“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”.
Wednesday is Ladies’ Day
Katrina vanden Heuvel: What We Learned From Planned Parenthood: Fighting Back Works
In 2010, when the right-wing echo chamber succeeded in destroying ACORN-a group Bill Moyers described as “more devoted to helping poor people become their own best champions” than any group he’d ever covered as a journalist-Senator Bernie Sanders offered this warning:
“These same forces drummed Van Jones out of the White House. The rightwing echo chamber is now two-for-two, and no one should have any illusions that it won’t be back.”
Sanders’ words proved prescient. Since 2010 Planned Parenthood-along with organized labor-has been a prime target of a well-funded and relentless effort by Republicans to dismantle and destroy progressive institutions. While the right might employ different tactics depending on the target, the goal is the same: take down progressive groups that have institutional strength.
Nancy Goldstein: Proposition 8 Is Unconstitutional. What’s Next for the Anti-Gay Law?
Today’s decision overruling Proposition 8 is deeply satisfying. The randomly assigned three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Court went beyond finding, 2-1, that Prop 8’s amendment of California’s state constitution failed the rational basis test and violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Judge Reinhardt’s 128-page decision also skewers the claims of Prop 8’s proponents to be protecting marriage, revealing their alleged concerns as nothing more than sheer mean-spirited prejudice tricked out as paternalism. To wit, “Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California.”
This is rousing stuff and one of the biggest losses that anti-equality supporters have ever suffered. “Even though this is a narrow decision that applies only to California, it will return us to same-sex marriage in an important state – one that has 40 million people and a disproportionate influence on the politics and culture of the country,” says Dale Carpenter, law professor at the University of Minnesota.
It’s been two years since hell paid Haiti a visit, but for countless women, terror still stalks the ruins. The scars of the January 2010 earthquake are etched on their bodies, in an ever-widening pattern of sexual exploitation.
A crisis of gender-based violence and exploitation is festering–and foreign aid efforts are still failing to protect survivor communities from harm, or to make the criminal justice system more accountable.
Ilyse Hugue: The Evil Brilliance of Komen’s Karen Handel
This morning, Karen Handel resigned as the vice president of public policy of the Susan G. Komen foundation. Handel had spent the last week at the epicenter of the controversy around Komen’s decision to withdraw support for Planned Parenthood and several progressive groups were circulating petitions to call for her dismissal. Handel’s very public resignation letter shows a political acumen and sophisticated grasp of cultural narrative that seems to have eluded Komen generally and their CEO, Nancy Brinker, through this entire debacle. [..]
This morning, Karen Handel resigned as the vice president of public policy of the Susan G. Komen foundation. Handel had spent the last week at the epicenter of the controversy around Komen’s decision to withdraw support for Planned Parenthood and several progressive groups were circulating petitions to call for her dismissal. Handel’s very public resignation letter shows a political acumen and sophisticated grasp of cultural narrative that seems to have eluded Komen generally and their CEO, Nancy Brinker, through this entire debacle.
Vandana Shiva: The Seed Emergency: The Threat to Food and Democracy
Patenting seeds has led to a farming and food crisis – and huge profits for US biotechnology corporations.
New Delhi, India – The seed is the first link in the food chain – and seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. If farmers do not have their own seeds or access to open pollinated varieties that they can save, improve and exchange, they have no seed sovereignty – and consequently no food sovereignty.
The deepening agrarian and food crisis has its roots in changes in the seed supply system, and the erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty.
Seed sovereignty includes the farmer’s rights to save, breed and exchange seeds, to have access to diverse open source seeds which can be saved – and which are not patented, genetically modified, owned or controlled by emerging seed giants. It is based on reclaiming seeds and biodiversity as commons and public good.
Pat Lamarche: Roseanne Barr Joins Other Green Party Candidates
Comedic innovator, proud grandma and self-proclaimed domestic goddess Roseanne Barr has announced her candidacy for President of the United States as well as for Prime Minister of Israel. Although some have argued that the former is so dictated to by the latter that holding both offices is unnecessarily redundant.
In less than 48 hours since Barr submitted her paperwork to the Green Party, a quick web search has yielded more than seven hundred links featuring news stories or commentary.
Many of the articles – like the one that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor – question Barr’s sincerity as she throws her hat into the ring.
And the wild fire of speculation on whether this was just another of Barr’s shenanigans or a true bid for the nomination representing the nation’s hundreds of thousands of Green Party members isn’t unique to the media outlets across the land, but in the discussion topic of rank and file greens as well.
3 comments
If you’re not willing to tackle it yourself, take a position and fight for it, well, then study it.
A feel-good bill has suddenly turned nasty
I just saw it on the twitter feed here.
Isn’t it enough they people can read misguided opinions pretending to be “facts” on computers or tablets? Now you can read it in a mobile fashion. Yeah, right.
http://www.politifact.com/mobile/
http://www.wfmz.com/news/Feds-…