Tag: nanny state

“Necessary” Is Not a Constitutional Argument

I hear a lot of bad constitutional arguments justifying this or that federal action. One common justification for expanding federal power is: “This thing is necessary! It needs to be done.”

But it doesn’t follow that the federal government has to do the thing. In fact, the founding generation expected that the states and the people would do most of the “necessary things” – not the federal government.

Tench Coxe was a prominent and influential advocate for ratification of the Constitution and a delegate for Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress in 1788-1789. He later served as Secretary of the Treasury. He wrote three essays published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in early 1788 under the pen-name “A Freeman.”

In these essays, Coxe offered some of the most forceful arguments asserting the limited nature of the federal government under the proposed Constitution. He insisted that many, if not most, of the “necessary” things for society would be taken on by state and local governments, not the federal government.

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Kids as young as 11 years old would be able to consent to vaccinations under a new bill proposed in Washington, DC

A bill passed in Washington, DC, could allow children as young as 11 years old to get recommended vaccinations without permission from their parents or legal guardians.

The “Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act” bill passed in the DC Council by a 12-to-1 vote. It says if a doctor determines that a minor is “capable of meeting the informed consent standard,” then they could get government-recommended inoculations, like the HPV vaccine, even if their parents object to it for religious reasons. 

“A child needs to be protected against the dangers of things like measles, other diseases that cause death, and the community needs to be protected so that diseases that were once thought to be eliminated are not coming back,” Council member Mary Cheh said in an online press conference Tuesday, according to the DC Post. Cheh introduced the bill in March 2019.

The bill requires the Department of Health to produce information about vaccines that are age-appropriate. And, if it becomes law, the bill stipulates that doctors would be required to bill insurers directly, and send the vaccination records to the kid’s school “if the parent is utilizing a religious exemption.” 

The Washington Post reported that Trayon White Sr., who is the only council member to vote against the bill, said he believes age 11 is too young to make an independent medical decision about one’s health. 

“Parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education and care of their children,” White said, later falsely claiming vaccines are dangerous for children.

The Post reported that White, who has a 12-year-old child, cited the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to argue the point, but that agency has been widely used by conspiracy theorists.

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An Overdue Rebuke to Politicians Who Think Anything Goes in a Pandemic

Last Friday the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that a law Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) used to shutter businesses and confine people to their homes except for Whitmer-approved purposes improperly delegated legislative functions to the executive branch. And last month a federal judge in Pennsylvania said that state’s lockdown violated the right of assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment, along with the 14th Amendment’s guarantees of due process and equal protection.

Both decisions uphold a principle that politicians across the country seemed to forget while they rushed to curtail the epidemic last spring. As U.S. District Judge William Stickman put it in the Pennsylvania case, “the Constitution sets certain lines that may not be crossed, even in an emergency.”

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‘Twindemic’ test: Massachusetts, many colleges mandate winter flu shots

Protesters have swarmed downtown Boston and the state Capitol in the seven weeks since Republican Gov. Charlie Baker issued the first-of-its-kind requirement for students from preschool through college.As the Massachusetts mandate plays out, other states have weighed similar requirements while colleges throughout the country pile on their own orders to prevent flu patients from clogging doctors offices and emergency rooms alongside people infected with coronavirus this winter.

State laws across the country already require various vaccines for students and health care workers, while allowing a host of exemptions. Governments still have broad authority to implement new flu shot orders, potentially paving the way for mandatory inoculation against the coronavirus in a country where vaccine skepticismis spreading and President Donald Trump has resisted many public health protocols during the pandemic.

“This is a brave new experiment by the state of Massachusetts,” said Lawrence Gostin, who heads a university-based center on health law that serves as an official collaborating institute with the World Health Organization. “If it turns out to be a wholesale success, that should influence other states to go a similar route, not just with flu but with other vaccines. But if it causes a backlash and only marginal benefit, states might be hesitant to adopt that model in the future.”

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