Punting the Pundits

“Punting 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.

Eugene Robinson: In the short term, immigration ruling is a gift for the GOP

Christmas came early for demagogues. The court decision  putting a hold on the worst provisions of Arizona’s new anti-Latino immigration law is a gift-wrapped present to those who delight in turning truth, justice and the American way into political liabilities.

As surely everyone knows by now, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking the state from enforcing parts of the law that look patently unconstitutional. The political fallout is pretty clear: In the short run, at least, Republicans win and Democrats lose.

Longer term, the impact of the immigration issue on the major parties’ prospects is the other way around. But the focus now is on winning in November, and the GOP is licking its chops.

Paul Krugman: Curbing Your Enthusiasm

Why does the Obama administration keep looking for love in all the wrong places? Why does it go out of its way to alienate its friends, while wooing people who will never waver in their hatred?

These questions were inspired by the ongoing suspense over whether President Obama will do the obviously right thing and nominate Elizabeth Warren to lead the new consumer financial protection agency. But the Warren affair is only the latest chapter in an ongoing saga.

Mr. Obama rode into office on a vast wave of progressive enthusiasm. This enthusiasm was bound to be followed by disappointment, and not just because the president was always more centrist and conventional than his fervent supporters imagined. Given the facts of politics, and above all the difficulty of getting anything done in the face of lock step Republican opposition, he wasn’t going to be the transformational figure some envisioned.

Nate Silver: It’s Like Mathematically Unpossible for Republicans to Win the House, or Something

We’re introducing a new scale tonight to “reward” polling and strategy memos which are vapid, disingenuous, jargony, or just plain fucking wrong. The scale is dubbed the Pennometer after former Clinton strategist Mark Penn, who was a master of the genre; it runs from 0 Penns for memos that are honest and persuasive to 5 Penns for those which might as well have been penned by Penn himself.

Just to get you really charged up, here’s Charlie

Charles Krauthammer: Iran starts feeling heat

“They [the United States and Israel] have decided to attack at least two countries in the region in the next three months.”

— Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, July 26

President Ahmadinejad has a penchant for the somewhat loony, as when last weekend he denounced Paul the Octopus, omniscient predictor of eight consecutive World Cup matches, as a symbol of decadence and purveyor of “Western propaganda and superstition.”

But for all his clownishness, Ahmadinejad is nonetheless calculating and dangerous. What “two countries” was he talking about? They seem logically to be Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah in Lebanon has armed itself with 50,000 rockets and made clear that it is in a position to start a war at any time. Fighting on this scale would immediately bring in Syria, which would in turn invite Iranian intervention in defense of its major Arab clients — and of the first Persian beachhead on the Mediterranean in 1,400 years.

Joe Conanson: Fred Barnes not on a team? Why did GOP pay him?

The Weekly Standard editor claimed political purity in bashing Journolist, but he’s on the Republican payroll

In the pages of the Wall Street Journal, Fred Barnes has lately lamented  the betrayal of “traditional journalism” by the liberal denizens of Journolist — the defunct listserv that conservatives have used to revive the debate over “liberal media bias.” His widely quoted Journal Op-Ed noted that before Journolist, neither liberal nor conservative journalists were likely to be “part of a team,” and went on to add:

   “If there’s a team, no one has asked me to join. As a conservative, I normally write more favorably about Republicans than Democrats and I routinely treat conservative ideas as superior to liberal ones. But I’ve never been part of a discussion with conservative writers about how we could most help the Republican or the conservative team.”

This assertion of political purity struck me as false, coming from a journalist who has appeared repeatedly as a speaker at Republican Party events across the country — a breach of the political boundaries of “traditional journalism” that few, if any, of the writers on Journolist, for example, would ever contemplate.

I know you never heard of Evan, well maybe you have.

Evan Knappenberger: Heroism of PFC Bradley Manning

I am writing today about PFC Bradley Manning, and why he is my new M.I. hero. Mr. Manning has the distinction of being the prominent “wiki-leaker” suspected of the 92,000 document upload featured in the news this last week. I look up to Mr. Manning specifically because he had the guts to do what I didn’t: expose the lie that is war.