One of America’s dumbest governors (Maine’s Paul LePage) and one of its most dishonest, corrupt obnoxious (New Jersey’s Chris Christie), both received a fairly stinging rebuke from a judge in Maine today, who thoroughly rejected the idiotic and dangerous attempts to quarantine medical aid worker and badass Kaci Hickox, after she recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone.
“The court is fully aware of the misconceptions, misinformation, bad science and bad information being spread from shore to shore in our country with respect to Ebola,” Judge Charles C. LaVerdiere, the chief judge for the Maine District Courts said in his ruling, according to AP. “The court is fully aware that people are acting out of fear and that this fear is not entirely rational.”
Before rejecting LePage’s legal attempt to restrict her movements, LaVerdiere “thanked Hickox for her service in Africa and acknowledged the gravity of restricting someone’s constitutional rights without solid science to back it up.”
Hickox, who does not have Ebola, has never had Ebola, is not infectious with Ebola and is symptom-free of Ebola, “said she is following the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation of daily monitoring for fever and other signs of the disease,” since returning home from her important work in West Africa.
She had been ordered quarantined by Christie in NJ upon her return, before being allowed to travel home to Maine earlier this week, where LePage has also been attempting to restrict her movements — because both Governors are cowardly and dangerous imbeciles.
One more interesting point here…
AP reports that “With the judge’s ruling, a state police cruiser parked outside [Hickox’] home drove away.”
Well, that’s odd. LePage told reporters yesterday that he had stationed state troopers outside her house “to protect her more than anybody” because, as he claimed in an incredibly creepy and threatening on-camera statement (see video below beginning at the 10:00 mark), “the last thing I want is for her to hurt.”
LePage’s remarks could have come straight out of The Godfather:
We have 1.3 million people to protect. So on one hand, I’m trying to protect the entire state. But at the same token, I don’t want her to get hurt either.
Tempers get flaring when people get scared, and this is not a very nice position to be in.
So, LePage claimed he was “trying to protect her“, but, the minute the court said she could not be quarantined or have her movements restricted by the state without science-based cause, the state trooper ordered to be stationed outside her house left.
Apparently, LePage wasn’t very interested in protecting her after all.
LePage is up for re-election this Tuesday, and could squeak by again in another three-way race. In the video below, Maddow describes him as Maine’s “bombastic walking carnival of a Governor.” But she was being far too kind.
MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show covered the latest science-free idiocy of LePage, Christie et al on the Thursday, 10/31/2014 program. LePage’s seemingly-threatening comments about aid worker and Ebola-free medical professional Hickox begin just after the 10:00 mark in the video segment below…
I love Kaci Hickox. She dramatically and effortlessly shows us what a little personal integrity and refusal to be bullied can get you. A lot. Just beautiful to witness. Especially in this time of relentless over the top fear-mongering.
If the democrats had a clue(sadly nowhere near a clue) they would relentlessly go after the GOP’s jugular. The GOP is like a rabid dog with Alzheimer’s. Just completely for bat-shit-shark-jumping-head-so-far-up-their-asses-they-can-floss-with-their-own-mouth-on-their-own-teeth-from-the-inside(no idea on that one, just going for something on the Super X-Games edge of extreme) crrrrrraaaaaaaazzzzzzzzzzyyyyyyyyyyy.
The GOP stands for Grand Old Panic and Grand Old Poverty. The dems should relentlessly portray the repubs as the completely crippled by fear-hypocrisy-riddled-unthinking beasts that they are.
To take just one subject that should be harped upon.–The repukes glory in cutting spending for anything and everything that helps us all. This, of course, means that a ton of really necessary stuff like medical research, facilities, and preparedness that are always good to have around but are especially worthwhile in times of crisis are eviscerated. So, they do every single goddamn thing in their power to gut all that and as soon as the first little health challenge comes along they are outraged and up in arms and slinging shit every which way but at themselves which is exactly where it should be going if they had an ounce of capacity for self-reflection which they obviously don’t. Then, of course, they want to follow up their past terrible(and completely unacknowledged)ideas with new really terrible ideas that will, of course, you guessed it, only serve to intensify the problem. These clowns are the gods gifts to hundred percent pure unadulterated horseshit.
Well, Brad. On increasingly rare occasions, you’ve extended the Intellectually Honest Conservative Award.
Perhaps you should consider the Jackass of the Month Award…
But then, with so many asinine remarks made by the members of the anti-science party, that may prove a difficult call in measuring who qualifies as the worst each month.
What David and Ernest said.
This Obola pandemic, this fear of all things African, is an ignorant episode in our history.
Good on the Maine judge, but let’s not forget the enormity of our national ignorance (The Real Dangers With Microbes & Viruses).
The Nation magazine identified the G.O.P. as the Greedy Old Party. I like this moniker, but I could not claim it as my own.
badass maybe “correct terminology” as
Kaci Hickox is a “CDC intelligence officer”
under a two-year CDC program modeled after the U.S. military.
The official intelligence designation granted to Nurse Hickox by the CDC was “Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer,” and she is a graduate of the 2012 EIS program
Whole thing is an attempted PR stunt in the Hegelian dialect. Problem, Reaction, Solution.
People who tune out big 6 media know the truth and the cures. Science has become FASCIST, and that isn’t science anymore.