What’s the next Platner surprise, electing vets to fight polarization and other commentary

Conservative: What’s the Next Platner Surprise?

Graham Platner was sold to “Mainers and the national media” as “an antiwar Marine during the Iraq War, a hardscrabble oysterman, and a working-class straight talker,” grumbles National Review’s Jeffrey Blehar.

“And then, one by one, we discovered that each of these biographical points were, when not outright false, distorted beyond all recognition.”

Platner wasn’t anti-war: He “volunteered” because he wanted “to kill some people” — and “later signed up with Blackwater as a mercenary.” His “oyster farm’s biggest customer is his mother.”

Plus, his “Nazi death’s head” tattoo “would have instantly disqualified him from running for office in any sane world.”

Now we learn that, just “months before he declared his candidacy,” Platner’s wife caught him “juggling six separate sexting relationships” on the teen app Kik. “What are we about to find out next about Graham Platner?”

Democrat: Electing Vets To Fight Polarization

Facing “evidence of deepening political divisions” in Congress, veteran Rye Barcott fights back via With Honor, which “has elected dozens of veterans to Congress across both parties, with an explicit commitment to promote bipartisan policies and cooperation,” cheers Douglas E. Schoen at The Hill.

The resulting For Country Caucus includes 40 veterans in Congress, pledged to “help address the divisive political polarization tearing our country apart.”

There’s a “critical lesson that veterans know well, but too many Americans have forgotten: There is much more that unites us as a nation than divides us.” From 1965-’75, 70% of Congress were veterans; now it’s just 23%.

So “it is hard to think of a force that is more sorely lacking and desperately needed in American politics today” than With Honor’s work.

Judicial watch: Schumer Supreme Threat Lingers

Chuck Schumer’s vow to make Supreme Court justices “pay the price” for having “released the whirlwind” took a new turn with a “swatting” stunt called in on Justice Amy Comey Barrett’s home, notes The Federalist’s M.D. Kittle.

Threats against the high court center on the “the hope” that “enough conservative justices would cave to public pressure — or worse.”

Protests outside their homes and assassination threats have multiplied since the “unprecedented leak” of the “Roe-ending Dobbs” decision.

Justices now “are supposed to be protected by around-the-clock security,” though Schumer, “the guy who released ‘the whirlwind’” apparently remains untroubled by the results.

From the right: Dems Vow To Wreck SCOTUS

Democrats “are likely to retake the House and maybe the Senate in November,” and “seem determined to blow up the Supreme Court,” warns The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the designated “agent for this task,” wants to expand the high court to 13 justices, “the number required to tilt the Court left under a new 7-6 majority”; he’d also “deny the Justices the power to choose which cases they hear,” which is “such a radical change that it’s hard to imagine all the implications.”

“Angry” that the Supremes are “no longer a second progressive legislature that can impose policies they can’t get through Congress,” Democrats are therefore “plotting one of American history’s most destabilizing power grabs.”

Climate beat: Europe’s ‘Dangerous Utopianism’

“Europe is engulfed in a deadly heat wave that demonstrates the danger of embracing utopian energy policies. Democrats in America should pay close attention,” thunder the Washington Examiner’s editors.

“Most American homes have air conditioning, but the International Energy Agency estimates that air-conditioning ownership in Europe is around 20%.”

Our common “household appliance is, during high heat, a life-saving infrastructure,” meaning far fewer deaths from high temps.

“Europe’s suffering is largely the result of misplaced priorities,” failing to invest in “reliable power, resilient water systems, modernized buildings, and air conditioning.”

Its “net-zero agenda” treated “energy consumption as an enemy.”

Europe’s embrace of the “‘climate cult’ has made energy more expensive, weakened the continent, and left ordinary people less prepared for extreme weather.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board