"The contention that the world of politics tends to attract more than its share of crazy people seems self-evident."

"Politics offers fame, power, glamour, and, often, considerable amounts of money (or, at least, the ability to control considerable amounts of money. You will run into nutty candidates, nutty campaign managers and staffers, nutty volunteers, nutty donors, and nutty hangers-on. Who knows, maybe even some political correspondents can be nutty from time to time."

 
From "Do the Democrats Have a . . . Murder Problem?" by Jim Geraghty (National Review). 

Great title, by the way.

"The simplest explanation is that Biden simply lied. But there is that possibility that Biden genuinely does not remember what his military advisors recommended a few months ago..."

"... on one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency. If the president insists he did not lie in the George Stephanopoulos interview, is it now acceptable to ask if Biden can remember what he is told in briefings?"

From "Say, How Is Joe Biden’s Memory These Days?" by Jim Geraghty (National Review).

IN THE COMMENTS:  Balfegor writes:

I think Geraghty is ignoring the possibility that Milley and McKenzie are lying. And the possibility that they "recommended" it him, but in a manner calculated to avoid anyone actually doing anything about it. The Rhodesia solution, as it were. I do think it's more likely that Biden just went for the glib, impulsive, obvious lie on the spur of the moment, as has been his practice throughout his long career. But we shouldn't dismiss the possibility that other people in this little drama might also be liars.

Rhodesia solution?

"Remember, dear readers, you and I are lab-leak-theory hipsters. We were into it before it was cool."

"Now, no less a figure than Dr. Anthony Fauci is no longer willing to say it’s too farfetched to be plausible: 'PolitiFact’s Katie Sanders... asked Fauci if he is “still confident that it developed naturally,” according to footage of the event which was resurfaced by Fox News on Sunday. “No actually,” Fauci said... “I am not convinced about that... I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened."'"

Writes Jim Geraghty in "The Circumstantial Evidence at Wuhan Lab Keeps Growing" (National Review)(reacting to the big Wall Street Journal scoop "Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin/Report says researchers went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before confirmed outbreak; adds to calls for probe of whether virus escaped lab").

UPDATE: Here's Jonathan Chait in NY Magazine: "How the Liberal Media Dismissed the Lab-Leak Theory and Smeared Its Supporters": 

Many mainstream journalists, though not all, dismissed the lab-leak hypothesis out of hand as a conspiracy theory....  The confusion surrounding this issue was sown in no small measure by Trump, who used China as a transparent gambit to distract from his failure to respond to the pandemic....

Obviously, the idea China would intentionally start a deadly pandemic inside of China, just so the virus would eventually spread around the globe and kill Americans, is preposterous.... However, the charge that the virus began in a lab and China was covering it up was never clearly false. Yet many media reports treated this aspect with the same skepticism as Trump’s other lies on the subject, often blending different aspects of these claims together....