Biden Administration Demands Judge Reinstate Mask Mandate on Planes, Trains, and Buses, Claiming It Doesn't Need Statutory Authority to Order Citizens to Mask Up, and Can Temporarily Veto Congressional Law When It Likes

It's not just the mandate -- it's the breathtaking power Biden is claiming "for the public health."

Biden is belatedly appealing a court decision from nine months ago, in which a judge struck down his mask mandate.

He could have appealed earlier. He didn't.

Now Biden -- remember, NeverTrump pushed him as the antidote to authoritarianism -- is claiming that he has the power to impose mask mandates on the entire citizenry of the United States with no congressional statutory authority granting him this power whatsoever, just on his own inherent power, and further, he's claiming he can suspend a law that blocks him from doing this, the Federal Administrative Procedure Act, when he feels it's necessary to do so.

"This appeal is not about an urgent matter of public health. If the mask order had been such an urgent matter of public health, you would have expected CDC to have applied for a stay to the district court's ruling," an attorney representing the Health Freedom Defense Fund said. "CDC promulgated a rule of unprecedented scope. And for the first time claiming authority to directly govern the lives of every member of the traveling public without bothering to explain its statutory authority."

A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pushed back on the Biden administration's argument that the CDC had "good cause" to forgo a provision of the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which requires that the government give the public proper time to review and comment on the mask rule before it was put in place, typically 30 days notice.

"The problem I'm having with your entire argument on this issue is that it seems like you're saying the agency can just say we think this is a good idea," one judge said.

The government argued for a compromise: Please say that we have the power to impose a national mask mandate without any statutory authority whatsoever granting us this power, even if you say we can't impose it immediately. Even if we can't "temporarily veto" the Federal Administrative Procedures Act.

The Justice Department contended that the appeals court should at least clarify that the CDC had the authority to issue the mask mandate, regardless if it sides with the government's decision to make the mandate effective immediately.

"You can imagine the next pandemic, there was an outbreak of measles or SARS and the CDC would want to and need to take swift action in order to control such a pandemic in the future," the attorney for the Justice Department noted. "I think the important thing here is that the potential collateral estoppel effect of the district court's ruling could tie up future CDC actions."

Can you feel the anti-authoritarianism?

The left and NeverTrump -- but I repeat myself; NeverTrump is just a species of Gentry Liberals that loves complimenting themselves on their "virtues" -- always claims they're "anti-authoritarian," but are constantly championing plainly authoritarian policies: government crackdowns on free speech. Government ordered masking, lockdowns, and forced vaccinations. Indefinite pre-trial detention of people for parading in a public place and four year prison sentences for stealing a coat-rack. Dawn raids on pro-life leaders for praying in a forbidden place.

FBI raids on the personal residence of a former president, to recover FUCKING FOLDERS containing no actual documents and napkins the president wrote on, because the leftwing manaic running the National Archives said his collection just wouldn't be complete without them.

This is third world stuff.

This is Prelude to Civil War stuff.

How can they claim they're "anti-authoritarian"?

They're using "anti-authoritarian" in a similar way that antifa uses the term "anti-fascist."

They're not against authoritarianism -- they're against a specific group of people.

The left and NeverTrumpers (but I repeat myself) loathe the white working class (and a lot of the white middle class, if we're being honest), and spit at the concept of "populism" -- a political philosophy which says that sometimes the white middle class should win in a single dispute. The NeverTrumpers are of the smug middle-manager class, college educated but not particularly well-educated. They need "Little People" to look down on, and have long taken it as their role in the GOP to keep down "the poors."

This is one of their many areas of social agreement and mutual interest with the left, and why it's been so very, very easy for NeverTrump to flip from being partisan but only lightly ideological Republicans to partisan and somewhat ideological Democrats. They have the same enemies.

And NeverTrump was truly, deeply scandalized and outraged that "the poors" actually took control of the party that rightfully belonged in the hands of the minority of Republicans that make up the well-to-do Gentry Liberal Professional Managerial Class and the Capital Class, and began voting their own interests instead of for the Chamber of Commerce's or AEI's.

How dare they. How. Dare. They.

When NeverTrump and the left say they're "anti-authoritarian," they mean they're against the The Lower Orders, who they accuse of being inherently authoritarian, and guilty of nascent authoritarianism. Because these lower order sub-men are inherently prone to violence and genetically programmed to follow strong charismatic leaders -- this is our enlightened, non-racist NeverTrump superiors' thinking, not mine -- it justifies any and all levels of actual authoritarianism to put them in their place.

After all, Biden and the left are only imposing a temporary, emergency authoritarianism until the Enemies of Democracy can be put down. I mean, they're not imposing real authoritarianism, like these ugly, genetically-defective Trumpaloos would impose if They ever got the chance.

So that's what The Bulwark Boys and AllahPundit mean when they say they're "anti-authoritarian." They mean they're pro-authoritarian, but in an enlightened, socially-conscious way, and only for the limited purposes of crushing their political enemies completely, until the world is once again made safe for true democracy, at which point they promise they'll end all of these authoritarian measures and restore freedom again.

That's all.

Why won't you give them just the temporary ability to make the law up unilaterally and jail all political enemies until The Current Danger has passed? It's not much to ask, is it?

posted by Ace at 02:53 PM

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