“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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Jamil Dakwar: UN Issues Scathing Assessment of U.S. Human Rights Record
While in some areas, like LGBT rights and freedom of speech, the United States’ human rights record fares far better than that of other parts of the world, in many areas — including national security, criminal justice, social and economic rights, and immigration policy — the U.S. has an abysmal record compared to other liberal democracies.
This report sends a strong message of no-confidence in the U.S. human rights record. It clearly demonstrates that the United States has a long way to go to live up to its human rights obligations and commitments. This will be the last major human rights review for the Obama administration, and it offers a critical opportunity to shape the president’s human rights legacy, especially in the areas of racial justice, national security, and immigrants’ rights. [..]
The U.S. record for implementing UN recommendations has thus far been very disappointing, but if President Obama really cares about his human rights legacy, he should direct his administration to adopt a plan of action with concrete benchmarks and effective implementation mechanisms that will ensure that the U.S. indeed learns from its shortcomings and genuinely seeks to create a more perfect union.
The world will be watching.
Leslie Savan: Verizon Swallows Net-Neutrality Champion Huffington Post
Most of the coverage of Verizon’s planned $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL-and thus of the Huffington Post and other news sites-has been almost giddy about all the moneymaking and technological possibilities. By merging with AOL, Verizon will expand by leaps and bounds into mobile video services and “programmatic ad buying,” bringing America’s largest mobile company “a new kind of energy and talent,” as one venture capitalist enthused. On its end of the pre-nup, AOL will get some much-needed cash and, still crumpled by its disastrous merger with Time-Warner in 2000, some fresh cachet. [..]
But there hasn’t been nearly as much talk about what this means for the content-you know, the journalism. When a telecom giant at the center of every poli-techno controversy, from net neutrality to NSA spying, owns and is expected to invest millions in one of the world’s most-read news sites, what happens to editorial independence?
The NSA and its surveillance state supporters in the Senate are making a last ditch effort to prevent Congress from taking away any of the spy agency’s authority to snoop on innocent Americans, despite the fact that there is now broad support for NSA reform in Congress.
Earlier this week, the House overwhelmingly passed the USA Freedom Act, a bill designed – at least so its authors hope – to end the surveillance program of every American’s phone records that Edward Snowden first exposed in June 2013. The bill passed by a huge margin, partially buoyed by the fact that a recent court opinion makes it virtually impossible for the NSA to continue as is. As Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the Edward Snowden story, noted after the bill passed, the vote is a significant moment. It’s the “first time since 9/11 that powers justified in the name of terrorism will be reduced rather than increased.”
But unfortunately it also passed because the bill is so weak, it was hard for many to object to it. Intelligence officials told the Daily Beast’s Shane Harris that they can more than live with USA Freedom Act, calling it a “a big win” compared to what it could have been. Another unidentified former official said: “The NSA is coming out of this unscathed.”
Zoë Carpenter: Why Progressives Want to Rewrite the Rules-and the Story-of the US Economy
Tuesday was quite a day for the emerging progressive offensive on economic issues. That morning in Washington the Roosevelt Institute, led by Nobel Laureate and Hillary Clinton adviser Joseph Stiglitz, unveiled an agenda to “rewrite the rules” of the economy to address the imbalance between concentrated wealth at the top and stagnation at the bottom. A few hours later New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio stood in front of the Capitol, flanked by members of Congress, labor leaders, and activists, and unveiled his own 13-point plan to right the national economy. [..]
To build support for this aggressive policy agenda, progressives know that first they have to change the way we talk about inequality and its origins. More than simply laying out ideas, the two plans are meant to galvanize “a coalition that can change the national debate,” as de Blasio put it. From a movement-building perspective, the benefits of putting forward an expansive, rather than narrow vision of economic transformation are obvious; low-wage workers, immigrants, criminal-justice reformers, working parents, students, and many others might find a natural place in such a coalition.
Matthew Dowd: Honor the Troops, Question the War
I have come to the place where I believe the decision to go into Iraq was a huge mistake. Should have I asked more questions in the midst of all that? Yes. Should I have not have placed trust in the administration that they knew what they were doing? Yes. Can we honor our troops and still be opposed to this war decision and seek answers? Absolutely.
It is astonishing to me watching former Governor of Florida Jeb Bush lay out a confusing and convoluted answer to the questions surrounding the Iraq war. Of any question that you should be prepared to handle as the brother of the president who led us into this folly, this is one you should have thought about, soul-searched and come up with a clear and concise answer. [..]
The best way to honor our servicemen and women is to have a leader who clearly understands history, is willing to account for mistakes even if they are by a relative, and then annunciate how he would do things differently. People who fight for our flag and make this sacrifice want to believe that the truth matters, that government can be trusted and that leaders know what they are doing.
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