“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.
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Gail Collins: The Polar Express
This is the season of Extreme Politics. Everything’s exciting. Mitt Romney paid taxes! Joe Biden just bought a 36-pound pumpkin! Paul Ryan is campaigning with his mom again!
Oh, and Congress is ready to go home to run for re-election. I know you were wondering. [..]
The good news is that our lawmakers spent their last pre-election days in Washington working to pass a bill that would keep the government running for the next six months. This is sometimes referred to as a “continuing resolution,” and sometimes as “kicking the can down the road.” Personally, I am pretty relieved to see evidence that this group has the capacity to kick a can. [..]
The majority leader, Harry Reid, pointed out repeatedly that he has had to struggle with 382 filibusters during his six years at the helm. “That’s 381 more filibusters than Lyndon Johnson faced,” he complained. Obviously, Robert Caro is never going to write a series of grand biographies about the life of Harry Reid.
It’s a wonder anything ever gets done. Although, actually, it generally doesn’t.
New York Times Editorial: Voter Harassment, Circa 2012
This is how [voter intimidation worked in 1966 v]: White teenagers in Americus, Ga., harassed black citizens in line to vote, and the police refused to intervene. Black plantation workers in Mississippi had to vote in plantation stores, overseen by their bosses. Black voters in Choctaw County, Ala., had to hand their ballots directly to white election officials for inspection.
This is how it works today: In an ostensible hunt for voter fraud, a Tea Party group, True the Vote, descends on a largely minority precinct and combs the registration records for the slightest misspelling or address error. It uses this information to challenge voters at the polls, and though almost every challenge is baseless, the arguments and delays frustrate those in line and reduce turnout.
In a lot of ways George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer (or finance minister) is Britain’s answer to Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president. True, he’s a toned-down version – no Ayn Rand, please, we’re British – but other aspects of the package are there in full force: Mr. Osborne is articulate, has a vision that’s completely at odds with everything we actually know about macroeconomics, and he was for a while the darling not just of the right but of self-proclaimed centrists on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mr. Osborne’s big idea in 2010 was that Britain should turn to fiscal austerity now now now, even though the economy remained deeply depressed; it would all work out, he insisted, because the confidence fairy would come to the rescue.
Never mind those whining Keynesians who said that premature austerity would send Britain into a double-dip recession.
Herman Schwartz: Imprisonment without End at Guantánamo
The Supreme Court ruled in a 2008 decision that Guantánamo detainees must have a “meaningful opportunity” to challenge their detention at a habeas corpus hearing.
This decision, Boumediene v. Bush, has repeatedly been subverted, however, by right-wing judges on the federal Court of Appeals in Washington. Yet the justices don’t seem to care – for they have declined to review any of the D.C. circuit’s rulings undermining the Boumediene decision.
Their indifference was most recently demonstrated in June, when the Supreme Court refused to review a decision, Latif v. Obama, that granted government intelligence reports a presumption of accuracy – regardless of how they were prepared. As a result of the court’s action, many Guantanamo detainees face what could be many years of indefinite detention.
Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif was one of these detainees. Until last week, when he was found dead in his cell on Sept. 9. Yet the military had twice recommended that Latif be released, as Wikileaks disclosed last year. An interagency national security task force had approved this in 2009, and his release was ordered in 2010 by the district court.
Robert Reich: Four Reasons Why Romney Still Might Win
Can Romney possibly recover? A survey conducted between Sept. 12 and Sept. 16 by the Pew Research Center – before the “47 percent victim” video came to light – showed Obama ahead of Romney 51% to 43% among likely voters.
That’s the biggest margin in the September survey prior to a presidential election since Bill Clinton led Bob Dole, 50% to 38% in 1996.
And, remember, this recent poll was done before America watched Romney belittle almost half the nation.
For the last several days I’ve been deluged with calls from my inside-the-beltway friends telling me “Romney’s dead.”
Hold it. Rumors of Romney’s demise are premature for at least four reasons [..]
David Sirota: Drug Dealers Protecting Their Turf
If you heard a drug dealer denigrate his competitor’s product as unsafe, would you trust his criticism? Or would you think he’s a hypocrite with ulterior motives? Last week, thanks to Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper (CO), these became the central political questions in the fight over whether to continue America’s destructive War on Marijuana.
The frontline in that war is Colorado, where the federal government has interfered with its system of state-regulated medical marijuana businesses, despite President Obama’s promise to refrain from doing so. Countering that crackdown is a 2012 ballot initiative that would make Colorado the first state to fully legalize marijuana and regulate it like alcohol.
Enter Hickenlooper. In the same month a poll showed majority support for the marijuana legalization initiative, the governor blasted the measure for allegedly “detract(ing) from efforts to make Colorado the healthiest state” and for “send(ing) the wrong message to kids.”
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