New York AG appealing ruling that prevented Democratic governor from throwing Americans in quarantine camps for indefinite periods without review



Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James is appealing a 2022 court ruling throwing out a state regulation over its glaring illegality. If successful, James' appeal will restore the power to Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration to arbitrarily detain American citizens for indefinite periods and force them into quarantine camps.

What is the background?

The regulation, Section 2.13 "Isolation and Quarantine Procedures," was adopted and enshrined in the New York Code, Rules and Regulation in February 2022. It went into effect April 22, 2022.

This regulation enabled the state commissioner of health to "issue and/or ... direct the local health authority to issue isolation and/or quarantine orders ... to all such persons as the State Commissioner of Health shall determine appropriate."

"For the purposes of isolation orders, isolation locations may include home isolation or such other residential or temporary housing location that the public health authority issuing the order determines appropriate," read the regulation.

Those detained at home or in a New York concentration camp without trial or proof of infection were to be monitored "to ensure compliance with the order."

In April 2022, state Senator George Borrello (R), Assemblyman Mike Lawler (R), and Assemblyman Chris Tague (R) joined pro-freedom citizens' group Uniting NYS in suing Gov. Kathy Hochul, Department of Health Commissioner Bassett, the Department of Health, and the Public Health and Health Planning Council over the New York's forced "Isolation and Quarantine" regulation.

Borrello said, "From the start of the pandemic I was deeply concerned that the expansive ‘emergency’ powers that were given to the Executive Branch would establish a permanent precedent. Unfortunately, that is precisely what we are seeing here in New York State."

"It’s an unconstitutional overreach that violates the required separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government. It must be challenged," added Borrello.

Tague said, "This policy’s aim to forcibly isolate law-abiding citizens is reminiscent of actions taken by some of the ugliest tyrannical regimes history has ever known. It has no place standing as law here in New York, let alone anywhere in the United States."

Their suit claimed that the Hochul administration not only lacked the statutory authority to promulgate 10 NYCRR 2.13 "Isolation and Quarantine Procedures," which had been adopted as an emergency regulation on Feb. 22, 2022, but that it was "not the least restrictive way in which Respondents could try to achieve their goal."

The lawsuit intimated that Hochul and others had acted in a despotic manner, having "exceeded their executive powers, thereby usurping the power of the NYS legislature" and "misleading the public."

They noted that it violated the NYS Administrative Procedure Act, the Separation of Powers doctrine, and Public Health Law and had been enacted "against the will of the NYS Legislature which refused to act on the topic."

New York Judge Ronald Ploetz happened to agree.
In his July 2022 decision, Ploetz noted that "adoption of Rule 2.13 was invalid of the pre-existing provisions adopted by the Legislature."

"Involuntary detention or hospitalization ... triggers Constitutional protections including the right to counsel ... as well as proof of the need for detention by clear and convincing evidence," wrote Ploetz. "No such due process protections are afforded by Rule 2.13. The Commissioner has unfettered discretion to issue a quarantine or isolation for anyone, even if there is no evidence that person is infected or a carrier of the disease. Further, the Commissioner sets the terms, duration, and location of the detention, not an independent magistrate."

Ploetz underscored, "Involuntary detention is a severe deprivation of individual liberty, far more egregious than other health safety measures, such as requiring mask wearing at certain venues," noting that it could result in unemployment and family breakdowns.

The regulation was deemed "null, voice and unenforceable as a matter of law."

Hochul and her administration were also prohibited from both enforcing 2.13 or readopting it.

The Democratic fight to detain Americans on a whim

The Brownstone Institute reported that on March 13, 2023, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) formally submitted an appeal to overturn Ploetz's ruling and restore the illegal quarantine regulation.

Rather than file an appeal before the November elections, during which Hochul and James were on the ballot, the Brownstone Institute noted James waited until the January 2023 deadline came around.

Concerning the belated appeal, Sen. Borrello said in a statement, "It is disappointing, but not a surprise, that state officials have chosen to pursue an appeal of Judge Ploetz’s ruling declaring Rule 2.13 unconstitutional and 'null and void.' Their actions are an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars and an attempt to defend an indefensible policy. The constitutional separation of powers and the right of due process are principles that cannot be compromised."

"This case has been on solid ground from the start and Judge Ploetz’s ruling only confirmed that. The notion that a state agency could unilaterally adopt a policy that mandates authoritarian-style isolation and quarantine procedures would have been unimaginable a few short years ago," said Rep. Lawler. "However, the extreme government control and overreach that was disturbingly normalized during the pandemic has given rise to actions like this one. It has to stop and that is why we won’t give up."

Assemblyman Tague stated, "This unconstitutional power-grab must be stopped in its tracks. If Rule 2.13 is allowed to stand, I guarantee that we will see more frightening intrusions on our civil liberties in the years ahead."

"I am calling on the governor and the attorney general to accept the court’s ruling and stop this waste of taxpayer resources on this futile fight," said Tague.

Bobbie Anne Cox, the attorney instrumental in bringing the lawsuit against Hochul's health regime, wrote on her Substack, "Every New Yorker, every American, should know that our government wants complete and utter control to lock you up or lock you down, with no proof that you are sick, for an indefinite amount of time, regardless of age, and with no path for release once imprisoned."

While James appears keen on enabling the Democratic governor to lock up law-abiding citizens, the attorney general has been an advocate for no-cash bail and a critic of police conducting arrests during traffic stops, in both cases helping to keep criminals on the streets.

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Rolling Stone magazine ridiculed for peddling claim that 'cancel culture is good for democracy'



Rolling Stone once covered rock and roll music and counted among its contributors Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Matt Taibbi. This week, it platformed a defense of horizontal despotism and the mobbing of nonconformists.

The magazine, which paid out $1.65 million in 2017 for its part in a defamatory episode of cancel culture and previously ran a critique of efforts to "cancel Liz Cheney," published an article by LGBT activist Ernest Owens on Monday entitled, "Why Cancel Culture Is Good For Democracy."

Twitter CEO Elon Musk was among those who ridiculed the publication over the article, calling its defense of mob tyranny "obnoxious."

Tyranny of the mob

Owens downplayed in his article fears of the "angry mob instantly judging us and preparing to end our careers before they start," suggesting that "we are the people who make up the so-called mob."

After ostensibly identifying himself and his readers with the mob, Owens indicated that the character assassinations, censorship, and attacks on persons with whom activists disagree have simply been a matter of vigilante justice: "Cancel culture has leveled the playing field for those who can’t always rely on the government to protect them."

Persons whom Owens and other LGBT activists regard as "bigots are protected under the First Amendment to fuel disgusting rhetoric without state-sanctioned consequence. ... Cancel culture is the poison to those in power that have benefited from unchecked free speech."

Owens racialized his defense of virtual lynch mobs and horizontal despotism, stating, "Straight white men and other people with power aren’t used to getting pushback for the ways they conduct themselves—and cancel culture has reset the ways society can react. Those who fear cancel culture may claim they fear suppression of speech, but it’s accountability that they want to avoid."

The LGBT activist noted in the piece that the internet has changed the game; that previously it "was hard to fully cancel something," but after "the internet began to take off in the 1990s, society began to see a shift in how the public could consider canceling with less gatekeeping."

In an Orwellian twist, the LGBT activist suggested that "cancel culture is a way for a new generation of people to practice free speech."

What Owens regards as an exercise in free speech, Alexis de Tocqueville suggested in “Democracy in America” was a form of horizontal despotism.

While "chains and executioners are the coarse instruments that tyranny formerly employed" in democratic republics, despotism “leaves the body and goes straight for the soul," wrote de Tocqueville, whose family narrowly avoided a bloody cancellation at the hands of the mob during the French Revolution.

De Tocqueville detailed the nature of cancel culture, albeit in its pre-digital form: "The master no longer says to it: You shall think as I do or you shall die; he says: You are free not to think as I do; your life, your goods, everything remains to you; but from this day on, you are a stranger among us. You shall keep your privileges in the city, but they will become useless to you; for if you crave the vote of your fellow citizens, they will not grant it to you, and if you demand only their esteem, they will still pretend to refuse it to you. You shall remain among men, but you shall lose your rights of humanity.”

The writer who runs afoul of the mob is made the "butt of mortifications of all kids and of persecutions every day. ... He yields, he finally bends under the effort of each day and returns to silence as if he felt remorse for having spoken the truth.”

Characterizing this pursuit of ideological conformity by way of horizontal social pressure as an effective way of holding others "accountable," Owens suggested that the "potential for cancel culture is democracy uncensored and unchained. Despite how critics have tried to represent it, cancel culture is not cyberbullying or doxing. Cancel culture gives us the chance to engage in new and exciting ways—civically, culturally, and politically."

Owens elsewhere intimated that cancel culture can also be engaged in kinetically.

He told the Boston Globe that "when you look at the LGBTQ rights movement, in the end, marginalized voices won because of cancel culture," adding that "it was not a peaceful, 'I agree, I disagree.' It was a riot."

Backlash

While the Rolling Stone article was roundly ridiculed online, its detractors did not appear to seek Owens' cancellation.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted Tuesday, "How blatantly obnoxious that they just want to keep canceling people! Do they ever write about music anymore? They should rename themselves 'Scolding Stone', as all they seem to do these days is holier-than-thou nagging."

\u201c@WallStreetSilv How blatantly obnoxious that they just want to keep canceling people! Do they ever write about music anymore?\n\nThey should rename themselves \u201cScolding Stone\u201d, as all they seem to do these days is holier-than-thou nagging.\u201d
— Wall Street Silver (@Wall Street Silver) 1677011070

Billy Markus, one of the software engineers behind Dogecoin, intimated the magazine was due for a name change, writing, "rolling sanctimony."

Conservative Twitter commentator Ian Miles Cheong responded, "Canceling people is that rag’s bread and butter now. I don’t think they write about anything that doesn’t have some woke angle."

Mathematician and "Sokal Squared" woke-hoaxer James Lindsay suggested that Owen was effectively pushing for Maoism, citing a 1957 document from communist mass-murderer Mao Tse-tung entitled, "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People."

The document referenced by Lindsay discusses the different methods by which "the contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and the contradictions among the people must be resolved."

According to Mao, the first function of the people's democratic dictatorship was "internal, namely, to suppress the reactionary classes and elements and those exploiters who resist the socialist revolution, to suppress those who try to wreck our socialist construction, or in other words, to resolve the contradictions between ourselves and the internal enemy. For instance, to arrest, try and sentence certain counter-revolutionaries, and to deprive landlords and bureaucrat-capitalists of their right to vote and their freedom of speech for a certain period of time — all this comes within the scope of our dictatorship."

Although now platforming a defense of cancel culture, Rolling Stone paid a hefty sum for its participation in and exacerbation of the phenomenon in 2017.

The magazine ran an article written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely in November 2014 entitled "A Rape on Campus."

In an apparent effort to cancel a fraternity and a former associate dean at University of Virginia, the article advanced the claims by a single source that young men had brutally raped her in 2012. However, police in Charlottesville determined there was "no substantive basis" to conclude the incident had ever occurred, reported the New York Times.

According to the Washington Post, the article "caused an immediate sensation ... going viral online and reverberating through the U-Va. community." The resultant cancel mob was as misled as it was incensed.

A 10-member jury determined that the so-called reporter, Erdely, was responsible for defamation with actual malice and similarly found the magazine liable of defamation.

It would appear that not all calls for accountability are warranted and not all cancellations are measured or just.

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