“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”.
John Oliver: What He Said
The following video contains profanity.
Paul Krugman: Fearing Fear Itself
Like millions of people, I’ve been obsessively following the news from Paris, putting aside other things to focus on the horror. It’s the natural human reaction. But let’s be clear: it’s also the reaction the terrorists want. And that’s something not everyone seems to understand. [..]
Think, for a moment, about what France is and what it represents. It has its problems — what nation doesn’t? — but it’s a robust democracy with a deep well of popular legitimacy. Its defense budget is small compared with ours, but it nonetheless retains a powerful military, and has the resources to make that military much stronger if it chooses. (France’s economy is around 20 times the size of Syria’s.) France is not going to be conquered by ISIS, now or ever. Destroy Western civilization? Not a chance.
Michael Brenner: Obama and Post-Constitutional America
Theoretically, the checks on abuse of office in the American system are four-fold: socialization into a political culture whose norms are upheld communally by other participants, the media and the general public; enforcement of legal stipulations by the courts; periodic elections; and, ultimately, the resort to impeachment by the legislative branch of government in accordance with procedures embodied in law at every level of government. None is an absolute guarantee of fidelity to proper conduct. [..]
The issue here is less unconstitutional conduct than the vitiating of the Constitution itself.
The President of the United States has one overarching obligation: to uphold the Constitution and to enforce the laws of the land. That is the oath he swears on Inauguration Day. Failure to meet fully that obligation breaks the contract between him and the citizenry from whom he derives his authority and on whose behalf he acts. The consequence is to jeopardize the well-being of the Republic.
Jessica Valenti: Republicans want to halt our access to abortion – and our right to study them
Apparently it’s no longer enough for Republicans to try to stop women from getting abortions. Now they want to stop us from writing about them, too.
Missouri state senator Kurt Schaefer is trying to block University of Missouri doctoral student Lindsay Ruhr from researching her dissertation because she’s studying the impact of a state law that mandates a 72-hour waiting period before being able to obtain an abortion. Free speech? What free speech?
Schaefer, chairman of the state’s temporary Committee on the Sanctity of Life, is claiming that Ruhr’s research is illegal – he sent a letter to the university chancellor late last month citing the ban on public funds, which includes monies at public universities, being used to help women obtain abortions.
Robert Creamer: Does Anyone Really Believe We Can Trust Anyone in GOP Field With Our National Security?
Imagine a world in which an egotistical bloviator like Donald Trump had his hand on the nuclear trigger.
The Paris terrorist tragedy has once again put into sharp relief the fact that our president is also the Commander-in-Chief.
Let’s take a quick tour of the GOP field and try to visualize which of them we would truly trust to protect our national security.
Think about the leaders in the current Republican field. [..]
When we arrived at the site of the retreat having seen “13 Days,” the new President, George W. Bush, addressed the group. It was a shocking contrast. And we did not yet know how shocking, since we had not yet witnessed the results of the unilateral, tone deaf foreign policy that would result in the catastrophic Iraq War disaster.
But even then, we all thanked God that John Kennedy — not George W. Bush — was president of the United States during those frightening days of October 1962.
The question of who might sit in the president’s chair — who might have his or her finger on the nuclear button — could be an existential question for America, and for much of humanity.
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