Insight

“Corruption is no stranger to Washington; it is a famous resident.” —Walter Goodman (1927-2002)

“It has to be a level playing field. I think that’s something that we all need. Because that’s what sports are and for me, I don’t know where this is going to go. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” —Olympian Michael Phelps regarding “transgender” swimmer “Lia” Thomas

Re: The Left

“It has always been bizarre that the head of an obscure agency has soaked up so much media attention. Over the past two years, [Anthony] Fauci has done so many interviews with so many outlets — from Sunday shows to obscure podcasts — that one wonders how he had time for his day job. Nearly everyone in Washington enjoys being in front of a microphone, but even the most shameless media hogs might blush at Fauci’s interview schedule. It would be one thing if Fauci were merely delivering updates on the state of Covid. But he has gone way beyond that and delved into pure self-promotion. How did the appearance of Fauci on the cover of InStyle, sitting by the pool in sunglasses, declaring, ‘With all due modesty, I think I’m pretty effective,’ advance public health?” —National Review

“Fauci’s political dispositions shape his alarmism and discredited him with a large swath of the country that any viable public-health strategy has to be able to reach. He denounced people for attending college-football games in a region of the country where Covid was in seasonal decline. No outbreak materialized. He’s been under fire from Republican senators and House members and has handled it increasingly poorly — he was caught on a hot mic calling Senator Roger Marshall a ‘moron’ during a Senate hearing last week. Fauci’s claim that he himself ‘represents the science’ and his admitted deceptions of the public are incompatible with each other and intolerably insolent to boot. Most important, they subvert and undermine American self-government. He must go.” —National Review

“Even the people who were rooting for Joe Biden can’t ignore the evidence piling up and spilling out all over. He’s just not up to the job of being president. He makes promises that he doesn’t know how to keep, wildly overestimates his own persuasiveness, denies problems are problems until it’s too late, and offers excuses and points fingers when he fails. We’re [less than] a week away from Biden’s first year in the Oval Office, and it’s already abundantly clear: The man is in over his head.” —Jim Geraghty

Re: “Cheating Rights”

“10 days of early voting and excuse-only absentees in Delaware is just fine, but 17 days of early voting and no-excuse absentees in Georgia is racist Jim Crow? The Senate Democratic Leader pretends it is a civil rights crisis that Georgia has enshrined more early voting and more absentee balloting than his state of New York has ever allowed.” —Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell

“The partisan election takeover bills that Democrats want to ram through this week are not — not — in any way successors of the civil rights legislation from the mid-20th century. … This is about one party wanting the power to unilaterally rewrite the rulebook.” —Mitch McConnell

Race Bait

“Critical Race Theory is nothing more than a dog whistle. … Anger and fear are very strong emotions, and I think [the Glenn Youngkin] campaign was a lot based on that, was out there provoking fear and anger in people, and they responded to it. And the rest is history.” —former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam

“From Reconstruction, to Jim Crow, to the present day, our economy has never worked fairly for black Americans — or, really, for any American of color.” —Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen

Non Compos Mentis Awards

“Let’s be honest: Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs. … I’m telling you a very hard, ugly truth. Okay? Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line.” —NBA’s Golden State Warriors minority stakeholder Chamath Palihapitiya (“When [the NBA] says we stand for justice, don’t forget there are those who sell their soul for money & business like [Chamath Palihapitiya]… When genocides happen, it is people like this that let it happen. Shame!” —Boston Celtics’ Enes Kanter Freedom)

“[Governor Ron DeSantis] is doing everything possible to take away power from local governments. Taking away people’s abilities to protest. Making it harder to vote. Talking about, you know, banning books. That’s what dictators do. … I saw the rise of Hitler. I learned those stories.” —Florida gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried

“Strong confidence and cooperation represent the only right way to defeat the pandemic. Holding each other back or shifting blame would only cause needless delay in response and distract us from the overall objective.” —Chinese President Xi Jinping

Intraparty Squabbles

“I think the problem for the Democrats right now is not that they have bad leaders. They have bad followers.” —Democrat “strategist” Paul Begala

“Many liberals are complaining that the recent debates over short-term closings are creating a hysterical overreaction from people still angry about the 2020-21 school shutdown. Perhaps a first step to building trust that we are not planning to repeat a catastrophic mistake is to admit the mistake in the first place.” —New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait

“As the voting rights bill finally comes to the floor of the Senate, there is only one vote which will really matter. Will 50 Democrats vote to override the filibuster, protect American democracy and pass the bill, or will Manchin and Sinema vote with the GOP and let the bill die?” —Senator Bernie Sanders

And Last…

“We are paying crazy prices on everything, but let’s waste another week on a bill that isn’t going to pass and deals with a votings rights crisis that doesn’t exist.” —Senator Marco Rubio