Mask setback / ‘Clown show’ / Year’s best cars

Chicago Public Square will take Presidents Day off, but will return to preside over the news Tuesday.


Mask setback. An Illinois appeals court has upheld a challenge to Gov. Pritzker’s requirement that masks be worn in the state’s schools …
 … leaving the matter up to individual districts.
The New York Times’ David Leonhardt updates the growth of “red COVID,” the partisan disparity in pandemic deaths among Republicans.
California’s the first state to map plans for living with COVID-19 pretty much the same as people now deal with the flu.
Bloomberg: Failure of the U.S. and other nations to fund poorer nations’ fight against COVID is “creating the conditions for yet another pandemic reset” …
 … speaking of which: New research suggests the BA.2 omicron subvariant may also cause more severe disease and be more resistant against emerging treatments.

Springfield ‘clown show.’ A Democratic representative from Chicago who said she doesn’t like “to entertain buffoonery” moved successfully yesterday afternoon to remove nine House Republicans who refused to wear masks.
Here’s video of what WCIA-TV’s Mark Maxwell calls Republicans’ display of “mask martyrdom.”
The Sun-Times reports that House Speaker Chris Welch is going door-to-door to get his wife elected a Cook County judge.

‘Being a public figure in these times is terrifying.’ Reflecting on the arrest of a man angry about parking tickets and carrying a gun while stalking Mayor Lightfoot for days, Politico’s Shia Kapos says, “If you’re a woman in elected office, it seems even worse.”

‘I never want to disgrace this country again.’ A suburban couple convicted for their role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection have written nice notes to their federal judge.
The Daily Beast details an Oath Keepers founder’s participation in a federal lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election citing—really, no kidding—The Lord of the Rings as legal precedent.

Truckers stopped. Canadian cops have begun arresting drivers in the three-week demonstration against COVID restrictions that has been blocking traffic in the capital city of Ottawa for three weeks …
 … and that inspired serial entrepreneur and schmuck Elon Musk to compare Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolph Hitler.
In light of their condemnation of Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S., Republicans supporting the Canadian truckers face charges of a racist double standard.

Dingus gold. Columnist Lyz Lenz bestows her Dingus of the Week honor on the Olympics, for being “so quick to throw away whole human lives and flesh just to win at a game where everyone loses.”
A teenage Russian figure skater broke into tears after failing to finish first: “I hate this sport.”
The New York Times: Bots and fake accounts have been promoting China’s vision of an Olympics free of controversy.

‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth?’ That 2016 assertion from Donald Trump could come back to bite him now that a New York judge has ordered him to testify in an investigation of his business practices.

The year’s best cars. Here’s Consumer Reports’ new list.
The Onion mocks long-stalled but finally official U.S. approval of advanced headlights that adjust automatically to minimize glare for drivers headed the other way: “What about people who rely on bright oncoming lights to wake them up?

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 Pam Spiegel made this edition better.

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