By this morning, Politico thought better of that approach, or at least Burns did. The Hunter Biden pardon has made clear to the media -- when it's too late -- what Joe Biden's entire career made clear enough before 2020. In a single breathtaking act, Burns laments, Biden just justified what is coming next at the Department of Justice, not to mention every other federal agency. 

Because Biden made it clear last night that the system as it exists right now mainly operates in defense of the elite -- just as Donald Trump and his conservo-populist supporters have claimed:

President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter almost looks like a fiendish prank on Washington — a Sunday night ambush designed to embarrass and shock.

That was presumably not Biden’s aim. But however unintentionally, the pardon is a kind of sabotage.

It is a rich gift to those who want to blow up the justice system as we know it, and who claim the government is a self-dealing club for hypocritical elites. It is a promise-breaking act that subjects Biden’s allies to yet another humiliation in a year packed with Biden-inflicted injuries.

As for the months of promises not to pardon Hunter, Burns has a caustic rejoinder:

Instead, countless hours of work and public dollars have gone toward securing indictments and verdicts that the president voided by fiat on a cold December evening.

Voters now know what his word as a Biden is worth.

Yes, we do. But most of us knew that all along, too, and the electorate made that clear enough last month in giving his administration the heave-ho. That goes well beyond the decision that surprised none of the rest of us last night, but we can stay on this point long enough to hear from Jonathan Turley. The Georgetown Law professor calls Biden the "Liar in Chief," and details just how far the lies went -- and why a pardon was unavoidable:

In the 2020 election and throughout his presidential term, Biden repeatedly lied to the American public with an ease and impunity that shocked even many political veterans in Washington. He was repeatedly asked if he knew about Hunter’s foreign dealings, including millions in alleged deals with Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, and other clients. President Biden lied and denied such knowledge. As I detailed in my testimony in the Biden impeachment hearing, he had repeated discussions of these dealings. He is even on tape discussing news stories on the dealings.

President Biden was also repeatedly asked if he met any of his son’s clients. He repeatedly lied. We have pictures and records of dinners and meetings with these clients. Hunter Biden was expressly thanked for his arranging such access to his father.

Few reporters pressed Biden on the corruption scandal, but they were often met not only with denials but angry retorts from the president. When Fox reporter Peter Doocy raised it, the President steamed “Yes, yes, yes. God love you, man — you’re a one-horse pony, I tell you.”

When CBS’s Bo Erickson broke ranks and raised the scandal and drew a rebuke from Biden “I know you’d ask it. I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask.”

How much have most Americans learned about Joe Biden's lies? Not much -- if they get their news from the Protection Racket Media. Ever since October 2020, the American media industry has circled the wagons around Joe Biden when it came to Biden Inc corrupt activities, starting with the Hunter Biden laptop story -- but really, even before that. It was well known that Hunter was getting cushy sinecures from foreign sources in board seats for firms with which he had no personal expertise. The Burisma connection was so well known that Trump and his team tried to get to the bottom of it, only to get impeached by a Democrat-controlled House for (foolishly) asking personally about it on a call with Volodymyr Zelensky.

Did the media bother to look at Hunter's curious activities at that point? Did they think to follow the money and discover the shell corporations set up by the Bidens to launder foreign payments into cash disbursements for everyone, including the grandchildren? Not at all. So when the laptop did emerge, their reaction was to call it "Russian disinformation" and deplatform the New York Post for reporting on the story at all. Only after 18 months did the American media grudgingly admit that the laptop was genuine and that its contents painted a picture of corruption and lawbreaking by Hunter.

What did Biden say all this time? He maintained until this year that the laptop was a Russian-intel operation, when he clearly knew better. He lied, because that's what Biden has done his entire life -- he lies. He makes up stories to paint himself as a hero, he falsely brags about his IQ and his scholastic standing, and he plagiarizes speeches and reportedly law-school essays as well. Joe Biden's word as a Biden isn't worth a plugged nickel, and now everyone knows it.

And of course, voters just got a four-year ringside seat to the demonstration of "the word of a Biden." Joe promised to serve as a centrist unifier, and instead immediately became a progressive Left president that attempted to ram a radical agenda through Congress. He demagogued every issue in his presidency, including at one point suggesting that even Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema had sided with Bull Connor in Georgia over voter-ID laws. He committed the most disgraceful act in the history of American presidents by abandoning 14,000 Americans to the Taliban and then lied about how well the bug-out from Kabul had gone. Almost as egregiously, Biden lied about his cognitive decline and created a conspiracy of lies to keep power in his hands -- or someone's.

In every step and in every way, the Protection Racket Media served as Biden's wingman. They dutifully regurgitated his spin as established fact, and when that didn't work, they made Republicans the story rather than Biden. That instinct carried through even to last night, as Politico and other news outlets focused on Republican reactions rather than report that Joe had just issued a 10-year free pass to the chief bagman for Biden Inc. Even Burns' caustic response deflects from that and onto the coming administration's attempts to root out politicization and weaponization in federal law enforcement.

This is why Republicans and conservatives are as exercised by this pardon as we see today. It's not that we find it surprising; just the opposite, in fact. None of us are surprised about the corruption among the Bidens, but we need to make sure that the corruption of the American news industry gets exposed right along with it. And that's why we're going to keep seeing "Republicans pounce!®" stories rather than any real dive into Biden's true nature and the corruptocracy he created to monetize "the word of a Biden" for the last several decades. 

Addendum: I'm still on vacation, and will return next week. At the latest.