Toxic narrative on cops is false and other commentary – New York Post

Protest journal: A Toxic Narrative on Cops

At City Journal, Rafael A. Mangual sees irony in gripes that attention paid to the relative handful of violent agitators distorts the image of an otherwise peaceful movement even as the violence by cops that sparked the protests similarly doesnt fairly characterize law enforcement. Police are not perfect, he admits, but to bridge the gap between protesters and cops, destructive hyperbole about police violence needs to be recognized for what it is. Data on police use of force predominantly reveal professionalism and restraint, suggesting, for instance, that in 2018, police in America applied deadly force with a firearm in just 0.003 percent of arrests. To prevent more destruction and anarchy, the debate needs to be grounded in data rather than hyperbole.

While President Trump rails against mail-in voting, many Republican election officials are expanding it anyway as well they should, argues RealClearPolitics A.B. Stoddard. For one thing, Trumps claim that vote-by-mail is rife with fraud is false: The conservative Heritage Foundation found only 204 cases of the fraudulent use of absentee ballots out of the 250 million ballots cast in the last 20 years. And mail-in voting can benefit Republicans in places like Florida, whose many senior citizens are a critical bloc of Trumps support and the most susceptible age group to COVID-19. Even though many Republicans back the change, though, any effort to scale up mail-in voting will be difficult especially without pressure from Trump and the Republican National Committee.

Reasons Matt Welch rolls his eyes at the The New York Times, supposedly the serious journalistic institution in the United States, which published an article claiming its own employees were scared that a Times op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) would threaten their very lives. Such a claim just shows how many in the media are noisily abandoning liberalism: Even outlets that once waved the flag of provocative viewpoint-diversity have long since become barely distinguishable enforcers of a joyless orthodoxy. If an editor dares to commit the sin of expressing a Wrongthink or publishing a Deplorable, he or she now has to make a full public confession or a cowed explanation. If that cramped cowardice is the future of journalism, warns Welch, journalism has no future.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has been telling protesters things they dont want to hear, applauds National Reviews Jim Geraghty: Theyre risking their lives by gathering in large numbers during the pandemic, and their violence and looting are tainting the cause they claim to stand for. Many elected leaders who keep insisting they stand with the protesters and support them are playing along with the fantasy that the protests are somehow less dangerous than other gatherings, even when we have direct evidence to the contrary. Geraghty wonders: Do our leaders really love the protesters, as they claim? If you love someone, after all, you do as Bottoms is doing: Tell him the truth especially when he doesnt want to hear it.

Mars is within reach, cheers Kevin Mooney at the Washington Examiner, and its thanks in no small part to the public-private partnership between NASA and SpaceX. The successful launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and docking at the International Space Station mark a turning point. As aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin, who founded the Mars Society, explains in his book The Case for Space, breakthroughs in rocketry are opening new avenues for the commercialization of space and manned missions leading to the colonization of the Red Planet. Zubrin believes we can establish our first small outpost on Mars within a decade. Thats optimistic, concedes Mooney. But over the past days, the case for space has suddenly become more compelling, exciting and believable than since the Apollo program which was a while ago.

Compiled by Karl Salzmann & Adam Brodsky

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Toxic narrative on cops is false and other commentary - New York Post