The COVID-19 pandemic has reached and exposed forgotten corners of our society, some of those corners dark and unpleasant. One such corner involves the welfare and health of individuals in our prisons, both those awaiting trial and those found guilty.
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Should we ever let people die? That is, when reasonable efforts and not unreasonable expenses would save a life should we ever send an individual to their death? Never is a difficult standard, here as everywhere, as we send young people to war, remove dying and incurable patients from life-support, and, in the workplace, construct tunnels and buildings and open mining operations with the near certainty that significant numbers of workers will die in the effort.
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We Americans take pride in our freedom. No one can take that from us. Is that true? What about a bug with the name of COVID-19, the coronavirus? What about every mayor, governor or health commissioner in the United States? Could any or all of them put us in a lockdown, the term generally associated with inmates in a prison, to be let out when, if and in a manner they determine? Does the common welfare (health) override somehow all of our rights: no speech, shopping, worship or walking the dog? Perhaps no voting (that later).
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The barely disguised intervention of the President and the Attorney General in what is, in many ways, the ordinary legal process criminal case of Roger Stone seems troubling, but we have some difficulty seeing just why.
Read MoreDo you care about equality? Here is a simple test. Suppose you had to choose between two societies. In the first, the wealth among the citizens is relatively even, with everyone having between 90 and 110 units of that wealth, with units made up of money, personal goods, housing, cars, and the usual collection of consumer goods we all love, collect, covet, and want to own.
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