“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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Trervor Timm: How the FBI’s assault on security provoked a backlash
The FBI’s underhand attempt to get a judge to order Apple to make iPhones less secure is largely backfiring. The Obama administration is now taking heat from all sides in the debate over whether they can force Apple to open a backdoor in its encryption – despite there being no law that requires it.
The FBI’s primary case against Apple was once considered about as sympathetic for the government as it gets: the original phone in question belonged to one of the deceased San Bernardino terrorists, and was owned by a city which had already given permission to break into it. But thankfully, the public now realizes that this case is about much more than just “one phone” (as the FBI once tried to pretend, before admitting that the case would set a precedent that would allow them to break into thousands of them).
What really is at stake is the future of internet security, and whether the government can force tech companies to become arms of the state.
Amanda Marcotte: Stop “helping” Hillary: Sorry, guys, but Clinton doesn’t need to smile, whisper, or have John Kasich as her running mate
Tuesday night, those who were lucky enough to be watching their primary coverage on MSNBC were treated to what may be a record-setter in scorching hot takes, courtesy of, who else, Chris Matthews. “I do think if you could ever find a way to put a ticket together that would actually end some of this mishegoss, to use a Yiddish word,” Matthews spun out before coughing up, and you could feel this coming, that he’d like to see Hillary Clinton pick John Kasich as her running mate [..]
In general, Tuesday night was ugly reminder of how many men’s reaction to female power is to look for ways to contain and control women. Clinton’s massive sweep of primaries was met met by a bunch of men — and a few women — rushing forward to put Clinton in her place, to remind her that no matter how high an office she holds, her first duty, as a woman, is to soothe and placate the most delicate of male egos.
Heather Digby Parton: Donald Trump’s other authoritarian shtick: Why we should be paying much more attention to his “law and order” extremism
Donald Trump’s xenophobia, nativism and nationalism are well established by now. His rantings about Latino immigrants and Muslims and “China and Japan” have been discussed at great lengths on every television network and in the pages of all the major newspapers for months. When he says, “We’re going to make America great again,” we know he means to restore total American global dominance and white American privilege.
We tend to think of Trump’s authoritarianism in terms of his promises to “get rid of the bad people so fast your head will spin,” leaving the impression that he isn’t concerned with such impediments as due process. And he has made it clear that he plans to do everything in his power to ensure that torture and wanton extrajudicial killings are part of the program as a deterrent and as a punishment. There is no doubt that Trump unabashedly sees himself as a “strongman” leader.
But the violence that finally spilled over last week focused attention, at least briefly, on another aspect of his appeal that hasn’t received quite the same amount of coverage, even though it’s been a fundamental part of his appeal from the very beginning: his call for “law and order,” and the thinly veiled racism that phrase evokes.
Gail Collins: Kasich, the Boulder Between the G.O.P. and Trump
Wow, John Kasich.
The governor of Ohio is not normally a person you’d connect with a “wow.” Maybe a “jeepers.” Or a “huh!” But here he is! The medium-size, crinkly-eyed boulder between the Republican Party and Donald Trump. [..]
Right now he certainly seems like the only non-appalling option the Republicans have, even though there are a lot of people in Ohio right now who are shaking their heads in stupefaction at the sight of their governor as the nation’s poster boy for moderation. He’s signed an absolute mountain of anti-abortion bills — nearly half of the clinics in the state have shut down during his tenure. His enthusiasm for giving public funding to private, for-profit schools has been scandalous. And on the economic front he has the usual conservative contempt for taxing residents according to their ability to pay.
But he doesn’t think we should ban Muslims or deport millions of immigrants. And there’s always that thing about the downtrodden. This year, it’s as good as the Republicans can hope for. And the other options are so really, really bad.
Peter van Buren: Back to the Future
The nuances of foreign policy do not feature heavily in the ongoing presidential campaign. Every candidate intends to “destroy” the Islamic State; each has concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea, and China; every one of them will defend Israel; and no one wants to talk much about anything else — except, in the case of the Republicans, who rattle their sabers against Iran.
In that light, here’s a little trip down memory lane: in October 2012, I considered five critical foreign policy questions — they form the section headings below — that were not being discussed by then-candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Romney today is a sideshow act for the current Republican circus, and Obama has started packing up his tent at the White House and producing his own foreign policy obituary.
And sadly, those five questions of 2012 remain as pertinent and unraised today as they were four years ago. Unlike then, however, answers may be at hand, and believe me, that’s not good news. Now, let’s consider them four years later, one by one.
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