“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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Marcy Wheeler: Sterling Verdict Another Measure of Declining Government Credibility on Secrets
Yesterday, Judge Leonie Brinkema sentenced Jeffrey Sterling to 42 months in prison for leaking information about a dubious CIA plot to deal nuclear blueprints to Iran to New York Times journalist James Risen.
Given how circumstantial the case against Sterling was – consisting largely of metadata – not to mention the hand slap David Petraeus got weeks ago for leaking far more sensitive information and then lying about it to the FBI, that’s a tough sentence.
But given the government’s call, in sentencing memoranda, that Sterling spend up to 24 years in prison, it was, as Government Accountability Project lawyer Jesselyn Raddack said, the least worst outcome.
The sentence should also be seen as a rebuke to the government and its frenzied claims about secrecy, most notably the claim they made in this case that leaking information to a journalist is worse than leaking it directly to our adversaries. [..]
The government’s insistence that whistleblowing and accountability equate to spying is coming under increasing scrutiny, even mockery.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: The Emerging Populist Agenda
The most surprising development in our political debate isn’t the gaggle of Republican presidential contenders or the ceaseless attacks on Hillary Clinton. What is stunning is the emergence of a populist reform agenda that is driving the debate inside and outside the Democratic Party.
A range of groups and leaders are putting forward a reform agenda of increasing coherence. Today, the Roosevelt Institute will present a report by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, while New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is to release a “Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality.” These follow the Populism 2015 Platform, released in April by an alliance of grass-roots groups and the Campaign for America’s Future. Also in April, the Center for Community Change (CCC) joined with several grass-roots allies to launch Putting Families First: Good Jobs for All.
Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont), now contending for the Democratic presidential nomination, released his Economic Agenda for America last December. And while Hillary Clinton has chosen a slow rollout of her agenda, the Center for American Progress published the report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity headed by former treasury secretary Larry Summers, widely seen as a marker of where Hillary might move.
The United States has its second universal periodic review (UPR) before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday. Countries will be able to ask the U.S. questions and make recommendations about its implementation of human rights commitments made during its first review, which took place in 2010, as well as about other issues of concern.
At the top of the list should be Washington’s failure to hold accountable those responsible for the systematic torture carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency in the global “war on terrorism.” Five years ago, the U.S. accepted a UPR recommendation from Denmark to “take measures to eradicate” and “thoroughly investigate” all forms of torture and abuse by military or civilian personnel within its jurisdiction. But the only investigation into CIA torture conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice was limited in scope and closed in 2012 with no charges filed. Nor does it seem to have met basic standards of credibility or thoroughness; investigators apparently never bothered to interview key witnesses of the abuse: the detainees.
Zoë Carpenter: Rand Paul Is Fighting for Your Privacy-Unless You’re a Woman
“The right to be left alone is the most cherished of rights,” Kentucky senator and presidential aspirant Rand Paul said over the weekend in San Francisco. He was there to sell himself to the young tech elite as a civil-liberties crusader; the only candidate willing to take an uncompromising stand against government surveillance. He cares so deeply about privacy that he’s planning to filibuster the renewal of parts of the Patriot Act.
But the leader of “the leave-me-the-hell-alone coalition” is simultaneously, albeit more quietly, arguing that women should have little privacy in their healthcare decisions. “The government does have some role in our lives,” Paul said at a summit organized by the anti-choice Susan B Anthony List in April, by which he meant making abortion illegal. Paul describes himself as “100 percent pro-life.” Along with all of the other Republican presidential candidates he supports a bill that resurfaced this week in the House that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Recently Paul has become something of a champion for anti-abortion groups that are trying to reframe the abortion debate so that pro-choice views seem extreme. Pressed by reporters last month to clarify whether his support for abortion bans includes exceptions, Paul deflected the question by calling up the specter of late-term abortions. “Why don’t we ask the DNC: Is it OK to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus?” he said to a New Hampshire journalist. No matter that only 1 percent of abortions in the United States occur after 21 weeks of pregnancy; claiming Democrats endorse the “killing” of babies is an easy way not to account for his selective support for personal liberty.
Kate Aronoff: Movement Builders Should Listen to Bernie Sanders – Focus on Mass Action, not Candidates
Is Bernie Sanders a more progressive presidential candidate than Hillary Clinton? Undoubtedly. Will he single-handedly catalyze a united left front in the United States? Probably not.
Unchallenged, Hillary Clinton is likely to run a campaign chock-full of populist optics, but thin on any real engagement with the issues that make progressives most nervous about her bid: foreign policy, welfare, corporate influence and more. Sanders, a registered independent, who caucuses with Democrats yet identifies as a democratic socialist, has been unafraid to talk about class inequality, even – heaven forbid – capitalism. He’s even started bringing a long-taboo word back into mainstream American political conversation: socialism.
As Ned Resnikoff points out for Al Jazeera, Americans’ stance toward socialism has been thawing since the Cold War. Between Occupy Wall Street, Kshama Sewant’s election to Seattle City Council, and – now – Sanders’ candidacy, it may finally be possible to de-link the “S Word” from the gulags and authoritarianism of the Soviet Union, and re-associate with such basic amenities as healthcare, education and housing. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, 49 percent of 18-29 year olds even have a positive view of socialism. With any hope, this year’s Democratic primary debates will challenge Clinton to choose firm sides on these issues, and maybe even build them into her platform in response to the vocal minority more endeared to Sanders’ populism than Clinton’s smug establishmentarianism.
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