Upright

“Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression.” —Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

“If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” —Timothy Keller

For the Record

“Nine months ago, [Mitt] Romney opposed [Ketanji Brown] Jackson’s confirmation to the D.C. Circuit of Appeals. But now he thinks she deserves a promotion? Even after she rejected the Declaration of Independence and was unable or unwilling to define what a woman is?” —Gary Bauer

Re: The Systemic Redlining of Free Speech

“The messaging control Twitter now ensures is too important to DC power centers to let it go without a huge fight. I doubt even Elon Musk could just convert it back into a free speech platform without some major war.” —Glenn Greenwald

“If Musk helps restore Twitter to its free speech roots and moves it away from its left-wing censorship regime, it will be perhaps the most heroic and public-serving action I have seen a billionaire take in my lifetime. … If our greatest living entrepreneur looks at the space and decides he couldn’t build his own better version, it tells you everything you need to know about Twitter’s competitive position.” —Jeremy Carl

“When you have just a couple billionaires like Elon Musk and JK Rowling not go woke, it throws everything into chaos. The richest people and giant corporations are all supposed to unite together to force trendy values on the populace.” —Frank J. Fleming

Democrats, Call Your Offices

“In Brussels, the EU has been weighing whether to cut funding for Hungary. European lawmakers have argued that Mr. Orban has used his majority in parliament to rewrite election laws, redraw voting districts, and permit mail-in ballots without identity verification from communities that favor him.” —The Wall Street Journal on EU leftist complaints about the reelection of Hungary’s “authoritarian” Prime Minister Viktor Orban (So “authoritarians” rewrite election laws and permit mail-in ballots without identity verification…)

The BIG Lie

“While Republicans like to blame the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan for inflation, that alone did not overheat our $25 trillion economy. … Biden has a legitimate argument that his spending plan only contributed a tiny sliver of the 7.9 percent inflation rate. By one estimate, the plan only increased inflation by 0.35 percentage points.” —The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin (“A new study from the San Francisco Fed shows it was Biden himself who put America on this grim trajectory. Specifically, it was the massive $1.9 trillion stimulus dumped into the US economy in early 2021 by the president’s American Rescue Plan. … The damage it did has been massive. Median OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] inflation went from around 1% to 2.5% during 2021. Here? From under 2% to 7% (5% excluding food and energy). And it kept on rising after that, to the nearly 8% we see now. The details are uglier still: Per the latest data, fuel oil is up almost 44%; gasoline, 38%; meat and eggs, 13%. Put in concrete terms, a recent Bloomberg calculation translates this to an added $433 per month in household expenses for 2022.” —New York Post editorial board)

Swampthink

“Here’s the thing to remember: Even if all the oil we use in the USA were made in the USA, the price of it is still subject to powers and dynamics outside of the USA. Which means that until we achieve a form of energy independence that is based on clean energy created here at home, American citizens will still be vulnerable to wild price hikes like we’re seeing right now.” —Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg

Non Compos Mentis Award

“Ketanji Brown Jackson will likely be confirmed as the first Black Supreme Court justice by the end of this week.” —Politico

And Last…

“At the very least, the campaign against Disney has ensured that conservatives in Congress will not extend the company’s intellectual property protections when they expire at the end of next year. This is a win for the public domain — and a multibillion-dollar loss for Disney.” —Christopher F. Rufo