Hunter watch: GOPers Stand Vindicated

“The list of those owed an apology over the Hunter Biden affair may stretch to the moon and back,” snarks Kimberly A. Strassel at The Wall Street Journal. Topping the list? Republicans “Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson.” Their probe of Hunter spooked Dems, who called it “a vehicle for ‘laundering’ a foreign influence campaign.” Now that the story is authenticated, Grassley wants Dems to say “what parts . . . were Russian disinformation,” while Johnson noted “the press is . . . continuing to ignore” Joe Biden’s own possible involvement. Hunter’s shenanigans raise “questions about counterintelligence and extortion” and make us ask if the president really had “no knowledge of his son’s doings.” And while Johnson and Grassley “are getting satisfaction . . . they’d no doubt take that apology, too.”

Urban beat: Residents on Their Own vs. Crime

“Philadelphia’s progressive district attorney Larry Krasner has let violence and mayhem run unchecked in the City of Brotherly Love,” declares Thomas Hogan at City Journal. The city set “a new annual record for homicides, with 562 killings in 2021,” while Krasner continues to let “criminals walk” free and even expands the list of crimes he won’t prosecute to include firearms offenses — “in the belief that such prosecutions are unjust and racially discriminatory.” As a result, Philly residents are now forced to defend themselves to fight crime. “In an ordered society, law enforcement has a monopoly on the use of force, and citizens turn to the criminal-justice system for protection.” But not in Krasner’s world, which is why the city’s population slipped by almost 25,000 residents last year.

Fiscal expert: State Budget’s Alarming Flaws

In putting together a New York state budget for the current fiscal year, Albany “does not appear to have sufficiently balanced priorities between relief and recovery now and protecting future New Yorkers from the next emergency or recession,” worries Andrew Rein at the Citizens Budget Commission. For example, the 15% of operating funds that were set aside for reserves amounts to less than half the $40 billion-plus over three years that past recessions have cost the state. Meanwhile, “the budget reportedly adds billions of dollars of recurring spending with apparently no commensurate actions to restrain spending growth in other areas.” That could lead to “significant future fiscal stress, which is especially concerning given the rocky recovery, global instability and inflationary pressures.”

Libertarian: Musk’s No Free-Speech Guarantee

Elon Musk bought the largest stake in Twitter perhaps to champion free speech there, notes J.D. Tuccille at Reason. Yet “any movement based around one person is . . . only as good as that person” — and Musk, “already at war” with the SEC, stands accused of “retaliation against critics” at Tesla. So it’s possible “the clout he wields at Twitter might . . . be wielded against free speech.” Which is why the job of protecting “free speech can’t lie in the hands of one person”; it needs “a culture that values protections for dissent without regard for our agreement or disagreement with other people’s views.”

Progressive: Team Biden’s War on Charters

“More than 3.5 million U.S. parents today choose charter schools because they believe they are a better fit for their children,” argues Will Marshall at The Hill. Yet the Biden Department of Education has rolled out new rules “aimed at retarding the spread of public charter schools” by requiring their organizers to partner “with local school districts to enhance their chances of winning” federal funding. Trouble is, partnering with “often hostile districts would compromise” what makes charters effective — “their autonomy.” Another rule: The Ed Department “wants to give federal grant reviewers the power to override state and local decisions to authorize schools in the name of ‘community impact.’ This amorphous standard seems plainly intended to stem the defection of families from district schools to charters.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board