“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Charles M. Blow: Fruit of a Poison Tree
So the “president,” who was “elected” under the fog of Russian interference (now under investigation by both houses of Congress) and with a boost from the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (now under investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general), has just made a nomination to the Supreme Court: Judge Neil Gorsuch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in Denver.
Pundits have been applauding like a pod of trained seals in the hours since the announcement, gushing about how brilliant Donald Trump’s rollout of Gorsuch was, how immensely qualified he is and how difficult it would be for Democrats to block his nomination if they chose to do so.
Let’s tackle each of these individually, but let’s do so under the umbrella of this ultimatum that I believe the liberal base is sending to the Democratic Party: Fight this, tooth and nail. Never give up and never give in.
Steven W. Thrasher: Donald Trump’s ‘listening session’ on Black History Month was anything but
President Trump marked the first day of Black History Month by doing three things: showing off how little he knows about African Americans or our history, attacking an almost entirely white segment of US society (the mainstream media) and outlining some of the ways he intends to help the “inner city”, which will probably bring new levels of hell to black America.
Flanked by Omarosa, a black reality TV personality from The Apprentice, and addressing a room which seemed to have the few Trump voters with melanin in their skin, Trump gave the most lackluster, piss-poor Black History Month speech I can remember since Reagan kicked off the first one.
I am of two minds about the month. At its best, it allows for black Twitter, black culture makers and everyday African Americans to revel in the genius and creativity of our people. But at its worst, it allows blatantly bigoted conservatives (and more insidiously, anti-black liberals) a get-out-of-jail card to say: “Hey, I’m not racist! I love me some peanuts and George Washington Carver!”
Trump didn’t even meet the low bar for the latter, though. Just like he did in front of the CIA’s memorial wall, Trump centered the message on himself, speaking about black history ostensibly to black people more lazily than when he talked about “Two Corinthians” to Christians.
Corey Robin: American institutions won’t keep us safe from Donald Trump’s excesses
Before I wrote my book on conservatism, I was a student of the politics of fear. My first book, which was based on more than a decade of research, was an analysis of how political theorists since Hobbes have understood the politics of fear. In the second part of the book, I offered my own counter-analysis of the politics of fear in the United States. Fear, American Style, I called it.
Here’s what I learned about it: the worst, most terrible things that the United States has done have almost never happened through an assault on American institutions; they’ve always happened through American institutions and practices.
These are the elements of the American polity that have offered especially potent tools and instruments of intimidation and coercion: federalism, the separation of powers, social pluralism and the rule of law.
All the elements of the American experience that liberals and conservatives have so cherished as bulwarks of American freedom have also been sources and instruments of political fear. In all the cases I looked at, coercion, intimidation, repression and violence were leveraged through these mechanisms, not in spite of them.
Richard North Patterson: How Trump’s Supreme Court Appointee Threatens Voting Rights
The nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court foreshadows a renewal of the right-wing judicial activism stalled by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last year — especially in areas where Justice Anthony Kennedy has allied with his more conservative Republican brethren. But the gravest harm could be to voting rights.
There is no doubt that Gorsuch will enable the conservatives, led by Chief Justice Roberts. Like his fellow finalists, he was carefully vetted by the Federalist Society, founded in the 1980s to ensure that Republican judicial appointees hew to a stringent legal and political philosophy. Their core purpose is “no more Souters” — meaning Republican justices who commit the apostasy of independence.
And it’s worked. An exhaustive study published in 2009 by two political scientists showed that members of the Federalist Society, such as Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, are twice as likely to cast votes that reflect a conservative ideology than are Republican nonmembers like Kennedy. Thus has the GOP politicized the judiciary.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.: It’s time to make Republicans pay for their supreme hypocrisy
You want bipartisanship on Supreme Court nominations? Let’s have a consensus moment around Sen. Ted Cruz’s idea that having only eight Supreme Court justices is just fine.
“There is certainly long historical precedent for a Supreme Court with fewer justices,” the Texas Republican said last year when GOP senators were refusing even to give a hearing to Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee.
Cruz cited a Democratic court appointee, Justice Stephen Breyer, to give his case heft. He noted that “Justice Breyer observed that the vacancy is not impacting the ability of the court to do its job.”
If that argument was good in 2016, why isn’t it valid in 2017? After all, some Republicans were willing to keep the seat vacant indefinitely if Hillary Clinton won the presidential election. “I would much rather have eight Supreme Court justices than a justice who is liberal,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in October.
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