In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I mentioned yestrday that the bad-clown-in-the-day-care moral panic, which began about1983, didn't end until the Waco massacre ten years later. This is because Janet Reno, who was Bill Clinton's attorney general from 1993 to 2001, built her career as Florida state attorney by bringing well-publicized day care toddler rape cases, and she approved the FBI's disastrous final raid on the Branch Davidian compound when she was told children were being abused inside. The McMartin preschool case in California sticks most prominently in memory of that period, but the moral entrepreneurs and prosecutors in that case never prospered. Janet Reno was a different matter. According to Wikipedia, During Reno's tenure as state attorney, she began what the PBS series Frontline described as a "crusade" against accused child abusers. Reno pioneered the "Miami Method,""a controversial technique for eliciting intimate details from young children and in...

News of new regional lockdowns in the UK has begun to reach US outlets . I'm even less able to talk insightfully about the UK than I am about Canada, so I don't intend to go into detail, except insofar as the UK situation gives what I think is a comparative view of the global moral panic. But as a distant observer, it does seem to me that the UK public throughout the 20th century was willing to take a lot more abuse from its political class, from the First War, through the Depression, Second War rationing, and postwar socialist austerity than the US public would ever have allowed, and apparenly this now continues. Just sayin'. A vistior forwarded to me a message from someone in the UK who isn't with the program: Greetings from Tier 4. We had the body bags delivered yesterday with instructions. We have to hang a white sheet out of the window when someone dies and they will be collected. Another 5 neighbours died yesterday. The rest have left for the co...

After mass yesterday, I asked our pastor if, in response to the LA County relaxation of its prohibition on indoor worship, there were any plans afoot to resume it at our parish. (There had been no announcement about any change at mass itself.) It turns out that he was completely unaware of the situation, which is partly understandable, since the press release was issued only late Saturday. But he also said, "There's been nothing from the archdiocese." That strongly suggests to me that the process was anything but consultative. Our pastor said, "We keep lobbying, but. . ." This seems consistent with remarks by Abp Cordileone in San Francisco that his archdiocese keeps submitting plans for safe reopening but never gets a reply. So it seems safe to assume that the county revised its decree without any sort of discussion with religious leaders, and it apparently gave them no heads-up about the change. So they could plan for Christmas, after all. Does "Dr...

Buried in a hysterical press release yesterday on "soaring" COVID hospitalizations, this appeared midway down: The Los Angeles County Health Officer Order will be modified today to align with recent Supreme Court rulings for places of worship. Places of worship are permitted to offer faith-based services both indoors and outdoors with mandatory physical distancing and face coverings over both the nose and mouth that must be worn at all times while on site. Places of worship must also assure that attendance does not exceed the number of people who can be accommodated while maintaining a physical distance of six feet between separate households. LA County's has been among the most stubborn lockdown regimes, but it's becoming plain that the US Supreme Court's Diocese of Brooklyn order is forcing civil authorities to pull back. The wording in yesterday's modification is vague, saying that churches "must also assure that attendance does not exceed the...

Liberty Counsel has announced that the State of Colorado has dropped its suit against Andrew Wommack Ministries, which I covered as the case was under way on the old blog, back in October . This came in the wake of Gov Polis's, removal of numerical caps on worship services, which in turn was a direct result of the US Supreme Court's action in the Diocese of Brooklyn case on November 24. On December 16, District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser relaxed the attendance cap on churches in the District following the Archdiocese of Washington's suit. On Wednesday D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser removed the 50-person limit for religious gatherings and allowed houses of worship to welcome up to 250 people or reach 25% capacity. The Mayor’s office made the adjustment five days after the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington sued the mayor over attendance caps. While the order eases restrictions on religious gatherings, its language emphasizes the increasing severity of the cor...

In a development that's drawn a great deal of attention, San Diego Superior Court Judge Joel Wohlfeil on November 11 granted a request for a temporary injunction that stops “any government entity or law enforcement officer from enforcing the provisions of the cease-and-desist orders” filed against two establishments — Pacers Showgirls International and Cheetahs Gentlemen’s Club — provided both locations follow extensive measures designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus on their premises. At the time, this was a temporary restraining order pending the outcome of a hearing scheduled for December. Since the order, Gov Newsom issued more restrictive regional orders that closed both indoor and outdoor dining, limiting restaurants to takeout only. On December 16, Wohlfeil issued his final order : In the nine-page ruling, San Diego County Superior Court Judge Joel R. Wohlfeil issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the cease-and-desist order from being enforced on...

I've been looking for good data on COVID for quite some time, and the more I look, the harder it is to find. For instance, I went looking for a rolling 7-day average of COVID deaths in the US nationally, and what I find in CDC data is at best confusing. For instance, the CDC appears to combine "deaths due to pneumonia, influenza and COVID-19 (PIC)" in its reports -- but naturally, that's not what I'm looking for. I want to know what the numbers are for COVID specifically. and I'm not sure if this is ever broken out. A site called the COVID Tracking Project has charts that provide 7-day rollling averages for tests, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. If I google "US daily COVID deaths", I get a google site that lists one total (3611 for December 16), while the COVID Tracking project site gives a different total (3400 for December 16). The last 7-day average on the COVID Tracking Project site was 2400 on December 15. The last rolling 7-day aver...