90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, April 17, 2020

Michigan Sheriffs Will NOT Strictly Enforce Gov. Whitmer’s Executive Order

A group of Michigan sheriffs have declared that they will not strictly enforce Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s draconian stay-at-home order.

“While we understand her desire to protect the public, we question some restrictions that she has imposed as overstepping her executive authority,” Leelanau County Sheriff Mike Borkovich, Benzie County Sheriff Ted Schendel, Manistee County Sheriff Ken Falk and Mason County Sheriff Kim Cole said in a joint press release.

“She has created a vague framework of emergency laws that only confuse Michigan citizens,” the sheriffs said.

Foxnews.com reports: The sheriffs said that, instead of stringent enforcement, they “will deal with every case as an individual situation and apply common sense.”

They added that they had taken an oath to protect the “God-given rights” of the Michigan and U.S. constitutions. “We believe that we are the last line of defense in protecting your civil liberties,” the release stated.

The sheriffs noted that their focus should be on reopening their counties and getting people back to work, but added that CDC guidelines such as social distancing, washing hands and wearing masks should be followed.

Whitmer enacted a stay-at-home order March 24. It was originally set to expire April 13 before being extended to April 30. Over the weekend Whitmer announced an expansion of her order, which among other things prohibits residents from visiting family or friends with the exception of providing care, bans public or private gatherings of any size or family ties, and places restrictions on what essential businesses which remain open may sell.

Whitmer – who had to issue clarifications to her orders, most notably when someone tweeted a picture from Walmart saying that children’s car seats were “non-essential” items – has so far remained steady in her resolve that Michigan needs to stick to strict stay-at-home measures in...

CNN is far from alone when it comes to boosting Chinese propaganda, but it’s home to the most recent example of American media pulling for China in the past few months.

The network experienced almost immediate backlash April 13 when it published a story in which the main source was a press release from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Stated clearly: CNN’s article reporting the Chinese Navy “has done a much better job controlling coronavirus than the US Navy” could hardly be told apart from the PLA press release it cited. It was an almost exact replica.

“There is a word for anyone who takes the word of an authoritarian regime, with a long record of lying, whether it was President Trump praising China’s clearly flawed response to Coronavirus or U.S. media repeating clearly bogus PLA talking points: Fool,” Peter Singer, a strategist and senior fellow at New America told the Daily Caller.

Cadets from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy march in formation before a ceremony to mark Martyr’s Day at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Monday, Sept. 30, 2019. (Mark Schiefelbein – Pool/Getty Images)

CNN’s propaganda push was “incredibly irresponsible” and “audacious,” Rebeccah Heinrichs at the Hudson Institute, added.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that it is Chinese communist party propaganda,” Heinrichs said of the article. “While we’re in the middle of this pandemic, there’s multiple things going on at the same time. One of them is a fight for clarity and accurate information. And we know that the Chinese government is still propagating false information and so for American media to not look at anything that comes out of China very skeptically … is so irresponsible.”

“I mean the job of the media is to expose what is true and they are very hyperactive on making sure they do that. You can be hypercritical of the U.S. government, but then to turn around and to copy and paste Chinese communist party propaganda when the stakes are so high is just incredibly audacious and...