Conservative: Impeachment Inquiry, Yes!
“Speaker Kevin McCarthy is calling for an impeachment inquiry, which he says is a ‘natural step forward’ based on evidence” uncovered by House committees about President Biden’s role in his son’s influence-peddling and whether the Justice Department is “compromised,” explains The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn. Such an inquiry has “practical advantages”: It “doesn’t require a legislative purpose, which gives its subpoenas more force in the courts.” And, “if done judiciously,” it would be “a road back from the way Nancy Pelosi stacked every procedural deck and cut every congressional corner to get” President Donald Trump. “The American people have to know whether or not their president is a crook,” and when it comes to Biden, an impeachment inquiry may be “the only way” they’ll get that answer.
Eye on NY: Soaring Green Costs
“The myth that New York can replace fossil fuel power plants with cheap renewable energy has begun to crumble under renewable developers’ demands for higher prices to offset inflation and supply chain challenges,” warns the Empire Center’s James E. Hanley. The Alliance for Clean Energy New York, a renewable energy industry group, wants “to increase the prices paid to as many as 86 of 117 onshore wind and solar projects” that can’t move ahead without charging more. Even the unfinished Champlain Hudson Power Express project, “transmitting hydropower from Quebec to New York City, has also asked for a price increase.” Inflation and supply-chain issues “constrain the availability of needed materials and increase their costs.” The price of that promised bright energy future “is going to be higher than advertised.”
Here’s what the Biden family business scandal impeachment inquiry would look like
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry Tuesday into President Biden — turbocharging congressional power to acquire documents and testimony about Biden’s role in his family’s foreign business dealings while he was vice president.
House Republicans already have issued an array of demands to executive branch agencies relating to Joe Biden’s involvement with first son Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden’s international dealings — in many cases setting September deadlines that could soon escalate into litigation.
The inquiry aims to answer a number of questions:
What’s in Joe Biden’s vice presidential emails?
While vice president, Joe Biden used the pseudonyms “Robert L. Peters” and “Robin Ware” to communicate with staff members — leaving a paper trail of nearly 5,400 written records.
The House Oversight Committee demanded those communications from the National Archives with an Aug. 31 deadline, but a source tells The Post the agency did not comply.
What do Hunter Biden’s bank records show?
Congressional Republicans are preparing to issue subpoenas to banks for accounts held by Hunter and James Biden — after previously subpoenaing some of the associates’ bank statements.
The records could show whether any money was transferred to Joe Biden from his relatives’ foreign income streams and also whether they covered a substantial portion of his expenses. It’s possible the House will later seek the president’s bank records too.
Neocon: Scientist’s Lab Leak Lies
Virologist Kristian Andersen authored a paper that claimed “evidence demonstrated that Covid had not emerged from a laboratory,” yet internal messages revealed “Andersen and his colleagues didn’t have anywhere near this level of certainty,” thunders Commentary’s Christine Rosen. In fact, “Andersen himself wrote, ‘Accidental escape [from a lab] is in fact highly likely — it’s not some fringe theory,’ ” in a private Slack with other scientists a few weeks before the paper, which “became the ur-text for shutting down any further exploration of the idea that Covid might have emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan,” was published. “Scientists who had been uncertain about the origins of Covid nevertheless deliberately obfuscated and misled reporters to craft a narrative that suited their political ends.”
From the left: EVs’ Road-Trip Problem
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm “knew charging might be a challenge” on her “four-day electric-vehicle road trip this summer,” reports NPR’s Camila Domonoske, “but she probably didn’t expect anyone to call the cops.” When a Granholm staffer used a regular car to block a fast-charging station in advance of her arrival in a Georgia town, “a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset” that it did just that. In fact, the trip also exposed the general scarcity of chargers, especially fast ones, requiring “cumbersome planning” for any long trip. Another issue: Even “having a superfast charger doesn’t do you any good if the dang thing doesn’t work,” a surprise that popped up multiple times on the trip.
Libertarian: Disastrous Student Loan Plans
The “disastrous” federal-student-loan pause has ended after being “extended eight separate times” since 2020, but “will have cost taxpayers an estimated $200 billion in lost revenue,” laments Reason’s Emma Camp. And worse is ahead with President Biden’s drive to alter the SAVE program, an “income-driven repayment (IDR) plan for student loan borrowers.” His scheme “is so generous, and allows borrowers to pay back such a small amount of their loans before forgiveness in many cases, that some critics have described it as essentially turning student loans into de facto grants.” And it’s “estimated to cost taxpayers $475 billion over the next decade.” Neither the pause nor Biden’s new plan addresses “the factors that lead individuals to take on too much student loan debt.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board