“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.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Robert Reich: Why Obama Wins on Foreign Policy and Gays But Loses on Economics and Taxes
Two important victories for President Obama this week — the New Start anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia to reduce weapons and restart inspections, and the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell after a 17-year ban on gays in the military.
Why have Senate Republicans been willing to break ranks on these two, while not a single Republican went along with Obama’s plan to extend the Bush tax cuts only on the first $250,000 of income?
A hint of an answer can be found in another Senate defeat for Obama over the last few weeks that got almost no attention in the media but was a big one: Republicans blocked consideration of the House-passed DISCLOSE Act, which would have required groups that spend money on outside political advertising to disclose the major sources of their funding.
The answer is this. When it comes to protecting the fortunes of America’s rich (mostly top corporate executives and Wall Street) and maintaining their stranglehold on the political process, Senate Republicans, along with some Senate Democrats, don’t budge.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: The Costs of War
“We are winning” in Afghanistan, says Gen. David H. Petraeus. President Obama declares that the December military review shows we are “on track.” No doubt the president and the general are right: We will keep “making progress” for as many months or years as we choose to fight what is now America’s longest war – until we finally pull out, in defeat or in political exhaustion, wondering what we have accomplished for all the blood and treasure spent.
The president’s review only confirmed what informed observers already know. U.S. troops can win nearly any firefight. But ultimately we are no more secure, and Afghanistan is no closer to becoming a stable and developing country. No matter how light or agile their “footprint,” U.S. and allied occupying forces end up generating as many enemies as they kill, not only in Afghanistan but in other Muslim lands. No matter how much help we give to the Afghan people, inevitably it is seen as being on behalf of a government that is more a kleptocracy than a democracy.
New York Times Editorial: A Matter of Life or Death
St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix announced on Tuesday that it will continue to provide life-saving abortion care to patients even though it means losing its affiliation with the local Roman Catholic Diocese.
This commendable decision by St. Joseph’s and the hospital network that oversees it, Catholic Healthcare West, upholds important legal and moral principles. It also underscores the need to ensure that religiously affiliated hospitals comply with their legal duty to provide emergency reproductive care. . . .
This is no small matter. Catholic hospitals account for about 15 percent of the nation’s hospital beds and are the only hospital facilities in many communities. Months ago, the American Civil Liberties Union asked the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to investigate reported instances where religious doctrine prevailed over the need for emergency reproductive care, and to issue a formal clarification that denying such treatment violates federal law.
Sen. Al Franken: The Internet as We Know it Is Still at Risk
In today’s net neutrality action by the Federal Communications Commission there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that, thanks to Commissioners Copps and Clyburn — not to mention a nationwide network of net neutrality activists — the proposal approved today is better than the original circulated by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. For instance, the FCC has now stated that it does not condone discriminatory behavior by wireless companies like Verizon and AT&T — an important piece that was missing from the first draft.
The bad news is that, while it’s no longer worse than nothing, the rule approved today is not nearly strong enough to protect consumers or preserve the free and open Internet. And with so much at stake, I cannot support it.
I’m still very concerned that it includes almost nothing to protect net neutrality for mobile broadband service — often the only choice for broadband if you live in rural or otherwise underserved areas. And I’m particularly disappointed that the FCC isn’t specifically banning paid prioritization — the creation of an Internet “fast lane” for corporations that can afford to pay for it.
E.J. Dionne, Jr.: The Pride of ‘Obama’s Orphans’
At the beginning of 2009, the choice before Democrats who controlled the 111th Congress was whether they would enact historic legislation, even at the risk of their majority, or whether they would play it safe.
They gave the safe option a pass, with two results: This will go down as the most productive Congress since the 89th, which was even more Democratic because of Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide. And 52 Democratic House incumbents, most elected in 2006 or 2008, lost their seats.
The departing Democrats are, as one in their ranks put it, “Obama’s Orphans.” So many of them cast vote after vote for the president’s program. They were then left at the side of the road while history moved by.
During the recent campaign, these loyalists were accused of being “out of touch,” and they certainly were out of sync with the prevailing mood of those who chose to vote this year. But this accusation begs an important question: To whom did these members owe their real loyalty?
Aura Bogado: Undocumented Students Give Congress an F
Jennifer was three days away from graduating from Yale when I met her for lunch in New Haven, Conn., last May. Like most in her class, she was excited to have her family in town for the event and was busy packing and preparing to say goodbye to the small city she had called home for the past four years. Unlike most of the graduating seniors, however, Jennifer was unsure about her future. She would soon have a piece of paper called a Yale degree, but she was missing a piece of paper that would grant her citizenship. Jennifer and nearly 2 million other young people live lives of legal uncertainty. . . . .
For now, the Dreamers have a lot to be proud of. Like Jennifer, they continue to graduate and contribute to their society any way they can. During a time when states increasingly criminalize brown people, they managed to get support for a pro-immigrant bill in the House. They also set a new model of dignity for being “undocumented and unafraid,” celebrating their marginalized status as a core from which to build a vibrant new movement. This grass-roots group of students has earned the respect of legislators, educators, media pundits and others. Perhaps Washington insiders should listen.
Larry Gross: ‘Don’t Ask’: Not Quite Fa La La Just Yet
According to the mainstream media and the Obama administration, it would appear that all us gay folks should don our gay apparel and go caroling from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to the Capitol, thanking our elected representatives for finally giving us the right to kill and be killed without simultaneously hiding in the closet. Progress, no doubt, in the sense that any denial of our civil rights is a denial of our basic right to full citizenship-but not a cause for unalloyed celebration.
Consider that President Obama campaigned on a menu of promises to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender folks, and I very much doubt that most of us would have put repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” at the top of that list. Early on Congress added sexual orientation to existing federal hate crimes legislation, which was one item on the promised agenda-although another that evokes ambivalence, given the troubling civil liberties aspects of hate crime laws. Here, too, as with the military, we seem confined to saying “we’re not thrilled with the institution, but if it exists we shouldn’t be excluded.” I think it is fair to say that two other issues ranked higher on the LGBT agenda than either hate crimes or DADT: enacting the Employment Non-discrimination Act [ENDA] in its transgender-inclusive form, and repealing the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA].
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