Ex-prosecutor: Hunter Special Counsel Is a Must

Though he’s “sympathetic to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s insistence . . . that the Biden investigation — which the administration disingenuously minimizes as if it implicated only the president’s son, Hunter — is in the capable hands of the Biden Justice Department, with no need to appoint a special counsel,” former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy explains at The Hill, “there is a bulletproof case for the appointment of a special counsel under regulations that are supposed to bind the Justice Department.” “Millions of dollars allegedly poured into the Biden family . . . from foreign sources tied to” corrupt and authoritarian governments,” and Joe Biden “had to know his son was trading on his political influence.” Since “the controlling federal regulations dictate that a special counsel must be appointed,” the longer Garland fights it, “the more it increases suspicion that the president’s hands may not be clean.”

Ex-Marine: Send Ukraine More Aid

“U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization aid to Ukraine has been too little, too late,” laments Bing West in The Wall Street Journal. “The air war was conceded to Russia a month ago when President Biden, unnerved by Vladimir Putin’s threats, vetoed the transfer of Polish MiGs to Ukraine. With Russia bombing civilians daily, that timorous decision must be reversed.” And having “conceded control of the air, the odds of Ukraine taking back the cities held by the Russians are low, and approach zero without massive artillery.” And keep in mind: “NATO military aid is one-tenth of what Europe is paying Russia for energy.”

Libertarian: Biden’s Not-Bad Zoning Plan

President Biden is taking “another stab at zoning reform,” reports Reason’s Christian Britschgi. He’s “proposing to spend $10 billion over ten years incentivizing local and state governments to remove regulatory barriers to new housing construction.” His administration argues “America is short some 3.8 million homes” and puts “some of the blame” on local regulations. “Federal money can incentivize cities” to “undertake a wholesale rewrite” of their “decades-old zoning codes,” Britschgi notes. The “proposal is not perfectly, or even particularly, libertarian. It still involves new federal spending.” But “this is one area where the federal government could potentially play a constructive, deregulatory role.”

Media watch: Musk’s Concerned Competition

The Washington Post is “very concerned” Elon Musk will soon “own a major media platform,” snarks Becket Adams at the Washington Examiner — much like its “overlord” Jeff Bezos. WaPo warns Twitter’s new owner is a “right-wing gadfly,” which is funny considering: He’s a “leader in green technology, building his automotive empire largely on the back of taxpayers. He’s a climate change alarmist. He’s a crony capitalist. He’s liberal on nearly every social policy.” The newspaper worries about not just Twitter execs losing their jobs but the social-media giant’s anonymous users. It’s hilarious because the paper “just a few weeks ago revealed the identity of the anonymous Twitter user behind the ‘Libs of TikTok’ account.” The paper’s “criticisms and concerns” don’t seem “genuine” but rather a reflection of Bezos, the paper’s owner, who “almost certainly views Musk as a direct competitor.”

Culture critic: Educating for Morals

“Classical education is a holistic approach that is geared toward the cultivation of students’ minds, imagination, perception, and emotions so that they can be equipped with character traits that will help them to flourish,” notes Jennifer Frey at Thomas B. Fordham Institute. But “virtue education can be incorporated into a more mainstream educational setting,” too. English language arts curriculum standards, for example, often emphasize “technique and mechanics.” But in “teaching children how to read, listen to, and write stories, we are forming their imagination, perception, and moral character.” We “ought to think more carefully about how reading, hearing, and writing stories play an essential role in forming our moral imagination and character.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board