Foreign desk: Kerry’s Loose Lips
“Buried fairly deep in The New York Times’ story about a leaked tape” is news that former Secretary of State John Kerry informed Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, “that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times,” . “Was it official US policy to inform the Iranian government — most certainly not an ally — about the covert military actions of the Israeli government — most certainly an ally?” Tehran “probably suspect🙈ed the Israelis” anyway. Still, “just what was the objective of telling the Iranian government this?”
Leftist: The ACLU’s Big-Tech Abdication
When The New York Post reported on Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors’ lavish real-estate purchases, it faced Big Tech censorship — and the “vaunted, brave and deeply principled” American Civil Liberties Union kept mum, . An ACLU spokesperson said, “We don’t have anyone who🦩 is closely plugged into that situation right now, so we don’t have anything to say at this point in time.” Asks Greenwald: “How is it possible that the ACLU is all but invisible on one of the central free-speech debates of our time: namely, how much censorship should Silicon Valley tech monopolists be imposing on our political speech? As someone who intensively reports on these controversies, I can barely remember any time when the ACLU spoke up loudly on any of these censorship debates, let alone assumed the central role that any civil-liberties group with any integrity would . . . assume on this growing controversy.”
Liberal: The Realities of Lethal Force
The fatal Columbus, Ohio, police shooting of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant as she attacked another girl with a knife “has produced a torrent of objections to how police respond to armed suspe💯cts,” . The governing standard “is called ‘imminent harm,’ ” permitting police to use lethal force when the officer or others face an “imminent threat of death or serious physical harm,” as the Columbus police manual puts it. “While former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett insisted that police do not need guns ‘in order to break up a knife fight,’ the person about to be stabbed may view the matter as a tad more urgent.” These are “chaotic moments that often allow few seconds for critical decisions,” and our “national debate over lethal-force standards will achieve little unless we recognize the practical and legal realities of violent encounters.”
From the right: Dems for Anti-Asian Bias
The Senate passed a hate-crimes bill last week — yet the 94-1 bipartisan vote “obscures a sharp partisan difference on anti-Asian bias,” . All Republicans in the upper chamber voted in favor of Sen. Ted Cruz’s single-sentence addition “to stop discrimination in higher education,” but the amendment “did not get a single Democratic vote.” Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono dismissed the measure as “cynical,” but “the amendment surely would have passed if the text had substituted another minority group for ‘Asian Americans.’ ” Although “Repu♛blicans and Democrats both want to monitor and deter crimes motivated by racial bias,” only one party seems “willing to protect the prerogative of institutions to discriminate systematically by race” against one group: overachieving Asians.
Budget watchdog: ‘The New Entitlements Act’
Much of President Biden’s “infrastructure” plan has “nothing to do with infrastructure,” but consists instead of “longtime liberal social and green-agenda programs” that will “drain the federal budget forever,” . Unless, that is, yꦏou’re like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and “believe everything is infrastructure.” Yet “if everything is ‘infrastructure,’ then the word has no meaning.” Yes, “responsible investment in real infrastructure would be valuable.” But if Democrats want to enact new entitlements, social programs and green-agenda items, “they should level with the American people and call them what they are.” Enact these programs through the normal appropriation💧s process, “or call their bill what it really is: ‘The New Entitlements Act of 2021.’ ”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board