Why NJ and NY Make Ebola Quarantine Mandatory

Here's the story of the quarantined nurse in NJ. It makes clear to me why quarantine should be mandatory, not voluntary.

Kaci Hickox,...has been caring for Ebola patients...in Sierra Leone. Upon her return to the U.S. on Friday, she was placed in quarantine at a New Jersey hospital....

I am a nurse who has just returned to the U.S. .... I have been quarantined in New Jersey. This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me.
I am scared about how health care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa. I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see...quarantine....

Again, I wondered what I had done wrong...

I had spent a month watching children die....

I recalled my last night at the Ebola management center in Sierra Leone. I was called in at midnight because a 10-year-old girl was having seizures. I coaxed crushed tablets of Tylenol and an anti-seizure medicine into her mouth as her body jolted in the bed."

I think the level of denial shown in this is remarkable. It boils down to "I did a good and unpleasant thing by helping Ebola patients in Africa (true) and now you disgusting scary awful people are locking me up in quarantine. How DARE you question my medical status (just because many, many, many doctors and nurses have already contracted ebola and died)? How dare you question my right to take a cab, ride the subways, and go bowling any time I feel like it? I am a good person. How dare you treat me like I might be infected?"

And this is exactly why NY and NJ have, in my opinion properly, made quarantine mandatory and not a mere suggestion. Like exposed, probably exposed,and possibly exposed people before her in the US, she makes it pretty clear than voluntary quarantine is not going to happen, because SHE did a good thing and should not be made to suffer at all for it.

Locking up such people as public health hazards strikes me as one of the few things our government...oh wait, strike that...two state governments are getting right.

See the whole scary story in the Dallas News.

Do Non-Citizens Voting Illegally Affect Election Outcomes?

Political Science professors Jesse Richman and David Earnest, in the Washington Post:

In a forthcoming article in the journal Electoral Studies, we bring real data from big social science survey datasets to bear on the question of whether, to what extent, and for whom non-citizens vote in U.S. elections. Most non-citizens do not register, let alone vote. But enough do that their participation can change the outcome of close races....

How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.

Why would the possible affect on one or two elections matter?:

Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.

Guess what: Voter ID would not solve this problem, if a problem it is.

McDonalds Or Organic Food Delight?

Two wicked, wicked Dutch guys present McDonalds food at a food convention and get some interesting responses.



With over 3 million views so far, the Golden Arches folks must be snickering in their Egg McMuffins.

Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers Applauded By The Canadian House of Commons

The Republican War On Women

"CNN host Carol Costello can barely contain her excitement" pretty much says it. Costello appears delighted that Sarah Palin's daughters were physically assaulted.

Oh...wait...I don't think Costello is a Republican...

More here, with the emergency call audio..

Department of Justice and Democrat Collusion?

I hope not. Still...

The administration official calling House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) office last week had an odd request.

Could the Justice Department get some help leaking information about the IRS’s scrutiny of conservative groups? asked Brian Fallon, a top spokesman for Attorney General Eric Holder.

Apparently thinking he had reached the office of Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), Fallon said the department wanted congressional staffers to get documents to selected reporters so that officials could comment on them “before the majority” did.

Hmmm....