02/05/2011 archive

“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”

New York Times Editorial: Politics and the Court

When it comes to pushing the line between law and politics, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas each had a banner month in January.

ustice Scalia, who is sometimes called “the Justice from the Tea Party,” met behind closed doors on Capitol Hill to talk about the Constitution with a group of representatives led by Representative Michele Bachmann of the House Tea Party Caucus.

Justice Thomas, confirming his scorn for concern about conflicts of interest and rules designed to help prevent them, acknowledged that he has failed to comply with the law for the past six years by not disclosing his wife’s income from conservative groups.

Gail Collins: The Siege of Planned Parenthood

As if we didn’t have enough wars, the House of Representatives has declared one against Planned Parenthood.

Maybe it’s all part of a grand theme. Last month, they voted to repeal the health care law. This month, they’re going after an organization that provides millions of women with both family-planning services and basic health medical care, like pap smears and screening for diabetes, breast cancer, cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.

Our legislative slogan for 2011: Let Them Use Leeches.

Robert Reich: The Jobs Report, and America’s Two Economies

At a time when corporate profits are through the roof, the Dow is flirting with 12,000, Wall Street paychecks are fat again, and big corporations are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash, you’d expect jobs be coming back. But you’d be wrong.

The U.S. economy added just 36,000 jobs in January, according to today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Remember, 125,000 are needed just to keep up with the increase in the population of Americans wanting and needing work. And 300,000 a month are needed — continuously, for five years — if we’re to get back to anything like the employment we had before the Great Recession.

The independence of the judiciary means that the Courts should be free from improper influence from outside interests.  What a great idea for having a transparent, fair judicial system.  It’s a concept that has so much promise.  But in practice the present Supreme Court and its members may be driving it off a cliff. Today’s news about Justice Thomas’s wife’s lobbying business may signal its ultimate demise.

The New York Times reports that Justice Thomas’s wife,

who has raised her political profile in the last year through her outspoken conservative activism, is rebranding herself as a lobbyist and self-appointed “ambassador to the Tea Party movement.”

Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, said on libertyinc.co, a Web site for her new political consulting business, that she saw herself as an advocate for “liberty-loving citizens” who favored limited government, free enterprise and other core conservative issues. She promised to use her “experience and connections” to help clients raise money and increase their political impact.

The end of George Bush. The end of the Democrats. The end of Obama. The end of home ownership. The end of Hosni Mubarak. The end of the Amazon. The end of US agriculture. The end of the world food supply. The end of sanity. And the end of Advanced Civilization.

The Kinks. And everything you always wished you never knew. It’s all here. 😉

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

February 5 is the 36th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 329 days remaining until the end of the year (330 in leap years).

On this day in 1917, with more than a two-thirds majority, Congress overrides President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the previous week and passes the Immigration Act.. The law required a literacy test for immigrants and barred Asiatic laborers, except for those from countries with special treaties or agreements with the United States, such as the Philippines.

The Immigration Act of 1917, also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, added to the number of undesirables banned from entering the country, including but not limited to “idiots”, “feeble-minded persons”, “criminals”, “epileptics”, “insane persons”, alcoholics, “professional beggars”, all persons “mentally or physically defective”, polygamists, and anarchists. Furthermore, it barred all immigrants over the age of sixteen who were illiterate. The most controversial part of the law was the section that designated an “Asiatic Barred Zone”, a region that included much of eastern Asia and the Pacific Islands from which people could not immigrate. Previously, only the Chinese had been excluded from admission to the country. Attempts at introducing literacy tests had been vetoed by Grover Cleveland in 1897 and William Taft in 1913. Wilson also objected to this clause in the Immigration Act but it was still passed by Congress on the fourth attempt.

Anxiety in the United States about immigration has often been directed toward immigrants from China and Japan. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese from entering the U.S. The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 was made with Japan to regulate Japanese immigration to the U.S. The Immigration Act of 1917 is one of many immigration acts during this time period which arose from nativist and xenophobic sentiment. These immigration laws were intentional efforts to control the composition of immigrant flow into the United States.

The Square That Is The Center Of Their Universe  

CAIRO, Egypt – Dozens of Egyptian women spilled out of a mosque in the Dokki neighborhood Friday, only their eyes visible from black veils that flapped in the breeze.

Marching in formation, they set off for downtown Cairo, where they hoped to join hundreds of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square who were calling for the removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

When pro-Mubarak youths jeered at them from a balcony overhead, the women raised their voices louder. “Go home!” the youths yelled at the women, who replied by chanting, “He’s leaving! We’re not leaving!”

Well, he’s a tax raiser, an amnesty giver, a cut-and-runner, and he negotiated with terrorists. Why is he a hero to conservatives? I don’t think you understand it.

The transcript can be read at Mike Stark’s here web site, The StarkReport

The Kinks are likely the most important British Invasion band that most folks remember only slightly, if even at that.  They were quite good, but completely different from the BIG THREE (The Beatles, The Who, and The Rolling Stones) in that they just never seemed to get things completely right.  I mean no disrespect to them by that statement.

I really like that band!  The problem with them was that they never really penetrated the American psyche like the previously mentioned ones did, although they DID have lots of hits.  I guess that part of it was because they did not have quite the level of genius in writing that The Beatles had, nor the outstanding musicianship that at least three of the four of The Who had, or the showmanship mastery (and good writing) that The Rolling Stones had.

Regular Features-

• Late Night Karaoke by mishima
  

• Muse in the Morning by Robyn
• Six In The Morning by mishima

Featured Essays for February 4, 2011-

• Is Mubarak in De Nile – or is he in Tel Aviv yet? by RUKind
• Social Security: Where’s Our Tahrir Square? by fake consultant
• The Video That Sparked Egypt’s Revolution by Edger
• "The True Face of Hosni Mubarak" is Now Being Televised Across the World by Edger
• World Wide Tahrir coming to a street near you. by dharmasyd
• Reporting the Revolution: The Day of Departure Update:1800 hrs EST by TheMomCat
• Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to Honduras: Stop the Killings of Transwomen by Robyn
• The Most Common Mosquito-Borne Virus: Dengue by TheMomCat
• Original v. Cover — #64 in a Series by curmudgeon

DocuDharma

Almost solid premiers, must be a sweeps month.  You may find better uses for your time (unless you’re a Smallville fan.

No Fate.

• AMC– Terminator 2: Judgment Day x 2 (my personal favorite of the series, along with Aliens it makes up my action women of the 80s double feature)
• Bravo– The Green Mile x 2 (I understand some people like this movie)
• Disney– Wizards of Waverly Place, Fish Hooks (premiers), Phineas and Ferb
• Discovery– Gold Rush (last week’s and new), Flying Wild (premier)
• E!– The Soup (premier)
• ESPN– Hoopies, Mavs @ Celtics, Jazz @ Nuggets
• FX– The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy II: The Golden Army
• National Geographic– Dog Whisperer (premier)
• Oxygen– Grease Sing-A-Long x 4
• Sci Fi– Merlin (premier)
• Style– One Fine Day
• TBS– The House Bunny x 2
• Turner Classic– The Heiress, The Bridge on the River Kwai
• TLC– Say Yes to the Dress marathon (with premier)
• TNT– Speed 2: Cruise Control
• Toon– Generator Rex (premier), Clone Wars (Part 2 of the Mortis Trilogy, premier)

You’re already dead, Silberman. Everybody dies. You know I believe it so don’t fuck with me!

Later-

The hardest thing is deciding what I should tell you and what not to. Well, anyway, I’ve got a while yet before you’re old enough to understand the tapes. They’re more for me at this point… to help get it all straight.

• AMC– The Terminator (not so good)
• Disney– Phineas and Ferb Rollercoaster: The Musical
• Sci Fi– Being Human (this week’s), Merlin (Instapeat)
• TBS– Spanglish
• Turner Classic– Ryan’s Daughter
• TNT– The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, D.O.A.: Dead or Alive
• TV Land– Hot in Cleveland marathon
• Vs.– Skiing, FIS Freestyle World Championships
• VH1– New Jack City

Dave hosts Justin Bieber, Martha Stewart, and Robert Plant.

The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.

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