“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”.
The Sunday Talking Heads:
This Week with Christiane Amanpour:GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain is a guest.
The roundtable, with George Will, ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper, Republican strategist Nicolle Wallace and Democratic strategist Mark Penn, debate the Cain surge, Gov. Rick Perry’s slump and Gov. Chris Christie’s big decision. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz joins the “This Week” roundtable and shares his ideas to fix Washington and bring America back.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer talks to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about foreign policy, Campaign 2012, and the economy; Plus, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD) and Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) weigh in on the key issues of the week.
The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests, Nia-Malika Henderson, The Washington Post National Political Reporter, John Heilemann, New York Magazine National Political Correspondent, Rana Foroohar, TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor and David Ignatius, The Washington Post Columnist, will discuss:
Is America Beginning A Long-term Decline?
How Is Chris Christie Making Mitt Romney Look Unacceptable?
Meet the Press with David Gregory: Guests are Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.
The Vice Chairman of the Democratic Caucus in the House, Rep. Xavier Becerra (CA); Republican strategist, Mike Murphy; Washington Post columnist, EJ Dionne; and the Wall Street Journal’s, Peggy Noonan will discuss the GOP candidates and the primary calendar changes.
State of the Union with Candy Crowley: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, a former State Department official and national security advocate, Liz Cheney will no doubt cheer the assassination of American citizen, Anwar Al-Awlaki. And to continue the celebration former NSA and CIA Director, Gen. Michael Hayden and former congresswoman, Jane Harman join the party.
Michael Rattner:
Anwar al-Awlaki’s Extrajudicial Murder
The law on the use of lethal force by executive order is specific. This assassination broke it – that creates a terrifying precedent
Is this the world we want? Where the president of the United States can place an American citizen, or anyone else for that matter, living outside a war zone on a targeted assassination list, and then have him murdered by drone strike.
This was the very result we at the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU feared when we brought a case in US federal court on behalf of Anwar al-Awlaki’s father, hoping to prevent this targeted killing. We lost the case on procedural grounds, but the judge considered the implications of the practice as raising “serious questions”, asking:
“Can the executive order the assassination of a US citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organisation?”
Nicholas D. Kristof: The Bankers and the Revolutionaries
AFTER flying around the world this year to cover street protests from Cairo to Morocco, reporting on the latest “uprising” was easier: I took the subway.
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has taken over a park in Manhattan’s financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against “banksters” or corporate tycoons. Occasionally, a few even pull off their clothes, which always draws news cameras.
“Occupy Wall Street” was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it’s gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards – mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches – but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support.
New York Times Editorial: The Supercommittee’s Stark Choice
In August, Congressional Republicans tried to box in Democrats and the White House by demanding huge deficit cuts in exchange for preventing a government default. Then they joined in the creation of a “supercommittee” on deficit reduction that they hoped would take taxes off the table and focus entirely on cuts in spending.
But that supposed victory has forced many Republicans into an equally tight corner. They are starting to realize that if they remain adamant, the resulting across-the-board cuts will disproportionately affect programs they support, starting with military spending.
The joint committee created by the debt-ceiling agreement is desperately groping behind closed doors for ways to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit. Republican leaders want it all to come from spending cuts; Democratic leaders want a mix of cuts and revenue increases. If the two sides cannot agree, there will be automatic cuts, which largely spare social-welfare programs but would severely reduce military and security spending.
Maureen Dowd: Cooperation in Evil
MAYBE it’s the Mario Lanza in him. But Nino Scalia relishes being operatically imprudent.
The Supreme Court justice’s latest supreme lapse of judgment involves poking his nose in a local legal wrangle about the place where I slept for four years: the Catholic University dorms.
In a speech last weekend at Duquesne University Law School, a Catholic institution in Pittsburgh, Justice Scalia defended religion in public life.
“Our educational establishment these days, while so tolerant of and even insistent on diversity in all other aspects of life, seems bent on eliminating the diversity of moral judgment, particularly moral judgment based on religious views,” the devout Catholic said
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