“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:
Up with Chris Hayes:If you are an earlier riser on weekends or, like me, up all night working, I’ve heard that Hayes is a good watch and has had some very interesting guests and discussions. Guests are not announced adding to the spontaneity of the format.
This Week with Christiane Amanpour: This week’s guests: Rahm Emanuel; Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Chris Coons (D-DE); the roundtable tackles the race for the Republican nomination and all the week’s politics, with George Will, political strategist Matthew Dowd, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer:The guests are Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and GOP presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
The Chris Matthews Show:This week’s guests: Helene Cooper, The New York Times White House Correspondent, Lizzie O’Leary, Bloomberg TV Washington Correspondent, Dan Rather, HDNet Global Correspondent and John Heilemann, New York Magazine National Political Correspondent.
Meet the Press with David Gregory:The guests are Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Republican Whip, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). At the roundtable: Democratic strategist Dee Dee Myers, Republican strategist Mike Murphy, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, and former RNC Chairman, Ed Gillespie.
State of the Union with Candy Crowley:Guests are super committee co-chair, Sen. Patty Murray (D-OR); Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY); Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; republican strategist Rich Galen, and former Pennsylvania republican Rep. Robert Walker
Except for Hayes and the opportunity to watch Paul Krugman, sleep in.
The 2012 election is almost a full year away and nobody knows who is running against President Obama, but that didn’t stop Mary Kay Henry, the D.C.-based National President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), from announcing last week that her organization endorses President Obama for re-election. That’s not surprising – while many unions have exhibited political independence, SEIU officials have long been among Obama’s closest and most loyal allies in Washington – but what was notable here was how brazenly Henry exploited the language of the Occupy movement to justify her endorsement of the Democratic Party leader: “We need a leader willing to fight for the needs of the 99 percent . . . .Our economy and democracy have been taken over by the wealthiest one percent.”
But now SEIU’s effort to convert and degrade the Occupy movement into what SEIU’s national leadership is – a loyal arm of the DNC and the Obama White House – has become even more overt, s Greg Sargent reports today:
One of the enduring questions about Occupy Wall Street has been this: Can the energy unleashed by the movement be leveraged behind a concrete political agenda and push for change that will constitute a meaningful challenge to the inequality and excessive Wall Street influence highlighted by the protests?
A coalition of labor and progressive groups is about to unveil its answer to that question. Get ready for “Occupy Congress.”
New York Times Editorial: Reneging on Justice at Guantánamo
In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantánamo Bay prisoners who are not American citizens have the right of habeas corpus, allowing them to challenge the legality of their detention in federal court and seek release.
The power of the ruling, however, has been eviscerated by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The appellate court’s wrongheaded rulings and analyses, which have been followed by federal district judges, have reduced to zero the number of habeas petitions granted in the past year and a half.
The Supreme Court must reject this willful disregard of its decision in Boumediene v. Bush, and it can do so by reviewing the case of Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif, a Yemeni citizen imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay since 2002.
Nicholas D. Kristoff: Occupy the Agenda
YOU have to wonder: Could Mayor Michael Bloomberg and police chiefs around the country be secretly backing the Occupy Wall Street movement?
The Occupy protests might have died in infancy if a senior police official had not pepper-sprayed young women on video. Harsh police measures in other cities, including a clash in Oakland that put a veteran in intensive care and the pepper-spraying of an 84-year-old woman in Seattle, built popular support.
Just in the last few days, Bloomberg – who in other respects has been an excellent mayor – rescued the movement from one of its biggest conundrums. It was stuck in a squalid encampment in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park: antagonizing local residents, scaring off would-be supporters, and facing months of debilitating snow and rain. Then the mayor helped save the demonstrators by clearing them out, thus solving their real estate problem and re-establishing their narrative of billionaires bullying the disenfranchised. Thanks to the mayor, the protests grew bigger than ever.
George Zornick: Memo Reveals How Seriously Powerful Interests Take OWS
This morning, Up With Chris Hayes unveiled a major scoop: the show obtained a written pitch to the American Bankers Association from a prominent Washington lobbying firm, proposing a $850,000 smear campaign against Occupy Wall Street.
The memo, issued by Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford, described the danger presented by the burgeoning movement, saying that if Democrats embraced Occupy, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street…. It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.” Furthermore, it notes that “the bigger concern…should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”
CLGC was pitching an $850,000 campaign of opposition research and targeted campaigns against politicians who supported the movement. It was written by two firm partners with close ties to House Speaker John Boehner: Sam Geduldig joined CLGC before Boehner became speaker, and Jay Cranford left Boehner’s office this year to join the firm. Another partner at CLGC is reportedly “tight ” with the speaker.
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