“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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Howie KleinL Time For The Democrats To Bid Adieu To The Blue Dogs?
The DCC carefully neglected to mention that the most vile provisions were pushed by, among others, the Finance Chair of the DCCC, Wall Street shill Jim Himes (New Dem-CT).
Wednesday afternoon, the DCCC was asking people to sign petitions against “Boehner’s” Wall Street giveaway in the omnibus appropriations bill. They carefully neglected to mention that the most vile provisions are being pushed by, among others, the Finance Chair of the DCCC, Wall Street shill Jim Himes (New Dem-CT) and by most of the Blue Dogs and New Dems left in Congress– including the ones who were defeated and are just hanging around the lame duck looking for K Street jobs. We’ve written about how Himes and his fellow Wall Street shills have been working on this since last year. The House passed it October 30, 2013 292-122, 70 slime bags from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party joining the GOP to vote for it back then, including not just the Blue Dogs and New Dems who always support the Republicans over working families, but House party leaders like Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Joe Crowley (D-NY) and purported “progressives” like Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Grace Meng (D-NY), Gwen Moore (D-WI) and Charlie Rangel (D-NY). [..]
This is the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the ruin of the great traditions and values of the party and all that ails the party. We write about it often here at DWT. In fact, last Monday we looked at Michael Tomasky’s proposition that the Democratic Party should just forget about The South entirely. Tempting… but… uh, no.
The DCCC thought you wouldn’t notice that Jim Himes, their own Finance Chair, is behind this plan to gut Wall Street reform.
Glen Ford: It’s Not the Law, But Prosecutors, That Give Immunity to Killer Cops
Black Americans know all about “law and order”: the term, itself, is code for the state-wielded hammer that is relentlessly deployed against us. No people on earth are more conditioned to concentrated bludgeoning under “color of law” than African Americans, who account for one out of out eight of the world’s prison inmates. Black males are 21 times more likely than their white peers to be killed by U.S. lawmen, and make up a clear majority of young police shooting victims under the most draconian law and order regime on the planet. Of all the world’s peoples, none have been so unremittingly inculcated with the lessons of crime and punishment – especially punishment, whether merited or not.
For a people so acculturated, justice demands retribution – even for Pharaoh and his army. Thus, the simple and near-universal Black American demand that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder prosecute killer cops.
But, this they will not do.
The Obama administration has no intention of pursuing prosecution of Darren Wilson, or Trayvon Martin’s vigilante killer George Zimmerman, or the whole crew of New York City homicidal and/or depravedly indifferent first-responders in the Eric Garner case. Obama and Holder have nothing worthwhile to say to the nine grieving Black mothers now visiting Washington demanding justice for their murdered loved ones, other than empty assurances that they feel the families’ pain.
The United States tortures.
That much became undeniably clear this week when the Senate Intelligence Committee released the executive summary (pdf) of it’s report on the CIA’s interrogation and detention program under the Bush administration. [..]
After taking office in 2009 President Obama did ban the use of torture through an executive order, and to this day says that the practice was inconsistent with our values as a nation. But that one stroke of the pen doesn’t match up with the rest of his actions.
The ethos of this administration has been to look forward and not backwards. This has meant letting the architects of the Bush torture regime escape prosecution and any semblance of accountability despite clear violations of international law.
Robert L. Brosage: The Budget Deal: This Is Who They Are
The first signs of the November election returns are apparent in the $1 trillion spending bill that the House of Representatives passed last night in Washington.
This spending bill was forged with resurgent Republicans on their best behavior. They are still a minority in the Senate in the lame-duck session. Their leaders exercised adult supervision over the wingnuts, rejecting calls for a government shutdown over immigration because Obama. They largely adhered to the budget deal cut last year on spending limits, and agreed to fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year through next October (with the exception of Homeland Security because Obama), putting off real changes until they assume the majority in the new Congress next year.
But good behavior and adult supervision didn’t stop them from adding revealing signature riders and last-minute deals. Consider these the early slush of the coming Republican winter, the first returns on investment for their donors. Tucked into the 1,603-page bill to fund the government — that no legislator will read — are cankerous riders, foreshadowing what is to come. They couldn’t help themselves; this is who they are.
Eugene Robinsom: Answering Evil With Evil
The “debate” over torture is almost as grotesque as torture itself. There can be no legitimate debate about the intentional infliction of pain upon captive and defenseless human beings. The torturers and their enablers may deny it, but they know-and knew from the beginning-that what they did was obscenely wrong.
We relied on legal advice, the torturers say. We were just following orders. We believed the ends justified the means. It is nauseating to hear such pathetic excuses from those who, in the name of the United States, sanctioned or committed acts that long have been recognized as war crimes. [..]
Why would the CIA officer in charge of the program destroy all videotapes of waterboarding sessions? Why would the agency fight the Senate investigators so fiercely, at one point hacking into the committee’s computers? Why would there be such a coordinated attempt by torture’s apologists to steer the “debate” toward subsidiary questions and away from the central issue?
There is only one answer: They decided to answer evil with evil, rather than justice. And they knew it was wrong.
David Sirota: Are Charter Schools Segregating America’s Education System?
Charter schools are often promoted as a tool to address educational inequities, but a potential precedent-setting legal case launched earlier this month says the opposite. In filings with the U.S. Department of Education, two Delaware nonprofit groups allege that some of the state’s publicly funded, privately managed schools are actively resegregating the education system-and in a way that violates federal civil rights law.
The complaint, by the Delaware branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Community Legal Aid Society, cites data showing that more than three-quarters of Delaware’s charter schools are “racially identifiable”-a term that describes schools whose demographics are substantially different from the surrounding community.
According to the complaint, “High-performing charter schools are almost entirely racially identifiable as white” while “low-income students and students with disabilities are disproportionately relegated to failing charter schools and charter schools that are racially identifiable as African-American or Hispanic.”
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