Twenty-Five Things That Caught My Eye Today: Cuomo & the Nursing Homes, Disney & More

1. New York Times: New Allegations of Cover-Up by Cuomo Over Nursing Home Virus Toll

2. New York Post: Cuomo aide Melissa DeRose admits they hid nursing home date so feds wouldn’t find out

. . . .Instead of a mea culpa to the grieving family members of more than 13,000 dead seniors or the critics who say the Health Department spread COVID-19 in the care facilities with a March 25 state Health Department directive that nursing homes admit infected patients, DeRosa tried to make amends with the fellow Democrats for the political inconvenience it caused them.

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“So we do apologize,” she said. “I do understand the position that you were put in. I know that it is not fair. It was not our intention to put you in that political position with the Republicans.”

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5. The Washington Post: Two officers who helped fight the Capitol mob died by suicide. Many more are hurting.

6. Becket: Supreme Court allows pastoral comfort for condemned in execution chamber

The Supreme Court denied Alabama’s request to overturn a lower court’s order granting a death row prisoner the right to have his pastor accompany him to the death chamber. The Alabama Department of Corrections has banned all clergy from the death chamber, depriving prisoners like Willie Smith from praying with a clergy member during their final moments. Smith’s execution was scheduled for last night, but a federal appeals court ordered Alabama to allow Smith’s pastor in the death chamber, and the Supreme Court upheld that decision.

7. Peggy Noonan: A Vote to Acquit Trump Is a Vote for a Lie

Facts make people feel. People are so unused to being given them. They’re grateful for the respect shown in an invitation to think.

8. Salvatore J. Cordileone: California’s Unscientific Worship Ban

The idea of “essential workers” and “essential work” is a problematic new concept produced by the Covid-19 pandemic—one still working its way through the body politic to the detriment of American ideals. While this is bad enough, when it comes to faith it represents a colossal overstep of governmental authority: Only religious authorities have the right to determine which religious services are essential for their people. Even the most restrained interpretations of the First Amendment would have to admit this.

The free exercise of religion means many things beyond the right to worship. But worship is the most fundamental part of it, and for months millions of Americans were deprived of that most simple natural right. Such blatant disregard of the Constitution bodes ill for everyone. These next four years will be a time either to coalesce around core ideals or continue to divide along ideological lines.

9. Mary Hallan FioRito: Repealing abortion notification law would be tragic mistake

The horrifying case of Chicago’s Tonya Reaves, who died after a second trimester abortion at a Chicago area Planned Parenthood clinic, while not necessarily reflective of Illinois abortion clinics as a whole, nevertheless underscores the fact that surgical abortions are invasive, irreversible and come with risks. And non-surgical terminations, like abortion pills, can leave a young girl with excruciating cramps and heavy bleeding for days — and the possibility of her passing her baby’s remains anywhere — including at school. Parents need to be included in their daughters’ abortion decisions if for no other reason than to monitor them for complications post-procedure.

10. Noah Smith: Everyone Has to Pay When America Gets Too Old

11. How Sanctions Cheat Children

There is a glaring discrepancy between Canada’s use of sanctions as a silver bullet response to international crises, and its immigration policy.

If Canada’s goal is to enhance international peace and stability rather than the country’s status on the world stage as a benevolent, refugee-welcoming country, it is time for the government to lift sanctions that are exacerbating the misery of vulnerable people in countries already devastated by war, conflict and COVID-19.

12. Catholic News Agency: Catholic missionary priest nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Fr. Pedro Opeka, 72, is a Vincentian priest from Argentina who has worked with the poor in Madagascar for more than three decades. He founded the Akamasoa humanitarian association in 1989 as a “solidarity movement to help the poorest of the poor” living on the site of a garbage dump.

Janez Janša, the Prime Minister of Slovenia, has announced that he nominated Opeka for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for his dedication to “helping people living in appalling living conditions.”

13. David Leonhardt: Covid Absolutism

As my colleague Tara Parker-Pope puts it, “Avoid breathing the air that other people exhale.”

A student walking across campus — let alone a masked student — presents little risk to another student who remains at least six feet away. The same goes for joggers in your neighborhood.

14. Erika Bachiochi: The Merits of Romney’s Pro-Family Policy

Today, the liberal left and the libertarian right, both beholden to this hegemonic market frame of reference, tend to misunderstand the nature of the burden on caregivers. Most on the left assume universal institutional daycare would fix all parental ills, providing infants and young children the care they need and getting mothers back to work. While Biden’s refundable child tax credit, like Romney’s allowance, could help to reorient our nation’s priorities, the Biden Administration’s insistence on increasing tax credits (and other monies) for institutional day care—the kind few would choose for their own children—would further commercialize the goods of the home. A larger child credit or allowance—like Romney’s—would let parents determine who will give their children care, and would not discriminate against those who wish to care for their children themselves.

15. Ashley McGuire: Hey Joe Biden, Covid heroes at Catholic school show road to reopening

Catholic schools in all 50 states opened this fall for in-person learning where the local government officials would allow it. And where they would not, parochial schools fought hard for the right to open. Meanwhile, teachers’ unions have taken the opposite approach. They’ve fought every effort to get kids back in school and continually moved the goalposts, despite the facts, science and the increasingly loud and unified voice of the scientific and medical community arguing that kids belong in school. Where I live, not a single public school has opened — apart from for a minute fraction of students in some grades. Not even for children with the most severe of learning disabilities or other challenges such as extreme food insecurity and homelessness.

16. Tevi Troy: Secretary for America: George Schultz, R.I.P.

The State Department was… the source of the most legendary George Shultz story. Shultz would call all newly minted advisers up to his office before sending them off on their new postings. He would walk the ambassadors over to the globe he had in his office, and tell them, “I’m going to spin the globe and I want you to put your hand on your country.” After each ambassador earnestly pointed to the country to which he or she was headed, Shultz would correct them, explaining that their country was the United States of America.

17. ‘Myanmar is a symptom’— Cardinal Bo on the coup, US elections, and China

Cardinal Bo: “Human rights flow from the Christian concept of human dignity articulated in the first pages of the Bible. It is a constitutive element of being a Christian. The whole process of Exodus and Christ’s own Galilean Manifesto of Luke 4: 16-19 is the articulation of human rights in faith language. So we cannot avoid supporting Human Rights.”  

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“So when the Church speaks against violation of human rights, it is articulating her faith in the public square. From ‘Womb to Tomb,’  human beings have rights. Proclaiming that is the Good News and evangelization. It is more than prophetic. It is our existential identity.”

18. Patrick T. Brown: Conservatives Need a Pro-Family Agenda Beyond Tax Credits

By stressing the irreplaceable nature of family life, along with its affective, economic, and procreative dimensions, conservatives can find a reason to oppose attempts to redefine the family beyond blood and kinship, and to pivot on economic policy to more substantively support families across the income distribution.

19. Nicholas Eberstadt: What do Prime-Age ‘NILF’ Men Do All Day? A Cautionary on Universal Basic Income

Economists and other social scientists often use “leisure” and “free time” interchangeably, but this is a mistake. The “leisure” activities that NILFs and NEETs indulge in are generally not the sort of higher pursuits that, for example, Josef Pieper had in mind in his classic Leisure: The Basis of Culture. The overwhelming majority of this “leisure” is screen time: television, internet, DVDs, and all the rest. NEET men reported an average of over five hours a day in front of screens—nearly 1,900 hours a year, almost equivalent to the time commitment of a full-time job. ATUS does not ask specifically about video games; if it did, even more NEET screen time commitment would almost certainly be recorded.

To go by the time-use surveys, prime-age men without work who are not looking for jobs and not engaged in training spend almost three times as many hours in front of screens as working women and well over twice as many as working men.

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21. Cristo Rey Boston is now tuition-free for all students

Prospective and current students at Cristo Rey Boston High School on Savin Hill Avenue will be awarded full tuition scholarships beginning this month, a commitment that will cost about $150,000 annually on top of the school’s $3 million yearly budget.

22. Turkey: 1,550-year-old church’s base ground unearthed

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25. Disney Posts Job Ad Looking For Strong, Fierce Women Who Are Also Obedient, Submissive, And Docile