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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Trevor Timm: The hostages killed by US drones are the casualties of an inhumane policy

President Obama’s admission on Thursday that the CIA killed two innocent hostages in a US drone strike in Pakistan should definitively prove to the American public what the White House has been trying to hide from them for a while: the US government’s secretive use of drone strikes is a transparency nightmare and human rights catastrophe. It requires a full-scale, independent investigation.

The only thing surprising about the news that US drone strikes killed one American and one Italian civilian al-Qaida hostage – along with two alleged American members of al-Qaida who were supposedly not targeted – is that the US actually admitted it.

Secrecy, misdirection and lies have shielded much of the public from the realization that US drone strikes have killed countless civilians in the past decade. There is literally no public accountability – not in the courts nor in Congress – for the CIA and the military’s killings outside official war zones. It doesn’t matter who they kill, where, or under what circumstances.

Paul Krugman: Zombies of 2016

Last week, a zombie went to New Hampshire and staked its claim to the Republican presidential nomination. Well, O.K., it was actually Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. But it’s pretty much the same thing.

You see, Mr. Christie gave a speech in which he tried to position himself as a tough-minded fiscal realist. In fact, however, his supposedly tough-minded policy idea was a classic zombie – an idea that should have died long ago in the face of evidence that undermines its basic premise, but somehow just keeps shambling along.

But let us not be too harsh on Mr. Christie. A deep attachment to long-refuted ideas seems to be required of all prominent Republicans. Whoever finally gets the nomination for 2016 will have multiple zombies as his running mates.

Start with Mr. Christie, who thought he was being smart and brave by proposing that we raise the age of eligibility for both Social Security and Medicare to 69. Doesn’t this make sense now that Americans are living longer?

David Cay Johnston: What would Jesus do about tax policy?

The Presbyterian Church USA calls for reform of US tax code to address inequality

Nearly 1 in 5 Americans is now officially classified as poor. This fact naturally raises a question: Where are the religious leaders whose scriptures tell them that caring for their 60 million impoverished neighbors is their central moral duty?

I posed this question at a tax conference in New York City this week to one of the leaders in the small Christian movement focused on the role taxes play in creating inequality. She shrugged.

“The church always leads from behind,” she said.

But this may be beginning to change. The awful realities of worsening poverty in America amid overwhelming abundance at the top are becoming harder to ignore, especially those tasked with following Jesus’ teachings.

Ralph Nader:Corporate ‘Free Traitors’ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

The pro-big business President Barack Obama and his corporate allies are starting their campaign to manipulate and pressure Congress to ram through the “pull-down-on-America” Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and foreign investment treaty between 12 nations (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam).

The first skirmish is a fast track bill to have Congress formally strip itself of its constitutional authority to regulate trade and surrender this historic responsibility to the White House and its corporate lobbies.

Lest you think the TPP is too commercially complex to bother about, think again. This mega-treaty is the latest corporate coup-d’état that sacrifices the American consumer, labor and environmental standards — inventively called “non-tariff trade barriers” — and much U.S. sovereignty to the supremacy of corporate commercial trade.

Jeff Biigers: Regret to Inform You: Coal Blasting Rages On

The Washington University Students Against Peabody Energy ruined my Earth Day. They sent me footage of a recent fact-finding trip to Saline County, Illinois, where some of my family members, friends and farmers are being blasted by nearby Peabody Energy strip-mining operations.

Regret to inform you: Coal blasting rages on in southern Illinois, along with cancer-linked mountaintop removal operations in central Appalachia, and mining across the West.

Let’s get the narrative right: Coal is not dying, it’s declining and shifting, and though mountaintop removal is on the ropes, the knockout still awaits federal action. US coal mining production in 2015 is still set for 926 million tons, down from 996 millions tons, and estimated to rebound to 941 millions tons in 2016, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Thanks to the Appalachian decline, the Illinois Basin mined 104.9 million tons in 2014, up 4.6%.

Peter Flanary: It’s Time For the GOP to Dump Bobby Jindal

Religious freedom is under attack in Bobby Jindal’s America, where “radical liberals” and “the media elite” are bullying corporations into supporting marriage equality.

“If it’s not freedom for all,” Louisiana’s governor argued Thursday in the New York Times, “It’s not freedom at all.” With his proposed faith-based bill, the Marriage and Conscience Act, Jindal claims that he wants to ensure liberty for everyone.

But the legislation is not on the side of gay and lesbian couples. Instead, it would legally protect companies from doing business with them, because same-sex ceremonies violate “a sincerely held religious belief.” Without this law in place, Jindal warns of inevitable “discrimination against Christian individuals and businesses.”

Jindal must have missed the memo from his fellow conservatives that this is the year for pandering to gay voters, not shaming them — at least not to their faces. It’s time for the Republican Party to officially distance itself from the governor, who in his column managed to diminish and alienate two powerful, and wealthy, voting blocs: corporate America and LGBT constituents.