#Social media is state media and other commentary

The left is attacking New York Post reporting that exposes Hunter Biden’s “influence-peddling” as Russian disinformation, but “the funny thing about kompromat — a Russian term for compromising information — is that it is often true,” quips Jonathan Turley at The Hill. “Hunter Biden has yet to deny these were his laptop, his e-mails, his images.” Twitter’s suppression of the story is “an outrageous example of open censorship and bias” and “shows how private companies effectively can become state media working for one party.” To allow social-media platforms immunity when they have taken it upon themselves to police content would be a loss of “the greatest single advance in free speech via an unregulated Internet.”

Economist: Yes, It’s a V-Shaped Rebound

“Shutdowns of ‘nonessential’ businesses caused real GDP to drop at a 31.4 percent annual rate in the second quarter,” recalls economist Brian Wesbury at RealClearPolitics. Yet “a V-shaped recovery is being traced out.” Later this month, he says, a report will show third-quarter real GDP rebounding at a 33.4 percent annual clip — “one of the largest jumps in output the US has ever experienced.” It’s “a testament to the underlying strength of the US economy before the shutdowns” and the “seemingly unlimited ingenuity of the American people.” It’s fortunate we “entered this government-mandated recession with the highest incomes and lowest poverty rate” ever recorded.

Freedom fighter: Unchecked Putin

“Alexey Navalny is the biggest thorn in Vladimir Putin’s side,” declares The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen. Many of his fellow dissidents, such as Garry Kasparov, are exiles or, like politician Boris Nemtsov, dead. When Navalny realized on a flight from Siberia he’d been poisoned, he tells Gessen, “I informed the flight attendant that I was about to die, right there on their plane, and I lay down.” He survived. “I find myself living inside of a James Bond movie,” except “I’m like a little old man.” The nerve agent Novichok has taken its toll. “Now, pulling a T-shirt off — that’s truly difficult.” Putin, his chief critic says is “the most powerful man on the planet, because nothing keeps him in check. Sure, the US president leads a stronger country, but he is constrained by the courts, by Congress, by the media, by the opposing party.”

Legal eagle: Ignorant Opinions on Originalism

Some critics of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s jurisprudence, such as Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times and Hayes Brown of MSNBC, plainly didn’t do their research, Ilya Somin explains at The Volokh Conspiracy. They claim “originalists” ignore the huge impact of the post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution, an error that is intended “to privilege white men over blacks and other racial minorities.” But “they are badly wrong” and “guilty of ignoring a vast originalist literature devoted to that very subject.” Professors such as Michael McConnell, Steve Calabresi, Christina Mulligan, Randy Barnett, Akhil Amar and Somin himself have written extensively on the issue — as did “prominent early originalists such as Robert Bork and Raoul Berger going back to the 1960s,” while Justices Clarence Thomas, William Rehnquist and others confronted it in their high-court opinions. Bouie, Brown & Co. “should at least consult relevant specialists before making sweeping claims about originalism.”

Foreign desk: Don Right Not To Talk to Beijing

Actions will speak louder than words when it comes to dealing with “ruthless China,” argues Gordon G. Chang at Newsweek. President Trump should continue to ignore calls from national-security professionals, including Henry Kissinger, to begin “long-term discussions with China” — talk “with a militant Chinese regime will almost certainly lead to unfavorable outcomes.” Beijing historically “violates obligations and expects counter-parties to comply with theirs,” proving it’s “futile trying to constrain China’s militant regime with words.” The “let’s-talk-to-China approach” has “failed” for a half-century, as “by trying to talk, as various administrations have done, China perceives an American unwillingness to act.” The way forward is to “stop talking to Beijing and start confronting it with vigor.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board