By Matt Rooney
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The era of independent Media willing to question authority is long over, Save Jerseyans.
On Monday morning, New Jersey native Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC (who herself previously contracted COVID-19) “interviewed” Governor Phil Murphy. I’m not sure that’s really a fair categorization of what it was. At one point, she stopped just short of demanding that the Governor enforce COVID-19 travel guidelines because “lives are at risk,” asking Murphy whether the current “honor system” was insufficient.
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Murphy responded by observing that “no amount of enforcement” can penetrate a private home.
Check it out:
Do states need to have more than an honor system when it comes to enforcing quarantining? @GovMurphy says "it's impossible to enforce someone taking the Lincoln Tunnel from New York City into Hudson County, but we enforce them all the time."@MSNBC pic.twitter.com/JQQk3RKxDI
— Chris Jansing Reports (@JansingReports) December 7, 2020
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Stephanie Ruhle wants Murphy to replace the current “honor system” with what? State Troopers busting down front doors? Throwing violators into vans and dropping them on the other side of the bridge or tunnel?
She’s also missing some things. Critical things. I know you’re shocked.
First, as Murphy himself hinted (but would never come right out and say), most COVID-19 spreading at the moment may be happening in private venues (like living rooms) where the government has no power to compel behavior. It’s not as if people are streaming into Mercer County from Bucks County, breathing on our residents, and then hightailing it back across the Delaware River to evade capture.
Secondly, Murphy abandoned his original ever-changing travel advisory list right before Thanksgiving since it had become more than a little ridiculous (since multiple N.J. counties qualified for the list). We’re not supposed to go anywhere right now unless it’s necessary per the latest state guidance. Visitors are being asked to quarantine for 7-10 days based upon a few different factors. So, in a sense, the entire state is under a symbolic travel ban at the moment.
Symbolic. The original list was a called an “advisory” for a reason. It’s advice; it’s not mandatory. Interstate travel isn’t easy to restrict thanks to the U.S. Constitution. There’s not much more Murphy could do even if it would make sense to do more.
For the purposes of this case, we need not identify the source of [the right to travel] in the text of the Constitution,” the U.S. Supreme Court held in a seminal 1999 ruling on the topic. “The right of ‘free ingress and regress to and from’ neighboring states which was expressly mentioned in the text of the Article of Confederation, may simply have been ‘conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger Union the Constitution created.
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