KBJ’s “women’s problem” and other comments

Conservative: KBJ’s “women’s problem”.

When Biden Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson refused to offer Sen. Martha Blackburn a definition of the word “woman,” “it was an amazing moment and a terrible one for Jackson.” explains Byron York of the Washington Examiner. “You have to be a biologist to know what a woman is? Who would say that? Perhaps in the seconds she had to ponder the question, Jackson was able to see that the whole issue was a minefield for a candidate backed by the progressive legal community.” Although Jackson’s hearings are over, “the exchange will reverberate.” Wokeism has become a major concern for voters, “and the fact that President Joe Biden’s nominee would not answer Blackburn’s easy questions will be difficult for Democrats to defend in this year’s midterm election.”

Media Report: Why Hunter Laptop Stories Matter

“The real Hunter-Biden laptop scandal isn’t the laptop itself.” writes Brendan O’Neill at Spiked. “It’s the fact that America’s media elites studiously ignored the whole damn thing and even outright censored it,” to the point that “social media oligarchs even stopped people from sharing The Post’s stories about it.” It all adds up to an “extraordinary moment”: A “free-spirited daily newspaper published an exciting report on . . . the son of the then Vice-President” and was “shamed, blocked and defamed” for it – “a chilling attack on media freedom, the right to object and the truth itself”. And while “Hunter’s laptop is embarrassing” and “raises questions that need answering,” “the ruthless war on the laptop is history.” . . should be seen as a very loud warning sign.”

Albany Beat: Cuomo’s chilling COVID nostalgia

“In his quest for a political comeback” notes Noah Rothman at Commentary, ex-reg. Andrew Cuomo “revels in what for most of us has been sheer misery” – and tweets “a screenshot of one of the [his] Daily press conferences in the midst of the pandemic.” Why would Cuomo “relive the bleakest days of the pandemic”? Certainly “not because of his dubious record in handling COVID-19.” Rather, amid the trauma of the pandemic, “his key supporters formed an unbreakable emotional bond” with him. Only “personal satisfaction” could explain his “otherwise inexplicable dredging of his catastrophic last year in office”. He “reflects on what must have been one of the best times of his life”; that it was “the very worst of times for the rest of us” escaped him.

Libertarian: Bidenites aim to further raise prices

Despite inflation at a 40-year high, Team Biden is pushing to raise wages for government contractors and reverse Reagan-era policies aimed at curbing price hikes. warns Eric Boehm of Reason. The change would restore the “30 percent rule” that based federal contractors’ rates “on the highest wages” paid to at least 30 percent of workers in a given area. Labor scrapped the rule in 1982 after a federal report found it fueled inflation and bloated construction costs. Restoring it now would drive up prices even further and limit the number of infrastructure projects that can be undertaken. But Team Biden dismisses such concerns. Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time it has “ignored warnings of possible inflation to achieve policy goals.”

Foreign Editor: China owes its rise to the West

“In the past few decades, China has lifted nearly 800 million people out of poverty,” Steve Kelman points out the hill – thanks not to communism but to capitalism. Back when China’s economy was “a largely state-run version of the Soviet model,” it experienced “spurts of economic growth, traumatic famine, and periodic economic crises.” But “that changed dramatically, first tentatively with the announcement of ‘reform and opening-up’ in China in 1978 and then really after 1992 when Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping unleashed private enterprise.” Today, the private sector “makes up 87 percent of urban employment in China, compared to 18 percent in 1995”. So “let’s not belittle or belittle China” – but let’s also understand that these achievements have their roots in the “West”.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board