Conservative: ‘Smear Campaign’ v. Thomas
A New York Times magazine “hit piece” is part of campaign “aimed at undermining the legitimacy of Justice Thomas’s jurisprudence,” thunders Peter Wood at Spectator World. The conceit is that the justice “might be inappropriately influenced by his wife” because of her work advising outfits like his own National Association of Scholars, though she had nothing to do with the NAS brief in a college affirmative-action case before the Supremes. Yet the real issue is that he reads “our constitutional law as favoring equal justice regardless of race.” Ironically, the case involves Harvard, and Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan are Harvard grads (Kagan was a law school dean as well) — “a far more apparent conflict of interest than Thomas.” So “the drumbeat to demonize Justice Thomas” is “like a lot of progressive advocacy, profoundly hypocritical.”
From the right: Energy Wokeness = Weakness
Team Biden is “so committed” to the “woke religion” of “shutting down fossil fuels that they sacrificed our energy independence on its altar,” seethes Ned Ryun at American Greatness. “Crude oil more than doubled under Biden . . . natural gas had risen 74 percent before the Russians invaded” Ukraine and prices spiked further. “None of this had to happen, . . . since under Donald Trump the United States had become a net exporter of energy.” But Biden has “crippled our self-sufficient energy production, and made us reliant on purchasing absurd quantities of oil from countries that despise us.” The rational move: “reopening the Keystone pipeline and exploring additional options for drilling, fracking and nuclear energy” to get “cheaper costs for consumers and thousands of jobs for Americans,” boost “our national security” and “free Europe from Putin’s leverage by offering additional energy options.”
War watch: What Breaks First?
“Something’s going to break in the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Jim Geraghty writes at National Review. “The only question is what breaks first: The Russian supply lines, the Ukrainian ability to effectively resist, the Russian economy or the patience of some armed individuals around” Vladimir Putin. If Westerners “can see how disastrous the war is turning out for Russia, there is a chance that someone else closer to Putin can see it, too.” And rumored Putin health issues would explain “keeping his distance from others in public appearances.” But: “Would a man fighting a terminal disease be in a hurry to achieve his lifelong goal of reacquiring Ukraine under Russian authority? Would his usual caution and risk calculations be cast aside, as he felt he was up against the ticking clock of his own mortality?”
Foreign desk: Russia’s Loss, China’s Gain
China will be “the big winner financially and geopolitically” of the “US-led hybrid war against Russia, centered on unparalleled sanctions,” predicts Brahma Chellaney at The Hill. Beijing has faced no “meaningful sanctions despite swallowing Hong Kong, redrawing the geopolitical map of the South China Sea, expanding its land frontiers in the Himalayas and establishing a Muslim gulag with more than 1 million detainees.” Russia is an “easy target” because America “has little stake in the Russian economy.” Yet “heavy economic penalties on Moscow” are “set to turn China into Russia’s banker, enabling it to reap vast profits.” Sanctions, “a grossly overused tool,” could thus prove “counterproductive to America’s own economic and geopolitical interests.”
Libertarian: Musk v. the Totalitarians
Continued Internet access has let Ukraine “show the world the brutality and folly of the Russian attack,” observes Reason’s Isaac Reese. Russia aims to “knock the country fully offline,” but Elon Musk has provided Starlink, “a global satellite internet provider owned by Musk’s company SpaceX.” Now everyday Ukrainians can “coordinate their defense,” rally “people to their cause” and show the “devastating cost of war.” And in the future, “Satellite internet might one day offer an uncensored alternative for people living in North Korea, China or Cuba.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
