“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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Scott Lemieux: Merrick Garland, the piñata nominee
In ordinary times, you would expect a president like Barack Obama to nominate a young, liberal judge for the US supreme court. But these aren’t ordinary times. On Wednesday, Obama announced his pick: Merrick Garland. The 63-year-old Chief Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals is older than many expected the nominee to be – and more moderate. In other political circumstances, the choice of Garland would be unusual. But these are not ordinary times.
With the exception of Harriet Miers – the quickly withdrawn George W Bush nominee – the last supreme court nominee older than 55 was Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993. The reason lifetime appointments to the supreme court have been trending younger is obvious: in general, it means that a president’s constitutional values will get a longer period of representation on the court. Most of the justices on the typical shortlist of potential nominees are significantly younger than Garland.
Eugene Robinson: Is This the Dawn of the Resistance?
Desperate times call for desperate measures. The organized protest in Chicago that led Donald Trump to cancel a planned rally Friday may someday be remembered as the Dawn of the Resistance.
Trump has fueled his campaign’s rise with the angriest and most divisive political rhetoric this nation has heard since the days of George Wallace. No one should be surprised if some of those Trump has slandered or outraged respond with raised voices.
The Constitution’s guarantee of free speech applies to everyone, Trumpistas and protesters alike. Trump said over the weekend that he wants demonstrators who gatecrash his rallies to be arrested, not just ejected; he vows that “we’re pressing charges” against them. Someone should educate him: Peacefully disapproving of a politician and his dangerous ideas is not a crime.
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: The GOP Elites Have Themselves to Blame
From their “Dark Money” bagman Karl Rove to their philosophical guru David Brooks, the GOP elites are in a tizzy over saving the Republican Party from Donald Trump and the other intruders, extremists and crackpots who have fallen in behind Trump as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamelin. But who will save the party from the elites?
Look around at just some of the other sheer lunacy their party perpetrates when it’s not trying to shut government down, redistribute wealth upward, and prevent the president of the United States (who, the last time we looked, has the constitutional right and mandate) from filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
The Republicans in southern California just got a 7-6 majority on the region’s air quality board and have set out to reverse all of its safeguards, “reaffirming new smog rules backed by oil refineries and other major polluters,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
Richard Wolffe: The presidential race is down to this: political realism v reality television
We are now barreling towards a general election between a former secretary of state and a former judge of Celebrity Apprentice.
In the blue corner, a candidate who started her career at the Children’s Defense Fund. In the red corner, a candidate whose legal defense fund is fighting claims of a fake university.
One candidate dotes on her granddaughter. The other says he would date his daughter.
One watched the Osama bin Laden raid unfold in the White House situation room. The other has watched Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room on CNN.
It’s time for political realism to meet reality TV.
Jeb Lund: You call this a life of decadence, Mr Trump? Use your imagination!
I was willing to overlook Donald Trump’s misogyny, banishment of Muslims from the country, the demonization of undocumented Latinos and the spotlighting of crowd anger to incentivize mob behavior. Those just seemed like the birth pangs of a new American democracy. But Tuesday’s New York Times profile of Donald Trump’s butler goes too far.
Despite ticking off every clichéd box on the Weird Life Of An Insanely Rich Guy checklist, it’s obvious that the billionaire has no idea how to be an insanely rich guy. That’s no way to make America great again.
As the New York Times reports, his butler is named Anthony Senecal, and he has worked for Trump for 30 years and at the Mar-a-Lago resort for 60. Wrong, wrong, wrong. My God, what a waste of a butler. If you’re going to go provincial, at the very least, have a large mustachioed English man in sweaters. Better yet, glue a J Wellington Wimpy mustache on Chris Christie and hope that the My Fair Lady elocution lessons take hold sooner rather than later.
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