“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 thea Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Roger Cohen: A Journalist With a Mission
Glenn Greenwald believes that he faces possible arrest if he returns to the United States but is unbowed.
A young American lawyer comes to Brazil in 2005, falls in love, finds that his gay relationship confers greater legal rights than back home, starts a blog called Unclaimed Territory focusing on illegal warrantless eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, takes a place in the hills of Rio with a bunch of rescue dogs, denounces the cozy compromises of “establishment journalists,” gets hired to write a column by Britain’s Guardian newspaper, is sought out by the N.S.A. whistle-blower Edward J. Snowden, becomes the main chronicler of Snowden’s revelations of global American surveillance, is lionized for work that prompts a far-reaching debate on security and freedom, files repeated thunderbolts from his leafy Brazilian perch, and ends up, in just eight years, as perhaps the most famous journalist of his generation.
These things happen. At least they happen in the empowering digital age, and they happen to Glenn Greenwald. [..]
American society will also benefit from Greenwald’s ongoing revelations about out-of-control surveillance. He has testified before the Brazilian Senate, and should be allowed to testify before the U.S. Senate. He says, “I am definitely going back, I refuse to be exiled for a lie.”
He deserves assurance that he can return to the United States without facing arrest.
Yochai Benkler: Congress should grant Edward Snowden amnesty
The man who sparked the NSA surveillance debate remains in exile. We should thank him for his role and let him come home
Congress has in its power the ability to bring home the man without whom all the abuses, errors, and oversight workarounds would have continued unchecked. Five years ago, when Congress passed the Fisa Amendments Act, the legislature included in that statute a set of provisions that immunized the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program from civil suits by citizens whose rights had been violated and from states that wanted to investigate or sanction these companies. That provision was roundly criticized by civil liberties advocates, but it does provide a legislative model for what Congress could now do to protect Snowden from criminal or civil liability arising from his disclosures.
Critics say that Snowden broke the law and should pay the price; they argue that facing the consequences is what civil disobedience requires; that is what we learned from Martin Luther King, they say. But do they really believe that ultra-segregationist Bull Connor’s arrests in the civil rights era were justified?
Fast food workers are often on government assistance. The best solution, despite GOP resistance, is to raise the minimum wage
You’ve got to feel for McDonald’s. Every time the misunderstood corporation tries to offer its’ low-wage employees a hand, it backfires. First the fast food giant was ridiculed this past summer for dispensing helpful budgetary advice to its struggling workers (in a nutshell: get another job). Now the company is in hot water again after a recorded call to its’ McResource helpline, in which an employee who reported not being able to make ends meet was advised to sign up for food stamps and other government assistance programs, went viral online. Strangely though, the very people who ought to be most upset about this state of affairs – small government loving republicans who don’t want anyone relying on federal assistance for anything – have raised little or no objection. [..]
So for now we are stuck with a situation where one set of American workers has to subsidize the wages and benefits of another set of workers just so that certain corporations can keep their low end labor costs down and their profits way up. Fast food workers have actually come up with the most feasible way out of this unsustainable situation. They are asking their employers to raise their wages to $15 an hour, up from the average of $8 an hour. Needless to say McDonald’s and their fast food counterparts will happily stick to the cozy arrangement they have going as long as their enablers in congress allow them to. They may soon find, however, that the American taxpayer is not quite so easily played.
Heidi Moore: Little surprise here: women expected to do more at home – and at work
A new study illuminates how ‘favors’ are expected of women at work, but they often go unacknowledged, keeping women down
No matter what profession a woman works in, she’s actually in the service profession.
That’s the upshot of an illuminating (and to many, enraging) new Columbia Business School study highlighted this week, showing that co-workers and bosses feel entitled to favors from women – or, in fact, that almost everything a woman does at work is considered “a favor” that is off the clock. To put it another way, when a woman takes on a project no one else will, or does something helpful or thoughtful, it’s seen as something she does for fun. When a man does it, it seen as real work.
The revelation of this structural ingratitude explains a lot. It’s a pivotal point in understanding a key issue in workplaces: why can’t women form lasting alliances, even though they spend more time contributing to their organizations by mentoring?
Ana Marie Cox: Political games: why Democratic senators keep their Hillary support secret
There’s no point to making support for something political private. Hillary should leave the game playing to Bill
The childish behavior of men in Congress has always made “boys’ club” seem less like an epithet and more like something to strive for. Female politicians on the Hill, held to a higher standard in many ways, have had fewer scandals (financial or sexual) than their male counterparts and have a reputation for level-headedness that was thrown into high relief during the shutdown. As Senator John McCain said when the episode wound to a close:
Leadership, I must fully admit, was provided primarily by women in the Senate.
So male representatives are boys and women are the grown-ups, which is why the revelation that the US Senate’s 17 female Democratic members sent a secret mash note to Hillary Clinton is so puzzling. The letter’s existence came to light on Monday, when Senator Kay Hagan (North Carolina Democrat) made a reference to it during a talk at a political fundraiser; that it was a secret letter – “Ixney on Illaryhay orfay residentpay!” – became clear on Tuesday, when reporters followed up on the remark and there was “a round of apologetic e-mails from [Hagan’s] Senate office to other offices on Capitol Hill”.
John Nichols: Chris Christie’s No Moderate, and Barack Obama Ought to Say That
President Obama will make a campaign swing into the battleground state of Virginia this weekend, on behalf of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.
McAuliffe has been consistently ahead in the polls and his chances of winning look reasonably good-as do those of other Virginia Democrats in high-profile races. The Virginia Democrats have two advantages: Republican foes who have gone to extremes on social issues and a broad revulsion in a state with high levels of federal employment at Republican tactics during the government shutdown.
So Obama’s trip to Virginia comes with few risks.
The thing is that, at this point in his tenure, Obama could afford to take some political risks.
For instance, he could travel to the other state that is holding a gubernatorial election this fall: New Jersey.
Recent Comments