“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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New York Times Editorial Board: Don’t Blame Mental Illness for Gun Violence
Those who oppose expanded gun-control legislation frequently argue that instead of limiting access to guns, the country should focus on mental health problems. [..]
But mass shootings represent a small percentage of all gun violence, and mental illness is not a factor in most violent acts. According to one epidemiological estimate, entirely eliminating the effects of mental illness would reduce all violence by only 4 percent. Over all, less than 5 percent of gun homicides between 2001 and 2010 were committed by people with diagnoses of mental illness, according to a public health study published this year.
Blaming mental health problems for gun violence in America gives the public the false impression that most people with mental illness are dangerous, when in fact a vast majority will never commit violence. Still, some legal changes should be made to reduce access to firearms among the small percentage of people with mental illness who are dangerous to themselves or others.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: The new nuclear arms race
On a frigid day in February 1994, William Perry was sworn in as President Bill Clinton’s secretary of defense. Perry would take over at the Pentagon during one of the most fluid times in geopolitical history — between the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. During his time in office, Perry was one of the architects of a strategy he called “preventive defense,” the goal of which was to reduce global threats rather than just contain them. The greatest threat of all was nuclear, as fears spread about such weapons falling into rogue hands.
Two decades later, Perry has written a new book, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink,” in which he offers a dire warning: “Far from continuing the nuclear disarmament that has been underway for the last two decades, we are starting a new nuclear arms race.”
This is not hyperbole. The United States and Russia are acting with increasing belligerence toward each other while actively pursuing monstrous weapons. As Joe Cirincione described in the Huffington Post, the Pentagon plans to spend $1 trillion over 30 years on “an entire new generation of nuclear bombs, bombers, missiles and submarines,” including a dozen submarines carrying more than 1,000 warheads, capable of decimating any country anywhere. In the meantime, President Obama has ordered 200 new nuclear bombs deployed in Europe.
Richard Wolfe: Donald Trump is playing one game; the Republican field is playing another
In a just world, the words “Donald Trump” and “presidential debate” should never have appeared in the same sentence.
But then, what happened at the faux Venetian palace in Las Vegas on Tuesday night was not a debate. As a “debate”, it was as convincing as the gondolas gliding along the supposedly Grand Canal outside the casino.
Donald Trump, for instance, ambled in like the character he plays on TV: the judge on a reality show. Where other candidates embraced the audience as potential voters, Trump weakly applauded them as apprentices aspiring to his hiring.
Take the so-called moderators, which included the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. He ruthlessly grilled the candidates, asking Ted Cruz if he could possibly speak “with the kind of specificity and responsiveness you delivered in your nine supreme court arguments”. He later demanded to know if Ben Carson had the stomach for war when he was such an inspiring human being filled with kindness. He even applauded when Donald Trump ruled out, once again, running as an independent candidate if he lost the nomination.
Dana Milbank: Meet the Islamophobe inspiring Trump to redefine extremism
In the towering cumulonimbus that Donald Trump has formed over the Republican Party, there is a small silver lining: He makes the rest of the candidates look not quite so zany.
On Sunday, Trump declared that his nearest (but not terribly near) rival, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), is “a little bit of a maniac.” [..]
Consider the case of Frank Gaffney, a far-right provocateur who alleges a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy in the Obama administration, who warns of “creeping sharia,” referring to Islamic law, and who has played footsie with white supremacy. Respectable conservatives long ago abandoned Gaffney, but Trump Made Gaffney Safe Again.
Trump (joined by Cruz) appeared at a rally Gaffney organized in September. And, in his announcement last week that he would bar Muslims from immigrating, Trump cited a poll from Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy allegedly showing 25 percent of Muslim Americans believe “violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad,” and 51 percent think Muslim Americans “should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah.”
Eugene Robinson: Would Cruz be any better than Trump?
If Ted Cruz is the Republican Party’s cure for Donald Trump, the antidote may be worse than the poison.
With polls showing the senator from Texas rising to challenge the bombastic billionaire nationwide — and zooming past him in first-in-the-nation Iowa — the months-long bromance between the two men seems at an end. Trump raised questions Sunday about Cruz’s temperament and judgment, saying he had been “frankly like a little bit of a maniac” in the Senate
Laugh out loud, if you will, at the idea of Trump calling anyone maniacal. But the front-running tycoon has a point.
It was Cruz, after all, who repeatedly crossed to the other side of the Capitol and led the House Republicans toward fiscal cliff after fiscal cliff. It was Cruz who shockingly called Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a liar on the Senate floor. It was Cruz whom veteran Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) dismissed as a “wacko bird.”
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