“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: When Will the Killing Stop?
Videos of two fatal shootings of African-American men have again documented what appear to be almost casual killing by the police. They prompt the deepest shock at what the nation has witnessed over and over again: a chance encounter with the police and an innocent black life ended.
On Thursday night, a peaceful march in Dallas against the shootings ended in violence when snipers on rooftops killed five officers and wounded seven others. One suspect, who was killed in a stand-off with police, said he wanted to kill whites, according to the Dallas police chief. This horrendous attack on the police and the two killings this week demand sober reflection by the nation’s political and law enforcement leadership. [..]
The latest killings are grim reminders that far more reforms are needed to make law enforcement officers more professional and respectful of the citizens they have a duty to protect. Intensive training, stricter use-of-force standards and prosecutions of officers who kill innocent people are necessary to begin to repair systems that have tolerated this bloodshed.
And beyond that, with killings happening in cities, suburbs and rural communities, there needs to be leadership in every police department in the country that insists on cultural and attitudinal change. Credible civilian oversight of the police has to be a factor if community trust is ever to be restored. The latest ghastly images show how much has not been done, two years after Ferguson.
Paul Krugman: All the Nominee’s Enablers
A couple of weeks ago Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, sort of laid out both a health care plan and a tax plan. I say sort of, because there weren’t enough details in either case to do any kind of quantitative analysis. But it was clear that Mr. Ryan’s latest proposals had the same general shape as every other proposal he’s released: huge tax cuts for the wealthy combined with savage but smaller cuts in aid to the poor, and the claim that all of this would somehow reduce the budget deficit thanks to unspecified additional measures.
Given everything else that’s going on, this latest installment of Ryanomics attracted little attention. One group that did notice, however, was Fix the Debt, a nonpartisan deficit-scold group that used to have substantial influence in Washington.
Indeed, Fix the Debt issued a statement — but not, as you might have expected, condemning Mr. Ryan for proposing to make the deficit bigger. No, the statement praised him. “We are concerned that the policies in the plan may not add up,” the organization admitted, but it went on to declare that “we welcome this blueprint.”
And there, in miniature, is the story of how America ended up with someone like Donald Trump as the presumptive Republican nominee and possible next president. It’s all about the enablers, and the enablers of the enablers.
Matthew Miller: James Comey’s abuse of power
When FBI Director James B. Comey stepped to the lectern to deliver his remarks about Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, he violated time-honored Justice Department practices for how such matters are to be handled, set a dangerous precedent for future investigations and committed a gross abuse of his own power.
Some have praised Comey’s remarks as much-needed truth-telling from a fearless, independent law-enforcement authority, an outcome Comey no doubt had in mind. But in fact, his willingness to reprimand publicly a figure against whom he believes there is no basis for criminal charges should trouble anyone who believes in the rule of law and fundamental principles of fairness.
In a case where the government decides it will not submit its assertions to that sort of rigorous scrutiny by bringing charges, it has the responsibility to not besmirch someone’s reputation by lobbing accusations publicly instead. Prosecutors and agents have followed this precedent for years.
In this case, Comey ignored those rules to editorialize about what he called carelessness by Clinton and her aides in handling classified information, a statement not grounded in any position in law. He recklessly speculated that Clinton’s email system could have been hacked, even while admitting he had no evidence that it was. This conjecture, which has been the subject of much debate and heated allegations, puts Clinton in the impossible position of having to prove a negative in response.
Richard Wolffe: No one wants to be Donald Trump’s veep. What could go wrong?
In the long Kabuki dance that is a presidential election, there are only one or two moments that even come close to a decision worthy of the Oval Office. All the rest is commentary.
For Donald Trump, we are fast approaching one of those moments. In the next two weeks, the property developer will make his most fateful decision since he fired Meat Loaf from Celebrity Apprentice.
Who deserves the peculiar honor of serving the nation just a heartbeat away from an orange-hued president? More importantly, who would accept a job that famously – even under sane and qualified presidents – isn’t worth a bucket of warm piss?
Trump’s vice-presidential pick might reassure some Republicans that there would be some adult supervision of a president who wants to launch a trade war with China, deport 11 million US residents, and close the borders to a billion Muslims.
Then again, any voter who thinks that Trump will listen to wise veep counsel is in desperate need of some adult supervision of their own.
Jill Abramson: For Hillary Clinton, the email nightmare is far from over
“Will they ever stop?”
It’s the right question about Hillary Clinton’s damn emails, as Bernie Sanders called them last October. But the congressman who asked it, Democrat Xavier Becerra of California, knew the answer and so do we.
Republicans think the email issue can drive Clinton’s poll numbers on honesty and trustworthiness even lower than they are now (more than 60% of voters say they don’t trust her). It may prove to be their best issue against her, despite Donald Trump’s own abysmal numbers. It helps make Trump’s “Crooked Hillary,” sobriquet stick. [..]
Unfortunately, the armada of partisan and ideological enemies has only fueled her innate paranoia about protecting her privacy. This is no doubt why she wanted a private server in the first place. Her insistence on privacy as such a public figure is one of her worst qualities and has gotten her into trouble before because of it, whether it was withholding Whitewater documents and law firm billings or the texts of her more recent speeches to Wall Street.
Transparency is almost always the better route as Comey, no Javert, proved in his congressional testimony.
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