By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2024-12-11 23:33:37 | Updated at 2024-12-12 01:57:42
2 hours ago
From the right: Fall of the Prog DAs
Per leftists, snarks National Review’s Jim Geraghty, progressive prosecutors implementing “no cash bail, dropping charges, charging the minimum crime and pursuing minimum sentences” and “declining to prosecute two-thirds of those arrested” have no effect on crime rates.
Indeed, “it’s just terrible luck” those policies keep on “generating a spike in violent and property crime!”
“The most famous and infamous” such DAs is Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg, whose “Javert-like pursuit of Trump over old business filings while the city suffered from a post-pandemic crime surge added to the perception that the Democrats obsessed over anything and everything Trump did while ignoring serious and worsening problems in the lives of the ordinary citizenry.”
Bragg “won the biggest case of his career. And all it cost him was everything else.”
Mideast watch: Iran’s Next Proxy
Bashar al-Assad’s ouster cost Tehran a major asset; now, note Jonathan Sweet & Mark Toth at The Hill, fitting Iran’s “desperate need for a new proxy” is the “Somalia-based terrorist group” al-Shabaab.
US intelligence believes the Iran-backed “Houthi rebels established a weapons agreement with al-Shabaab,” providing “access to a new source of weapons — including drones and possibly ballistic missiles.”
“Al-Shabaab would be a dangerous and capable proxy for Iran” requiring Team Trump to “exercise maximum pressure” and vigilance “against Tehran’s machinations in the Horn of Africa.”
Conservative: Antisemites & Facts at Oxford
“News reports have made clear” that the recent Oxford Union’s debate on Israel and genocide “descended into madness” as the pro-Israel “team couldn’t even get through their statements without obscene screeching from the audience,” observes Commentary’s Seth Mandel.
Worse, a video released by debater Jonathan Sacerdoti shows “that the parts that drove the crowd to the brink of insanity were merely Sacerdoti’s reciting of statistics — i.e., facts.”
“Eight minutes in, Sacerdoti notes, in objection to the idea that Israel is purposely starving Gazans: ‘Israel has provided 700,000 tons of food to Gaza during this war. That is a daily average of 3,200 calories per person.’ To which a woman in the audience yelled: ‘You sick motherf—ker!’ ”
“You don’t get to hear that response” on the Union’s video, as “the sound is cut out for 110 seconds, the length of time it takes the presiding official to regain order.”
Censorship beat: The West’s Free-Speech Follies
“Almost every Western democracy, from Britain to Australia, has embraced legislation that restricts what people can see and say online,” warns Paul Coleman at Spiked.
Now a bill in Barbados would “criminalize online content that causes ‘annoyance’ or ‘emotional distress’ ” with “penalties of seven years in prison and approximately £27,000 in fines.”
In Canada, “Justin Trudeau has intensified efforts to regulate online content through his Online Harms Bill,” which allows “life imprisonment” for mere “hateful conduct.”
And Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, wants Daily Mail articles blocked on platforms like X.
“As the censorship industrial complex expands, the fight to defend free speech must rise to meet it on a global scale.”
Libertarian: Murder Fans’ Health-Care Fantasies
Supporters of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s assassin are “dreaming” if they think “insurance executives like Thompson are all that stands between them and their visions of a single-payer medical system that satisfies every desire,” chides Reason’s J.D. Tuccille.
While leftists’ want medical “bills paid by the government,” the truth is that “third-party payers — whether governments or insurance companies — do enormous damage to the provision of health care,” as they leave consumers with no incentive to control costs.
And “concerns about rising costs, demand, and finite resources apply just as much when the payer is the government.”
Canada’s “single-payer system famously relies heavily on long wait times to ration care.”
Bottom line: Getting “government and other third-parties” out of the process is the best route to lower health-care costs.
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
