Law ⋆ Page 2 of 19 ⋆ Brownstone Institute

The Cosplay of Elite Pride

Christopher S. Grenda May 25, 2023 Law, Vaccines 9 minute read

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So many of our narratives contort public policy failures into a simulated pride for apocryphal success, incidentally acknowledging the imperfections in order to cover the bodies. From the initial days of the lockdowns, there were way too many people with paychecks talking. All the voices on all of our telescreens enjoyed uninterrupted direct deposit while aggressively advocating the closure of tens of thousands of small businesses – first to flatten the curve, then to slow the spread, then to await the vaccines.

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The Covid Censorship Requests of Australia’s Department of Home Affairs

Andrew Lowenthal May 24, 2023 Law, Technology 6 minute read

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The Australian stereotype of mocking self-important authorities was tepid at best during the crisis, and what questioning of authority did take place appears to have been quickly memory-holed by the spell-checkers-turned-fact-checkers at the Department of Home Affairs “Extremsim” team. With each passing day, Idiocracy is looking more and more like prophecy.

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The Power of Public Health Agencies Must Be Curbed

Jayanta Bhattacharya May 19, 2023 Law, Public Health 5 minute read

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Now that states are moving to restrict public health powers, public health authorities face a choice that will decide whether the public will ever trust public health again. They can fight a partisan political battle against these laws, and the collapse of public trust in public health will continue apace. Or they can gracefully accept limits to their power in light of their pandemic failures.

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Justice Neil Gorsuch Speaks Out Against Lockdowns and Mandates

Brownstone Institute May 18, 2023 Law 8 minute read

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“Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes.” ~ Judge Neil Gorsuch

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The Hospital Protocol Killed Their Loved Ones and They Want Justice

Stella Paul May 17, 2023 History, Law 6 minute read

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When the federal government sent $9,000 to Patty Myers to pay for her husband’s funeral, she got angry. “I didn’t want to take a penny. It felt like hush money, like they were paying me to keep quiet about how my husband died in the hospital.”

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Like a Tweet, Lose Your Job

Brownstone Institute May 5, 2023 Government, Law, Media 3 minute read

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Free speech is more than a slogan. It must be an operational reality for everyone. It can be closed down by forces other than edicts from government. It can be suppressed also by arbitrary private actions that reflect regime priorities. Ever more workers and especially intellectuals today work in an environment of fear that leads to self-censorship.

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Was this Deceptive Trade? Paxton v. Moderna

Brownstone Institute May 2, 2023 Law, Vaccines 4 minute read

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Suing vaccine makers is notoriously difficult by design. Alone among private producers, they are indemnified against nearly all harm thanks to government privilege. That makes them mostly off-limits for legal liability from vaccine injuries. Eliminate that provision and the companies would not likely even be in business at all, which tells you all you need to know. However, deceptive claims are a separate issue. Finally we might have here a perfectly crafted legal position to hold these run-amuk companies accountable.

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Meet the VLOPs! The EU Extends its Censorship Powers

Robert Kogon April 28, 2023 Law, Media 3 minute read

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The European Commission announced its first list of designated Very Large Online Platforms – or VLOPs – that will be subject to “content moderation” requirements and obligations to combat “disinformation” under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). As VLOPs, the designated services will be required “to assess and mitigate their systemic risks and to provide robust content moderation tools.”

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The Censorship-Industrial Complex

Andrew Lowenthal April 27, 2023 Law, Media 14 minute read

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Big Media and Big Tech fell completely out of sync with material reality, smearing criticism that had previously been normal, and explicitly banning topics from social media such as discussion of a possible lab leak, or vaccines not stopping viral transmission. Polite society agreed with such bans, stayed silent, or even, as in the case of the Virality Project and its partners, led the censoring. A cadre of North American and European anti-disinformation elites meanwhile had been slowly convincing NGOs in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that their biggest problem was not too little but too much online freedom, the solution to which was more corporate and government control in order to protect human rights and democracy.

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Berenson v. Biden: The Potential and Significance

Brownstone Institute April 19, 2023 Law 4 minute read

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Discovery and depositions from Pfizer and the White House would be the most valuable insight of the three years – insight into the power structures that orchestrated lockdowns, censorship, forced vaccinations, school closures, economic upheaval, government overreach, and the merger of corporations with the state. The media’s blackout may delay negative press coverage for the country’s most powerful forces, but the ramifications of the lawsuit could prove far more consequential than an undesirable headline in the New York Times.

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Congress Has a Leverage Point on Pandemic Policy

Daniel Horowitz April 6, 2023 Law, Policy 8 minute read

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Unlike the PREP Act and the other emergency pandemic powers, this one is set to expire at the end of September. In other words, absent any action, PAHPA and all its authority to wage biomedical warfare are finished, thereby providing House Republicans with tremendous leverage to clip the agency’s wings. How can Republicans move on from this disaster and reauthorize the agency that is responsible for the worst tyranny in American history?

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They Hit the Pause Button and the Music Stopped

Jeffrey A. Tucker April 4, 2023 History, Law, Policy 8 minute read

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Society is not a machine that anyone can control. It has no pause button. Attempt to treat it as if it does and you end up creating something distorted and possibly terrible, certainly the end of material and cultural progress but probably something much worse. It was utter folly for anyone to imagine that what they thought they were doing should ever be done. It is even more egregious that so many played along when they should have refused the pause.

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