“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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Keith Olbermann: Why Donald Trump is Not Fit to Be President
A constitutional wall will block President-elect Donald Trump’s mean-spirited ambition to swiftly deport up to three million undocumented immigrants.
The Constitution protects states or localities from commandeering by the federal government to enforce federal statutes, including immigration laws. That doctrine was expounded by Justice Antonin Scalia in Printz v. United States (1997) holding that state or local law enforcement officials could not be compelled to enforce background checks or other provisions of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Conservatives celebrated.
The Constitution also prohibits the federal government from circumventing the anti-commandeering doctrine of Printz by coercing state or local governments to enforce federal law on pain of losing substantial federal funding for unrelated programs or policies. That doctrine was expounded by Chief Justice John Roberts in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012). There, the Court held that the Affordable Care Act unconstitutionally sought to coerce states to expand eligibility for the federal-state Medicaid program by threatening a loss of all federal matching funds for failing to do so. The federal government cannot use bait-and-switch tactics to allure state or local governments into a cooperative spending program, and later materially alter the terms for continued receipt of federal funds. A material alteration would include a requirement that they waive their anti-commandeering protection against enforcement of the federal immigration laws.
Amanda marcotte: Forget Jill Stein’s recount! It’s yet another distraction from the deep structural problems that led to President Donald Trump
Over the holiday weekend, Jill Stein of the Green Party raised millions of dollars to fund a recount of the agonizingly close election tallies in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, three states narrowly won by Trump. This effort was apparently motivated by reports that a group of computer scientists and voting-rights lawyers had reached out to Hillary Clinton’s campaign with concerns that voting machines might have been hacked. It is worth noting that the Clinton campaign is skeptical of these claims and is only participating because the recounts are already underway.
The important thing to remember is that there are claims of hacking and voter fraud after every major election. Republicans, in fact, have been stoking fears about voter fraud for years now. Among Democrats, the fears tend to flare up around elections, and they tend to focus on claims that the voting machines are being illegally manipulated.
For both Democrats and Republicans, these conspiracy theories are comforting because they shore up their side’s deeply felt belief that their views are the winning ones and that the only possible way the opposition could prevail is by cheating.
But this election was a unique one that guaranteed that Democratic concerns about hacked machines were going to be even more pronounced.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Putin didn’t undermine the election. We did.
Three weeks after Election Day, allegations of Russian interference in the contest continue to appear. Adm. Michael S. Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, stated that there was a “conscious effort by a nation-state to achieve a specific end.” Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein has formally called for a recount in Wisconsin, citing reports of potential outside hacking. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has joined the call, even though a campaign lawyer admits that her team has “not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology.” The Post features an article alleging that independent research reveals that Russia ran a “sophisticated propaganda campaign” to interfere in our elections, weaken Clinton and discredit our democracy. But much of the research cited comes from a group that insists on remaining anonymous and bases its conclusions on murky methodology. [..]
Our election system is embarrassing not for anything Putin allegedly did. In the “world’s strongest democracy,” this is the second presidential election in the past five in which the winner of the popular vote has lost. In U.S. elections, money talks louder than elsewhere, simply because we spend so much more of it — a record $6.8 billion spent in the 2016 presidential and congressional elections. Yet our turnout — 58 percent of eligible voters this year — is among the lowest of all democracies’. It is only in U.S. elections that money is considered protected speech and corporations pass for people. In this year’s elections, the Brennan Center for Justice reports that 15 states had new restrictions on the right to vote, part of a systematic, partisan effort by Republicans to suppress the vote, particularly the vote of people of color. Gerrymandered congressional districts make it so that Democrats must win the popular vote by an overwhelming margin to have any hope of winning a majority in Congress. The Russian-state-funded RT may report on these grotesqueries, but Putin didn’t create them. If we want to keep foreign powers from “discrediting” U.S. elections, we might start by cleaning up a broken system.
Adil F. Shamoo: The Last Days of Democracy?
The recent presidential campaign season brought political pornography to the American people. Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, his senior counselor and chief strategist, have ushered in a new dark age of American politics. [..]
This fraudulent campaign has resulted in the election of a fraudulent president. Soon we will accept a fraudulent presidency. Democracy is fading, and many seem not to have noticed.
History is full of national leaders who were tyrants, dictators, fraudsters, and hucksters. Some rule even today. The people of these countries are reduced to feeling grateful when these rulers do something good for the people. They accept worse actions with the knowledge that under the powers of their more fascistic rulers, their dissent will not be tolerated. Are we witnessing the beginning of the total destruction of American democracy? Not yet. But, without question, the chipping off of some of the pillars of democracy has begun. It’s not too late to turn it around, but we’d better get started.
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