#Shootings prove we need cops and other commentary

From the right: Shootings Prove We Need Cops

Defund-the-police activists are “notably quiet” following events like “the fatal spa shooting in Atlanta and Monday’s supermarket shooting in Boulder, Colo.” — because, argue the Boston Herald’s editors, such atrocities remind folks that some people are violent and “we need brave men and women willing to jump into the fray to protect us.” After the Atlanta carnage, police posted a photo of the suspect, ID’d him, tracked his cell phone, stopped him on the highway and arrested him. “Impressive and necessary police work.” In Boulder, Officer Eric Talley was “first on the scene” and paid “the ultimate price” with his life, leaving seven children. Other cops took the shooter into custody. These officers did “what police all over the country do when all hell breaks loose — they run toward it.”

Libertarian: Biden’s Disastrous Spend-a-Palooza

President Biden’s next $3 trillion spending plan will be called an infrastructure bill, yet, laments Reason’s Eric Boehm, “only about $1 trillion would be directed toward such traditional infrastructure items as roads.” The rest “will probably be packed with progressive policy items” — paid family leave, free community college, universal pre-K. And while the tax hikes it’ll include will kill jobs, “mounting national debt” will likely have “more serious” consequences. Even without new spending, the debt is expected to swell to twice the size of the US economy in 25 years. That could trigger “a major fiscal crisis,” but even if it doesn’t, “merely making the interest payments” will drag down “long-term economic growth and Americans’ standard of living.”

From the left: Intel Agencies Cross Red Lines

The Department of Homeland Security last week released a report citing a growing threat of violence from domestic extremists, but Glenn Greenwald blogs of the “serious concerns” it raises of “possibly illegal involvement by the intelligence community in US domestic political affairs.” The report was “not subject to the standard rigors of an intelligence community finding, yet continually makes sweeping claims that it prefixes with the authoritative phrase ‘the IC assesses.’ ” And why did the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, both barred by law from domestic surveillance, contribute to the report? Beware: “Involvement of the intelligence community in the domestic activities of US citizens is one of the most dangerous breaches of civil liberties and democratic order the US government can perpetrate.”

Conservative: Cuomo Bros’ Nepotism

Last year, “Gov. Andrew Cuomo quietly ordered state health officials to prioritize care for his friends and family, even before health-care workers,” writes the Washington Examiner’s Becket Adams. His brother Chris Cuomo, “a supposed journalist, never reported that New York’s elite were prioritized over everyone else” even as “he was on the receiving end of the governor’s beneficence.” And CNN admitted to Chris’ special treatment only after letting the anchor “regale his viewers with tales about his family’s brush with the virus.” It’s bad enough the governor roped state troopers and health officials into his “scheme” to misuse his political power, but that Chris Cuomo, “who role-plays on weeknights as a fearless journalist, withheld all of this information from the public is unforgivable.”

Medical expert: Stop Ignoring Natural Immunity

“Herd immunity is near,” despite Anthony Fauci’s “denial,” cheers Johns Hopkins medicine prof Marty Makary at The Wall Street Journal. Fauci’s “estimate that it’ll take a 70 percent to 85 percent vaccination rate ignores those who have already been infected.” Yet natural immunity “is real” and reinfections “rare.” As many as “half of Californians have natural immunity today,” though only 26 percent have been vaccinated. “Fauci’s vaccination-only path to herd immunity” is a “false justification for continued excessive restrictions on freedom” and means authorities might be “misallocating the limited vaccine supply” by not prioritizing “people without natural antibodies.” Fauci says “we don’t have good data on natural immunity.” Yet that is “largely because his own National Institutes of Health has done little” to address the issue.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board