Libertarian: Hideous Housing Hypocrisy

New York Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou finds herself in quite the “tangle,” snarks Reason’s Christian Britschgi. In a recent Daily News op-ed, Niou claimed that last weekend’s “murder of four homeless people in New York City could have been prevented by more government spending on housing and social services.” The problem: Niou is also a plaintiff in a lawsuit against an affordable-housing project in Little Italy. “So why is she suing to stop it?” Well, “it’s all about the open space.” The proposed apartment building would replace Elizabeth Street Garden and, according to Niou, “we cannot pit the need for housing against the need for green space.” Fair enough, says Britschgi, but it’s “hard to argue that while also asserting that housing is also a right that needs to be guaranteed by the government.”

Ed. desk: Calif. Dems Give Poor Kids the Shaft

If California progressives really “cared about the plight of poor kids,” snaps Steven Greenhut at The American Spectator, they would’ve snuffed Assembly Bill 1505, which will gradually gut charter schools in the Golden State. Instead, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it on Oct. 3. California started its experiment with charters in 2002, with the backing of such liberal stalwarts as former Gov. Jerry Brown and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. But teachers unions declared war at the outset, and now, thanks to Newsom, they’ve succeeded: While the bill doesn’t ban existing charters, it “will stop the growth in charters.” Charters have been delivering, especially for poor and minority students, but “none of that really matters to California’s Democratic leaders” — as long as their union allies have control of the schools.

PC watch: Reagan Banned From Campus

At First Things, Carol Swain writes: “Students at The King’s College, a Christian liberal-arts school in New York City, live in 10 residential houses named after President Ronald Reagan,” among other luminaries. But Reagan’s recently unearthed remarks on the 1971 call with President Richard Nixon have led to predictable calls for expunging his name. The remarks were unquestionably racist, but “we should be wary of a selective moral perfectionism,” Swain argues. “Should the standards now being applied to Reagan also be applied to John F. Kennedy (sexual assault), Lyndon B. Johnson (blatant racism) or Martin Luther King Jr. (plagiarism, infidelity and possibly sexual assault)? In a word, no.”

Religion beat: The Signs of a New Saint

On Sunday, Pope Francis declared John Henry Cardinal Newman, the great 19th-century English writer, thinker and convert to Catholicism, a saint. The Catholic Church, notes theologian Chad Pecknold, recognizes saints “most especially by way of miracles.” In Newman’s case, these include the case of a Massachusetts man “who was healed of an incurable spinal disease” as well as “a woman with unstoppable bleeding” who was “cured through the intercessions of the Oxford convert.” The church studies putative miracles in great depth in order to rule out material causes. Yes, “the great blaze of publicity for Saint John Henry Newman will rightly attend to his life and works, his virtue and sanctity. But his life, it must be said, is a miraculous sign which points to its divine cause.”

Conservative: Which Way, Corporate Man?

“Corporate America’s subservience to communist China and the resurgence of populism in America are two things that will not coexist peacefully,” declares Becket Adams at the Washington Examiner. “Something is going to give,” and after last week’s shameful NBA kowtow to Beijing, “that ‘something’ will give probably sooner rather than later.” And it wasn’t just the NBA. Apple last week removed the Taiwanese-flag “emoji” from its operating system in Hong Kong, while hipster shoemaker Vans blocked Hong Kong dissidents from entering one of its culture exhibitions. The danger to big biz: “American populists are smart,” and they are homing in on “China’s control over US businesses.” This “could allow the populists to gain a greater foothold in U.S. government.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board