Mandatory vaccinations, home searches without a warrant and forced quarantine for those who resist.
Critics of a pandemic preparedness bill pending in the Legislature say it would allow all those things and sets the stage for a medical police state where any response to an epidemic of flu or other illness has the potential to steamroll civil liberties.
The bill’s supporters and its sponsor, Sen. Richard Moore, D-Uxbridge, have found themselves in recent weeks defending against attacks from talk show hosts and Internet critics with an anti-Big Government bent. In the category of unlikely bedfellows: the ACLU has joined the opposition.
Moore and other supporters say the bill is largely borrowed from public health laws and court rulings already on the books. They say that rumors and lies have led people to overreact to the legislation, and cite as an example the statement that the bill makes vaccinations mandatory. While he says his own bill doesn’t mandate vaccination, Moore points to a 1905 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Massachusetts smallpox case that said states could require people to get vaccinated.
Critics responded that the bill’s language is too broad and vague in many key areas, and that supporters were splitting hairs in defending it. No, vaccination is not mandatory, but people who do not get vaccinated after the governor declares a health emergency can be placed under quarantine, and failure to observe the quarantine can result in arrest.
read more @ taunton daily gazette
The underlying problem apparently being that local Massachusetts legislators think the internet is full of crazy conspiracy theorists who overreact to things. I mean, hey, all these laws are already on the books. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG. THEY HAVEN'T NOTICED, APPARENTLY, THAT *ANYTHING* HAS GONE WRONG YET. THIS IS A VERY COMMON PROBLEM AMONG PEOPLE IN GENERAL. THEY DON'T SEE THAT WE HAVE A PROBLEM. THEY THINK THE PEOPLE WHO *DO* SEE THAT WE HAVE A PROBLEM -- *WE* ARE THE PROBLEM. SEE? WE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO NOTICE IT'S NOT PATRIOTIC TO NOTICE WHEN YOUR COUNTRY IS BEING DISMANTLED OR SOMETHING.
FOR INSTANCE, THEY DON'T NOTICE THE MILITARIZATION OF THE LOCAL POLICE FORCES.
The Ominous Growth of Paramilitarism in American Police Departments
One of the most alarming side effects of the federal government's war on drugs is the militarization of law enforcement in America. There are two aspects to the militarization phenomenon. First, the American tradition of civil-military separation is breaking down as Congress assigns more and more law enforcement responsibilities to the armed forces. Second, state and local police officers are increasingly emulating the war-fighting tactics of soldiers. Most Americans are unaware of the militarization phenomenon simply because it has been creeping along imperceptibly for many years. To get perspective, it will be useful to consider some recent events:
read more @ cato (yes, a think tank, i know...go figure)
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