Joseph Simonson of the Washington Free Beacon pokes fun at the president’s newfound opposition to legacy admissions at top universities.

President Joe Biden’s late son Beau was once seen as the scion of a political dynasty. A former Department of Justice prosecutor, state attorney general, Bronze Star recipient, and presumptive future governor, Beau Biden’s résumé offers a glaring contrast to his brother Hunter’s rap sheet.

But Beau Biden’s life of public service probably wouldn’t have been possible without his father’s helping hand, which was so evident in the early years of Beau Biden’s professional life that it generated scrutiny from a local Delaware newspaper in 1996. Both Beau Biden and his father were forced to answer questions about how the young lawyer earned a spot in a hyper-competitive Justice Department program that would serve as the springboard for his political career.

Today, the story of how Beau Biden got that job provides an awkward backdrop to his father’s rage in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing affirmative action in higher education: The president has responded not just by attacking the decision and the Court, but also by taking aim at so-called legacy admissions and directing his Department of Education to look at how such practices “hold back” diversity and inclusion on college campuses. …

… In 1996, Beau Biden was far from the ideal applicant for a prestigious Justice Department job that saw 4,000 applicants for only 163 spots. He graduated with a 2.69 GPA from a third-rate law school, Syracuse University, and his only prior job experience was clerking for a New Hampshire judge—who, coincidentally, served as a New Hampshire co-chairman of Joe Biden’s failed 1988 presidential campaign.

Still, the Wilmington, Del., News Journal reported in 1996 that Beau Biden snagged a spot in “an entry-level program for lawyers at the Justice Department.” The article does not name the program, but it seems to be the Attorney General’s Honors Program, described by the Justice Department as “the nation’s premier entry-level federal attorney recruitment program” for “high-caliber attorneys.” Beau Biden’s father at the time was the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department.