NO GAMBLING = A HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION?
Six Norfolk and Virginia Beach business owners have sued the Commonwealth in hopes of keeping skill games in operation beyond July 1 — the day they are scheduled to be banned. Attorneys argued that the loss of the games — often found in convenience stores, bars, and restaurants — will “substantially affect, damage, and hinder” their clients’ businesses, “potentially to the point of insolvency and closure.” Further, it describes the law banning them as “discriminatory,” in that similar games such as historic horse racing terminals will still be legal. The attorneys are asking a judge to halt the law’s effective date while Attorney General Mark Herring investigates the matter as a possible violation of the Virginia Human Rights Act.
Business owners receive a cut of the money gambled. Their interest is understandable.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, human rights are the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are considered to be entitled, often held to include the rights to life, liberty, equality, and a fair trial, freedom from slavery and torture, and freedom of thought and expression. Not being able to gamble is a violation of human rights? Really?
No.
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IS IDEOLOGY INFECTIOUS, CAUSING INSANITY?
It used to be that members of Congress were accorded a modicum of respect. Far too many of them have engaged in outrageous behavior that has all but destroyed that regard.
Bob Good (VA-5), who campaigned as a “biblical conservative,” recently joined Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in calling for the firing of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and, to many, the one voice to be relied upon on during the past 15 months for clear guidance about COVID-19.
While Good and Taylor know they, of course, cannot fire him, they have proposed legislation stripping him of his salary. The two joined with others who focused on the lockdowns that affected US schools and businesses last year, blaming Fauci for “ridiculous policies that locked down our churches and small businesses.”
The chorus accused him of misleading the public by shifting his guidance on mask-wearing and details of how the virus is transmitted — even though he and other leading scientists have defended the updates to those recommendations as the expected result of learning more about a brand-new health threat. Fauci responded calmly:
“As a scientist, as a health official, when those data change, when you get more information, it’s essential that you change your position because you have to be guided by the science and the current data.”
A rational statement, as opposed to that of a few congressional Republicans, whose views don’t change, despite facts that do.
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‘GUN SANCTUARY’ COUNTY FAILS GUN RUNNER
Despite living in a Second Amendment sanctuary jurisdiction, a Spotsylvania man (“Spotsy” in local newspeak) was recently found guilty of the straw purchasing of multiple firearms. According to federal court records, the individual got two Spotsylvania women to purchase a total of 62 guns for him between 2018 and 2020. He couldn’t legally make the purchases himself due to a 2011 felony conviction in New York on a firearms-related offense.
Conveniently, the man is already incarcerated, serving a four-year sentence he received in Spotsylvania Circuit Court in April stemming from drug-related convictions. In December 2019, Spotsy adopted a resolution avowing it to be a “Second Amendment” sanctuary, prohibiting the expenditure of government funds to enforce gun control laws.
But the county’s attempt at nullification does not apply to Uncle Sam.
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Categories: AROUND THE NOVAHOOD, CIVIL RIGHTS, crime and punishment, gun control, Issues, Local, police, POLICING, RULE OF LAW, State
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