“Pondering 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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New York Times Editorial Board: Unfinished Business From 9/11
Fourteen years after its completion, the full record of Congress’s investigation into the 9/11 attacks has not been published. Twenty-eight pages are still being withheld amid suspicions that what they contain could implicate the Saudi government and Saudi citizens in the terrorist strike.
President George W. Bush ordered the pages kept secret in 2002. In 2014, prodded by some of the 9/11 families, President Obama asked intelligence officials to work on declassifying the material. The process is still dragging on. The 28 pages should be released immediately. Americans still do not know exactly why 15 out of the 19 hijackers from Al Qaeda were Saudi citizens and whether that indicates efforts by influential Saudis, including in the powerful religious establishment, to support the plot. Former Senator Bob Graham, who was a co-chairman of the 2002 joint congressional inquiry into the attacks, has long claimed there is evidence of complicity by institutions and people beyond the 19 terrorists.
The Saudi government has long denied any involvement and that view was largely supported by the 9/11 Commission, an independent bipartisan panel that conducted a separate inquiry in 2004 and found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials” funded Al Qaeda. Still, questions remain about the work of a number of Saudi-sponsored charities with financial links to Al Qaeda.
Trevor Timm: Why does the court charged with protecting our privacy keep doing the opposite?
How many times does the NSA have to be rebuked in court before judges start taking away some of the agency’s vast surveillance powers?
The controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court – derided in recent years as a rubber stamp for the NSA, and which normally operates in almost complete secrecy – just released an opinion from November 2015 in which federal judge Thomas Hogan sharply criticized the spy agency.
Hogan said he was “extremely concerned” about lax practices at the NSA and FBI regarding how they handle the vast quantities of data they collect. Worse, for four years, the agencies held on to personal information gathered by surveillance ruled unconstitutional in 2011, all while keeping it hidden from the court.
Yet after saying all this, the judge went on to reapprove all the surveillance the NSA asked for. It’s almost hard to keep track of how many times the courts have criticized spy agencies for breaking their own rules, the law or the fourth amendment, and then allowed them to proceed unimpeded.
Paul Krugman: In Hamilton’s Debt
The Treasury Department picked an interesting moment to announce a revision in its plans to change the faces on America’s money. Plans to boot Alexander Hamilton off the $10 bill in favor of a woman have been shelved. Instead, Harriet Tubman — one of the most heroic figures in the history of our nation, or any nation — will move onto the face of the $20 bill.
She will replace Andrew Jackson, a populist who campaigned against elites but was also, unfortunately, very much a racist, arguably an advocate of what we would nowadays call white supremacy. Hmm. Does that make you think about any currently prominent political figures?
But let me leave the $20 bill alone and talk about how glad I am to see Hamilton retain his well-deserved honor. And I’m not alone among economists in my admiration for our first Treasury secretary. In fact, Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong have an excellent new book, “Concrete Economics,” arguing that Hamilton was the true father of the American economy.
Eugene Robinson: It matters who’s on the money, and Harriet Tubman fits the bill
Conservatives should be delighted that Harriet Tubman’s likeness will grace the $20 bill. She was a Republican, after all, and a pious Christian. And she routinely exercised her Second Amendment right to carry a gun, which she was ready to use against anyone who stood in her way — or any fugitive slave having second thoughts. On her long road to freedom, there was no turning back.
Instead, we’ve had mostly silence from the right. Donald Trump did mouth off, of course, opining that slated-to-be-displaced Andrew Jackson “had a great history” and that substituting Tubman — who, he allowed, was “fantastic” — amounts to “pure political correctness.” Ben Carson defended Jackson as “a tremendous president” who balanced the federal budget.
Both men suggested that Tubman instead be put on the $2 bill, which nobody uses. That would be a great recipe for tokenism. I’m glad that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew made a bolder and more meaningful choice.
Venessa Marie Perry: With Prince’s Death, My Childhood Is Gone, But His Life Is a Lesson in Living
In the last few years the music industry has lost many great musicians. Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Natalie Cole, David Bowie, Maurice White, to name a few and now Prince. I didn’t cry when Michael Jackson died but today I shed tears as if I knew him personally. He was part of my childhood and like many other things that have gone, so is he.
My introduction to this musical genius, known as Prince was through his semi-autobiographical movie, Purple Rain. The movie soundtrack produced chart toppers, “When Doves Cry” and “Purple Rain.” As a young girl coming of age in the ‘80s with MTV and Video Soul, I witnessed first hand how Prince captivated us, not only with his music but with his eccentric style. The high heels and ruffled shirts pushed the boundaries of fashion and male sexuality. I had no idea what sexuality meant at that time but I knew that this man didn’t care what people thought of him. [..]
There are many lessons that we can take from Prince, but the one that stands out the most, is to be yourself. Don’t let anyone define you.
He was an icon, a legend, and a musical anomaly. His Royal Badness will be missed but his legacy will never be forgotten.
Mark Weisbrot: Washington’s Dog-Whistle Diplomacy Supports Attempted Coup in Brazil
The day after the impeachment vote in the lower house of Brazil’s congress, one of the leaders of the effort, Senator Aloysio Nunes, traveled to Washington, D.C. He had scheduled meetings with a number of U.S. officials, including Thomas Shannon at the State Department.
Shannon has a relatively low profile in the media, but he is the number three official in the U.S. State Department. Even more significantly in this case, he is the most influential person in the State Department on U.S. policy in Latin America. He will be the one recommending to Secretary of State John Kerry what the U.S. should do as the ongoing efforts to remove President Dilma Rousseff proceed.
Shannon’s willingness to meet with Nunes just days after the impeachment vote sends a powerful signal that Washington is on board with the opposition in this venture. How do we know this? Very simply, Shannon did not have to have this meeting. If he wanted to show that Washington was neutral in this fierce and deeply polarizing political conflict, he would not have a meeting with high-profile protagonists on either side, especially at this particular moment.
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