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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Paul Krugman: How to Kill a Recovery

The economic news has been better lately. New claims for unemployment insurance are down; business and consumer surveys suggest solid growth. We’re still near the bottom of a very deep hole, but at least we’re climbing.

It’s too bad that so many people, mainly on the political right, want to send us sliding right back down again.

Before we get to that, let’s talk about why economic recovery has been so long in coming.

New York Times Editorial: Foreclosure Follies

Recent price data show home values at nearly their lowest levels in the postbubble era, and a coming tide of foreclosures means prices will drop further. Seven million families have lost their homes so far, and another three million foreclosures are expected through 2012.

The ongoing crash is further evidence that the government’s antiforeclosure efforts have fallen short and America’s struggling homeowners need more help.

So what are House Republicans proposing? They want the government to get out of the antiforeclosure business altogether and leave homeowners to fend for themselves. The result would be hundreds of thousands of additional foreclosures and steeper price declines.

Glenn Greenwald: Bradley Manning Could Face Death: For What?

The U.S. Army yesterday announced that it has filed 22 additional charges against Bradley Manning, the Private accused of being the source for hundreds of thousands of documents (as well as this still-striking video) published over the last year by WikiLeaks. Most of the charges add little to the ones already filed, but the most serious new charge is for “aiding the enemy,” a capital offense under Article 104 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Although military prosecutors stated that they intend to seek life imprisonment rather than the death penalty for this alleged crime, the military tribunal is still empowered to sentence Manning to death if convicted.

Article 104 — which, like all provisions of the UCMJ, applies only to members of the military — is incredibly broad. Under 104(b) — almost certainly the provision to be applied — a person is guilty if he “gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly” (emphasis added), and, if convicted, “shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.” The charge sheet filed by the Army is quite vague and neither indicates what specifically Manning did to violate this provision nor the identity of the “enemy” to whom he is alleged to have given intelligence. There are, as international law professor Kevin Jon Heller notes, only two possibilities, and both are disturbing in their own way.

In light of the implicit allegation that Manning transmitted this material to WikiLeaks, it is quite possible that WikiLeaks is the “enemy” referenced by Article 104, i.e., that the U.S. military now openly decrees (as opposed to secretly declaring) that the whistle-blowing group is an “enemy” of the U.S. More likely, the Army will contend that by transmitting classified documents to WikiLeaks for intended publication, Manning “indirectly” furnished those documents to Al Qaeda and the Taliban by enabling those groups to learn their contents. That would mean that it is a capital offense not only to furnish intelligence specifically and intentionally to actual enemies — the way that, say, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen were convicted of passing intelligence to the Soviet Union — but also to act as a whistle-blower by leaking classified information to a newspaper with the intent that it be published to the world. Logically, if one can “aid the enemy” even by leaking to WikiLeaks, then one can also be guilty of this crime by leaking to The New York Times.

Bill McKibben: Tim DeChristopher: Taking a Leap and Pointing the Way

Let’s consider for a moment the targets the federal government chooses to make an example of. So far, no bankers have been charged, despite the unmitigated greed that nearly brought the world economy down. No coal or oil execs have been charged, despite fouling the entire atmosphere and putting civilization as we know it at risk.

But engage in creative protest that mildly disrupts the efficient sell-off of our landscape to oil and gas barons? As Tim DeChristopher found out on Thursday, that’ll get you not just a week in court, but potentially a long stretch in the pen.

Tim is a hero not because he knew what he was getting into. As his testimony made clear this week, he had no idea at all; his decision to become Bidder No. 70 was about as spontaneous an action as we’ve ever seen.

Timothy Egan: The Fictions of Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee is supposed to be the Republican with a heart. He’s the guy who said Mexicans are people too during the 2008 race for the White House. He’s the weight-loss humanist who refused to join that anti-common-sense fringe of his party bashing Michelle Obama for suggesting that children eat more vegetables.

But beneath the veneer of Aw-Shucks-Huck is a public figure, and possible presidential candidate, who has shown a pattern of telling outright falsehoods about himself and the president.

This week, he backstepped from an extraordinary interview in which he had claimed, several times, that President Obama grew up in Kenya. But before that, Huckabee had created a shell of mistruths about a felon he helped to free early when he was governor of Arkansas. This man went on to murder four police officers in cold blood in my home state of Washington.

Robert Sheer: Boeing Boondoggle: Pork Can Fly

“The gift that keeps on giving” should have been the headline on the Pentagon’s decision to award the Boeing Co. a $35 billion defense contract. Defense of the nation, of course, had nothing to do with it, since the end of the Cold War also ended the need for midair refueling of the nuclear-armed bombers intended to retaliate after a Soviet first strike, a scenario brought to the public eye in the 1964 movie “Dr. Strangelove.”

Indeed, at a time when drones seem to be bypassing the need for manned military bombers and fighters of any kind, and when schoolteachers and firefighters are being terminated across the country, the awarding of this long-delayed and always questionable military-industrial-complex scam is simply perverse.

John Nichols: Wisconsin Legislators Move Desks Out of Capitol Locked Down By Governor

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is so determined to shut down debate on his proposal to strip collective bargaining rights from state, county and municipal employees and teachers that he has effectively locked down the state Capitol.

A judge has ordered the governor and his aides to open the Capitol.

Obviously shaken by the popular rejection of his proposal-which has sparked protests across the state, including one that drew more than 100,000 people to Madison last Saturday-the governor and his aides have failed to comply with the order. Instead, they have restricted access so severely that, in the words of former Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, they make a mockery of the state’s tradition of open and accessible government.

“Opening the Capitol to the public does not mean letting one person in every three hours, as then restricting the movements of that one person once she is inside,” explains Lautenschlager. “The governor and his aides are not respecting the judge’s order; they are in contempt of it.”

As Lautenschlager and her legal team attempt to open the Capitol, some legislators have grown so frustrated with the governor’s lawlessness that they have moved their desks out of the building in order to be accessible to their constituents.

Laura Flanders: Fighting Over Crumbs Left from Military Spending

There’s been a joke going around the labor protests. It goes something like this:

A union member, a CEO and a Tea Party member are sitting at a table with 12 cookies. The CEO grabs 11, turns to the Tea Partier and says “The Union’s out to take your cookie!”

I’ve been thinking that the joke applies pretty well to another situation. For instance, the military. Our military spending grabs 11 cookies and leaves us all battling over the 12th.

Christopher Hellman at TomDispatch added up all the military-related spending in the budget and came to a startling number: for fiscal year 2012, the actual military budget is something like $1.2 trillion dollars.

Trillion with a T.

Ray McGovern: How to Read Gates’s Shift on the Wars

In Establishment Washington, Defense Secretary Robert Gates enjoys a charmed life based on a charming persona. The Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) is always ready with fulsome praise for his “candor” and “leadership” – and even for his belated recognition that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were nuts.

“Certain kinds of public candor are so unexpected that they have the shock value of a gunshot at the opera,” purred a Boston Globe editorial about Gates’s admission that only a crazy person would commit U.S. ground forces to wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The editorial then lamented Gates’s planned retirement later this year and urged President Barack Obama “to look hard for a successor with some of Gates’s unusual leadership qualities.” Unusual leadership qualities, indeed.