Democrats need their own Mitch McConnell and other commentary

Mitch McConnell AP

Conservative: Dems Need Their Own McConnell

“How could Chuck Schumer have been so reckless as to set up yet another public failure for his party” when he staged the voting-rights and filibuster fiascos this week? asks National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke. The answer: He’s “terrified” he’ll be challenged by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and his decisions reflect it. Yet Schumer’s “best interests” don’t always line up with his party’s. Wednesday’s Schumer-designed “theater” in the Senate united Republicans, split Democrats, further roiled Sen. Joe Manchin, weakened Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and signaled “bipartisan opposition” to Democrats’ ideas. Still, it’s not clear the party has a better option than Schumer. “Much as they’d hate to admit it,” Democrats would “benefit immensely from having their own Mitch McConnell. But they don’t — and it shows.”

From the left: McCarthy & the 1/6 Commission

As it seeks info on private citizens, the House Jan. 6 committee “is claiming virtually absolute powers that not even the FBI or other law enforcement agencies enjoy,” warns Glenn Greenwald at his Substack. Yet several “McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases” directly barred Congress from “exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens.” Indeed, it’s “investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their Constitutional rights to express views about . . . the 2020 presidential election.” Worse, it’s “sending subpoenas to private banks, demanding the banking records of private citizens, and doing so such that either the person never finds out or finds out too late to obtain a judicial order about the legality of the committee’s behavior.”

From the right: Biden Needs To Fire Key Players

“On almost every issue” Americans care about, President Biden “has made things worse” — so why, wonders David Marcus at Fox News, “hasn’t any significant member of his administration been fired?” In fact, quite a few “should be on the chopping block”: National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who presided over an Afghanistan withdrawal that got “almost everything wrong.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “the poster child of American weakness.” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who’s overseen “record numbers of illegal migrants” pouring in. And given Biden’s unfulfilled promise to shut down the coronavirus, “every member of his COVID Task Force,” especially Drs. Rochelle Walensky and Anthony Fauci, “should have been pushed out months ago.” These “clowns” are destroying the country. “For God’s sake, “let the firings begin.”

Urban beat: Chicago’s Predictable Murder Record

“Chicago hit a grim milestone in 2021: the Cook County medical examiner’s office tallied 836 homicides, the most in 25 years,” observes City Journal’s Rav Arora. “Such violence is not unexpected, given the dysfunctions in the city’s police force and the constraints and disincentives now facing Chicago cops.” Chicago PD is understaffed by more than 1,000 officers and “only 5,000 people applied to Chicago’s police academy last year, compared with about 30,000 in past years.” Cops are overworked and “laboring under a federal consent decree to reform current training, tactics, and practices,” which has led to a reduction in “proactive policing.” That deficit, in turn, has produced a “hurricane of violence ravaging black communities.” But don’t expect to hear a peep about that from Black Lives Matter.

Public-health prof: Kids Suffer Needlessly

At Tablet, Vinay Prasad examines the “delusional and dangerous cultlike” choice to mask schoolchildren and concludes, “History will not look kindly on our evidence-free decision to make kids suffer most” during the pandemic. Every American child 5 and over can “receive a COVID vaccine,” yet this progress “has been accompanied by increased pressure on kids to wear masks in school.” America “is uniquely aggressive in masking young kids,” despite “sobering” data showing it has little “effect in slowing spread.” Omicron shows “the most effective mask can’t avert infection,” only “delay it while causing inconvenience, discomfort, and difficulty speaking, all of which are detrimental to the educational and emotional well-being of schoolchildren.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board