“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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New York Times Editorial Board: Protecting the Privacy of Internet Users
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission proposed common-sense privacy rules this week that would limit what broadband companies are allowed to do with the Internet browsing history and other personal information of consumers.
Companies like Comcast and AT&T, which operate wired and wireless networks, know a lot about what Americans do online, like the websites they visit and how long they stay on them. But there are no F.C.C. rules that bar those companies from selling that information to advertisers. The commission can, however, take action against the companies for deceptive and unfair practices. [..]
The commission will vote on March 31 to open Mr. Wheeler’s proposal to public comments before it can be finalized, probably before the end of the year. Cable and phone companies and their Republican supporters in Congress will undoubtedly oppose this regulation. But these rules are necessary because consumers need to have control over their personal information.
Marilynne Robinson: Trump: the great orange-haired Unintended Consequence
Donald Trump is not really exceptional among current Republican presidential candidates. He is the one with the brightest plumage, of course, and the one who has had long experience at cultivating celebrity. If Trump seems strangely incapable of consistency except in the matter of walling out and deporting immigrants, somber Ted Cruz is lurking nearby to alarm us with his ideological purity. If Trump is his own invention, there is Rubio, the polished creature of hired advisors and their moment-to-moment calculations.
The only satisfaction to be found in a Trump win lies in the fact that the others have lost, and lost badly. On the other hand, Trump’s bluster distracts attention from the others’ stated positions, so if one of his competitors manages finally to make the case, to the public or the party, that he is least objectionable, the claim might well be groundless.
Trump and the others are the product of the souring of the party system. Someone should point out, in these days when the constitution is so constantly and pietistically invoked, that political parties are not mentioned in the constitution, and that the prescient founders warned emphatically against them for reasons that should be clear to us now.
Paul Rosenberg: The Democratic establishment has gone mad — and 2016 will be last stand for party hacks
Early last October, after New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan announced she would run against GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte next year, Politico reported that despite this piece of good news in the Democrats’ quest to retake the Senate, “their path to victory is being blocked by potentially ruinous primary challenges in other key states.” Pesky voters! Who let them in? More specifically:
In four key states, each among the Democrats’ best bets to take over Republican seats, upstart challengers are mounting primary contests against the candidates party leaders feel have the best chance next November.
In Ohio, 31-year-old Cincinnati City Council member P.G. Sittenfeld is challenging establishment-backed, 75-year-old former Gov. Ted Strickland. In Illinois, former Chicago Urban League president Andrea Zopp is challenging another establishment candidate, Iraq War veteran Rep. Tammy Duckworth. In Pennsylvania, former Rep. Joe Sestak, whose unconventional style has consistently irritated Washington Democrats, is taking on Katie McGinty, a protégé of former Gov. Ed Rendell. And in Florida, liberal firebrand Rep. Alan Grayson is loudly attacking his House colleague Patrick Murphy, the establishment favorite, in the race for Marco Rubio’s seat.
It would be oversimplifying things to portray these races simply as reflections of Bernie Sanders’ challenge to Hillary Clinton, and nothing more. But given the dynamics of how top-down party endorsements and funding work, and the kind of grass-roots energy needed to challenge them, there is no denying that strong similarities are present.
Lucia Graves: Donald Trump’s campaign violence is condoned all the way to the top
When will the first pro-Donald Trump murder happen?
The incidents are piling up. A Black Lives Matters protester was sucker-punched by a white bystander at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. A young black woman was surrounded and shoved aggressively by a number of individuals at a rally in Louisville, Kentucky. A black protester was tackled, then punched and kicked by a group of men as he curled up on the ground in Birmingham, Alabama. Immigration activists were shoved and stripped of their signs by a crowd in Richmond, Virginia. A Latino protester was knocked down and kicked by a Trump supporter in Miami.
At a press conference on Friday morning Trump even seemed to encourage violence at his rallies. “We’ve had some violent people as protesters,” he said. “These are people that punch. These are violent people.” (No such videos have been found.) This adds to evidence piling up that the Trump campaign’s culture of violence extends all the way to the top.
Richard North Patterson: The GOP’s Morning After
Repugnant beyond redemption.
Whatever its dire implications, for a time the GOP presidential race had the terrible fascination of a multi-car collision. No more. Now we can see the casualties close-up — reason, dignity, honesty and hope. And, not least, a once great political party reduced to the intellectual and moral level of a mindless fraternity house.
In belatedly attacking the repulsive Donald Trump, the party establishment and also-rans have stripped bare his appalling candidacy without giving voters a plausible alternative. The residue evokes that abysmal frat house the morning after a drunken party — stubbed cigarette butts leaving burn holes in the coffee table; a carpet stained with red wine spills; an acrid smell whose origins are nauseating to consider. A sodden lout is sprawled on the couch, snoring with his mouth agape; a pale young woman in the bathroom applies lipstick with trembling hands, dimly recalling the shame she wishes to forget. All one can do is rush outside, desperate for a gulp of air.
Faced with such debris, it seems almost trivial to analyze the political fallout. But it can be gamed out easily enough.
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