Congressional circus: The Anti-Barr Show
At Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Democrats asked questions that “heaped scorn” on Attorney General William Barr — and then, The Federalist’s David Marcus eyerolls, “refused to allow Barr to answer.” If members really thought Barr had made mistakes or false statements, they would have made him “answer hard questions,” but they didn’t — because “he did nothing wrong and could explain that.” Thus, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) “engaged in a long rant” about federal forces and then “simply talked over” Barr when he “tried to explain the situation.” The hearing’s point wasn’t to question the attorney general: It was about “speechifying and silencing” him. It all adds up to a “sick reality show pretending to be governance.”
Conservative: America on the Brink
The establishment media’s “characterization of demonstrations that have routinely turned into looting and rioting” as “mostly peaceful” should “frighten all Americans,” argues Creators columnist Ben Shapiro. The same people cheering on violent Black Lives Matter protesters blasted nonviolent anti-lockdown protesters as dangerous, because “many of our cultural elites are fine with violence” — as long as they agree with its goals. Thus they will “pat the violent vanguard of revolution on the head, content that they will not pay the price,” and maintain that those who “crave law and order stand for regressive autocracy.” That attitude is how “the thin veneer of civilization disintegrates” and “democracies die.” And so “America draws closer to the brink.”
Media watch: When Black Lives Don’t Matter
An ABC News tweet — “Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified” — was “better than any satire as an illustration of the corporate media’s biases,” snarks Daniel McCarthy at Spectator USA. Liberal elites have a “conscience-free outlook” on “mayhem and murder in the streets,” which is nothing next to “the ideological and political struggle.” They are “exquisitely sensitive to the correct formulary use of language, even as they neglect the lives of actual black people who are murdered by criminals every day in America’s cities.” It’s a “bitter” irony: “Capitalizing the word ‘black’ is not going to save a single black child from a drug dealer’s bullet.” But “defunding, demoralizing and abolishing the police” will certainly “result in more black lives being lost to crime.”
Campaign desk: The Crusade Against Kamala
A “disgruntled group of at least a dozen” of Joe Biden’s closest allies are “waging a campaign to stop” Kamala Harris from becoming the ex-veep’s running mate, reports CNBC’s Brian Schwartz. “Some remain bitter about her attacks on Biden during primary debates last year,” about which she appears “to have no remorse.” Others “argue that she’s too ambitious,” with one saying, “She would be running for president the day of the inauguration.” Yet the California lawmaker “still appears to be in the top tier of candidates for the job,” with the Associated Press even capturing a picture of Biden holding notes signaling his “decision to stand with Harris.”
Policy pointers: The Wisdom of James Gattuso
At Technology Liberation Front, Adam Thierer expresses his gratitude to the late James Gattuso, a Washington policy hand who spent much of his career at the Heritage Foundation: “The most important thing I learned from working with James was how to properly conduct myself as an analyst and a human being.” Above all, he treated everyone “with enormous respect, even when he violently disagreed with them. He listened carefully, digested arguments and addressed them with a cool tenor, but also a powerful wit.” Hence No. 2 of Gattuso’s “10 Rules for Policy Analysis”: “Don’t assume the other guy is evil. He may be but will be on your side later.” Notes Thierer: “Many young people in the world of public policy … tend to look at their opponents as nefarious-minded dimwits who are without hope or a moral compass. … James taught me early on to avoid falling into this trap.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board