Biden’s health-care deform, Garland, Weiss should come clean and other commentary

Libertarian: Biden’s Health-Care Deform

President Biden’s latest proposed regulations targeting renewable short-term health plans “would mandate the very practice of stripping coverage from the sick that he had promised ObamaCare would end,” thunders Michael F. Cannon at The Hill. Unlike ObamaCare, these plans offer “broader provider networks and as much coverage as consumers want.” “The CBO and other non-partisan groups estimate that short-term plans reduce the uninsured by between one million and 2.3 million.” And: “Biden’s proposal would eliminate consumer protections, throw sick patients out of their health insurance, and leave them to face sky-high medical bills without insurance for up to one year.”

Wonk: Trump Rivals Should Bet on NH

GOP rivals of ex-President Donald Trump beware: Winning Iowa “is by no means a guarantee of anything for the non-Trump Republicans based on history,” points out CNN’s Harry Enten. “Iowa, it turns out, has not been very good at picking Republican nominees for president,” but “New Hampshire has had a significantly better track record.”

Indeed, “Republican primary voters there have picked the eventual nominee in five out of seven elections since 1980 without an incumbent GOP president.” Granite State “GOP primary voters are usually more moderate than their counterparts in Iowa,” a plus for the non-Trumps, as “polling has consistently shown” he’s “far weaker in the center of the GOP political spectrum than he has been on the right.” So “his opponents would be wiser to focus more on New Hampshire than on Iowa.”

Conservative: Garland, Weiss Should Come Clean

Delaware US Attorney David Weiss claims an “ongoing investigation” prevents him from answering Congress’ questions about the Hunter Biden case — yet, observes The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn, there’s “no ‘ongoing investigation’ exemption for refusing Congress.”

“Attorney General Merrick Garland insists Weiss was free to bring whatever charges he wanted,” and Weiss backs that. Yet a whistleblower says Weiss told him and others he wasn’t the deciding official in the case, so: “Someone is lying.” The suspicion is that Weiss is trying to “shield” prosecutors from “accountability for what they did and did not do.”

The FBI and Justice have lost “credibility” to use the “ongoing investigation” excuse. It’s in Weiss and Garland’s “interest to cooperate with Congress fully” — if “they have nothing to hide.”

From the right: Focus on the Numbers, Brad

City Comptroller Brad Lander “is the most progressive comptroller in New York history,” notes City Journal’s Stephen Eide. Sure, he’s “not unusual in abjuring the fiscal-watchdog duties of his office.” But the case of state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli — who avoids “social distractions” and “has not faced a competitive challenger since 2010” — shows a “comptroller focused on fiscal responsibility may distinguish himself as a voice, not an echo.”

Indeed, “being a budget scold” is “far from politically suicidal.” Lander “risks turning his office into a more professional version of the public advocate.” But “the comptroller has a bully pulpit that reaches the entire city and the elected official’s motivation to use it for shameless self-promotion. All of that is — or could be — a good thing.”

From the left: Troubling Turn vs. Free Speech

A video history of US flag-burning “is frustrating for me to watch,” grumbles TKNews’ Matt Taibbi, “since it captures how far almost everyone on the political spectrum has drifted from the embrace of the free speech idea” behind the 1989 Supreme Court ruling that protected “the act of burning the flag” under the First Amendment.

That relied on a 1969 decision that protected “the advocacy of the ‘necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing’ the U.S. government” — a case “upholding speech rights of a Klan member that ironically had the effect of ending decades of attempts to outlaw communist speech.”

Now the feds, in various Jan. 6 Capitol Riot cases, are “attempting to re-expand the definition of incitement in a way that almost certainly will end up having ramifications for leftist revolutionaries.”

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board