Congress and the president have adopted many critically important policies in great haste during brief periods of perceived national emergency. During the first “hundred days” of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in the spring of 1933, for example, the government abandoned the gold standard, enacted a system of wide-ranging controls, taxes, and subsidies in agriculture, and set in motion a plan to cartelize the nation’s manufacturing industries. In 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act was enacted in a rush even though no member of Congress had read it in its entirety.

New evidence has emerged in the case of 73-year old Karen Garner, an eighty-pound woman with dementia and sensory aphasia. Newly released video shows Garner was beaten to the point of having her arm broken and her shoulder dislocated while being arrested for an alleged attempted theft of $13.88. In June 2020, Garner had apparently attempted to leave a Walmart in Loveland, Colorado, with a bag full of small items but was confronted by store staff.