December 17, 2020

This is becoming a problem - another politician ignores restrictions

How can we effectively communicate the seriousness of staying at home, wearing a mask, and social distancing when the people we elect to promote these things keep getting caught ignoring them?

https://www.newsweek.com/rhode-island-governor-attends-wine-paint-event-after-urging-people-avoid-nonessential-activities-1555672

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo was photographed last week attending a wine and paint event, just a few days after she urged the state's residents to avoid all nonessential activities amid the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.

According to WLNE-TV, the photo of Raimondo was taken by Erica Oliveras on December 11 while the governor and her husband, Andy Moffit, attended a wine and paint event at Barnaby's Public House in Providence.

Susan Goodman, a Providence resident, told WLNE that the governor, "shouldn't even be at an event like that."

We can't have one law for the rulers and one for the ruled. I haven't been in a sit-down restaurant since all this began. I've been vigilant. I haven't seen close friends since February.

I don't know how it is for anyone else, but here in California, people are still furious with Gavin Newsom and London Breed for ignoring restrictions after they lectured everyone else to stop their social activities.

We have to start acknowledging that too many of our prominent own are getting caught out like this and increasing skepticism, if not fueling conspiracies, that they don't actually believe in what they're instructing the average citizen.

December 15, 2020

SCOTUS declines to hear gay marriage case (this is good for us)

Even with ACB, they seem inclined to leave precedent alone for the time being.

The Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari Monday in a case that threatened to chip away at marriage equality. The Court’s denial will disallow Indiana’s effort to discriminate against same-sex couples, and will continue to preserve the meaning of Obergefell v. Hodges.

Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill (R) took the position in Box v. Henderson that same-sex spouses should not have the same rights to be listed on state-issued birth certificates as opposite-sex spouses. The case arose as the result of several lesbian couples who conceived via artificial insemination; Indiana refused to list birth mothers’ wives on their children’s official birth certificates, but regularly listed birth mothers’ husbands on birth certificates without additional requirement.

The same issue had been raised in response to Arkansas’ identical practice in Pavan v. Smith—a 2017 Supreme Court case in which the Court also sided with the same-sex parents. A few months after Pavan, a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit heard oral arguments in Box v. Henderson. However, the Seventh Circuit waited nearly three years–in time for SCOTUS to include two Trump-appointees—before handing down a unanimous ruling in favor of the same-sex parents in Box v. Henderson.

By the time Indiana appealed its loss at the Seventh Circuit, SCOTUS would include Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and many court-watchers wondered whether the change to the bench would result in the Court’s eroding its landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges to allow the discrimination Indiana sought to conduct.

https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/even-with-three-trump-appointed-justices-on-the-bench-scotus-declines-to-roll-back-marriage-equality/