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: The War on Warren

Last week, at a House hearing on financial institutions and consumer credit, Republicans lined up to grill and attack Elizabeth Warren, the law professor and bankruptcy expert who is in charge of setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Ostensibly, they believed that Ms. Warren had overstepped her legal authority by helping state attorneys general put together a proposed settlement with mortgage servicers, which are charged with a number of abuses.

But the accusations made no sense. Since when is it illegal for a federal official to talk with state officials, giving them the benefit of her expertise? Anyway, everyone knew that the real purpose of the attack on Ms. Warren was to ensure that neither she nor anyone with similar views ends up actually protecting consumers.

Pepe Escobar: The Club Med War

It would be really uplifting to imagine United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 on Thursday was voted just to support the beleaguered anti-Muammar Gaddafi movement with a no-fly zone, logistics, food, humanitarian aid and weapons. That would be the proof that the “international community” really “stands with the Libyan people in their quest for their universal human rights”, in the words of United States ambassador to the UN Susan Rice.

Yet maybe there’s more to doing the right (moral) thing. History may register that the real tipping point was this past Tuesday when, in an interview to German TV, the African king of kings made sure that Western corporations – unless they are German (because the country was against a no-fly zone) – can kiss goodbye to Libya’s energy bonanza. Gaddafi explicitly said, “We do not trust their firms, they have conspired against us … Our oil contracts are going to Russian, Chinese and Indian firms.” In other words: BRICS member countries.

John Nichols: Wars Should Be Debated and Declared by Congress, Not Merely Launched by Presidents

The grotesque extremes to which Muammar Gaddafi has gone to threaten the people of Libya – and to act on those threats – have left the self-proclaimed “king of kings” with few defenders in northern Africa, the Middle East or the international community.

Even among frequent critics of U.S. interventions abroad, there is disgust with Gaddafi, and with the palpable disdain he has expressed for the legitimate aspirations of his own people.

The circumstance is made easier by the fact that the bombing of Libya by U.S. and allied planes has been carried out under the auspices of the United Nations. And with his words and his initial reluctance with regard to taking military action, President Obama has seemed to avoid many of the excesses of his predecessors.

Yet, now the headline on CNN reads “Libya War.”

This war, like so many before it, has neither been debated nor declared by the Congress of the United States.

Bill McKibben: Japan’s horror reveals how thin is the edge we live on

Climate change may not be responsible for the tsunami, but it is shrinking our margin of safety. It is time to shrink back ourselves

It’s scary to watch the video from Japan, and not just because of the frightening explosions at the Fukushima plant or the unstoppable surge of tsunami-wash through the streets. It’s almost as unnerving to see the aftermath – the square miles of rubble, with boats piled on cars; the completely bare supermarket shelves. Because the one thing we’ve never really imagined is going to the supermarket and finding it empty.

What the events reveal is the thinness of the margin on which modernity lives. There’s not a country in the world more modern and civilised than Japan; its building codes and engineering prowess kept its great buildings from collapsing when the much milder quake in Haiti last year flattened everything. But clearly it’s not enough. That thin edge on which we live, and which at most moments we barely notice, provided nowhere near enough buffer against the power of the natural world.

Dan Coughlin: Aristide Returns

Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s triumphant return to Haiti after seven years of forced exile in South Africa signals a new stage in the Caribbean country’s popular and democratic struggle just as a resurgent right-wing prepares to lay electoral claim – for the first time ever – to the country’s presidency in a controversial U.S.-backed presidential poll on Sunday.

“Today may the Haitian people mark the end of exile and coup d’etat, while peacefully we must move from social exclusion to social inclusion,” said Aristide, referring to the bloody 2004 U.S.-backed coup, the second time he was driven from power after being elected with huge popular majorities.

Robert Kuttner: Brown Shoots

As spring dawns, the economy’s green shoots have been trampled once again, first by the economic fallout from Japan’s tsunami, and again by rising worldwide commodity prices.

The disruption of Japan’s production revealed the soft underbelly of globalization — the reliance on vulnerable global supply chains only as strong as their weakest link. Rising food and energy prices produce a toxic stew of inflation and unemployment.

This depressing news, of course, has political as well as economic consequences. Politically, it means that the incumbent party — Obama’s — faces even tougher going in 2012.

Carol Rose: Afghan Women’s Rights Hero is Latest Victim of Ideological Exclusion

Malalai Joya is a 32-year-old Afghan woman named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Foreign Policy Magazine listed her on its annual list of Top 100 Global Thinkers, and last week The Guardian listed her among the “Top 100 women: activists and campaigners” in the world.

So why is the U.S. State Department refusing to let Ms. Joya visit our country?

Ms. Joya was scheduled to come to Boston and other U.S. cities this week – including scheduled stops at Harvard, U. Mass. Amherst, and Smith College — as part of speaking tour to promote her book, A Woman Among Warlords, when the State Department refused to grant her an entry visa.

Ms. Joya was told that her visa was denied because she is “unemployed” and lives “underground” — the result of various death threats lodged against her by the Afghan warlords she has publicly criticized.