WDBD FOX 40 Jackson MS Local News, Weather and Sports

WDBD Television for Jackson, MS

Andrew McCarthy

Andrew McCarthy: On coronavirus restrictions, burden of proof is on government to show justification

Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox.  Sign up here. 

There is never a good time for a pandemic, but an election year in a deeply divided country is an especially bad time. Everything is politicized. I would add that even science is politicized, but that would suggest that this was something new.

Sadly, we’re inured to the politicization of science, thanks to climate change and to the centrality of government funding to academic endeavors. Research resources are diverted toward our political conflicts, rather than being freely allocated where they could better advance the search for truth.

The politicization of science has ingrained in our political life something about which we ought to be highly skeptical: The argument from authority. It is doing extraordinary damage to the republic, through governmental responses — federal, state and municipal — to the coronavirus.

BRANDON JUDD: AS CORONAVIRUS SENDS UNEMPLOYMENT SKYROCKETING, TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS CLEARLY NEEDED

And it will keep doing damage unless and until we restore the burden of proof.

There is no doubt that governments have a compelling interest in public safety, which includes preventing the spread of a potentially deadly infectious disease.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR OPINION NEWSLETTER

It is nevertheless the foundational conceit of the American republic that governments are created to secure the fundamental rights of a nation’s citizens — our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Moreover, the legitimacy of government is dependent on the consent of the governed.

In the United States, authority is subordinate to liberty. Government is the servant, not the master.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Andrew McCarthy: On projections of coronavirus deaths, government uses unreliable model

Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox.  Sign up here.

To describe as stunning the collapse of a key model the government has used to alarm the nation about the catastrophic threat of the coronavirus would not do this development justice.

In a space of just six days starting April 2, two revisions (on Sunday and Wednesday) have utterly discredited the model produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

I wrote about the IHME’s modeling at National Review on Monday, the day after the first revision — which was dramatic, but pales in comparison to Wednesday’s reassessment. This was not immediately apparent because the latest revision (Wednesday) did not include a side-by-side comparison, as did the Sunday revision.

MEET THE FORMER NYT REPORTER WHO IS CHALLENGING THE CORONAVIRUS NARRATIVE

Perusal of the new data, however, is staggering, as is what it says about government predictions we were hearing just days ago about the likelihood of 100,000 deaths, with as many as 240,000 a real possibility.

As I noted in my last post on this subject, by Sunday the projection of likely deaths had plunged 12 percent in just three days, 93,531 to 81,766. Understand, this projection is drawn from a range; on April 2, IHME was telling us cumulative COVID-19 deaths could reach as high as approximately 178,000. The upper range was also reduced on Sunday to about 136,000.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR OPINION NEWSLETTER

On Wednesday, the projected cumulative deaths were slashed to 60,145 (with the upper range again cut, to about 126,000). That is, in less than a week, the model proved to be off by more than 33 percent.

My use of the term “off” is intentional. There is no shortage of government spin, regurgitated by media commentators, assuring us that the drastic reductions in the projections over just a few days powerfully illustrate how well social distancing and the substantial shuttering of the economy is working.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Nonsense. As Alex Berenson points out on Twitter, with an accompanying screenshot data updated by IHME on April 1, the original April 2 model was explicitly “assuming full social distancing through May 2020.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN IN THE NATIONAL REVIEW

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY ANDREW MCCARTHY

Andrew McCarthy: Mueller’s charges against Russian firms dismissed — other shoe drops in collusion farce

More than an investigation, the Mueller probe was the wellspring of a political narrative. That becomes clearer as time goes by and more information ekes out … such as new confirmation that, months before Mueller was appointed in May 2017, it was already well understood in Justice Department circles that there was no case of criminal “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER

Never was that made more obvious than by the Justice Department’s quiet announcement late Monday, under the five-alarm noise of the coronavirus scare, that it has dropped the special counsel’s indictment of Russian companies — an outcome I predicted here at National Review nearly two years ago.

A little refresher is in order.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

As detailed here many times, one of the biggest problems confronting those weaving the collusion tale was the inability to prove that Russia hacked the Democratic email accounts. As “Ball of Collusion” outlines, that’s not the only fundamental problem. There is also the fact that the Democratic emails, in which Hillary Clinton was not an active correspondent, did not actually hurt her campaign at all — certainly not the way her own email scandal did (a scandal for which there was no way to blame Moscow).

There is also the dearth of evidence that the Trump campaign was even aware of, much less complicit in, Kremlin intelligence operations. Still, very basically, it would be impossible to prove that Trump had conspired in Russia’s hacking unless prosecutors could first establish that Russia had done the hacking.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING ANDREW McCARTHY’S COLUMN IN THE NATIONAL REVIEW

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM ANDREW McCARTHY

Andrew McCarthy: No to ‘FISA reform’

Is FISA reform believable?

Fox News contributor and attorney Andrew McCarthy says the ‘Washington playbook’ prefers to do FISA court reforms instead of proper investigations.

Thanks to Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky.,  and Mike Lee, R-Utah, as well as an amen chorus of Trump loyalists in the House, the president seems poised to fulfill one of the fondest dreams of Clinton and Obama Democrats: Government policy that regards international terrorism as a mere crime, a law-enforcement issue to be managed by federal judges rather than a national-security threat from which the officials Americans elect must safeguard our country.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER

I doubt the president realizes these ramifications of declining to reauthorize three Patriot Act security measures that are set to expire. Successfully camouflaging themselves as “FISA reformers,” Sens. Paul and Lee have steered the president toward exploiting the imminent expiration as a way of holding the FBI accountable for FISA abuse.

In truth, the senators’ agenda predates the Trump era, and it would do nothing to fix what’s actually wrong with FISA. Their aim is to dismantle the post-9/11 intelligence-based approach to counterterrorism, a strategy prudently adopted by President Bush, who recognized that when our most immediate threat is jihadist mass-murder attacks, prevention should take precedence over prosecution. “FISA reform” is a shrewd way for them to accomplish this objective because it appeals to the president’s vanity — his most destructive blind spot.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

See, the libertarian senators have always opposed intelligence-based counterterrorism on philosophical grounds that they root in the Constitution. They are wrong, though their sincerity is not to be doubted. As I’ve related over the years (see, e.g., here and here), the distortion of the Fourth Amendment Paul has long championed (and to which Lee seems adherent) bears little resemblance to the Fourth Amendment as written and originally understood. If adopted, it would be a boon to both foreign terrorists and domestic criminals.

Washington’s reluctance to court this potentially catastrophic outcome has long frustrated libertarians, as have the facts that jurisprudence and the terrorist threat have lined up against them. But in recent years, things have started swinging in their favor.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING ANDREW McCARTHY’S COLUMN IN THE NATIONAL REVIEW

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM ANDREW McCARTHY

Andrew McCarthy: Schumer threats to justices in abortion case show Supreme Court is a political institution

Should Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., be censured? Of course he should, in the sense that the rule of law, were it actually our cynosure, would cry out for it.

On Wednesday morning, the Democrats’ Senate minority leader stirred up the mob outside the Supreme Court, unabashedly threatening Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price,” Schumer inveighed. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER

Inside, the justices were then hearing argument on what ought to be a straightforward abortion case (i.e., one in which the “right” invented in Roe v. Wade is not up for consideration). When called on his menacing remarks, rather than apologize, Schumer brazenly lied about what he had done. Thursday morning he was still lying — a tepid apology, offered under pressure while insisting that “in no way was I making a threat.”

TRUMP REBUKES SCHUMER OVER THREAT TO GORSUCH, KAVANAUGH: ‘A DISGRACE HE WAS ABLE TO SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT’

In a rule-of-law society, that should rate censure. Case closed.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Except it’s not closed, because we are not a rule-of-law society. We just pretend to be. In a rule-of-law society, a mob would not gather on the steps of the courthouse in the first place.

Why is the mob out there?

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING ANDREW MCCARTHY’S COLUMN IN THE NATIONAL REVIEW

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM ANDREW MCCARTHY

Andrew McCarthy: Trump’s curious New York Times libel lawsuit

President Trump is getting bad legal advice and bad political advice. Or, if he’s going on his own instincts, maybe that most mystifying trait of his has yet again reared its head: He just can’t stand prosperity or coast on good news. Whatever the case, this is not the right time — not that there would ever be a right time — to file a frivolous libel lawsuit against the New York Times, a suit that will put him on the defensive when he should be playing election-year offense.

This may have been the best week of the Trump presidency. Apparently poised to nominate an unabashed socialist as their 2020 standard-bearer, Democrats are panicking over the potential ramifications, including the down-ballot fallout. Meanwhile, Trump’s poll numbers are up, and he just had a successful visit to India, a country of great importance.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER

Even amid a stock-market plunge, Trump held the best press conference of his presidency on Wednesday evening. Yes, it’s early and a lot could go wrong. His administration, though, appears to be managing the coronavirus outbreak well. With Democrats shamefully trying to stoke panic, the president made like the adult in the room, urging calm and bipartisanship. Of course, we’re talking about Washington, so “calm and bipartisanship” have to be graded on a curve: Trump did call House speaker Nancy Pelosi “incompetent” and took the obligatory shot at Senate minority leader “Cryin’” Chuck Schumer. But these fleeting jabs were fair response to their targets’ demagogic sniping. Plus, Trump’s point needed making: They are undermining the cooperation the country needs from its elected leaders in a potential health crisis.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

So things are going Trump’s way. It is hard to imagine a worse moment for the president (through his 2020 campaign) to file his libel suit, the gravamen of which is a March 2019 op-ed by the Times’s former executive editor, Max Frankel.

The defamation claim is patently meritless. As a matter of law, opinion cannot be defamation, period. And Frankel’s essay was an opinion piece: It was expressly written as the author’s opinion and published in the opinion section of the paper. Drawing on reported news and mostly undisputed facts, Frankel argued that there must have been “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Putin regime during the 2016 election. The piece focused on the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, in which the top tier of the Trump campaign knowingly welcomed Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer connected to the Russian regime, who had promised information that would harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING ANDREW McCARTHY’S COLUMN IN THE NATIONAL REVIEW

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM ANDREW McCARTHY

Andrew McCarthy: In Trump impeachment trial, Senate right to block new witness testimony

The Senate was right to vote Friday against hearing new witness testimony at President Trump’s impeachment trial. The Democrats’ demand for new witnesses at the trial was a red herring – a talking point that had some surface appeal but, upon scrutiny, was nonsense.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the other impeachment managers claim that there have been no witnesses in the trial. They said before the Senate voted 51-49 Friday to block more witnesses that if Republicans did note vote to approve subpoenas for former National Security Adviser John Bolton, among other top current and former administration officials, that the trial will be a “sham” – an exercise in “cover-up.” You can’t have a real trial, was their refrain, unless witnesses are called.

It is nonsense. There have been plenty of witnesses. Schiff’s problem is that the additional witnesses he wanted to call would not change what has already been proved in any meaningful way.

GOP BLOCKS WITNESSES IN SENATE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL, AS FINAL VOTE COULD DRAG TO NEXT WEEK

Obviously, what’s happening in the Senate is not a trial in any familiar sense. We are used to judicial trials. Impeachment presents something completely different, a Senate trial. The Senate is a political body, not a law court.

More from Opinion

In the Senate, there are no trial procedures like those that govern judicial trials. The federal rules of evidence do not apply. Neither do the rules of criminal or civil procedure. You could not have a judicial trial without these rules.

In stark contrast, the Senate trial has featured a mountain of hearsay, press reports read into the record, witnesses testifying about their opinions on subjects they are utterly unqualified to opine on, and so on. None of that would be permitted in a judicial trial.

Even Chief Justice John Roberts – though he is a federal judge, is wearing his robe, and occupies a desk raised above the well – is not sitting as a judge in the usual sense. Under the Constitution, the Senate has the sole power over impeachment trials. The chief justice does not have power over the proceedings as he would in a court.

The Democrats’ problem is not that they’ve been stopped from proving their case. They did prove their case … but their case is, at best, a petty crime, while impeachment is akin to capital punishment

In the impeachment trial, Roberts is the presiding officer, not the judge. The Senate is the judge. For the sake of moving things along, the chief justice is ostensibly permitted to make rulings (for example, his refusal to allow a question from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., relating to the so-called “whistleblower”). But any ruling Roberts makes can be overruled by the Senate.

Remember, ordinarily the vice president is the presiding officer in Senate proceedings. But the framers realized that it would be inappropriate for the vice president to preside over an impeachment trial of the president. To avoid the obvious conflicts of interest, the chief justice was substituted for that purpose. But the task is ministerial, not judicial.

Just as the role of the judge and the governing rules in a Senate impeachment trial are night-and-day different from what takes places in a judicial trial, so too is the manner of presenting witness testimony.

In point of fact, there have been over a dozen witnesses at the impeachment trial. They have not physically come into the Senate and testified. Rather, they testified in the House investigation. Their testimony is all in the record of the Senate trial, and both the House managers and the president’s counsel relied on it in making their arguments.

That is actually not much of a departure from judicial trials. Routinely, in an effort to complete a trial expeditiously, opposing parties enter witness stipulations. These are agreements that, “if X were to be called as a witness, X would testify as follows” – with the two sides then summarizing what they mutually agree with witness would say.

The lawyers do not have to agree on why the testimony is relevant or whether it is true; just that their summary accurately reflects what the witness’ testimony would be if he or she came to court.

In effect, that is what has happened in the impeachment trial. Both sides are assuming that the many witnesses who testified before the House would give exactly the same testimony in the Senate that they gave in the House.

Another salient difference between judicial trials and the Senate impeachment trial is motion practice. In a normal criminal case, for example, there is no guarantee that any witnesses will testify. Instead, the defendant is permitted to make pretrial motions seeking dismissal of the charges – including on the ground that the indictment fails to state a cognizable offense.

When such a motion is made, the judge assumes for argument’s sake that all of the factual claims the prosecutors have made are true.

If the judge grants the motion, it means that even if all the testimony and documentary evidence came out precisely the way the prosecutors have alleged they would come out, the case still has to be dismissed because the charges are legally insufficient. There is thus no need to call witnesses – end of story.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR OPINION NEWSLETTER

If that procedure had been available in the Senate trial, the case would have been thrown out without any witnesses.

The consensus position of Republican senators is what Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., announced as his conclusion on Thursday night: The Democratic House managers proved their case that the president pressured Ukraine to conduct investigations that might help him politically; but the allegation does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense – because there ultimately were no investigations, because Ukraine got its U.S. aid and was not harmed, because it was lawful (even if unwise) for Trump to ask Ukraine to look into the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son for purposes of rooting out corruption, and so on.

Republicans have drawn that conclusion based on hundreds of hours of witness testimony set forth in thousands of pages of transcripts and available for viewing on video recordings. There has been plenty of witness testimony.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The important consideration when it came to Bolton is not whether he would physically show up in the Senate chamber, take the oath, and give testimony. It was whether his testimony would change anything. It wouldn’t. If he testified in a manner that is consistent with press reporting about his soon-to-be-published memoir, it would prove that the president pressured Ukraine for investigations.

The House managers have already proved that.

There is no need to belabor the point. The Democrats’ problem is not that they’ve been stopped from proving their case. They did prove their case … but their case is, at best, a petty crime, while impeachment is akin to capital punishment. It’s not that we approve of petty crime; it’s that petty crime is not a capital case. And even if Bolton testified, it wouldn’t become one.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY ANDREW MCCARTHY

Andrew McCarthy: Trump Senate impeachment trial – The questions that need to be answered now

We have at last reached the impeachment trial phase in which senators are given the opportunity to address questions to each side. Questions by the Republicans and Democrats are to be submitted and vetted by their respective leadership to avoid duplication and irrelevancy. They will then be submitted to Chief Justice John Roberts, who will pose them alternately to the House impeachment managers and President Trump’s defense team.

Each side presumptively has five minutes to answer, with the caveat that, on rare occasions when a question truly demands it, the party’s time to respond may be expanded slightly. This process will go on for no more than 16 hours – eight hours over the next two days.

Everyone who has been observing the Ukraine kerfuffle through the House impeachment inquiry and the Senate trial probably has some questions. I doubt close watchers will have very many, though.

JENNA ELLIS: TRUMP SENATE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL – HERE’S WHERE THINGS STAND NOW, WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN NEXT

More from Opinion

The case against the president is very thin, in the sense that a finite set of events that took place over a relatively short time to an inconclusive end has been lavished with months of investigative attention, with the result that the Democratic-controlled House, on a strictly party-line vote, voted two articles of impeachment. The charges are so vague that Democrats repeatedly shifted their theory about what to call the president’s alleged misconduct – campaign-finance violation, attempted extortion, quid pro quo, bribery, and more recently, a budget-law transgression – before ultimately settling on a nebulous “abuse of power” claim, coupled with obstruction of the House’s inquiry.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

We all have a good idea where things stand, and thus most of us are probably skeptical that this phase of questions by the Senate could change any minds.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING ANDREW McCARTHY’S COLUMN IN THE NATIONAL REVIEW

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM ANDREW McCARTHY

Andrew McCarthy: Trump impeachment trial should let him justify why he wanted Bidens investigated

When you get to court, though, you are horrified to learn that the judge is excluding your defense. The prosecutors peremptorily assert that it’s all a big lie. The judge doesn’t want to hear your constitutional claims about the rights to present a defense and call witnesses; your motion to subpoena evidence is denied.

Then, at the trial, not only do the prosecutors establish that you planned to take millions from the bank; they tell the jury there was not a shred of evidence that you had any legitimate collateral or business investment prospects. The whole thing, they insist, was a scam.

That is, they stop you from presenting your defense, and then they argue that you should be convicted because you have no defense.

TRUMP LEGAL TEAM GOES ON OFFENSE IN IMPEACHMENT TRIAL, ACCUSE DEMOCRATS OF ‘MASSIVE’ ELECTION INTERFERENCE

It sounds like something out of Kafka. It would never be tolerated in the U.S. judicial system: no competent judge would bar an accused from attempting to prove his defense; and if one did, any conviction would be reversed on appeal.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR OPINION NEWSLETTER

It would not matter whether the prosecutor’s proof was convincing; having one’s day in court means having an opportunity to present any exculpatory evidence.

Yet, what I’ve just described is essentially what House Democrats have done to President Trump in the Senate impeachment trial on the matter of the Bidens and Burisma.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

One of the most effective summations in the House impeachment managers’ presentation to the Senate on Thursday was given by Representative Sylvia Garcia, a freshman Democrat from Texas who used to be the presiding judge in Houston’s municipal court system.

Garcia took direct aim at claims about suspected Biden self-dealing in Ukraine that have been advanced by President Trump and his defenders, particularly House Republicans and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s private lawyer.

CLICK HERE TO FINISH READING THIS COLUMN IN THE NATIONAL REVIEW

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY ANDREW MCCARTHY

Andrew McCarthy: Trump impeachment trial and McConnell’s proposed resolution — The battle over witnesses

It is already easy to see what is likely to be the principal Democratic objection to the impeachment trial procedures resolution proposed by Senator McConnell.

The resolution would defer the question of whether witnesses and additional documentary evidence should be subpoenaed until the conclusion of the trial — i.e., the point at which Senators have not only heard lawyers for both sides present their case (over 48 hours) but have also asked follow up questions (16 hours), heard closing arguments (4 hours) and begun to deliberate on a verdict.

Obviously, Democrats are going to argue that they want to hear from such witnesses as former National Security Adviser John Bolton (and, perhaps, Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney) because those witnesses, and any related documentary evidence, are part of the House managers’ impeachment case.

SENATE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL SET TO BEGIN AS TRUMP ADDS LAST-MINUTE REINFORCEMENTS TO DEFENSE TEAM

That is, Democrats will insist that they are not pressing new allegations (in effect, lodging additional articles of impeachment); rather, these witnesses have testimony that is directly relevant to the two articles of impeachment, and that specifically addresses matters that the president himself raises in his trial submissions (e.g., the questions whether there was a quid pro quo and whether the president took any actions that were inappropriate).

Since the testimony bears directly on the two pending impeachment articles, Democrats will argue that it is part of the case they care about presenting. It should therefore be fully developed before the Senators begin asking their 16 hours of question and certainly before closing arguments and deliberations.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER

Of course, Republicans will counter that if the witnesses and documents in question were such a crucial part of the case, then the House should have made a better effort to obtain the testimony during its impeachment inquiry. Having failed to do so — and, indeed, having strategically opted to forego court litigation and instead file an article of impeachment for the purported obstruction of the House investigation — the Democrats should not be heard to complain.

More from Opinion

As long as the rules provide for the possibility of subpoenaing and interviewing new witnesses at some point, the Democrats are not prejudiced if that issue is deferred until after the Senate considers the case as it was actually charged by the House.

This is likely to be the debate that dominates the first real day of the impeachment trial on Tuesday.

One final point. The inclusion of new witnesses would not necessarily lengthen the trial by many weeks, as is sometimes suggested — although it could.

As I posited on Monday, there could be a compromise, reminiscent of the Clinton impeachment trial, in which any witnesses are privately deposed outside the public impeachment trial. Then, both sides could argue over what portions of the testimony are relevant and admissible — grappling with issues of privilege.

In the end, snippets of the pertinent testimony could be played in the public trial before the Senate. The effect would be to boil down long hours of witness interviews into a comparatively short, tight video presentation.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Senator McConnell’s resolution proposes something along these lines. Any witnesses who are subpoenaed would first be deposed, and then the Senate would decide after the deposition which, if any, of those witnesses would testify at the trial, “pursuant to impeachment rules.” I could easily see a rule, mirroring the Clinton impeachment rule, in which that testimony would consist of video extracts from the depositions, rather than bringing the witness into the well of the Senate for live (unscripted) testimony.

If that happens, the trial could be wrapped up in less than three weeks, especially in light of the breakneck pace anticipated by Senator McConnell’s resolution.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM ANDREW McCARTHY