Punting the Pundits

“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”.

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New York Times Editorial Board: GPS Tracking and Secret Policies

This week brought fresh revelations about the National Security Agency’s sloppy and invasive collection of phone data on Americans and others, as reported first by The Washington Post. In another realm of surveillance – the government’s broad use of location tracking devices – the Justice Department was in federal court on Thursday defending its refusal to release memos containing information about its policies governing the use of GPS and other potentially invasive technologies. [..]

The public has a right to know the government’s policies on these matters. There is very good reason to be concerned about the government’s interpretation of its police powers, especially given the Obama administration’s insensitivity to privacy in its mass collection of phone data in the national security sphere.

Jay Rosen: When You’re in a Fourth Estate Situation

As things stand today, the Fourth Estate is a state of mind. Some in the press have it, some don’t. Some who have it are part of the institutional press. Some, like Ladar Levison and Edward Snowden, are not.

“I think if the American public knew what our government was doing, they wouldn’t be allowed to do it anymore.”

Those are the poignant words of Ladar Levison, founder of Lavabit, a secure email service that he voluntarily shut down when faced with some sort of demand from the U.S. government to reveal user information. The precise nature of that demand he cannot talk about for fear of being thrown in jail, perhaps the best example we now have for how the surveillance state undoes the First Amendment. But we know that Lavabit was used by Edward Snowden to communicate with the outside world when he was stuck in the Moscow airport. So use your imagination!

Robert Reich: Why Congress’s Gridlock Doesn’t Paralyze Government but Gridlocks Democracy

Congress began its summer recess last week and won’t reconvene until after Labor Day. You’d be forgiven for not noticing a difference. With just 15 bills signed into law so far this year, the 113th Congress is on pace to be the most unproductive since at least the 1940s.

But just because the legislature has ceased to function doesn’t mean our government has. Political decision making has moved to peripheral public entities, where power is exercised less transparently and accountability to voters is less direct. What we’re losing in the process isn’t government – it’s democracy.

Ralph Nader: Time to Stop Undermining Homeownership

Here’s a startling fact — more than 10 million Americans have been evicted from their homes since 2007. That’s nearly the entire population of the state of Michigan. Just imagine if the people of an entire state were rendered homeless overnight — it would be quite a calamity. The news media would no doubt cover it 24/7, millions of dollars would be raised in aid, and thousands would volunteer to help shelter the displaced. Any companies responsible for such a massive displacement of people would be vilified — think of the public relations lashing BP received after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. While the housing crisis does not spur the same emotional response from the media and the general population as say, a natural disaster or a terrorist attack; perhaps it should. The housing crisis was not an inevitable glitch in the system, but rather a long-foreseen consequence of an industry running rampant in the name of profit.

The housing crisis is a multi-faceted issue with many moving parts, but here are some recent developments that warrant discussion.

Amy Goodman: Stop-and-Frisk: The World According to Questlove

Hip-hop hit a milestone this week, turning 40 years old. The same week, Federal District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin, in a 195-page ruling, declared the New York Police Department’s practice of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional. Hip-hop and stop-and-frisk are central aspects of the lives of millions of people, especially black and Latino youths.

Ahmir Thompson was just 2 years old when hip-hop got its start in 1973, but already had shown his talent for music. Thompson is now known professionally as Questlove, an accomplished musician and producer, music director and drummer for the Grammy Award-winning hip-hop band The Roots, which is the house band on the NBC show “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” He and The Roots soon will move with Fallon to the even more popular “The Tonight Show.” Despite his success, Questlove confronts racism in his daily life. But he has built a platform, a following, which he uses to challenge the status quo, like stop-and-frisk.

David Sirota: A Civics Lesson From America’s Education Debate

Paradoxes come in all different forms, but here’s one that perfectly fits this Gilded Age: The most significant lesson from the ongoing debate about American education has little to do with schools and everything to do with money. This lesson comes from a series of recent scandals that expose the financial motives of the leaders of the so-called education “reform” movement-the one that is trying to privatize public schools.