Eye on NY: Albany’s Absentee-Voting Bypass

“Albany is again thumbing its nose at New Yorkers and the state constitution, this time on mail voting,” frets The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. Voters in 2021 by 55% to 44% rejected a “constitutional amendment that would have loosened the rules and permitted no-excuses absentee voting,” yet the Legislature has now “passed a bill to let anyone vote by mail.” Per state Sen. Michael Gianaris, “The referendum was relevant to the absentee ballot process. This bill relates to a form of early voting”; the board snarks: “You see, the state constitution prohibits potaytos. This new legislation contemplates potahtos.” Fact is, “New York’s constitution sets out a provision for ‘absent’ voters — the Legislature can’t get around that provision by renaming it.”

Barr: Trump Did This to Himself

Yes, “Trump has been the victim of witch hunts,” notes William P. Barr at The Free Press — but his latest troubles are “entirely of his own making.” “On leaving office, Trump illegally removed from the White House hundreds” of “sensitive national defense documents.” The National Archives and Department of Justice gave him “more than a year” to return them. But he “stonewalled” and tried to deceive the feds and his own lawyer. True, “the DOJ sometimes pursues alleged wrongdoing by Republicans with far more gusto than it does” for Dems. But “responding to Trump’s indictment” by citing that grievance is “a dodge.” While Justice may have “held back a lot of information, . . . what we already know about Trump’s behavior is indefensible.”

Health beat: Trans Sanity — Overseas

Britain’s National Health Service “has officially recommended limiting access to puberty-suppressing drugs,” cheers Mary Vought at The Federalist. And Britain “isn’t alone in calling for a pause on the movement to provide experimental hormonal treatments to young adolescents without sufficient evidence of their safety.” Finland and Sweden have also “limited access to transgender interventions,” and the French are also advising a cautious approach for children and teens — all a stark difference from America, where the left bullies “anyone who dares question the propriety of transgender surgery and chemical castration.” US parents should “take the warnings of institutions like the NHS to heart. We must act to protect our young children from the potentially dangerous experiments that transgender activists seem so hellbent on promoting.”

Gadfly: Greta vs. the Working Class

Picture “a child of privilege gathering with her similarly comfortable pals to stop working people from working,” asks Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill: “That’s exactly what Greta Thunberg’s latest eco-stunt adds up to.” Photos of her arrest in Malmö, Sweden for “holding a sit-down protest to stop oil tankers from leaving and delivering their life-giving cargo” show “working men idly standing by their tankers while the world’s media get shots of Greta looking sad for Gaia.” It’s “working-class people reduced to background actors” in “a drama feverishly focussed on the jumped-up angst of the privileged.” “In the velvet glove of ‘saving the planet’ lurks the iron fist of ‘forcing the plebs to live on less’. How else do we account for the fact that in an energy crisis they’re making demands that would make energy even more expensive?”

Conservative: Hunter Plea Is Bad News for Joe

“When the adult son of a sitting president pleads guilty to criminal charges,” that “is not great news” for the prez, argues National Review’s Noah Rothman. Yes, “this intuitive conclusion has apparently eluded the press,” which treated as “somehow out of bounds” GOP remarks suggesting “the appearance of corruption in this dispensation from an executive agency controlled by the defendant’s father is just too glaring to ignore.” This, plus the White House’s confidence “that the handling of the case reflects well on the Biden administration” sounds like “a lot of whistling past a political graveyard.” “Biden can keep his beloved son as close as he likes, but he cannot avoid association with his progeny’s misdeeds — having now presided over their resolution.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board