“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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Valerie Plame Wilson and Joe Wilson: The NSA’s Metastasized Intelligence-Industrial Complex Is Ripe for Abuse
Where oversight and accountability have failed, Snowden’s leaks have opened up a vital public debate on our rights and privacy
Let’s be absolutely clear about the news that the NSA collects massive amounts of information on US citizens – from emails, to telephone calls, to videos, under the Prism program and other Fisa court orders: this story has nothing to do with Edward Snowden. As interesting as his flight to Hong Kong might be, the pole-dancing girlfriend, and interviews from undisclosed locations, his fate is just a sideshow to the essential issues of national security versus constitutional guarantees of privacy, which his disclosures have surfaced in sharp relief.
Snowden will be hunted relentlessly and, when finally found, with glee, brought back to the US in handcuffs and severely punished. (If Private Bradley Manning’s obscene conditions while incarcerated are any indication, it won’t be pleasant for Snowden either, even while awaiting trial.) Snowden has already been the object of scorn and derision from the Washington establishment and mainstream media, but, once again, the focus is misplaced on the transiently shiny object. The relevant issue should be: what exactly is the US government doing in the people’s name to “keep us safe” from terrorists?
Dean Baker: Baffling Budget Numbers: Making Reporters Do Their Job
Polls consistently show that the vast majority of the public has almost no idea of where their tax dollars go.
They tend to hugely overestimate the portion of the budget that goes to items such as food stamps, public broadcasting and foreign aid, and to underestimate the importance of Medicare, the military and other core items in the budget. As a result, people are often ill-informed when it comes to political debates on budget priorities.
This can lead to absurd situations where large numbers of people tell pollsters things like they would like to see foreign aid cut. But then say they would like government to spend much more in this area than we are now spending.
Criminalizing investigative reporting may undermine and intimidate journalism, but it is even more devastating to democracy. Thomas Jefferson got it right when explained to John Jay that: “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.”
Jefferson’s friend and comrade, Tom Paine argued similarly that citizens must be informed in order to be free. “A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed,” he observed in The Rights of Man. “It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.”
Jefferson, Paine and their contemporaries often griped about the newspapers of their day. But they recognized, correctly, that the chains of ignorance had to be broken. They supported a free and freewheeling press as an underpinning of democracy in their day. As we should in ours.
New York Times Editorial Board: A Reprieve for Affirmative Action
By a vote of 7 to 1 on Monday, the Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling about a public university’s use of race as a factor in admissions. The good news is that the court affirmed major precedents going back 35 years. It asserted that a more diverse student body – and an admission policy that helps produce one – serves a compelling interest of government by achieving educational and social benefits. Diversity, in turn, helps realize what the court has called “the dream of one nation, indivisible.”
At the same time, the court sent the case at hand – Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin – back for review by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which had upheld the university’s use of race in its admissions policy. The court did not say that race could not be used to achieve diversity. It did say, however, that the appeals court must closely reconsider the university’s admissions process to determine whether a race-neutral approach could achieve the level of diversity it seeks.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: On Too Big to Fail, All the Warning Lights Are Flashing Red (VIDEO)
“Too Big to Fail” banks played a key role in causing the last financial crisis. Since then they’ve grown even bigger, without much discouragement from the government (and in some cases with government support). Not a single executive has been prosecuted, despite their rampant lawbreaking, which means that there’s been no effective deterrent against reckless and illegal behavior.
And, with millions still unemployed and hundreds of millions still suffering the economic after-effects of the last crisis, we’re just about due for the next one. That’s why we convened a panel at last weekend’s Netroots Nation conference titled “Stopping the Next Depression: Ending Too Big to Fail.” And that’s why our first question was, “What would happen if the 40 million people who live in underwater American homes went on a mortgage strike?”
Norman Solomon: The Pursuit of Edward Snowden: Washington in a Rage, Striving to Run the World
Rarely has any American provoked such fury in Washington’s high places. So far, Edward Snowden has outsmarted the smartest guys in the echo chamber — and he has proceeded with the kind of moral clarity that U.S. officials seem to find unfathomable.
Bipartisan condemnations of Snowden are escalating from Capitol Hill and the Obama administration. More of the NSA’s massive surveillance program is now visible in the light of day — which is exactly what it can’t stand.
The central issue is our dire shortage of democracy. How can we have real consent of the governed when the government is entrenched with extreme secrecy, surveillance and contempt for privacy?
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