MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Can more local self-rule save a collapsing, ‘Late-Roman’ America?

BUCKLE UP: Virgin Galactic cleared to fly space tourists on SpaceShipTwo.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Biden Report Card: ‘Creepy Joe’ is just plain ‘weird.’

ON THE ONE HAND HE WAS DISBARRED AND DISGRACED: Renaming Of Endowed Professorship For President Clinton Roils Arkansas Law School.

On the other hand, he’s a Democrat and higher ed is shamelessly part of the Democratic apparat, so . . .

EXPLAINER: The Maricopa County Audit Completed Paper Ballot Examination. Here’s What Happens Next.

WE KNOW ENOUGH: What We Know About the Origins of Covid-19: Key findings from The Wall Street Journal’s investigation into how the global pandemic began. Some key bits:

A Journal investigation found China resisted international pressure for an investigation it saw as an attempt to assign blame, delayed the probe for months, secured veto rights over participants and insisted its scope encompass other countries as well.

China withheld data on potential early cases and delayed sharing information on animals sold at a market where the first cluster was found.

The question of whether a lab accident was the cause of the pandemic remains unanswered. [Does it, really?]

International pressure for a fuller inquiry into the origins of the virus grows.

Other efforts to trace the path of the pandemic continue.

China acts like it’s hiding something. Which probably means there’s something to hide.

FINGERS CROSSED: Robocalls are out of control. But that could change after June 30. “The way it works is that Stir/Shaken technology ensures that calls traveling through phone networks have their caller ID “signed” as legitimate by originating carriers and validated by other carriers before the calls reach you. In short, the technology authenticates a phone call’s origin and makes certain the information on the Caller ID matches.”

A simple 25¢ credit card deposit to make a call, fully refundable upon acceptance of the call, would do the trick.

A DIFFERENT REYNOLDS, NEEDLESS TO SAY: Kendi and Reynolds’ Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You, a Remix—A Partial List of Errors. “Many high schools and middle schools are assigning this ‘antiracism’ book associated with Critical Race Theory; besides being ideologically pernicious, it’s bad history.”

RIOTS FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME:

● Shot: Ocasio-Cortez Doubles Down On Defunding The Police, Claims Concerns Over Crime Wave Are ‘Hysteria.’

—Ryan Saavedra, the Daily Wire, Saturday.

● Chaser: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she’s in therapy over ‘extraordinarily traumatizing’ Capitol riot.

—The Washington Times, May 24th.

● Hangover: “[T]he Green New Deal would mean big changes. But how big? And how would those changes be made? Steve Inskeep, a journalist at NPR and host of the Morning Edition program, asked AOC if her plan requires ‘massive government intervention.’ ‘It does. It does. Yeah. I have no problem saying that,’ she responded, according to the transcript.”

—”44 Things You Should Know about the Green New Deal,” the Foundation for Economic Education, May 24th, 2019.

(Classical reference in headline.)

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Glass Is Half-Empty AND Half-Full. “There is literally no lefty cause that is too outrageous, too expensive, or too destructive of our institutions and culture, for Biden to fully embrace — we all know how gross Joey the Groper’s embraces are.”

SALENA ZITO: A labor dispute in which no one can win. “Despite plenty of Biden photo-ops with steelworkers standing behind him during events over the past two years, I am reliably informed that neither Biden nor Harris has reached out to the local unions for encouragement or support in this case.”