We have the ‘dumbest’ leaker, defund NPR and other commentary
From the right: We Have the ‘Dumbest’ Leaker
“It’s one thing to have our country’s secrets revealed by an ideologue such as Edward Snowden,” groans National Review’s Jim Geraghty.
But “we just had our biggest secrets revealed to the whole world by a 21-year-old Air Force National Guard tech-guy dweeb” to impress teenage friends on an online server.
“The leak involved classified information from just about every major US intelligence agency” — so even though “he’s just stupid, and he wanted to look like a big deal in front of his peers,” he still blew some of the “biggest secrets of our intelligence community.”
And Biden’s recent comments about it means he’s “lying his butt off, they’re not briefing him on all of the details, or he can’t remember what he was told in his briefings.”
Ex-pol: Doing Nothing = Social Security Cuts
“Joe Biden and Donald Trump agree on one thing,” snarks David McIntosh at The Wall Street Journal: leaving Social Security as is.
Yet without any changes, the law “requires a huge benefit cut in 10 years” — as much as 23%, per one analysis — because once its trust fund is depleted, “payouts will be limited to whatever funds come in from Social Security payroll taxes.”
And since benefits are tied to inflation, which has run higher than expected, the fund might go dry even sooner.
“The Biden-Trump strategy has been to play ‘beat the clock,’ leaving their successors to deal with the crisis.”
Candidates open to entitlement reform, like Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis, “would do well to point out that doing nothing is the worst Social Security cut.”
Libertarian: Defund NPR
“NPR announced that it was leaving Twitter after CEO Elon Musk slapped a ‘state-affiliated media’ label on its account,” notes Reason’s Liz Wolfe.
But NPR gets 4% of its funding direct from the feds; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds its member stations “to the tune of roughly 10 percent nowadays.”
This “Great Society initiative designed to provide a diversity of programming options for the poor and downtrodden has outlasted its usefulness in the era of Netflix, Hulu, Disney+.”
Time to start charging “customers a small monthly fee” so the feds can “kick NPR and PBS out of the nest.”
“Your taxpayer dollars should never have been subsidizing Big Bird, Tiny Desk concerts, or those insufferable tote bags in the first place.”
Legal desk: When Elephants Are People, Too
“Hoping for an easier path to confirmation” by lefty Senate Democrats who nixed her first nominee, Gov. Hochul’s new choice for chief judge is Court of Appeals Associate Judge Rowan Wilson, who wrote “a 70-page opinion arguing that an elephant should have the legal right to petition for release from the Bronx Zoo,” just as humans do, marvels the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon.
The court shot down his argument, in which he claimed the elephant, Happy, has “substantial cognitive, emotional and social needs.”
Indeed, he placed her “confinement” on a par with that of “abused women” and “enslaved persons.”
Then-Chief Judge Janet DiFiore blasted Wilson’s dissent as “short of any cogent legal analysis,” but clearly her likely successor “has a proclivity for pushing far beyond traditional legal boundaries.”
Conservative: Why Dems Fear Tim Scott
“Sen. Tim Scott’s run for president should sharpen voter focus on Democratic racism,” argues the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon.
“Scott is black and a conservative, two categories that the horrified Left believes cannot or must not overlap.”
The left’s “own racism is at least as ugly” as the right’s, and “black conservatives suffer most” from it, as evidenced by “the latest Democratic attempts to smear Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas” over his friendship with real-estate magnate Harlan Crow.
Dems hate Thomas because they “fear” him; they depend on blacks to back them as a “bloc” and to harbor “monolithic” opinions.
Yet “more and more” black folks are voting Republican. And “Scott would draw yet more” to the GOP.
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
