“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”.
Eugene Robinson: What Obama didn’t say about leaving Afghanistan
There was almost a pro-forma air to President Obama’s speech tonight.
He touched all the right bases – at times with specificity, at times with platitudes – but there was no sense, for me, that anything had fundamentally changed.
It was informative to learn that 10,000 U.S. troops will come home from Afghanistan this year and another 23,000 or so by the summer or fall of 2012. I am sure this announcement gives comfort and joy to the families of those young men and women who, fairly soon, will be homeward bound.
But that means nearly 70,000 troops will remain beyond next year – nearly twice as many as were in the country when Obama took office.
Dana Mibank: ‘Mission accomplished,’ Obama style
There was no banner, no naval cheering section, no aircraft-carrier landing and – thank heavens – no flight suit. But make no mistake: President Obama gave his own version of a “mission accomplished” speech Wednesday.
The policy itself was no triumph, just a split-the-difference compromise between the slower troop withdrawal from Afghanistan sought by the generals and the faster one many congressional Democrats and a majority of the public desired. But Obama packaged it nicely, wrapped it with a bow and declared, perhaps prematurely, that his “surge” in Afghanistan had been a success.
Americans are impatient – and increasingly despairing – about the war in Afghanistan. After 10 years of fighting, more than 1,500 American lives lost and $450 billion spent, they need to know there is a clear way out.
On Wednesday night, President Obama announced that American troops will soon begin to withdraw, but at a size and pace unlikely to satisfy many Americans.
He said that 10,000 of the 33,000 troops from the “surge” would come home before the end of this year, with the rest out by next summer. He vowed that reductions would continue “at a steady pace” after that, and that “the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security” by sometime in 2014.
David K. Shipler: Free to Search and Seize
THIS spring was a rough season for the Fourth Amendment. The Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow GPS tracking of vehicles without judicial permission. The Supreme Court ruled that the police could break into a house without a search warrant if, after knocking and announcing themselves, they heard what sounded like evidence being destroyed. Then it refused to see a Fourth Amendment violation where a citizen was jailed for 16 days on the false pretext that he was being held as a material witness to a crime.
In addition, Congress renewed Patriot Act provisions on enhanced surveillance powers until 2015, and the F.B.I. expanded agents’ authority to comb databases, follow people and rummage through their trash even if they are not suspected of a crime.
Dean Baker: Blognote in Honor of Thomas Friedman: Spending on the Commerce Department Is Going to Bankrupt the Country
The United States has to cut back spending on the Commerce Department or it will bankrupt the country. Okay, I have no evidence for this and it really doesn’t make any sense. The Commerce Department’s budget is about $10 billion a year, less than 0.3 percent of total spending, but this note is written in the spirit of Thomas Friedman.
Just as Thomas Friedman can tell readers that Social Security and Medicare are bankrupting the country with no evidence, in my blognote I get to blame the Commerce Department. The reality of course is that Social Security is fully funded by its own dedicated tax revenue through the year 2036, meaning the program on net imposes no burden on the government.
E. J. Dionne, Jr. Is Jon Huntsman too moderate for the GOP?
Here are the key questions about Jon Huntsman’s presidential candidacy: Is he the American version of David Cameron? And is the Republican Party ready for a Cameron moment?
What does a British prime minister have to do with the 2012 Republican primaries? If Huntsman is lucky, quite a lot. The British Conservative Party chose Cameron as its leader in 2005 because it was sick of losing elections and realized it could no longer present itself as an old, cranky, right-wing party. Cameron was Mr. Nice, Mr. Modern, Mr. Moderate and Mr. New. And now he’s in power.
Jeff Biggers: FOX and Republicans Rerun Mexicans, Lies and Videotape, As Arizona Becomes Grand Canyon State Again
As Interior Secretary Ken Salazar joined Havasupai tribal elders and Congressman Raul Grijalva for a historic announcement at the Grand Canyon National Park on Monday, Republicans across Arizona scurried to create their own roadside attraction.
And relying on information from a widely denounced anti-immigrant extremist, FOX News and other media outlets have been right behind them to fan the flames of Arizona’s right-wing discontent this summer.
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