“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
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Katrina vanden Heuvel: The corporate ‘predator state’
Bipartisan agreement in Washington usually means citizens should hold on to their wallets or get ready for another threat to peace. In today’s politics, the bipartisan center usually applauds when entrenched interests and big money speak. Beneath all the partisan bickering, bipartisan majorities are solid for a trade policy run by and for multinationals, a health-care system serving insurance and drug companies, an energy policy for Big Oil and King Coal, and finance favoring banks that are too big to fail.
Economist James Galbraithcalls this the “predator state,” one in which large corporate interests rig the rules to protect their subsidies, tax dodges and monopolies. This isn’t the free market; it’s a rigged market.
Maureen Dowd: Courting Cowardice
As the arguments unfurled in Tuesday’s case on same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court justices sounded more and more cranky.
Things were moving too fast for them.
How could the nine, cloistered behind velvety rose curtains, marble pillars and archaic customs, possibly assess the potential effects of gay marriage? They’re not psychics, after all. [..]
While Justice Alito can’t see into the future, most Americans can. If this court doesn’t reject bigotry, history will reject this court.
Feminists breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday when two young men in Steubenville, Ohio, Ma’lik Richmond and Trent Mays, were found guilty of raping an unconscious 16-year-old girl. In a case where social media, texts and video painted a clear-as-day picture of the horrors that happened that night, anything other than a guilty verdict was unthinkable.
But the trial outcome doesn’t change the fact that these two men, along with a party of onlookers, didn’t think anything was wrong-or even out of the ordinary-about sexually violating someone. And as the media and public response to the trial demonstrated, it’s not just the rapists who believe penetrating an unconscious girl is little more than teenage party hijinks. The truth is that for all of our cultural bluster surrounding rape-how awful it is, how it must be stopped-we’re still a country that treats sexual assault as a joke.
Amanda Marcotte: What North Dakota and Mississippi Reveal About Anti-Choice NIMBYism and Hypocrisy
With the legal struggle in Mississippi working through what may be its last phases and North Dakota on the brink of closing down its last clinic through a TRAP law requiring unnecessarily that abortion providers have admitting privileges at local hospitals, it seems that the NIMBYism strategy of anti-choicers may finally have reached the end goal of completely eliminating access to legal abortion in some states. Beyond just the gross misogyny on display in these efforts, what we’re seeing here is the triumph of symbolic politics over real world issues such as realistic policy goal-setting and the health of the population. Not that this should be any surprise. Like fundamentalist hypocrites from the beginning of time, anti-choicers have always been more interested in putting up appearances than dealing with people’s lived realities.
Kristina Lapinski: Op-ed: The 6 Most Absurd Prop. 8 Briefs
The Supreme Court has managed to attract some of the most outlandish of arguments from some familiar antigay figures.
Nine U.S. Supreme Court justices hear arguments today in the Proposition 8 case and in the Defense of Marriage Act case on Wednesday. For the past few weeks briefs have flowed into the Supreme Court in an attempt to persuade the justices, from both sides of the issue. Gay U.S.A. The Movie has compiled a list of the most absurd amici briefs submitted by the anti-equality proponents: [..]
Under the Supreme Court’s rules, a brief from an amicus curiae, “friend of the Court,” is supposed to bring to the Court’s attention “relevant matter not already brought to its attention by the parties.” If a brief does not conform, then the rule adds, the document “burdens the Court, and its filing is not favored.” While to some extent these absurd arguments may be unique, one can only wonder to what extent such garbage could impact the nine.
Joan Walsh: How not to seem like a racist
A tip for right-wingers angry about charges of racial bias: Try treating the Obama daughters with decency
Writing my piece on Andrew Breitbart and Tucker Carlson, I missed a huge example of overlap between their two sham-empires: the reporter who broke the Caller’s now-disgraced “scoop” about Sen. Robert Menendez patronizing prostitutes, Matthew Boyle, now works for Breitbart.com. And on Monday he penned the ridiculous story revealing the location of Malia and Sasha’s spring break vacation (which is now at the top of the Drudge Report).
On Twitter Monday and Tuesday, Breitbart fans attacked my focus on their hero’s bizarre racially driven crusades. They continue to insist that they’re being unfairly tarred with the charge of racism, when they’re the real “post-racialists” who just don’t like Barack Obama because he’s a liberal. I have some advice for right-wingers who don’t want it to seem like their anti-Obama animus is racial: Try treating his daughters with respect.
Recent Comments