America is on a path to a grand economic recovery in 2021, with much of the success of this move hinging on whether or not we can convince enough folks to get vaccinated so that herd immunity is declared. Of course, as with anything in the land of the free, there are plenty of us who just aren’t going to go along with the program.  That’s the beauty of liberty:  You are your own unique individual, and you have the inalienable right to live your life however you wish, just so long as you don’t make a victim of someone else in the process. And so our health professionals are now encumbered with the issue of vaccine hesitancy, as more and more Americans find themselves concerned over the speed at which these vaccines were developed. Some have even taken their concern over these inoculations to the extreme, as evidenced by the latest news out of Minnesota. A 32-year-old St. Paul man has posted multiple Facebook videos of himself stealing Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines by pretending he wants to get vaccinated and walking out with the vials. Thomas E. Humphrey said on the videos he’s a member of the sovereign citizen movement, which is an anti-government extremist group that believes they are sovereign from the U.S. He also said on a video that he lost his business and home last year due to pandemic restrictions, and now lives in a van with his dog. He says on another video he has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but disagreed with the diagnosis. Humphrey posted videos of himself walking into an Allina Health vaccination site in Oakdale and leaving with a vial of Pfizer vaccine, calling it poison. The following day, he posted a video of himself taking a vial of Johnson &…

You know what they say about giving an inch to the unscrupulous:  They’re going to take a mile.  It seems as though the Colonial Pipeline folks have never quite understood the lesson that is meant to be taught there. Several days ago, a group of Russian hackers, (who swear they’re not affiliated with the government), shut down the east coast’s most prominent gasoline pipelines with a ransomware attack.  For nearly a week, officials are the Colonial Pipeline tried in vain to get the petrol flowing, all while the hackers were apologizing for creating the disturbance.  It turns out that their code of “ethics” didn’t jibe with large scale societal disruptions; they just wanted the cash. And boy, did they get that. Colonial Pipeline Co. paid hackers nearly $5 million to free their computer network Friday, despite claims they had no intention of doing so. Bloomberg News reported that the company paid the ransom in untraceable cryptocurrency and received a decrypting tool to restore their computer network, according to “two people familiar with the transaction.” Though the company received a decrypting tool, it ran very slowly according to the report. One can only imagine that this sort of capitulation will only embolden future cyber terrorists, and set a horrid example for how American businesses will handle any coming threats of the ransomware variety.