Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media 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: Don’t Forget, Michael Flynn Pleaded Guilty. Twice.
Even President Trump has said his former national security adviser lied to the F.B.I.
It can be hard to recall, since so many members of President Trump’s inner circle have been indicted, convicted of federal crimes and even sent to prison, but the first felon to emerge from this administration was Michael Flynn.
Mr. Flynn, who served less than a month as the national security adviser before resigning in disgrace, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to F.B.I. investigators about his communications with the Russian ambassador. [..]
Yet on Thursday, the Justice Department, under Attorney General William Barr, suddenly dropped all criminal charges against Mr. Flynn.
In a court filing, Mr. Barr said that the interview in which Mr. Flynn admitted to lying to authorities was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis,” and so his statements were not “material” to an active investigation. Further, the department said it was unable to prove that Mr. Flynn had in fact made false statements.
To review: Mr. Barr is now saying he cannot prove charges to which Mr. Flynn has twice pleaded guilty in court — and for which there is ample evidence. [..]
Career prosecutors who have dedicated their lives to the rule of law and the independent administration of justice are left to wonder what they’re supposed to do now. (Shortly before the Justice Department’s filing, Brandon Van Grack, the prosecutor who led the case against Mr. Flynn, announced his withdrawal from the case.)
Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general, called Thursday “A black day in D.O.J. history.” He’s right. Our institutions have withstood corruption and malfeasance at the highest level, until now. With William Barr at the right hand of Donald Trump, that is no longer assured.
Paul Krugman: An Epidemic of Hardship and Hunger
Why won’t Republicans help Americans losing their jobs?
Covid-19 has had a devastating effect on workers. The economy has plunged so quickly that official statistics can’t keep up, but the available data suggest that tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, with more job losses to come and full recovery probably years away.
But Republicans adamantly oppose extending enhanced unemployment benefits — such an extension, says Senator Lindsey Graham, will take place “over our dead bodies.” (Actually, over other people’s dead bodies.)
They apparently want to return to a situation in which most unemployed workers get no benefits at all, and even those collecting unemployment insurance get only a small fraction of their previous income.
Because most working-age Americans receive health insurance through their employers, job losses will cause a huge rise in the number of uninsured. The only mitigating factor is the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, which will allow many though by no means all of the newly uninsured to find alternative coverage.
But the Trump administration is still trying to have the Affordable Care Act ruled unconstitutional; “We want to terminate health care under Obamacare,” declared Donald Trump, even though the administration has never offered a serious alternative.
Neal Katyal: Trump’s indefensible refusal to defend Obamacare
President Trump’s decision to argue that the Supreme Court should scrap the Affordable Care Act in its entirety is not just terrible policy in the midst of a pandemic — it is legally indefensible and a gross violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.
On Wednesday, apparently overriding the concerns of Attorney General William P. Barr, the administration said it will argue that the entire law must fall because one small piece of it is unconstitutional — in legal language, that the problematic part of the law cannot be severed from the rest of it.
Everything about this position is legally wrong. Twice before, the Justice Department has defended the Affordable Care Act against legal attack. Both times, the Supreme Court upheld the act. In the latest challenge to the law, a case involving a challenge brought by Texas and other Republican-led states, the argument is even weaker.
The administration’s claim in the case, which is to be argued this fall, is this: Congress in 2017 modified the Affordable Care Act by eliminating the required payment from those who do not purchase health insurance, the so-called individual mandate. Because the penalty is no longer in place, the administration contends, the justification for the individual mandate — that it is a valid exercise of Congress’s taxing power — has been eroded.
Even if that were correct — it isn’t — it is ludicrous to claim that this supposed defect somehow dooms the entirety of the law. When courts find problems in particular provisions of a law, they leave the rest of the law in place unless it is evident that Congress would not have proceeded without the invalid portions.
Eugene Robinson Democrats need to use Republicans’ playbook to make sure Trump loses
Democrats, learn from your former Republican foes: Pull heartstrings, wave the flag and go straight for the jugular.
Political warfare in this country has long been asymmetrical. Democrats tend to appeal to voters with arguments based on reason, fairness and economic self-interest. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but defeating President Trump and his GOP enablers is too important to leave any weapons on the shelf. Democrats need to learn to use the tools that Republicans have long wielded with tremendous skill and success: emotion, patriotism and cultural affinity.
Not to be overly anatomical about it, but Democrats tend to target the head while Republicans go for the heart and the gut.
Fortunately, some veteran Republican strategists are giving a master class in GOP-style political communication. It is imperative that Joe Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee sit up and pay close attention. [..]
What the veterans of GOP campaigns who made “Mourning in America” understand is that drawing lines between “us” and “them” is both powerful and effective. Republicans wave the American flag and imply, or come right out and say, that their opponents are un-American. Democrats need to wave the flag, too — it belongs to all of us — and show Trump as alien and destructive to who we are as a nation.
Democrats need to drive an emotional wedge of their own — between the mourning Trump has given us and the new morning that will dawn when he is gone.
Dahlia Lithwick: Whose Freedom Counts?
Anti-lockdown protesters are twisting the idea of liberty.
[..]The words freedom and liberty have been invoked breathlessly in recent weeks to bolster the case for “reopening.” Protesters of state public safety measures readily locate in the Bill of Rights the varied and assorted freedom to not be masked, the freedom to have your toenails soaked and buffed, the freedom to open-carry weapons into the state capitol, the freedom to take your children to the polar bear cage, the freedom to worship even if it imperils public safety, and above all, the freedom to shoot the people who attempt to stop you from exercising such unenumerated but essential rights. Beyond a profound misunderstanding of the relationship between broad state police powers and federal constitutional rights in the midst of a deadly pandemic, this definition of freedom is perplexing, chiefly because it seems to assume not simply that other people should die for your individual liberties, but also that you have an affirmative right to harm, threaten, and even kill anyone who stands in the way of your exercising of the freedoms you demand. We tend to forget that even our most prized freedoms have limits, with regard to speech, assembly, or weaponry. Those constraints are not generally something one shoots one’s way out of, even in a pandemic, and simply insisting that your own rights are paramount because you super-duper want them doesn’t usually make it so.
To be sure, a good number of these “protesters” and “pundits” represent fringe groups, financed by other fringe groups and amplified by a press that adores conflict. The data continues to show that the vast majority of Americans are not out on the hustings fighting for the right to infect others for the sake of a McNugget. Also, it is not irrational in the least to fear a tyrannical government capitalizing on a pandemic; it’s happening around the world. But even for those millions of people genuinely suffering hardship and anxiety, it’s simply not the case that all freedoms are the same. And it’s certainly not the case that the federal Constitution protects everything you feel like doing, whenever you feel like doing it.