Law prof: Blas’ Vax Mandate v. the Constitution
The constitutionality of Mayor de Blasio’s vaccine mandate “will turn primarily on Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), in which the Supreme Court upheld a smallpox vaccination law,” predicts law prof Eugene Kontorovich at The Wall Street Journal. The court said government can defend itself against disease via “reasonable” measures. Yet de Blasio’s mandate “goes far beyond” the precedent’s reasoning: Smallpox killed 30 percent of those infected, “disproportionately” slamming kids. COVID “is serious, but it’s in a different league.” In Jacobson, the town of Cambridge imposed a one-time fine of $5 (roughly $160 today). Though de Blasio has yet to announce details of his plan, it could threaten livelihoods. “A one-time fine for the unvaccinated might be reasonable,” but “forbidding them from earning a living goes much too far.”
Foreign desk: Better Late Than Never on Putin
Tuesday “was a good sign that the Biden administration realizes it can’t ignore Russia any longer,” cheers National Review’s Jim Geraghty. Team Biden has ’til now “talked a good game about standing up to” Moscow yet “inched away from any actual conflict.” But it spent “a good portion of” a virtual summit “attempting to send a clear message to Vladimir Putin and galvanize US allies in order to deter further Russian aggression against Ukraine.” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, “President Biden looked President Putin in the eye and told him today that things we did not do in 2014 we are prepared to do now.” The “administration is trying to play catch-up,” but at least “these former Obama administration officials recognize that they dropped the ball last time.”
Conservative: Biden’s Diplomacy of Disaster
“The State Department’s envoys are back in Vienna in the hope of starting a seventh round of negotiations over reviving Obama’s ‘Iran deal,’ ” notes Dominic Green at Spectator World. “But there seems to be nothing left to talk about. Iran is increasingly intransigent, and its latest demands give the US and its allies a choice between surrender or defeat.” The first mistake: “Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his chief negotiator Robert Malley promised Iran what it wanted — sanctions relief and an open path to the Bomb — before the negotiations had even begun. Naturally, the Iranians pushed for more, played for time and prepared for the day of victory.” They’ve now “announced a new set of demands that undo the hypothetical progress achieved in the previous six rounds of talks. Checkmate.” Bottom line: “The best-case scenario now is a nuclear cold war in the Middle East.”
Urban wonk: How Progressive Cities Feed Crime
“Today the centre of American crime is increasingly to be found on the West Coast, within some of the country’s wealthiest and most celebrated cities,” observes Joel Kotkin at UnHerd. The explanation isn’t “the traditional link between poverty and crime” but policy: “Virtually all the cities with the most notable crime outbreaks — San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles — are places with progressive prosecutors working to limit punishments for looters, organized thieves and the unruly, occasionally violent, homeless.” And this “lax legal environment has made west coast cities the happy hunting ground for ‘smash and grab’ thieves on a hitherto unprecedented scale.” Get ready for Republicans to win big come election season: “Tolerance of crime doesn’t pay.”
Pandemic watch: Boosters Help v. Omicron
“Preliminary laboratory research by Pfizer/BioNTech finds that a third booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine successfully neutralizes — that is, blocks — the omicron variant of the virus from entering and infecting cells,” reports Ron Bailey at Reason. And while the initial two shots are far “less likely to neutralize the omicron variant than they are for earlier versions . . . people may still be protected against severe forms of the disease.” These preliminary results argue for getting all your jabs — and if they don’t hold up, new “inoculations that specifically target the omicron variant” could be available as soon as March.
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
