“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: Sunday’s guests are Rev. Samuel Rodriguez (@NHCLC), President of The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; Dr. Donald Berwick, former administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Obama; Jared Bernstein, former chief economist and economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden; Chrystia Freeland, editor of Thomson Reuters Digital; Mahlon Mitchell, President of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin; John McWhorter, Columbia University Professor of Linguistic and American Studies, and Contributing Editor at New Republic and TheRoot.com; and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor & publisher at The Nation magazine.
This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Sunday’s guests are former Pennsylvania senator and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum; , Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Academy Award winning actress Angelina Jolie. The rountable pundits are George Will, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, AOL Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, and Major Garrett of National Journal.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Guests are RNC Chair Reince Priebus and Obama Campaign Advisor Robert Gibbs. Roundtable analysis from CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Norah O’Donnell, CBS News Political Director John Dickerson, CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes, and Politico’s Chief White House Correspondent Mike Allen.
The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Joe Klein, TIME Columnist, Helene Cooper, The New York Times White House Correspondent, Gillian Tett, Financial Times U.S. Managing Editor and John Heilemann, New York Magazine National Political Correspondent
Meet the Press with David Gregory: Guests are Obama re-elect chief strategist David Axelrod and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.
But in separate studios to minimize the level of bull s**t that will be shoveled
The roundtable guests are Publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader Joe McQuaid, the BBC’s Katty Kay, Fmr. Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN) and TIME’s Mark Halperin.
State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Guests are Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MI) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Guests on an economic panel are Alice Rivlin, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and Ron Brownstein.
The political, military industrial, corporate class in Washington DC continues to re-make our constitutional republic into a powerful, unaccountable military empire. Yesterday the U.S. Senate voted 93 to 7 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012 which allows the military to operate domestically within the borders of the United States and to possibly (or most probably) detain U.S. citizens without trial. Forget that the ACLU called it “an historic threat to American citizens”, this bill is so dangerous not only to our rights but to our country’s security that it was criticized by the Directors of the FBI, the CIA, the National Intelligence Director and the U.S. Defense Secretary! For the first time in our history, if this Act is not vetoed, American citizens may not be guaranteed their Article III right to trial.
The government would be able to decide who gets an old fashioned trial (along with right to attorney and right against self-incrimination) and who gets detained without due process and put into a modern legal limbo. Does anyone remember that none of the first thousand people the FBI rounded up after 9-11, and which were imprisoned for several months (some brutalized) were ever charged with terrorism? Does anyone remember that hundreds of the Gitmo detainees who were handed over to their American military captors in exchange for monetary bounties were found, after years of imprisonment, to have no connection to terrorism?
Laura Flanders: Heat from the Arts on Mayor Mike Bloomberg
It was Glass war, not class war, at Lincoln Center Thursday night, and Glass won, composer Philip Glass. It should come as no surprise that the maestro of mesmeric repetition has a knack for the “human mic.”
Occupy Museums, a group of roughly two hundred OWS-inspired protesters showed up outside the last performance of Glass’s Satyagraha Thursday. Satyagraha the opera tells the story of M.K. Gandhi’s early struggle against colonialism and segregation in South Africa. “Satyagraha” the word means “truth force.” Said the protesters to the opera-goers: “Mic Check. Mic Check: Let’s tell the truth… let’s tell the truth. Join US!”
It’s a pretty elite OWS spin-off for sure, but there was a precise policy target. In their call to action, organizers pointed up the irony of Satyagraha being performed at Lincoln Center, where in recent weeks people have been arrested and forcibly removed when they attempted to protest colonization of the arts by .001 percenter David Koch. (One of the theaters now bears his name.)
George Zornick: Keystone XL Isn’t Dead Yet
This week, Republicans in Congress have launched two different attempts to resurrect the delayed, and possibly dead, Keystone XL pipeline. One was clearly a public relations stunt, but the other could present a much more serious problem for pipeline opponents.
Early in the week, leading Republicans gathered to promote a bill by Indiana Senator Richard Lugar that would direct President Obama to act within sixty days on Keystone XL. The administration’s current policy is to push back action until early 2013 as alternate routes are studied, but the Republicans called for an immediate decision: “If the administration would simply get out of the way and let it go forward, it would create jobs almost immediately. Lots of jobs,” said Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. (This is not true, unless you have a very low bar for defining “lots.”)
Lugar’s bill has thirty-seven Republican co-sponsors, but isn’t really that dangerous-it won’t find enough Democratic support to pass the Senate. It’s really just a way to publicly whack Obama for delaying the project, not a viable attempt to get it going again.
Frank Bruni: And Now … Professor Gingrich
OF all the please-God-not-Mitt surges in the Republican contest, Newt Gingrich’s is the strangest.
And that’s not because of his marital mishaps. Or his lobbying that’s somehow magically something other than lobbying. Or his peevishness, comparable to that of an 18-month-old separated from the lollipop he snatched when Mommy’s back was turned.
It’s Gingrich’s braininess – or at least his preening assertion of such – that doesn’t quite fit, breaking the Republican pattern of late. How does an ostentatious know-it-all fare so well in a party supposedly hostile to intellectuals and intellectualism?
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