"Arguably Serving as the Most Politicized and Abusive Branch of Federal Law Enforcement"

"The viciousness we are witnessing today at the border, directed at children and adults, has a long history, a fact that should in no way mitigate the extraordinary cruelty of Donald Trump. But it does suggest that if the U.S. is to climb out of the moral abyss it has fallen into, it has to think well beyond Trump's malice. It needs a historical reckoning with the true cause of the border crisis: the long, brutal history of border enforcement itself."

Greg Grandin at The Intercept discusses the history of the U.S. Border Patrol.

"Act Like You Love Each Other and Want to Work Together"

"What happened, happened. People don't like to be interrupted and shouted down. They don't like to have their agenda hijacked by someone with a different agenda. But sometimes, when you're not getting heard, and your needs aren't getting met, you have to interrupt and insist on your agenda. That's fine, and for #blackslivesmatter, it could be that a sleepy progressive convention in the middle of the summer was a good time to interject and demand recognition. We'll all recover. We'll survive. Perhaps we'll all be better off for it.
"But how about some recognition that you hijacked the agenda and interrupted and shouted people down and denied people the ability to have their needs and desires met? They didn't respond the way you wanted? Well, you own that, because people never respond well in those circumstances. And now you want to heap contempt on their heads on top of it?
"No, this is all wrong.
"And for the folks on the other side who traveled to Arizona to hear what Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders had to say and to maybe have the chance to engage them in a civil dialogue, maybe you should take that frustration you're feeling and try to understand what it's like to live in a country with mass incarceration and unaccountable murderous police. I think that’s a lot more frustrating for the communities most affected than not getting to hear a speech.
"The problem isn't how people reacted in the moment, which was natural, but how they are behaving now."


Martin Longman in The American Prospect reacts to the tumult at the Netroots Nation meeting in Phoenix.


In The Washington Monthly Longman reacts again after the contretemps in Seattle.

And Jonathan Chait in New York sums up the situation.

"Universities Meant to Ameliorate Social Inequality Are Instead Exacerbating It"

"Ultimately, Arizona shows two ways that universities can respond to government defunding. They can become country clubs, or they can become 'knowledge enterprises' that rely on the Internet to deliver education to enormous, geographically diffuse student bodies. Either way, the gap between the type of education available to children from affluent families and that offered to everyone else is going to grow. There was a moment in American history, says Newfield, when 'the kind of thing that the Bush family could take for granted at Yale became possible at U. Michigan for somebody whose father was a middle manager.' That moment is over."


Michelle Goldberg in The Nation looks at the future of higher education.

"I Believe We Can Be Better"

"The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives–to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let's remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud. It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other's ideas without questioning each other's love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations."

The New York Times publishes a transcript of President Obama's speech in Tucson.