“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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Trevor Timm: The FBI may have dropped one case against Apple, but the battle is far from over
After a torrent of public criticism and an 11th-hour assist from a mysterious “outside party”, the FBI suddenly dropped its unprecedented demand to Apple on Monday that the tech giant re-write its software to backdoor the encryption that protects its iPhones to facilitate surveillance. While this is an undeniable win for both security and civil liberties, it’s almost certainly only temporary.
That’s because the battle between the Department of Justice and Apple is far from over – it’s probably just begun. The agency merely dropped its most well-known case; there are at least a dozen other similar legal fights open against Apple around the country, and those are just the ones we know about.
Scott Lemeiux: Without Scalia, America’s political landscape is being transformed
Today, the supreme court issued an opinion with a single sentence: “the judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court”. In this case, however, “short” doesn’t mean “unimportant”. The ruling has the effect of thwarting a major judicial attack on public sector unions, and also shows how the unexpected death of Antonin Scalia is already beginning to transform the American legal and political landscape.
Today’s ruling was in Friedrichs v California Teachers Association, a case that could have severely weakened public sector unions. Under existing law, public sector unions could not collect mandatory dues for workers they represent for political purposes, but could collect them for conducting union business such as negotiating and representing workers in disputes with management. The justification for “agency shops” is clear: it prevents free riding. If workers did not have to pay dues to pay for basic union business, they would get the benefits of union representation without having to share the costs. This would have the effect of undermining unions over time.
Jill Ambramson: This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest
It’s impossible to miss the “Hillary for Prison” signs at Trump rallies. At one of the Democratic debates, the moderator asked Hillary Clinton whether she would drop out of the race if she were indicted over her private email server. “Oh for goodness – that is not going to happen,” she said. “I’m not even going to answer that question.”
Based on what I know about the emails, the idea of her being indicted or going to prison is nonsensical. Nonetheless, the belief that Clinton is dishonest and untrustworthy is pervasive. A recent New York Times-CBS poll found that 40% of Democrats say she cannot be trusted.
For decades she’s been portrayed as a Lady Macbeth involved in nefarious plots, branded as “a congenital liar” and accused of covering up her husband’s misconduct, from Arkansas to Monica Lewinsky. Some of this is sexist caricature. Some is stoked by the “Hillary is a liar” videos that flood Facebook feeds. Some of it she brings on herself by insisting on a perimeter or “zone of privacy” that she protects too fiercely. It’s a natural impulse, given the level of scrutiny she’s attracted, more than any male politician I can think of.
David Ferguson: The Georgia governor killed the ‘religious freedom’ bill, but don’t call it progress
On Monday, Georgia’s Republican governor Nathan Deal vetoed a “religious freedom” bill that would have conferred special protections to religious and other officials in the state should they choose to discriminate against LGBT citizens on religious grounds.
My Facebook and Twitter feeds were immediately flooded with people crowing about the discovery of “one decent Republican” in Georgia, but please, let me hasten to assure you all that the governor who some call “Shady” Deal is nothing of the sort.
Deal vetoed that bill yesterday because – as anyone who has followed his trouble with ethics watchdogs and Machiavellian maneuvering against any form of accountability knows – the only thing he loves more than Jesus and bullets is money. The ideological line between Deal and the frothing lawmakers in Georgia’s state legislature is razor thin, but Deal, at least, can do the math.
Richard Eskow: Bernie’s Right. Wall Street’s Business Model Really Is Fraud.
Our nation’s largest and most powerful banks have repeatedly engaged in widespread fraud, causing both individual suffering and a recession that millions of Americans are still living through today.
They continued to commit the same frauds after the American people rescued them, and after they promised to stop as part of some major settlement agreements. There’s no reason to believe they’ve stopped today, and every reason to believe they haven’t.
Fraud is an essential part of Wall Street’s DNA. A 2015 survey, commissioned by law firm Labaton Sucharow, found that a deeply immoral culture had taken root among British and American bankers.
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