Pondering the Pundits

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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Andrew Gawthorpe: How Republicans are turning US states into labs of anti-democracy

America’s federal system of government is, in theory, key to the strength of its democracy. As opposed to citizens in the more centralized states of Europe, Americans get to vote for a huge array of local offices, policies and ballot initiatives that can influence their lives for the better. Innovation in the states can be healthy for the whole country, such as when healthcare reform in Massachusetts provided inspiration for the Affordable Care Act. The supreme court justice Louis Brandeis famously praised US states as laboratories which could “try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country”.

But what happens when the keys to the laboratory end up in the wrong hands? Throughout history, the power invested in the states has allowed all sorts of anti-democratic abuses to flourish. The most famous example is the Jim Crow system, which denied African Americans their rights and stained the ideals of American democracy for decades. In extreme cases, such as Governor Huey Long’s Louisiana in the 1930s, near-dictatorships have been established by ambitious local politicians.

John Kerry: Forget Trump. We All Must Act on Climate Change.

This week is the third anniversary of the Paris climate agreement. The Trump administration marked it by working with Russia and Gulf oil nations to sideline science and undermine the accord at climate talks underway in Katowice, Poland.

While I was in New Delhi this week, where I met with solar energy advocates, a comment made thousands of miles away by the journalist Bob Woodward almost jumped off my iPad: The president, he said, “makes decisions often without a factual basis.” This isn’t a mere personality quirk of the leader of the free world. It is profoundly dangerous for the entire planet.

Scientists tell us we must act now to avoid the ravages of climate change. The collision of facts and alternative facts has hurt America’s efforts to confront this existential crisis. Ever since Mr. Trump announced that he would pull America out of the Paris accord, those of us in the fight have worked to demonstrate that the American people are still in.

But the test is not whether the nation’s cities and states can make up for Mr. Trump’s rejection of reality. They can. The test is whether the nations of the world will pull out of the mutual suicide pact that we’ve all passively joined through an inadequate response to this crisis.

Richard Wolffe: Who wants to be Donald Trump’s lawyer? He needs a good one

Who wants to be Donald Trump’s lawyer?

No, seriously. Among all the positions normally considered to be the worst jobs ever – sewer engineer, decomposition cleaner, British prime minister – it surely ranks as even less desirable than Trump’s chief of staff: a job that literally nobody wants. No matter how many imaginary applicants Trump sees lining up outside the West Wing.

Trump’s last lawyer, Michael Cohen, is now preparing for a long cold spell inside the slammer next year. Meanwhile, the man currently purporting to represent the 45th president of the United States is hawking himself around Bahrain looking for other clients.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, now styles himself as one of the leading lights of Trump’s defense team. This is a stretch for a man who has spent the last decade as a lobbyist and security consultant. Giuliani’s legal career peaked in the late 1980s, around the time Michael Douglas proclaimed that greed was good. In other words: he’s the perfect pretend lawyer for our pretend president.

Helaine Olen: Nancy Pelosi is the heroine the resistance to Trump needs

On Tuesday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) showed President Trump how it’s done.

The occasion was the now infamous public meeting Tuesday between Pelosi, Trump, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Vice President Pence to discuss avoiding a government shutdown at the end of next week. A major sticking point: the wall Trump would like to build on the Mexican border.

Trump turned up with flashcards. Pelosi took over and schooled Trump. She called the government shutdown the “Trump shutdown.” She corrected misstatements. She kept her temper and focus as he interrupted her 15 times. And when he made a not-so-veiled reference to her ongoing fight to keep her speakership, she quickly filleted him. “Mr. President, please don’t characterize the strength I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory.” [..]

I am not arguing Pelosi is perfect. She is not. But she has decades of experience in both life and politics, and she used it to great impact on Tuesday. Trump has a preternatural instinct for reality-television-like spectacles, and it’s a rare person, male or female, who gets the better of him when it comes to getting down in the mud. But Pelosi took her greater experience and understanding of policy and the legislative process, not to mention the knowledge that men often put women down because they fear their laughter and contempt, and used it to give a master class in how to show up Trump as the blustering, less-than-well-informed bully he is. It was a bravura performance.

Rosa Prince: Theresa May Is Determined — and Doomed

And so Theresa May limps on — bruised, battered and with less authority than ever to enact any real policies, destined to serve only as a vehicle for delivering Brexit.

There is a sense that we’ve finally reached a tipping point this time. Yes, she’s survived, but the wounds from Wednesday’s no confidence vote, while not immediately fatal, appear impossible to fully recover from. When she does finally go — and we now know that her departure will be sooner rather than later — the sense of loss in the country may be keener than expected.

For there’s a paradox at the heart of Britons’ relationship with the woman who is still, for now, their prime minister. It is the times when she is at her weakest that they — grudgingly — seem to warm to her.