“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.
The Sunday Talking Heads:
This Week with Christiane Amanpour: This weeks guests are Austan Goolsbee, the newly appointed chair of the President’s Economic Council and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the Islamic Center, Park 51. The Round Table participants are George Will, Arianna Huffington, ABC News’ Senior Congressional Correspondent Jon Karl, and Kate Zernike of the New York Times and author of “Boiling Mad,” a new book about the Tea Party Movement, debating what should be done about the expiring the Bush tax cuts.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer will have an exclusive interview with Ohio Rep. John Boehner, the House Republican Leader. Later he will be joined by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Tom Kean, Co-Chairman of the 9/11 Commission and former New Jersey Governor
The Chris Matthews Show: Joining Mr. Matthews will be Dan Rather, HDNet Global Correspondent, Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent, Andrea Mitchell, NBC News
Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and David Ignatius, The Washington Post Columnist. The questions they will tackle: Did President Obama overreact to the Florida pastor? and Is President Obama smart so take a hard left turn on taxes?
Meet the Press with David Gregory: Mr Gregory will have an Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod who will discuss the Administration’s agenda and defends their record.
A second exclusive with Former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani (R) on tis anniversary of 9/11
The Round Table guests are Fmr. Clinton White House Press Secretary, Dee Dee Myers, Author of the book, “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and the Future of Islam,” Reza Aslan, Republican Strategist, Mike Murphy and Political Director for Atlantic Media, Ron Brownstein.
State of the Union with Candy Crowley: EXCLUSIVE! Nine years after 9/11 the country’s focus is on the intense debate over the wisdom of a proposed cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero and a controversial pastor in Florida who planned to burn copies of the Quran in the face of possible repercussions for the U.S. at home and abroad. We’ll have an exclusive conversation with a special Homeland Security panel. Candy speaks with Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano; Fmr. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; and Fmr. Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Fran Townsend.
Then, the summer of recovery … that wasn’t. How will the struggling economy effect the midterm elections? Will the Democrats be able to retain control of both Houses? The view from both sides of the aisle: House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD); and Fmr. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) and Fmr. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS)
Yeah, that’s balanced.
Fareed Zakaris: GPS: It’s been 9 years since the September 11th attacks and Al-Qaeda is in shambles and on the run — largely thanks to the efforts of the U.S. and its partners in combating terror. Fareed offers his “take” on why now that we face a diminished enemy, it is time to reset the balance between security and liberty.
Then Fareed is joined by a panel of seasoned experts from both sides of the political aisle, including two former CIA operatives, to get their take. Are we safer? Did the U.S. overreact to 9/11. You’ll be surprised at what they say.
Next up, what in the world is the rush to get out of Iraq?
And, after that, a big GPS exclusive with the first high ranking official to leave the Obama administration. Peter Orszag, until recently one of Obama’s top economic advisers, talks about what can be done to fix America’s economic ailments.
And finally, a last look at a new way to show the Taliban that it’s “game over”.
Glenn Greenwald: The pastor and cheap, selective concern for “blood-spilling”
After WikiLeaks published the Afghanistan war logs, political and media figures fell all over themselves to publicly condemn the group for having “blood on its hands,” despite the fact that (1) there is, as Wired noted just yesterday, “no evidence to date . . . that anyone has suffered actual harm due to the documents” and (2) many of the people most vocally condemning WikiLeaks have enormous amounts of blood on their own hands from the endless wars, bombing campaigns, occupations, and detention regime they supported and still support. But condemning WikiLeaks offers an opportunity for cheap, self-glorifying moralizing; the group has very little power or prestige in Washington and is thus an easy target for royal court journalists. Media figures who treat actual blood-spillers with great reverence thus suddenly found within themselves oh-so-profound concern over “blood-spilling.” Along those lines, contrast the well-deserved contempt Tony Blair is facing as he tries to peddle his self-justifying book with the media red carpet rolled out for every pro-war Washington official and the treatment George Bush — who spilled gigantic amounts of blood in Iraq and other places in the Muslim world — will receive from the U.S. media when he releases his book.
Adam Serwer : Obama’s Defense Of Park51.
Earlier today, during his press conference, President Barack Obama gave a noteworthy and eloquent defense of the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. His response was moving precisely because he clearly understood that this isn’t really about the “sensitivity” of a religious building being located in a “sensitive” area, but about American Muslims being able to claim the same rights and privileges in American life that everyone else can claim.
Initially, the president relied on the rhetorical frames that have been developed as part of the administration’s national-security strategy–disassociating Islam from terrorism, delegitimizing terrorists’ theological claim to Islam, and isolating them as a small, extremist minority. He even recognized his predecessor’s deliberate efforts to emphasize American religious plurality and tolerance. But the president’s speech really took off when he reminded everyone that, when it comes to American Muslims, “we don’t differentiate between them and us. It’s just us.”
Margee Ensign: Celebrating the End of Ramadan Rather Than Burning Qurans
I wish every American could have sat in my seat this morning, celebrating the holy celebration of Eid-El-Fitr Sallah, rather than waiting to see if the Florida pastor would burn copies of the Quran. Today, Muslims around the world are celebrating the end of Ramadan, a sacred time of fasting, prayer and contemplation. Today, I had the privilege of sitting in the front row with Muslim leaders from around the state of Adamawa in Nigeria as they honored their traditional leader, the Lamido (leader in Fulani) as well as the local governor.
A stunning procession of decorated horses, male and female dancers, musicians playing traditional horns and beating drums, all in beautiful, traditional costumes, paraded in front of their leaders, thanking and honoring them for their leadership. It reminded me of several of our celebrations in America — the Rose parade and a 4th of July celebration wrapped in one ceremony. Many Americans though would find it incomprehensible to compare a Muslim ceremony with a traditional 4th of July parade.
Why are so many Americans unwilling to try to understand and respect a religion and culture embraced by one out of every five people in the world? Think of the terms we hear most frequently and images that we see on television and the Internet referring to Muslims: “Islamic militants, Islamic terrorists, Jihadists and. Islamofascism.” The Muslim world is not monolithic in its politics, culture, or approach to religion. It stretches from the secular states of Indonesia, Turkey and Senegal to countries where Islam is supported by the state such as Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates to countries where Islam is the basis for political institutions in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. While we usually associate Islam with the Middle East and Arab countries, less than 15% of Muslims are Arab. According to the Pew Forum on Religion, the largest Muslim populations are in Indonesia and Pakistan followed by India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Iran and Turkey. Muslims speak more than 60 languages, come from many diverse ethnic backgrounds and are the majority in 57 countries. Why do we know so little about this important religion, and have allowed misunderstandings and distortions to dominate the public discourse? Rather than responding to Muslims with hate and hostility we need to find ways to understand, respect and be pragmatically engaged with the Muslim world.
Dan Choi: Repealing DADT — It’s Your Turn President Obama
I commend Judge Phillips, Alex Nicholson and the Log Cabin Republicans for their firm stance in defense of the First Amendment and their unwavering support of our national security. I demand President Obama and Senator Reid do the same, as our moral obligations compel us to strike down injustice and discrimination wherever it exists.
Judge Phillips has forthrightly exercised her unquestionable moral authority and lived up to her mandate to defend our constitution against a most vicious domestic enemy: discrimination against honest Americans. At a time when patriots suffer oppression for simply expressing truth and love, it is morally repugnant for any leader to delay justice based on self-interested timelines of political expediency.
I implore President Obama and his Justice Department to refuse lifting a finger, refrain from wasting any energy, statements, or money defending “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in the court system. His constitutional and moral obligations are most compelling at this historic time.
Davis Sarota: The Neoliberal Bait-and-Switch
In simplistic, Lexus-and-Olive-Tree terms, the neoliberal economic argument goes like this: Tariff-free trade policies are great because they increase commerce, and we can mitigate those policies’ negative effects on the blue-collar job market by upgrading our education system to cultivate more science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) specialists for the white-collar sector.
Known as the bipartisan Washington Consensus, this deceptive theory projects the illusion of logic. After all, if the domestic economy’s future is in STEM-driven innovation, then it stands to reason that trade policies shedding “low-tech” work and education policies promoting high-tech skills could guarantee success.
Of course, 30 years into the neoliberal experiment, the Great Recession is exposing the flaws of the Washington Consensus. But rather than admit any mistakes, neoliberals now defend themselves with yet more bait-and-switch sophistry — this time in the form of the Great Education Myth.
Ted Koppel: Nine years after 9/11, let’s stop playing into bin Laden’s hands
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded far beyond anything Osama bin Laden could possibly have envisioned. This is not just because they resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, nor only because they struck at the heart of American financial and military power. Those outcomes were only the bait; it would remain for the United States to spring the trap.
The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves. Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams.
Dahlia Lithwick: Empty Chambers
Why the judicial vacancy crisis matters.
Maybe it’s a failure of language. Perhaps we’ve been referring to it as the “judicial-vacancy crisis” for so long that nobody believes it’s a crisis anymore. Maybe we should upgrade it to a national judicial disaster or the global war on the judiciary. As the Los Angeles Times reported last week, approximately one federal judicial seat in eight is now vacant, and more are opening up. But instead of attempting to fix the problem, both sides argue over who is to blame.
Barack Obama has seated fewer federal judges than any president since Richard Nixon. (Although, to be sure, when Nixon was President, there were only 60 percent of the number of federal judgeships as today.) Despite the Democrats’ majority in the Senate, 102 out of 854 seats are vacant, and less than half of Obama’s nominees have been confirmed. Now cue the finger-pointing. Democrats say Republicans are deliberately gumming up the confirmation process for Obama judges, using arcane Senate procedures and threats of filibusters to stretch out the process for even the most noncontroversial appointees. They’re right. Republicans respond that Democrats started this game, and that the buck stops at Obama, who got off to a slow start with judicial nominations and never bothered to make this issue a priority. They’re right too.
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