#Susan Rice is a risky vice president pick and other commentary

Then-Vice President Joe Biden, center, and Susan Rice, then-US Ambassador to the UN, with then-UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2010.
AP

With Joe Biden’s “prospects for the White House looking increasingly rosy,” report The Daily Beast’s Sam Brodey and Hunter Woodall, some Democrats find it “peculiar” he is “increasingly considering one of the seemingly riskier picks for a VP”: Susan Rice. Yes, President Barack ­Obama’s national security adviser is “a steady hand who could offer him governing support from the get-go.” But she is also “a deeply familiar figure to” President Trump and his supporters, “a villain at the heart of numerous Obama-era outrages,” from “the attack at the US consulate in Benghazi to the beginning of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia.” Democrats don’t want to adopt “the same risk-averse approach” as 2016, but they are confident “Trump is self-immolating” and don’t want to hand him any sort of weapon. Rice would be just such a thing.

From the right: What Is the 1619 ‘Omelet’?

Stalin infamously justified his actions by saying, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking an egg,” notes Rod Dreher at The American Conservative, prompting the question: What is the “omelet” that justifies the “malicious and destructive” lies of The New York Times’ 1619 Project? Project leader Nikole Hannah-Jones & Co. claim “the purpose of America was to preserve slavery.” A host of “historians — none of them conservatives — called Jones and her team at the Times out on this lie,” yet our elites are still planning to use it to deceive Americans about “what America was and is,” even teaching it in schools. What is the goal? Well, if Americans come to believe Jones’ “fairy tale” is true, it will be the country’s “undoing.” “Is that what she’s after?”

Environmentalist: House Democrats Muzzled Me

When environmental-policy expert Michael Shellenberger showed up to testify to a House committee about a proposal to fight climate change, he recounts at Quillette, two Democratic members “smeared” his reputation, expertise and ethics. Shellenberger, a “climate activist for 20 years,” had actually advocated for a similar proposal, yet Reps. Sean Casten and Jared Huffman blasted him, and Chairwoman Kathy Castor refused to let him respond. Why? Just as Shellenberger had testified to Congress in January, he told the committee that “climate change is real but isn’t the end of the world” or “even our most important environmental problem,” which is China and Russia’s “global domination of nuclear energy.” Democrats shut him down in service of their “war on nuclear energy.”

Conservative: The Barr-Hearing Debacle

It was “one of those days” when “it just feels like we’re doomed,” says ­National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy of the House hearing with Attorney General William Barr. “It wasn’t anything like an actual hearing, and [Democrats] didn’t want him to testify — as in actually answer questions. The session was a coveted election-year opportunity for Democrats to berate” the AG, who they rarely even allowed to ­answer. The cause for despair: “They act this way because their voters expect and demand that they act this way.” To their base, “no stratagem that paints the president and his administration as ­deserving of anything more than contempt is beyond the pale” — including ignoring “the difference between peaceful protesters and rioters.” And: “A faction that would rather delegitimize than debate its opposition can do that to anyone or anything.”

Iconoclast: The Perfect Visitors for 2020

The US government seems to be adopting “the tagline of a famous ­internet meme,” quips USA Today’s Glenn Harlan Reynolds, namely: “I’m not saying that it’s aliens. But it’s aliens.” The New York Times’ “latest slow-roll disclosure about UFOs and aliens” this week included “reports that the Pentagon has obtained vehicles or parts of vehicles ‘not made on this Earth.’ ” Whether or not that’s true, finding that “our vast universe harbors other intelligent life,” probably even some that resembles ­humans, wouldn’t be too shocking. And if such extraterrestrials are planning a visit to this planet, well, “2020 is the perfect year for them to ­arrive,” isn’t it? “Welcome to Earth, alien visitors. Watch out for the murder hornets.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board