From the right: Even Chris Cuomo Deserves Privacy
Cut Chris Cuomo a break, sighs Tiana Lowe of The Washington Examiner. The CNN anchor was recently caught on video shouting at an unidentified man. The man appears out of nowhere in a public place and calls Cuomo “Fredo” — an apparent “reference to the dopey ‘Godfather’ brother” and perhaps “intended to impugn Cuomo’s Italian ethnicity.” When the clip inevitably went viral, Cuomo explained that he went ballistic because “Fredo [is] as bad as the N-word.” Lowe suggests that comparing “Fredo” to the N-word is “absurd.” Still, the provocateur “accosted Cuomo at a Shelter Island bar” while the anchor was on a family vacation. Concludes Lowe: “Whatever gripes you may have with public figures, they deserve a private life and the same respect with which you would treat any other stranger within civil society.”
Foreign Desk: Hong Kong Needs Trump’s Support
A “new generation of democratic activists” has taken to the streets of Hong Kong, enthuses Commentary’s Noah Rothman. These pro-democracy heroes are “far less concerned with offending the sensibilities of Beijing’s elite” than the Tiananmen-era dissidents were — and they are “far less shy” about “conveying pro-American sentiments,” even flying US flags, singing the American national anthem and “demanding civil liberties” like those in America’s Bill of Rights. The State Department’s rhetoric has signaled unequivocal condemnation of “Beijing’s efforts to undermine Hong Kong’s unique political autonomy.” Still, President Trump has thus far shown “strategic indifference” by “keeping mum . . . to avoid complicating negotiations with China over trade.” That’s a mistake. The “very existence of the Hong Kong demonstrations is an assault on the conventional wisdom that Western-style liberalism is exhausted,” argues Rothman. The leader of the Free World can’t afford to “mince words” in showing his support.
Libertarian: Dems Threaten Political Speech — Again
“Every Democrat in the Senate is backing a constitutional amendment” that would silence some people in favor of others, Reason’s Jacob Sullum worries. The amendment seeks to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which “lifted legal restrictions on what corporations and unions are allowed to say about politics at election time.” The senators who are pushing the amendment claim they want to elevate the voices of ordinary Americans. But Sullum counters that they are radically rewriting “the constitutional treatment of political speech, allowing Congress and state legislatures to impose any restrictions on election-related spending they consider reasonable.”
NRA member: Keep Guns Away From Dangerous People
In The Washington Post, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) declares: “I am a gun owner, a member of the National Rifle Association and a strong supporter of the Second Amendment.” Even so, the recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton have prompted him to “spend more time listening and thinking than talking” and embrace a “practical legislative response to try to prevent future such nightmares.” Already, his home state has enacted a so-called red-flag provision, since “anyone who has threatened self-harm, has threatened to harm others or is mentally unstable should not have access to a gun. At all.” As to the predictable response of gun-rights absolutists, Scott is emphatic: “You can call it an infringement on rights if you want. I don’t care. Just get guns away from such people.”
Theologian: Why Epstein Theories Appeal
Jeffrey Epstein’s initial autopsy confirmed the cause of death as suicide by hanging. But, notes Chad Pecknold at The Catholic Herald, “the best conspiracy theories had already anticipated that the most plausible scenario was that Epstein had been given a choice between hanging himself and a more painful death.” Regardless of what actually transpired in Epstein’s cell, people want to imagine that the financier and convicted sex offender got the death penalty, perhaps at the hands of the powerful men whose sexual secrets he took to his grave. “And there is something compelling and, yes, just, in a Hollywood screenwriter way, about Epstein being forced to ‘consent’ to his own suicide under mafia-style duress.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
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