Texas Ry. Co. v. Haber, 169 U. S. 613, 169 U. S. 626.
Is it right, fair or just? Maybe. Maybe not.
Is it Constitutional?
Sure looks like it to me.
When I see people... people who know absolutely nothing about this issue... attempt to apply a Constitutional excuse for their positions, I frequently think how ignorant of the Constitution they really are.
That this is an indictment of the education plant is difficult to avoid as a conclusion. But that is a subject for another post.
On the tombstones of the dead who share the view that this is unconstitutional, I suggest that the phrase "Yes, he/she is dead. And his ignorance of the Constitution is what killed him/her, not the virus."
Some in the political realm are attempting to climb the political ladder on a pile of dead.
I will never vote for such a person, regardless of party.
Meanwhile, remember this: the Constitution was never meant to be a death warrant. And while business will suffer, business can be rebuilt.
People?
Not so much.
As I write this, 41,649 have died in this country from the Chinese Virus. Fewer and fewer people are engaging in the insanity of numerical comparisons between "flu" and this, as the numbers continue to grow as this pandemic goes on and the comparisons with already completed flu episodes begins to shrink.
Freedom isn't free. And freedom also has consequences.
Do whatever you like. But you... as so many others have proven... could be quite dead if you guess wrong.
Is it Constitutional?
Sure looks like it to me.
When I see people... people who know absolutely nothing about this issue... attempt to apply a Constitutional excuse for their positions, I frequently think how ignorant of the Constitution they really are.
That this is an indictment of the education plant is difficult to avoid as a conclusion. But that is a subject for another post.
On the tombstones of the dead who share the view that this is unconstitutional, I suggest that the phrase "Yes, he/she is dead. And his ignorance of the Constitution is what killed him/her, not the virus."
Some in the political realm are attempting to climb the political ladder on a pile of dead.
I will never vote for such a person, regardless of party.
Meanwhile, remember this: the Constitution was never meant to be a death warrant. And while business will suffer, business can be rebuilt.
People?
Not so much.
As I write this, 41,649 have died in this country from the Chinese Virus. Fewer and fewer people are engaging in the insanity of numerical comparisons between "flu" and this, as the numbers continue to grow as this pandemic goes on and the comparisons with already completed flu episodes begins to shrink.
Freedom isn't free. And freedom also has consequences.
Do whatever you like. But you... as so many others have proven... could be quite dead if you guess wrong.
