White House watch: OKing SCOTUS Intimidation

“The Biden White House doesn’t seem to care that angry mobs have gone to the homes of six conservative Supreme Court justices to protest the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade,” thunders Joe Concha at The Hill. The lefty group Ruth Sent Us published the addresses of six justices, including several with “children at home.” Pushed on whether that’s “extreme,” Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki replied, “I don’t have an official US government position on where people protest.” Federal law prohibits “pickets or parades” with “intent of influencing any judge” if it’s “in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge.” Says Concha: “Perhaps another reporter in the daily briefing can circle back on this”: “By not condemning it,” Team Biden is “tacitly approving the intimidation of justices at their homes.”

Urban beat: Gentrifying Fare Evasion

“As more transit riders who can afford to pay fares jump them instead, will US cities step up efforts to increase collections?” wonders Dorothy Moses Schulz at City Journal. We’re seeing “the gentrification of fare evasion,” with Metropolitan Transportation Authority head Janno Lieber complaining that “people in designer clothes, carrying $7 lattes,” are “waltzing through emergency gates” in tony neighborhoods. Lieber, notes Schulz, wants to encourage payment through “education” and “consider technological, design, and personnel solutions to limit evasion” — i.e., “options other than citing, summonses, or arresting those who fail to pay the fare.” But refusing “to enforce the law” is “a recipe for declining fare revenue, increasing fare evasion, and skyrocketing crime.”

Libertarian: Do Roe Backers Understand It?

Polls suggest some people who support Roe v. Wade “do not fully understand what it entails,” argues Reason’s Jacob Sullum. In a Gallup survey, 63% said the Supreme Court should not overturn Roe, but “54% thought their own states should pass a law banning abortion after 15 weeks” — the exact issue in the case that generated the draft ruling. The “key question” is “not what most Americans think about abortion” but “whether the Constitution guarantees a right to abortion” or “imposes limits on state regulation of abortion.” The leaked opinion and oral arguments indicate “most of the justices think it does not.”

From the right: What Liberals Wrought

“Conservatism will look like Friedrich Nietzsche meets Beavis and Butt-Head if things continue,” warns Daniel McCarthy at Spectator World. “Conservatism draws its strength from four forces — Christianity; heartland patriotism; the philosophy of Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and the Founding Fathers; and revulsion against the left.” But as “religious identification falls and heartland patriotism is redefined as hate, philosophical conservatives can only complain.” Progressives have “a near monopoly on cultural power and hegemony in corporate America.” Yet conservatives aren’t disappearing in politics, with the GOP sure to make gains this year. Why? “The more power the left gains, the more obvious its failures become, and the more it gives rein to its despotic desires, the more Americans rebel.” Eventually “their plight will be articulated by new philosophers, who will offer prescriptions for a social order no longer in fact grounded in Christianity or local affection. Don’t blame Donald Trump — this hard new right is the result of liberalism.”

Conservative: Public Not With Dems on Abortion

“Democrats are unlikely to see the surge of angry abortion rights voters they hope for on midterm Election Day,” as the Supreme Court leak “is mostly a desperate, opportunistic attempt to deflect attention from the Democrats’ biggest political challenge this year,” predicts the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon. “President Joe Biden and the Democrats have turned a strong economy into a damaged and worrying one. Every issue other than this pales in voters’ minds.” Besides, Dems overstate public support for abortion: 43% of Americans “want it banned outright or permitted only in special circumstances.” Still, “you can’t blame Democrats for grasping at straws as they drown in an election year.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board