Attorney General Bill Barr Goes After Slow State Reopenings | Eastern NC Now

Publisher's note: This post appears here courtesy of the LifeZette, and written by Polizette Staff.

    Responding to public criticism of overreaching virus restrictions U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr said Tuesday on The Hugh Hewitt Show, "Blunter instruments that say everyone has to shelter in place, to stay at home regardless of the situation on the ground, or you know, you shut down a business regardless of the capacity of the business to operate safely for its customers and its employees, those are very blunt instruments."

    Barr implied that there could be better ways of dealing with the virus than with a state sledgehammer.

    "I also think that we have to give businesses more freedom to operate in a way that's reasonably safe. I think the president's guidance has been, as I say, superb and very commonsensical, and I think a lot of the governors are following that. And you know, to the extent that governors don't.... impinge on either civil rights or on the national commerce, our common market that we have here, then we'll have to address that."

    Barr acknowledged citizen protests and complaints over states that have gone over the top in virus restrictions, "These are very, very burdensome impingements on liberty, and we adopted them, we have to remember, for the limited purpose of slowing down the spread, that is bending the curve. We didn't adopt them as the comprehensive way of dealing with this disease. And we are now seeing that these are bending the curve, and now we have to come up with more targeted approaches."

    As protests spread all over the country over governors who are going too slow, or are trampling on civil liberties, in their quest for a coherent virus response, the president and his administration have become aware that federal action may be needed to dissuade them from inappropriate and unnecessary actions.

    In egregious cases such as Virginia, Kansas, and Kentucky, the feds may have to act soon before governors completely muck up their entire virus response.