Jul 17, 2015 4 min read

Editorial voices from newspapers around the country as compiled by the Associated Press:

Chances are you’ve never heard of Mitusye Endo.

And chances are you never would have, had it not been for a growing effort to have President Obama rescind Bill Cosby’s Presidential Medal of Freedom.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York is among those calling to have the nation’s highest civilian honor taken away from Cosby in the wake of a growing body of evidence he used drugs in order to have sex with dozens of women during his gilded heyday as “America’s dad.”

So what does someone named Mitusye Endo have to do with any of this?

Near the beginning of World War II, Endo was a 22-year-old living in California. But in the wake of anti-Japanese hysteria following Pearl Harbor, Endo – like more than 120,000 other Japanese-Americans – was stripped of her livelihood, her home and her family, and sent away to a government relocation camp.

But Endo didn’t sit idly by and accept her fate. She was among a handful of Japanese-Americans who stood up and challenged the constitutionality of the mass detentions. Offered the opportunity for release in exchange for dropping her case, she steadfastly refused. Instead, she remained held in camps for two years while her case made its way through the courts. In 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in her favor. Around the same time, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the camps closed and the detainees released.

Endo, who died in 2006, is an American hero. And why her name appears in the same breath as Bill Cosby’s now is because there is a separate effort afoot to have her awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the same award many are now seeking to have taken from Cosby.

Bill Cosby made significant contributions to American society through entertainment, philanthropy, and his efforts to empower and educate blacks. But his disgraceful and potentially criminal conduct toward women in the wake of overwhelming evidence, including his own testimony in court, demands he forfeit his place of honor among the greatest American citizens.

State Attorney General Kathleen Kane took another opportunity last week to demonstrate her incompetence.

Kane asked the state Supreme Court on Wednesday to invalidate Gov. Tom Wolf’s moratorium on executions. She wants the court to allow the execution of Hubert L. Michael Jr. for the 1993 murder of a York County teenage girl.

Kane, who had not publicly expressed criticism of Wolf’s decision before filing the action, argued in a court petition that the governor’s move was unconstitutional. The governor has not abolished the death penalty, although Pennsylvania’s capital punishment record has serious blemishes, including the exoneration of six death row inmates over the last four decades.

What’s the rush?

Only three people in Pennsylvania were put to death since 1978 and there is no obvious, urgent reason to execute Michael or anybody else.

Kane’s move serves no practical purpose and calls into question her motivation as well as the reliability of her judgment.

The worst of Donald Trump, the celebrity-billionaire-turned-presidential-candidate, was on full display this past weekend during rambling rants on immigration, media elites, GOP presidential rivals and whatever else popped into his head.

Trump is a carnival barker who conflates shouted insults with leadership, and points to his wealth as his credibility scorecard whenever he’s challenged. While he claims to speak for a “silent majority” of Americans who are disenchanted with the country’s direction, Trump does it with a scolding demagogic cynicism that mostly inflames passions. This is a real threat to the field of GOP candidates and the country he claims to love.

For the moment, at least, he’s sucking all the oxygen out of the room without offering a single solution to any issue.

Trump has the bully pulpit, but for now revels in being just the bully.