#Reporters as arms of the spy state and other commentary

From the left: Reporters Now Arms of the Spy State

A decade after the huge WikiLeaks dump of Afghan War secrets launched “a historic stretch of true oppositional journalism” investigating massive national-security-agency abuse, Matt Taibbi seethes at his TK News site, suddenly “the FBI-CIA-media partnership” has become “cozier than a Swedish porn shoot.” And all it took “was a little partisan catnip” as “the intel agencies started feeding reporters sensational (and often bogus) stories about the Russian-Republican conspiracy.” Thus figures like ex-CIA chief John Brennan, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, “both of whom had been caught lying to Congress,” and other intel vets are now “rehabilitated and are all paid contributors to either MSNBC or CNN.” Liberals don’t even quail at news “that the government is considering using private citizens to help it conduct what amount to vigilante intelligence operations for the DHS, FBI, CIA, and NSA” as “a slew of War on Terror programs are being retooled for domestic use.”

Foreign desk: Israel Hatred Takes an Ugly Turn

“Israel is now the only country on Earth that is expected to allow itself to be attacked,” fumes Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill. After “an escalation of violence in the Middle East,” protests “were instant and inflammatory,” with Londoners burning Israeli flags on the streets and Americans holding placards with the Israeli and Nazi flags side by side. The Onion got “tens of thousands of likes” for its tweet “IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child.” To “rage solely against Israel” because it has “sent missiles to destroy Hamas’s firing positions in Gaza,” from which the terrorist group sends “hundreds of missiles into civilian areas in Israel,” is “essentially to say: ‘Why won’t Israelis let themselves be killed?’”

Libertarian: The Job-Loss Gender Gap Isn’t Permanent

“The gender gap in pandemic job losses has been wildly exaggerated,” argues Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown. Vice President Kamala Harris called 2.5 million women dropping out of the workforce amid the pandemic a “national emergency.” But by April’s end, “the unemployment rate for women was slightly lower than the unemployment rate for men.” Yes, nearly half a million more women than men are still out of the labor force, since women “tend to outnumber men as the primary caregivers for children and elderly or ailing family members, leaving them more vulnerable to work disruptions when schools and child care centers shut down.” And “women are more highly concentrated in retail, leisure, and hospitality jobs,” which the pandemic and lockdowns hit hard. Those factors suggest the drop is likely to be short-term — and not in need of Harris’ multitrillion-dollar solutions.

From the right: Biden Folks MIA on Hamas

Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged last week that “Israel has a right to defend itself” as it retaliated against Hamas rockets, note the Washington Examiner’s editors. But he failed to “state clearly” that Israel is “defending itself against a terrorist instigator,” even as many Democrats don’t actually see Hamas as “the bad guy.” Fact is, Hamas is “a terrorist organization. It uses civilians as shields so it can accuse Israel of war crimes when it retaliates.” It seeks “not simply to kill Israelis but to purge all the Jews from Israel” — in other words, “a second Holocaust.” And it’s “succeeding in ruining the daily life of Jews and Arabs alike.” No democratic society can “accept existence on these terms, let alone flourish.”

Conservative: Dems AWOL on Wuhan-Lab Probe

Democrats have failed to join congressional Republican efforts “to gather evidence in possession of the U.S. government and the controversial EcoHealth Alliance nonprofit-research organization about the possibility that the virus first leaked from the Wuhan lab,” observes Jimmy Quinn at National Review. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, CIA head William Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines have all said “a lab leak is a plausible theory,” yet “congressional Democrats have maintained a conspicuous silence.” The key test may be if they stymie Sen. Roger Marshall’s resolution “to create a twelve-member committee to investigate the virus’s outbreak.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board