THE LONG MARCH THROUGH INSTITUTIONS: Bearing False Witness. Leading civil rights organizations lend their voices to false claims about police.

THE CLUES LEAD TO A LAB IN WUHAN: Origin of Covid — Following the Clues. Nicholas Wade, one of the best science journalists in the world, meticulously reviews the structure of the Covid virus and the evidence for the competing theories of its origin. He concludes that “proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence.”

People round the world who have been pretty much confined to their homes for the last year might like a better answer than their media are giving them. Perhaps one will emerge in time. After all, the more months pass without the natural emergence theory gaining a shred of supporting evidence, the less plausible it may seem. Perhaps the international community of virologists will come to be seen as a false and self-interested guide. The common sense perception that a pandemic breaking out in Wuhan might have something to do with a Wuhan lab cooking up novel viruses of maximal danger in unsafe conditions could eventually displace the ideological insistence that whatever Trump said can’t be true.

And then let the reckoning begin.

Read the whole thing.

NOT THE NEW CENSORS IN THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY: What’s “Normal” in America? More than 200 employees of Simon and Schuster want to stop publishing anyone involved with the Trump administration because it wasn’t a “normal” chapter in American history.

For a long time, dictators, from the European tyrants of the 1930s to the military leaders of the Latin American juntas, skillfully used the violent excesses of dissenters to seize and preserve power. Now so-called liberal “resistance” to “fascism” justifies its attacks on freedom of speech by citing the threat posed by a former American president. Susan Sontag famously enraged the New Left by calling Communism “fascism with a human face.” The current woke movement has all the trappings of fascism with an anti-fascist face.

And fascism seems perfectly normal to them.

BUT HEY, IT’S ENRICHING TRIAL LAWYERS: American’s War on Pain Pills Is Killing Addicts and Leaving Patients in Agony. The government’s efforts to get between people and the drugs they want have no prevented drug use, but they have made it more dangerous.

THE CITY THAT NEVER WAKES: The Big Empty. Sohrab Ahmari takes a stroll on the abandoned sidewalks of New York:

By the end of my walk, I was tempted to scream, Charlton-Heston-in-Planet-of-the-Apes-style: “We finally did it! You maniacs . . . God damn you!” They—we—turned the greatest city in the world into Podgorica at nighttime, except weird and dystopian to boot.

When I got home, I told my wife that I wished to launch a civil-disobedience movement against the lockdowns. She blessedly talked me down, and I slept off the strong drink and inspired resolution. Still, I’m angry, as an American and a New Yorker, and have been angry since this all began. I can’t avoid holding in contempt the virtue-signaling double-masking types on the Upper East Side (“I’m one of the good ones, Dr. Fauci!”); the moms at my son’s Catholic school who pull Junior away from touching a metal railing (“Watch out! The virus!”); the young professionals who seem to take a perverse pleasure in the possibility that we are unlikely to socialize in person ever again and must learn to love the Clubhouse voice app.

The pandemic and the lockdowns are highly complex events and, as the social theorists might say, overdetermined. But one clear factor is the behavior of a laptop class that lives in fear of risk, with no transcendent horizon and “the consolations neither of Christ nor of Seneca,” as my friend Rusty Reno likes to say. That class seems prepared to desolate a place like New York City in service of safety-ism, to reorganize our way of life around its own neo-gnostic preferences, its horror of embodied relationships and inherited obligations—including obligations to place.

Yes, it’s now the Big Empty.

NO, IT’S NOT A HOMELESS PROBLEM: San Francisco’s Substance-Abuse Crisis. Governor Gavin Newsom touts Project Roomkey, his hotels-for-the-homeless program, as a model for the rest of the nation, and the program is expanding with funding from the Biden administration. But take a stroll through the city’s Tenderloin, Civic Center, and South of Market neighborhoods:

Block after block, you’ll see thousands of people who are barely alive. Some are alone; others are piled on top of one another, running into traffic, or standing slumped over, unconscious. They’ll be injecting or smoking heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamine in front of you, unaware or unfazed by your presence. Scabs cover their faces and bodies, limbs are swollen red and blue, often bloody and oozing pus. You’ll notice the garbage, rotting food, discarded drug detritus, and feces surrounding them. A shocking number are mere teenagers, but many are old or have aged well before their time.

Project Roomkey’s hotels offer no addiction-recovery treatment, and there’s no sobriety requirement. But the hotel residents do get fresh needles.

HIS PARTING GIFT: Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate. The astrophysicist S. Fred Singer spent much of his career challenging climate alarmists and other environmentalist doomsayers. He died last year, but not before revising and updating his opus on the subject with the help of two other climate scientists, David R. Legates and Anthony R. Lupo.

NOT-SO-SOFT BIGOTRY: The Tribalist Left. When will the “antiracists” start rooting out the bigots in their own ranks?

STAY UNWOKE, DON’T GO BROKE: Capitalist Havens of Free Speech. Market-driven innovation is providing new outlets for free expression in an increasingly intolerant media environment. Steven Malanga chronicles the rise of Substack, Adam Carolla and other rebels against mainstream orthodoxy. He also discusses the history of free speech and what has made it possible: capitalism.

HEATHER MAC DONALD: A Troubled Rule of Law. The pervasive sense that cities would burn if Derek Chauvin were not convicted raises questions about whether the jury’s verdict was reached dispassionately. And the false narrative about a racist criminal-justice system will continue victimizing thousands of law-abiding blacks in vulnerable urban neighborhoods who yearn for more police protection.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What Is a Supernova Volcano and How Can We Prevent an Eruption? When it comes to existential threats to humanity, a supervolcano eruption is twice as likely as a giant asteroid strike. But there’s a fix, as explained in one of the engaging science and public-policy videos at the new Kite and Key Media website. Other videos debunk the “overpopulation” crisis and the myth that electric cars can make a difference in combating climate change.

ANOTHER REASON TO ABOLISH THE FDA: The FDA’s War on Nicotine Will Encourage Americans to Smoke More Cigarettes. Having done its best to discourage smokers from from switching to vaping, the FDA’s new policy will directly promote more cigarette sales.

A PLAGUE OF CHILD ABUSE: Masking Children Is Unnecessary—and Harmful. The pandemic has turned American adults into selfish neurotics who have been punishing innocent children for over a year, and still can’t restrain themselves. Social distancing and masks hinder learning while harming children emotionally, socially, and physically, all for no purpose other than providing false comfort to adults who ought to know better. In my City Journal article, I present the evidence that these restrictions are both pointless and damaging.

THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOOTING: Storm Warning in Philadelphia. While hapless city officials try appeasing activists, residents and business owners brace for the Chauvin verdict.

MUCH TO THE DISMAY OF THE PUBLIC-HEALTH ESTABLISHMENT: There Will Be No Third Wave of Covid Deaths. There may be a lot more infections in the UK, but few severe cases, according to a professor at Bristol University with a strong track record for predicting trends in Covid and other viruses.

BUT THE OPPORTUNITY FOR GRAFT IS A SURE THING: Industrial Policy Is a Bad Bet. Biden’s spending bills will lead to lower growth and more risk.

LOCKDOWNERS’ FAVORITE ARGUMENT: The Great Barrington Declaration and Ad Hominem Argumentation. The personal attacks on critics of lockdowns shows how weak the lockdowners’ case is.

CORRUPTING INFLUENCES: Who Killed Adam Toledo? How did a 13-year-old boy end up in an alley with a gun at 2:30 on a Monday morning? Chicago police say that he was apparently out on the street with a 21-year-old member of the Latin Kings gang.  Video footage appears to show that one or both of them fired eight or nine shots at a passing vehicle. The gunshots brought police to the scene — and the fatal chase in the alley.

ANNALS OF JUNK SCIENCE: Why Americans Are Suckers for Quick Fixes From Psychologists. Nick Gillespie of Reason talks to Jesse Singal about the self-esteem movement, the implicit-bias test, and other follies chronicled in Singal’s new book, The Quick Fix.