Punting the Pundits

The president could have rescued the economy by pushing for more stimulus. Not doing so was an error of epic proportions

If President Obama had been doing his job, he would have immediately begun pushing for more stimulus the day after the first one passed. He should have been straightforward with the American people and said that the stimulus approved by Congress was an important first step, but that the severity of the downturn was so great we would likely need more.

Instead of being honest with America, he started talking about the “green shoots of recovery” and said he was going to focus on the budget deficit. This was an error of unbelievable proportions. By raising the budget deficit front and centre, he backed himself into a corner from which it is almost impossible to now escape.

New York Times Editorial: Justice and Prosecutorial Misconduct

A Texas case in which a man was exonerated after serving nearly 25 years in prison demands accountability after a district attorney withheld evidence.

Michael Morton was exonerated by DNA evidence this month after being wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and serving nearly 25 years in prison in Texas. In seeking to prove Mr. Morton’s innocence, his lawyers found in recently unsealed court records evidence that the prosecutor in the original trial, Ken Anderson, had withheld critical evidence that may have helped Mr. Morton.

The judge reviewing the case allowed Mr. Morton’s lawyers, including those from the Innocence Project, which represents prisoners seeking exoneration through DNA evidence, to gather facts about the prosecutor’s conduct. The Innocence Project’s report makes a compelling case that Mr. Anderson, now a state judge, disobeyed “a direct order from the trial court to produce the exculpatory police reports from the lead investigator” in the case.

Jamelle Bouie: Ben Nelson’s Christmas Gift to America

The Senate might hail itself as the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” but like all democratic institutions, it has had an incredibly mixed history, with moments of genuine achievement-the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for instance-tarnished by moments of cowardice and moral failure, like the Iraq War. If you can say anything about the tenure of Nebraska senator Ben Nelson-who announced his retirement this afternoon-it’s that he strove to embody the worst of the Senate during his two terms in office.

During the Bush presidency, in addition to his support for the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, Nelson voted to restrict marriage rights for gay couples and to make reproductive healthcare more difficult for women. He voted against legislation to raise the minimum wage, against attempts to increase Pell Grants and for the 2005 bill to make bankrupcy proceedings more difficult for ordinary Americans.. He voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act, and voted in support of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and its draconian attacks on civil liberties for detainees (and everyone else). He voted against President Bush’s bill for comprehensive immigration reform, and voted in support of a bill to establish English as the official language of the United States.

Robert Sheer: Marginalizing Ron Paul

Paul is being denigrated as a presidential contender even though on the vital issues of the economy, war and peace, and civil liberties, he has made the most sense of the Republican candidates. And by what standard of logic is it “claptrap” for Paul to attempt to hold the Fed accountable for its destructive policies? That’s the giveaway reference to the raw nerve that his favorable prospects in the Iowa caucuses have exposed. Too much anti-Wall Street populism in the heartland can be a truly scary thing to the intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that controls American capitalism.

It is hypocritical that Paul is now depicted as the archenemy of non-white minorities when it was his nemesis, the Federal Reserve, that enabled the banking swindle that wiped out 53 percent of the median wealth of African-Americans and 66 percent for Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.

E. J. Dionne: Romney and the Art of Unpredictable Predictability

MANCHESTER, N.H.-No matter what happens in Iowa, Mitt Romney has a safety net in New Hampshire.

And that could rank as the year’s most perilous sentence. Why shouldn’t Romney be surprised in the state that temporarily derailed Barack Obama’s supposedly rapid march toward nomination four years ago? Hillary Clinton humbled many a pundit here in 2008, reason enough to challenge the rapidly jelling conventional wisdom about the Republican presidential campaign.

John Nichols: Gingrich’s Iowa Crash Has GOP Base Hunting for Next Anti-Romney

Decorah, IO-Newt Gingrich has chartered a bus to carry the former House Speaker and third wife Callista across Iowa in a final push for first-in-the-nation caucus votes.

But his campaign is not going anywhere. The new Public Policy Polling survey shows Congressman Ron Paul, the maverick libertarian from Texas whose disciplined campaign is the polar opposite of Gingrich’s, extending his lead, with 24 percent support. The Republican Republicans love to hate, Mitt Romney, is at 20 percent. Gingrich, formerly the leader in the race, has collapsed to 13 percent. Gingrich is just two points ahead of Congressman Michele Bachmann, who is at 11; and just three points ahead of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and Texas Governor Rick Perry, both of whom are at 10. The prospects that Santorum, Bachmann or Perry will finish ahead of Gingrich are real-and rising.