IRS whistleblowers vindicated, fight crime to – Latest News
From the precise: IRS Whistleblowers Vindicated
Why is Donald Trump “fundamentally uprooting the federal bureaucracy?” asks The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel.
Look on the “years of retaliation” within the IRS towards Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler “for their sin of treating Hunter Biden like any other lawbreaker.”
They “encountered political interference” and have been “thwarted in attempts to search Joe Biden’s guest house”; “instructed not to ask questions about Joe or pursue leads connected to Joe’s grandchildren” and “exiled from the Hunter case” once they refused to play ball.
“Shapley and Ziegler have been vindicated many times — by the ultimate Hunter prosecutions, his guilty pleas, and even his pardon.”
But their promotion “this week to senior jobs, advising Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on IRS reform” is the truest vindication of all.
More From Post Editorial Board
Urban beat: Fight Crime To Fight Gangs
Despite “a wide array of prevention and intervention efforts to steer kids away from gang life,” these “initiatives have had mixed results,” laments Joshua Carter at City Journal.
Since “the biggest driver of gang membership is violent crime,” policymakers should perceive that “the best way to stop teenagers from joining gangs is to provide them with safer neighborhoods.”
High-crime communities restrict “economic opportunities,” increase “kids’ sense of vulnerability” and heighten “social isolation.”
In locations the place “lower crime, stronger social ties, and resulting economic opportunity” exist, “fewer young people feel the need to join gangs.”
“Safe neighborhoods” are “the product of deliberate policy choices” — and “curbing gang activity” is an important one.
Liberal: The ‘World Happiness’ Scam
“To put it bluntly,” the World Happiness Report, which persistently claims that “the happiest countries in the world are in Scandinavia” whereas rating the United States far decrease, “is a sham,” fumes Yascha Mounk at his Substack.
Though information shops print its findings “without a hint of skepticism,” the report “simply compiles answers to a single question” about total life satisfaction, which “doesn’t really ask about happiness at all.”
Plus, “residents of the same Scandinavian countries that the press dutifully celebrates for their supposed happiness are especially likely to take antidepressants or even to commit suicide.”
And some components of the United States “are seemingly the happiest in the world.”
“Supposedly serious news outlets” ought to subject “publicity exercises” just like the report “to appropriate journalistic scrutiny.”
Court watch: Roberts’ Belated Protest
Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy notes that Chief Justice John Roberts “did not say a word about” the push to impeach his colleagues Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, or about Sen. Ron Wyden’s plea to “President Biden to ‘ignore’ any ruling from Judge Matt Kacsmaryk concerning mifepristone.”
Yet now Roberts is “hitting the panic button” over requires judicial impeachments from the precise; “his protest has started a bit too late.”
“The Constitutional crisis is a coin with two sides,” and “Roberts could de-escalate the situation by promptly reversing some of these out-of-control lower court rulings.”
Seems he’d “rather sit on his hands and pontificate. I’ve long said that the Chief Justice is living in a different reality than the rest of us. This episode proves it.”
Mideast desk: Houthis = Barbary Pirates
In the 1780s the Barbary Pirates, raiders from North African “statelets,” would “attack American merchant shipping, capturing sailors for whom they initially extorted ransom and subsequently protection money in the form of tribute,” remembers Dov S. Zakheim at The Hill.
“The Houthis are today’s Barbary Pirates,” and “only differ from their predecessors in that they have not yet attempted to seize American captives for ransom.”
“The pirates were essentially an extension of their North African rulers”; the Houthis are “deeply beholden to Iran for training and materiel support” — and since they insist “that they will not be cowed by the U.S. strikes,” Trump could “only be able to defeat the Houthis if he goes beyond merely threatening the state that has long supported them.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
