“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: Another Hit to the Fourth Amendment
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government — or that’s how it works in theory, anyway.
In practice, though, court decisions over several decades have created so many exceptions to this constitutional principle as to render it effectively meaningless in many real-world situations.
On Monday, the Supreme Court further weakened the Fourth Amendment by making it even easier for law enforcement to evade its requirement that stops be based on reasonable suspicion. The justices ruled 5 to 3 that a police officer’s illegal stop of a man on the street did not prevent evidence obtained from a search connected to that stop to be used against him. [..]
The Utah Supreme Court rightly rejected this argument, but that decision was overturned in a majority opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas. The officer’s lack of any specific suspicion of Mr. Strieff, Justice Thomas wrote, was a result of “good-faith mistakes.” The illegal stop was, at worst, “an isolated instance of negligence.”
In a powerful dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor took apart that specious reasoning. “Do not be soothed by the opinion’s technical language,” she wrote. “This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants — even if you are doing nothing wrong.”
Katrina vanden Heuvel: How billionaires, corporations and secretive governments curtail press
James Madison once wrote, “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.” Nearly two centuries later, the tragic farce that is Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is making a mockery of the right to public information and freedom of the press.
Last week, Trump banned The Post from receiving credentials to cover his campaign events, making the paper the latest media outlet the presumptive Republican nominee has summarily banished. Trump, who has called journalists “sleaze,” “slime,” “scum” and “the most dishonest people ever created by God,” lashed out at The Post for performing the most basic of journalistic duties: accurately reporting his words in the wake of the horrific mass shooting in Orlando. In a statement, Post executive editor Martin Baron described Trump’s move as “nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press.”
There is a certain irony in Trump, who benefited from the obscene amount of coverage lavished on him throughout the Republican primaries, melting down under even a whiff of media scrutiny. Trump’s dangerous attacks on the press, however, go beyond his name-calling and childish tantrums. If elected, Trump has also pledged to “open up” libel laws in order to facilitate more legal action against journalists, saying, “We’re going to have people sue you like you’ve never got sued before.” He has made it painfully clear that a Trump administration would have disdain for the First Amendment.
Eugene Robinson: The challenges in covering Trump’s relentless assault on the truth
Donald Trump must be the biggest liar in the history of American politics, and that’s saying something.
Trump lies the way other people breathe. We’re used to politicians who stretch the truth, who waffle or dissemble, who emphasize some facts while omitting others. But I can’t think of any other political figure who so brazenly tells lie after lie, spraying audiences with such a fusillade of untruths that it is almost impossible to keep track. Perhaps he hopes the media and the nation will become numb to his constant lying. We must not. [..]
How are we in the media supposed to cover such a man? The traditional approach, which seeks fairness through nonjudgmental balance, seems inadequate. It does not seem fair to write “Trump claimed the sky is maroon while Clinton claimed it is blue” without noting that the sky is, in fact, blue. It does not seem fair to even present this as a “question” worthy of debate, as if honest people could disagree. One assertion is objectively false and one objectively true.
John Kiriakou: Guantanamo Bay Should Be Closed Forever
With less than seven months left in his presidency, Barack Obama has failed in his plans to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. For more than 14 years, Guantanamo has been the symbol of everything that is wrong with the United States’ so-called war on terror. It is a living example of a fundamental disrespect for human rights, civil liberties and the Constitution of the United States.
The U.S. is supposed to be a nation of laws. But those laws are ignored at Guantanamo. We are supposed to be a nation of civil liberties. But those liberties are denied at Guantanamo. We are supposed to be a nation that has a living, breathing Constitution that protects the rights of all of us—not just American citizens, but anybody under U.S. jurisdiction. But that Constitution means nothing at Guantanamo. Instead, it is a “secret” prison, in that almost nobody is allowed to see its inner workings. It’s a place where people who have never been formally accused of a crime, let alone convicted of one, are held incommunicado and indefinitely.
Robert Reich: A Big Idea For Hillary
If Donald Trump continues to implode, Hillary Clinton will win simply by being the presidential candidate who isn’t Trump.
But the prospect of a President Trump is so terrifying that Hillary shouldn’t take any chances. The latest match-up polls show her about 6 points ahead — a comfortable but not sure-fire margin.
What else can she offer other than that she’s also experienced and would be the first woman to hold the job?
So far, she’s put forth a bunch of respectable policy ideas. But they’re small relative to the economic problems most Americans face and to Americans’ overwhelming sense the nation is off track.
She needs a big idea that gives her candidacy a purpose and rationale — and, if she’s elected president, a mandate to get something hugely important done.
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