“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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Paul Krugman: Goodbye Spin, Hello Raw Dishonesty
The latest big buzz is about Jeff Sessions, the attorney general. It turns out that he lied during his confirmation hearings, denying that he had met with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. In fact, he met twice with the Russian ambassador, who is widely reported to also be a key spymaster.
Not incidentally, if this news hadn’t come to light, forcing Mr. Sessions to recuse himself, he would have supervised the investigation into Russian election meddling, possibly in collusion with the Trump campaign.
But let’s not focus too much on Mr. Sessions. After all, he is joined in the cabinet by Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who lied to Congress about his use of a private email account; Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, who lied about a sweetheart deal to purchase stock in a biotechnology company at a discount; and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, who falsely told Congress that his financial firm didn’t engage in “robo-signing” of foreclosure documents, seizing homes without proper consideration.
And they would have served with Michael Flynn as national security adviser, but for the fact that Mr. Flynn was forced out after the press discovered that, like Mr. Sessions, he had lied about contacts with the Russian ambassador.
At this point it’s easier to list the Trump officials who haven’t been caught lying under oath than those who have. This is not an accident.
Eugene Robinson: There was nothing ‘presidential’ about Trump’s speech
What I heard from President Trump in his speech Tuesday night was a greatest-hits compilation of campaign promises he has no earthly way to keep. “Dying industries will come roaring back to life,” he vowed. Gleaming new roads, bridges and airports will magically materialize. Health care will be better, cheaper and available to all. Terrorism, crime, poverty and even drug addiction will cease to plague our soon-to-be-great-again land.
What I didn’t hear was anything to reassure the nation that its fate is in competent hands.
Trump’s speech won praise for being “presidential,” but only from those grading him on an absurdly generous curve. It should not be remarkable that the highest elected official of the richest and most powerful nation on earth managed to get through an hour-long speech without foaming at the mouth. Two-bit banana republics set a higher bar. [..]
Trump said he wants an America “not burdened by our fears” — after spending an hour stoking those fears. Even when he uses his indoor voice, he doesn’t sound much like a president.
Jill Abramson: Is investigating Jeff Sessions a witch hunt? No, it’s a quest for the truth
The question was never whether he should recuse himself. The answer to that was always obvious. The question now is whether he perjured himself.
As a top campaign official, Jeff Sessions was never a credible choice to lead the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He completely disqualified himself when he failed to disclose two meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during his confirmation hearing.
Was he was being dishonestly unforthcoming, or plain lying?
Either way, he was, at the very least, being supremely hypocritical.
During the campaign, Sessions was one of the loudest voices calling for a special counsel to be appointed to investigate Hillary Clinton’s emails. He signed a petition calling for one after his predecessor as Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, held a private tête-à-tête with Bill Clinton at a particularly sensitive point in the federal investigation into Clinton’s emails.
Now it’s his own tête-à-tête with the Russian ambassador at a sensitive point in the 2016 campaign that is sparking demands for a special counsel to investigate the unfolding scandal over Russian meddling in the US election. Sessions’ belated recusal will do little to quell them. Democrats are already calling for his resignation. Recusal was the mildest step that could be taken.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: If Justice Is Really Blind, Jeff Sessions Must Resign
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is a man out of time, a holdover from an age when some people believed that certain groups were exempt from the rule of law. He may be out of time in another way, too: His days as attorney general might be numbered.
Even in the Senate, Sessions was something of a fringe figure on the far right. Then he had the foresight or good timing to be one of the first politicians to get on board the Trump train. Sessions quickly moved, in the words of one headline, “from the fringe to prime-time.”
How extreme is Jeff Sessions? The head of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, Heidi Beirich, reviewed Session’s comments about Muslims and immigrants and concluded he had engaged in “hate speech.” She calls the new extent of Sessions’ influence “a tragedy for American politics.”
Bryce Covert: Paul Ryan’s Misguided Sense of Freedom
In his first address to Congress, President Trump made many sweeping pledges, but one of them was familiar to anyone who listened to him campaign. He said that he was “calling on this Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare” and demanding “reforms that expand choice, increase access, lower costs and, at the same time, provide better health care.”
That’s a lot to promise, and Republicans have thus far been unable to get on the same page about how to repeal the Affordable Care Act and what should take its place. But Mr. Trump is not the one who has to deliver on it. It falls to House Speaker Paul Ryan to rally the troops.
For his part, Mr. Ryan has been diligently tweeting pledges to the American people that the law is on its way out. Republicans haven’t landed on a replacement plan yet. But Mr. Ryan is sure they will come up with something because they know, as he said in a recent tweet, “Freedom is the ability to buy what you want to fit what you need.” [..]
n so doing, Mr. Ryan inadvertently revived an idea that desperately needs to be resuscitated — the idea that freedom requires not just a lack of barriers, but also the conditions that allow people to live their lives fully. Deprivation, then, is a constraint on Americans’ freedom.
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