THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Knife and Razor Edition.

GOING ON ALL DAY: CHECK OUT STUDENT FREE SPEECH DEBATES FROM ARIZONA’S PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES. Live all day today starting at noon Eastern, both Oxford- and storytelling-style. At 3:30 PM ET, catch the keynote address, where I interview Prof. Keith Whittington of Princeton and the Academic Freedom Alliance. (I’m also one of the judges.) And kudos to Arizona’s public universities, all of which have a green light for free speech policies from FIRE, and to the Arizona regents for the unique Regents’ Cup competition.

CHAUVIN ALTERNATE JUROR CONFIRMS MOB FEAR: If one of the panel feared the consequences of not delivering the verdict demanded by the BLM mob, odds are others had the same fears.

WHY DO DEMOCRATS HATE ASIANS? Senate defeats legislation to ban discrimination against Asian-Americans in higher education.

HATEFUL TRANSPHOBIA IN THE STRANGEST PLACES: LGBTQ Activists Denounce Caitlyn Jenner After Announcing Run For California Governor.

SEEMS FAIR: UK universities could end up paying students back for services not provided during COVID.

SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB: I killed my fiddle-leaf fig. But allowing it to die was a lesson in processing grief.

Alternate headline: I had to turn in a 1,300 word column, was stumped for an idea, and these things don’t write themselves, you know?

ILYA SHAPIRO: The voter suppression lie.

The voting wars have flared up again, though they’ve never really been far from the national political debate since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, or the Supreme Court decided Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 — or really Bush v. Gore in 2000. This time, a massive new Georgia law, the Election Integrity Act of 2021, also known as Senate Bill 202 (or SB 202), has triggered national apoplexy, with Democrats, including President Joe Biden, declaring it the new Jim Crow. Such comparisons are insulting to those who fought for civil rights in the 1960s, incendiary to a public discourse already hampered by low institutional confidence, and at base disingenuous.

Sorting out fact from fiction is not only important for this particular law, the fallout from which has already reached Major League Baseball and some Hollywood productions, but to understand the general debate over election regulation in America.

The Georgia law limits ballot drop boxes to places they can’t be tampered with (such as early voting sites), standardizes weekend voting hours, and asks people to write a driver’s license or Social Security number on absentee ballot envelopes.

Jim Crow was “literacy tests” and poll taxes, having to guess how many bubbles are in a bar of soap, and battling billy clubs and police dogs on the way to the voting precinct.

The Washington Post gave Biden “ four Pinocchios” for his claim that SB 202 was “ Jim Crow in the 21st century” for limiting voting hours and otherwise “deny[ing] the right to vote to countless voters.” That paper, not exactly a right-wing house organ, reported that “experts say the net effect was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them.” MIT elections expert Charles Stewart III found that “it indicated an expansion of hours, especially in rural counties.”

SB 202 does indeed improve voting access for most Georgians, entrenching the new opportunities to vote early and absentee (by mail and drop-off) introduced during the pandemic. For example, during a generous, at least compared to blue states such as New York and the president’s own home state of Delaware, 17 days of in-person early voting, voting locations have to be open at least eight hours, with county officials given leeway to adjust the times to suit their constituents. Election Day voting hours are even longer. The window for requesting absentee ballots, which can be done online, is reduced to a “mere” 67 days, starting 11 weeks and closing 11 days before an election, to allow time for the ballot to be mailed out and returned. . . .

Attempts by progressive groups and Democratic politicians to tie SB 202 to the era of segregation and systemic racial disenfranchisement are thus remarkably dishonest. Even the bizarre attack on the provision purportedly limiting the distribution of water to voters waiting in line is all wet. Many states have similar anti-electioneering (or anti-vote-buying) rules, which, as colorfully detailed by Dan McLaughlin in National Review, make it illegal to send “people in National Rifle Association t-shirts and MAGA hats to hand out free Koch-brothers-financed, Federalist Society-branded pizza to voters.” To again pick on the Empire State, New York explicitly prohibits giving voters “meat, drink, tobacco, refreshment or provision” unless the sustenance is worth less than a dollar and the person providing it isn’t identified. To be perfectly clear, under the new Georgia law, poll workers can still provide water to voters, and anyone can donate food and drink for election workers to set out for those waiting in line.

As for voter ID, SB 202 simply adds a requirement that voters provide the number of their driver’s license or (free) state identification card to apply for a ballot, the same as California, New Jersey, and Virginia, and one of those (or the last four digits of a Social Security number) when returning it. Surely, applying a numerical voter-verification requirement to absentee or mailed ballots is better than the inexact science (to say the least) of signature-matching. Colorado, now a solidly blue state that votes entirely by mail, rejected 29,000 ballots last fall (about 1 in 112) because the mailed signatures didn’t match those on file. That doesn’t count the 11,000 who were allowed to “cure” the issue by texting in a picture of a — gasp — photo ID. Illustrating the point further, the Tampa Bay Times just came out with an amusing article about how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s signature has changed over the years, apparently leading to his ballot being tossed in a 2016 primary.

Voter ID more generally is hugely popular, including among Democrats.

Whenever the left is yelling about racism, it’s some sort of a grift.

BYRON YORK: An Outrage From The FBI.

On June 14, 2017, a team of Republican lawmakers went to an athletic field in Alexandria, Virginia to practice for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity. As they worked out, a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle and pistol approached and opened fire. Representative Steve Scalise, the House Republican whip, was gravely wounded. A lobbyist was also seriously hurt, and a congressional aide and Capitol Police officer were wounded, as well.

The shooter, James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, was an active Bernie Sanders supporter who hated Republicans and particularly hated then-President Donald Trump. “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.,” Hodgkinson posted on his Facebook page. He thought of himself as part of the Resistance. He joined Facebook groups like “Terminate The Republican Party” and “Join The Resistance Worldwide!!”

Hodgkinson came to the Washington area in 2017, living out of a van parked in Alexandria. He brought his guns and developed a plan to attack Republicans. He went to the baseball field with a list of several GOP members of Congress in his pocket, along with physical descriptions of some of them. Before the attack, he asked Republican Representative Jeff Duncan, who was leaving practice early, whether the players on the field were Republicans or Democrats. Duncan said it was the Republican team. A short time later, Hodgkinson opened fire. After a rampage of nearly ten minutes, he was killed by Capitol Police and Alexandria Police.

The attack was a clear act of violent, politically-motivated domestic terrorism. There was simply no doubt about that. And yet last week, Republican Representative Brad Wenstrup, who had been at the practice, revealed that the FBI concluded Hodgkinson was simply trying to commit “suicide by cop.”

The FBI is on the other side. They’re not even trying to hide it.

THE PRIORITIES OF THE RULING CLASS ARE NOT THE PRIORITIES OF THE PEOPLE: SOLVED: Fewer Than 1 in 4 Americans (And Just 1 in 3 Dems) Say Sexism Is a ‘Very Big Problem.’

ANOTHER LEFTIST HIT-PIECE: WaPo’s Sen. Tim Scott Fact Check.

WaPo then includes a lengthy chronology explaining who’s who in Sen. Scott’s line, but it all comes down to this… Senator Scott’s great-great-grandfather, Lawrence Ware, managed to acquire a vast amount of land over several decades at a time when it was extremely difficult for a black man to do so.

There are some gaps in the research, but WaPo “believes” that they have managed to piece the story together.

By 1910, Lawrence Ware had a farm, a home mortgage-free, and was raising 9 children. One of his sons, Willie Ware, Scott’s great-grandfather, was listed as a “farmer” on the 1910 census who worked on his father’s farm. Willie was 16 years old at the time. Eventually, Willie, father of Artis, was able to own his own farm, and his son worked on it when he was young. But WaPo did manage to get that “gotcha!” — Artis Ware was listed as attending school all the way to fourth grade!

* * * * * * * *

To use Mr. Kessler’s own words, Glenn “tells a tidy story packaged for political consumption.” In this case, to maintain the leftist politics of the Washington comPost.

The reader learned nothing new from the hit job other than Senator Scott’s grandfather was tossed out of school in 4th grade rather than 3rd. The fact that he was forced out of school at that young age was still disgusting and doesn’t change the fact that Senator Scott’s story demonstrates how far this country has come in terms of race relations.

Yes, we still have more to go. One of the race relation areas where the country needs to advance is the liberal belief that Black Americans are monolithic. Or, as Biden put it, if they don’t vote for the Democrat, they aren’t really black. Part of the reason the Washington Post went after Tim Scott is that he is a person of color and a conservative Republican.

Incredibly, the Washington Post has the audacity to publish a hit-piece questioning the history of a man who grew up in the Jim Crow south while they’ve breathlessly been calling the Georgia bill on electoral reform the “new Jim Crow” for about a month now. Truly, truly astounding!

Evidently, the Washington Post believes it’s time to cancel the legacy of Miles Davis.

WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF TRANSPHOBIA? ‘I’m Sorry If Anybody Was Upset,’ Says Joy Behar After Repeatedly Referring To Caitlyn Jenner As ‘He.’

GO AWAY, GEORGE, YOU’RE OVER: George Bush to Republicans: Sorry for that “nativist” remark.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Why Aren’t We Celebrating Operation Warp Speed? “We should be looking at OWS like we do the Apollo Program or the global campaign that wiped out smallpox. Yet we’ve seen very few victory laps, let alone reflection on one of the most successful government interventions in living memory…Maybe partisanship is responsible. Democrats probably don’t want to admit that the Trump administration did something very right.”

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Biden’s Solution to the Border Crisis Is Just Awful.

COLLUSION: Former Coca-Cola Employee Convicted of Stealing $120 Million Worth of Trade Secrets to Sell in China. “A Chinese-born American chemist was found guilty on April 22 for her role in a scheme to steal trade secrets worth an estimated $120 million from American companies for the purpose of setting up a Chinese company that would manufacture the product for the global market.”

TWITTER IS GARBAGE: Twitter refuses to say whether LeBron James violated terms of service.

IT’S ALWAYS BEST:  Thrift and the Virtue of Home Made

D*MN IT BEE, STOP GIVING THEM IDEAS:  Dungeons And Dragons Introduces New 100-Sided Die For Determining Your Character’s Gender.

DON’T SCHEDULE YOUR FAMILY VISIT FOR A CLOUDY DAY:  Disney World to power 40 percent of park with solar power.

SEEMS LIKE THEY ANNOUNCE A NEW ATTEMPT AT THIS EVERY TEN YEARS OR SO, BUT I’VE YET TO SEE A CHESTNUT:   Scientists hope genetic engineering can revive the American chestnut tree.

THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED:  NYC rents are in free fall, now reaching record lows.

UNFORTUNATELY, MOST OF THEM ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR A FAMILY PUBLICATION:  In Germany, more than 1,200 new words have been created in age of COVID-19.

GOVERNMENT RECOMMENDATIONS ON DIET ARE NOW AND HAVE ALWAYS BEEN BUFFOONERY:  Americans are eating lots of unhealthy food – except at school, study finds.

Humans are not one-size-fits-all in dietary needs.  And again, remember children: science and government shouldn’t mix. When it does things go very wrong very fast.