“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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Paul Krugman: Sex, Money and Gravitas
Can a woman effectively run the Federal Reserve? That shouldn’t even be a question. And Janet Yellen, the vice chairwoman of the Fed’s Board of Governors, isn’t just up to the job; by any objective standard, she’s the best-qualified person in America to take over when Ben Bernanke steps down as chairman.
Yet there are not one but two sexist campaigns under way against Ms. Yellen. One is a whisper campaign whose sexism is implicit, while the other involves raw misogyny. And both campaigns manage to combine sexism with very bad economic analysis.
Widney Brown: Time to Focus on US Government’s Unlawful Behavior, Not Snowden
The drama of the five weeks since Snowden’s arrival in Russia has distracted attention from the key issue: how the ever-burgeoning security apparatus in the US has used secret courts to undertake massive, sweeping and systematic invasions into the right to privacy of people living in the USA
Let’s not lose sight of why Snowden was forced to seek asylum in Russia. Once he disclosed the full scope of the US government’s actions, they cancelled his passport and called him a criminal.
Freedom of expression – a fundamental human right – protects speech that reveals credible evidence of unlawful government action. Under both international law and the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution, the US government’s actions are unlawful.
The big election race of 2013 is for the position of Federal Reserve chairman.
The United States is not an economy democracy, however. So there will be no popular vote on who will make the most critical decisions on jobs, investments, interest rates and a host of other defining issues for working families, communities, states and the nation.
But there is a campaign going on. In order to influence the selection of a new chair by President Obama and the Senate confirmation process: contenders are positioning. Camps and caucuses are organizing. Endorsements are being made. Issues are being placed on the table.
So let’s invite the American people into the process.
Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan: Manning, Snowden and Assange Were the Ones who Took Risks to Expose Crime
But those who planned the wars, those who committed war crimes, those who conduct illegal spying, for now, walk free
“What a dangerous edifice War is, how easily it may fall to pieces and bury us in its ruins,” wrote Carl von Clausewitz, the 19th-century Prussian general and military theorist, in his seminal text “On War,” close to 200 years ago.
These lines came from the chapter “Information in War,” a topic that resonates today, from Fort Meade, Md., where Pfc. Bradley Manning has just been convicted of espionage in a military court, to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has lived for more than a year, having been granted political asylum to avoid political persecution by the United States, to Russia, where National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum.
George Zornick: Obama’s “Insane” New Bargain and Our Perverse Politics
President Obama introduced yet another plan to create jobs and pump the sagging economy yesterday, pitched as a “grand bargain” between Republicans and Democrats (or more accurately, Democrats and the business community). It’s perhaps not a terrible plan considering the current political atmosphere. But taking one step back, Obama’s offer is a deeply revealing snapshot of a dynamic that’s become deeply skewed and perhaps hopelessly corrupted.
Margaret Kimberly: Freedom Rider: Obama Fights to Keep Black People in Jail
The Obama administration is fighting a federal court ruling that would free the remainder of the mostly Black prison inmates convicted under now-defunct, viciously racially disparate crack cocaine laws. The First Black President and his Black attorney general are determined to keep “5,000 people in jail who have no reason to be there.”
If Barack Obama’s ascendance to the oval office was worth a fraction of the importance which has been claimed, the president would do something to stop the human catastrophe of mass incarceration and the destruction it has wrought on black Americans. Instead he has officially given it his blessing. In a stunning decision, the Obama administration has made it quite clear where it stands. It stands with making certain that the president spends his two terms in office pleasing white people at the expense of black people.
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