From the right: Joe’s at Heart of Hunter Probes
Two major congressional investigations are underway surrounding Hunter Biden, but it’s actually President Biden “at the heart of both stories,” stresses Newt Gingrich at Fox News.
As officials dig into the “Biden family’s potentially criminal money-making activities” and the “various federal law enforcement efforts to protect the Bidens from scrutiny,” it’s clear Hunter is just Joe’s “bagman.”
No one is paying thousands for Hunter’s art “because he is the next Van Gogh,” and Hunter has no real ability “to get federal agencies to break their own rules.”
But Joe has influence — he’s not “protecting his son” but himself.
The president has used his extensive influence to pull many strings, enriching “family members and allies,” while using his son for cover.
Free-speech champion: Libs Ditch Core Values
“Liberals are abandoning liberal values,” particularly “their storied commitment to free speech,” warns Dennis Prager at RealClearPolitics.
It’s “the most important human freedom,” yet, per Pew Research, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (70%) “are much more likely” than Republicans and Republican leaners (39%) to back “the US government taking steps to restrict false information online.”
“Five years ago, Americans were more inclined to prioritize freedom of information over restricting false information.”
Yet it’s tyrannies that are known to “label dissent ‘misinformation.’ That is what Vladimir Putin’s government labels all dissent in Russia today.”
Democrats’ increasing tolerance for government censorship is a warning: “Free speech is seriously threatened for the first time in American history,” and “the threat to free speech comes entirely from the left.”
Deficit watch: How To Stop the Bleeding
US debt and debt numbers are “daunting,” but the problem’s not “insurmountable,” argues Orland Park, Ill., Mayor Keith Pekau at the Washington Examiner.
Since 1963, during times when Republicans had control of Congress, spending rose annually 4.68% on average; revenue 6.25%.
At those rates, we could “eliminate the deficit by 2039 and the debt by 2053.
Holding spending to a 4% growth rate would eliminate all of our debt by the end of 2047.”
And such rates would be enough to fund social programs, the military, discretionary spending and “much-need infrastructure” projects while offering “latitude to grow social safety nets in a sustainable way.”
But getting there requires “a president willing to lead on the issue and congressional representatives who can demonstrate a modicum of fiscal discipline.”
COVID journal: DeSantis’ Strategy Proved Right
“Progressives want Donald Trump to win the GOP nomination, which explains why they’re distorting Ron DeSantis’s Covid record,” posit The Wall Street Journal’s editors.
But “Florida’s overall age-adjusted Covid death rate during the pandemic is 13% lower than the U.S. average and about the same as California’s.”
That’s despite DeSantis “defying the lockdown consensus and reopening his state in spring 2020,” thus avoiding learning loss and other continuing “lockdown damage.”
His “strategy proved to be an economic boon,” with employment in Florida growing by “7.4% since January 2020 versus 2.5% in California and a 1.2% decline in New York.”
“Progressives can’t admit they were wrong. Nor can Mr. Trump. So they are trying to take down Mr. DeSantis for being right.”
Conservative: Wokist Idiocy on Mass Shootings
“Is there any limit to the degree to which ‘researchers’ will discredit themselves to prove their woke bona fides?” asks Ian Kingsbury at City Journal.
“A new study published in JAMA Surgery suggests not.” It argues “that ‘structural racism’ plays a role in mass-shooting events” but relies on the “assertion that metro-area demographics,” including “out-of-wedlock birth and violent crime,” are “a measure of structural racism.”
No: The correlation between that data and higher numbers of mass shootings “is a statistical artifact of the reality that mass shootings are more likely in areas with higher concentrations of black residents.”
“This study’s proper function”? To “serve as a prime example of the medicalization of social issues and public health’s growing penchant for policy-based evidence-making.”
Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
