When the Wall Street Journal reported in a front-page lead story that the Department of Energy had concluded the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from a leak from China’s Wuhan laboratory, you might have argued it was old news. The FBI had already, it turns out, come to the same conclusion and with a higher degree of confidence (moderate) than the Energy Department (low).

Those agencies’ conclusions, moreover, came as a result of a May 21 directive from President Joe Biden to multiple intelligence agencies to review two “equally plausible scenarios” for COVID’s origin, “whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal” (the zoonotic theory) “or from a laboratory accident” (the lab leak theory).… Continue Reading

It’s the biggest political hoax since Titus Oates’s allegations of a “Popish Plot” to assassinate King Charles II in 1678. Oates’s charge of a Jesuit conspiracy swept through London and led to the execution of four innocent men before Oates was proved a fraud.

The full consequences of the great political hoax of our time — the charge that former President Donald J. Trump was colluding with Russia — are not yet fully apparent.… Continue Reading