From The New York Times:
Halfway into her flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles Monday night, Brooke Tansley heard the pilot’s voice pipe up through the public address system, apologizing for the interruption.
“You’re going to be very excited to hear this news,” she recalled him saying. The Transportation Security Administration was no longer requiring masks on planes, and passengers were free to take them off if they’d like. The announcement was met with a smattering of claps and some jubilant cheers, and about a third of the people aboard immediately peeled off their masks, Ms. Tansley said.
But, as the Times explained, Ms. Tansley was not at all jubilant. She’s an asthmatic who was flying with two children too young to be vaccinated and she was on her way to a meeting with a colleague with a rare autoimmune disease.
But now, escaping the “oppression” of a face mask is deemed more important than protecting the life of anyone already born, including Ms. Tansley’s 8-month-old.
Just as shocking is the fact that such a judge, who never should have made it to the federal bench in the first place, would have such enormous power over American policy. The Washington Post explains the utter lack of qualifications of now-Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle:
She was nominated to the federal bench by President Donald Trump and confirmed by a GOP-controlled Senate in Trump’s lame-duck period in 2020, despite being rated as “not qualified” by the American Bar Association. Then 33, she was one of the youngest people ever appointed to the federal judiciary. At the time, she had practiced law for four years and had tried two cases to verdict — both while interning for the State’s Attorney’s Office, before she had graduated from law school.
And did I mention that Mizelle has called Justice Clarence Thomas, whom she clerked for, “the greatest living American?” Paul Campos, of Lawyers, Guns & Money, has more on her radical, right-wing beliefs, including her belief that paper money is not constitutional. Campos likens her unqualified appointment to “the equivalent of throwing somebody whose driving experience consists of a few driver’s ed classes into the middle of the Indy 500.”
But there she is, with a lifetime appointment, confirmed by the same senators who demonized and refused to confirm the eminently qualified Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Even with Trump out of office, pro-life is for fetuses, only. Here’s a guy who tweeted his Jesus worship on Sunday, celebrating with his fellow passengers on Monday the ability to infect others who got on a plane thinking they were protected.
The airlines deserve some of the blame, too:
Other folks are not happy with the situation, either:
If you’re not happy with an unqualified, radical having the power to endanger so many Americans, this seems like a good time to reiterate how important it is to vote like your life depends on it. Because keeping more Judge Mizelles off the bench is just the latest example of how it really does.
