“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”.

Paul Krugman: The War on Logic

My wife and I were thinking of going out for an inexpensive dinner tonight. But John Boehner, the speaker of the House, says that no matter how cheap the meal may seem, it will cost thousands of dollars once you take our monthly mortgage payments into account.

Wait a minute, you may say. How can our mortgage payments be a cost of going out to eat, when we’ll have to make the same payments even if we stay home? But Mr. Boehner is adamant: our mortgage is part of the cost of our meal, and to say otherwise is just a budget gimmick. . . . . .

We are, I believe, witnessing something new in American politics. Last year, looking at claims that we can cut taxes, avoid cuts to any popular program and still balance the budget, I observed that Republicans seemed to have lost interest in the war on terror and shifted focus to the war on arithmetic. But now the G.O.P. has moved on to an even bigger project: the war on logic.  

E. J. Dionne Jr.: GOP test: A civil and honest health-care discussion

President Obama’s call for “a more civil and honest public discourse” will get its first test much sooner than we expected.

Having properly postponed all legislative action last week out of respect for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of the Tucson shootings, the House Republican leadership decided it could abide no further delay in a vote on its “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” And so, as a spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor explained, “thoughtful consideration of the health care bill” is slated for this week.

It’s disappointing that the House did not wait a bit longer before bringing up an issue that has aroused so much division, acrimony and disinformation. After all, the repeal bill has no chance of becoming law. The president would certainly veto it, and the Democratic-led Senate is unlikely to pass it.

Moreover, it was the acidic tone of the original health-care debate that led Giffords, in her widely discussed interview last March, to suggest that we “stand back when things get too fired up and say, ‘Whoa, let’s take a step back here.’ ”

Robert Kuttner: Consolation and Inspiration From Dr. King

On this, the commemoration of the 82nd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birth, we can take some solace from what Dr. King did in the face of forces far more annihilating than the ones that progressives face this cold January.

Impossibly enough, he built a movement.

He did so in an era when the consequences for challenging the racial order in the American South were swift and brutal. You lost your economic livelihood, or your life.

In 1955, when Dr. King led the Montgomery bus boycott, the chances of such a movement seizing the nation’s conscience, and within less than a decade including the full moral authority of an American president, were just about inconceivable. He was a minor 26-year-old radical, hardly known outside his own circle.

In 1955, except for a recent Supreme Court decision on school segregation widely held to be unenforceable, there was no support from the government to end the racial order in the South. The Democratic Party was fatally dependent on the votes of Southern racists. The Republican Party of Lincoln was failing to lead even on something as rudimentary as a federal anti-lynching law.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

January 17 is the 17th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 348 days remaining until the end of the year (349 in leap years).

On this day in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his farewell address to the nation warning the American people to keep a careful eye on what he calls the “military-industrial complex” that has developed in the post-World War II years.

A fiscal conservative, Eisenhower had been concerned about the growing size and cost of the American defense establishment since he became president in 1953. In his last presidential address to the American people, he expressed those concerns in terms that frankly shocked some of his listeners.

Eisenhower began by describing the changing nature of the American defense establishment since World War II. No longer could the U.S. afford the “emergency improvisation” that characterized its preparations for war against Germany and Japan. Instead, the United States was “compelled to create a permanent armaments industry” and a huge military force. He admitted that the Cold War made clear the “imperative need for this development,” but he was gravely concerned about “the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex.” In particular, he asked the American people to guard against the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Military-industrial complex (MIC) is a concept commonly used to refer to policy relationships between governments, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them. These relationships include political approval for research, development, production, use, and support for military training, weapons, equipment, and facilities within the national defense and security policy. It is a type of iron triangle.

The term is most often played in reference to the military of the United States, where it gained popularity after its use in the farewell address speech of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, though the term is applicable to any country with a similarly developed infrastructure.

It is sometimes used more broadly to include the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as institutions of the defense contractors, The Pentagon, and the Congress and executive branch. This sector is intrinsically prone to principal-agent problem, moral hazard, and rent seeking. Cases of political corruption have also surfaced with regularity.

A similar thesis was originally expressed by Daniel Guerin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government support to heavy industry. It can be defined as, “an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs”.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

January 16 is the 16th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 349 days remaining until the end of the year (350 in leap years).

On this day in 1919, the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes,” is ratified.

The movement for the prohibition of alcohol began in the early 19th century, when Americans concerned about the adverse effects of drinking began forming temperance societies. By the late 19th century, these groups had become a powerful political force, campaigning on the state level and calling for total national abstinence. In December 1917, the 18th Amendment, also known as the Prohibition Amendment, was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

The amendment and its enabling legislation did not ban the consumption of alcohol, but made it difficult to obtain it legally.

Following significant pressure on lawmakers from the temperance movement, the House of Representatives passed the amendment on December 18, 1917. It was certified as ratified on January 16, 1919, having been approved by 36 states. It went into effect one year after ratification, on January 17, 1920. Many state legislatures had already enacted statewide prohibition prior to the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment.

When Congress submitted this amendment to the states for ratification, it was the first time a proposed amendment contained a provision setting a deadline for its ratification. The validity of that clause of the amendment was challenged and reached the Supreme Court, which upheld the constitutionality of such a deadline in Dillon v. Gloss (1921).

Because many Americans attempted to evade the restrictions of Prohibition, there was a considerable growth in violent and organized crime in the United States in response to public demand for illegal alcohol. The amendment was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933. It remains the only constitutional amendment to be repealed in its entirety.

To define the language used in the Amendment, Congress enacted enabling legislation called the National Prohibition Act, better known as the Volstead Act, on October 28, 1919. President Woodrow Wilson vetoed that bill, but the House of Representatives immediately voted to override the veto and the Senate voted similarly the next day. The Volstead Act set the starting date for nationwide prohibition for January 17, 1920, which was the earliest date allowed by the 18th Amendment.Volstead Act, on October 28, 1919. President Woodrow Wilson vetoed that bill, but the House of Representatives immediately voted to override the veto and the Senate voted similarly the next day. The Volstead Act set the starting date for nationwide prohibition for January 17, 1920, which was the earliest date allowed by the 18th Amendment.

“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”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: n a special “This Week” Town Hall “After The Tragedy: An American Conversation Continued,” Christiane Amanpour anchors the first discussion with many of the men and women who had assembled in the Safeway parking lot when the shooting began. Among those who will join the Town Hall: family members of victims, citizens who took heroic action and community leaders. ABC News Anchor David Muir will be in the audience to restart a conversation about America and to probe the community’s reaction to some of the difficult questions raised by tragedy.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests Rudy Giuliani, Former NYC Mayor, Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa., Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. and Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. who will discuss the aftermath in Tuscon.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are  Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic Senior Editor, Norah O’Donnell, MSNBC Chief Washington  Correspondent, Gloria Borger, CNN Senior  Political Analyst and Reihan Salam, National Review.

They will discuss these questions:

Obama at two years: Can he calm the haters?

How will GOP presidential candidates handle Sarah Palin now?

Meet the Press with David Gregory: This Sunday, discussion and debate about guns in America and the tone of political discourse after Tucson, with Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Republican Senator from Oklahoma Tom Coburn. Also, we’ll hear the latest on the condition of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, from her friend Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).

Joining ‘lurch’ for a special roundtable conversation: David Brooks of the New York Times, Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, Rev. Al Sharpton and Tim Shriver.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: This Sunday, on a special edition of State of the Union, we’ll spend the hour searching for answers as we look at the state of mental health.

First, an overview of schizophrenia and other potentially debilitating mental disorders with two specialized experts: Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, the executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, and Dr. Lisa Dixon, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Then, did Jared Lee Loughner exhibit any behavior that would indicate he was dangerous? Could anything have been done to prevent him from acting? We’ll be joined by two professionals with a personal connection to schizophrenia:

Dr. Fred Frese, a psychologist for 40 years, is the former president of the National Mental Health Consumers’ Association, and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia as a young adult.

Peter Earley is a former national reporter for the Washington Post and author of a dozen books, including “Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness,” which details his journey seeking treatment for his adult son who was declared mentally ill.

Finally, we’ll talk with the co-chairs of the Congressional Mental Health Caucus, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pennsylvania) and Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-California). Where can we go from here? What legislative obstacles stand in the way of meaningful reform?

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: An exclusive interview with the man who — until just days ago — was President Obama’s chief economic adviser. Former director of the National Economics Council Lawrence Summers gives his FIRST interview since leaving the White House. Why aren’t we seeing stronger job growth, when will the President tackle the deficit, and how much will the U.S. economy grow in 2011?

Then, what in the world? The Brits went ballistic over something President Obama said about France this week. Does America have a new BFF?

Next, America has more guns per capita than any other country on earth. The U.S. buys more than 50% of ALL of the new guns manufactured around the world. What is it about America and guns? And did that contribute to the tragedy in Tucson? An GPS panel – including French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy — looks at America’s unique gun culture, and what separates us from the rest of the world.

Finally, could you use a pay raise in 2011? Well, you may be better off than you think. India’s PM earns only $4000 a YEAR. How much $$$ does YOUR leader take home? We’ll take a last look.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech in support of the striking sanitation workers at Mason Temple in Memphis, TN on April 3, 1968 – the day before he was assassinated

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

This week the New York Times did an insightful article about the first responders and Emergency Room staff at the University Medical Center in Tuscon, AZ with interviews of the Paramedics and Trauma Surgeons. It is graphic and may make some a little squeezy but it gives the reader a new perspective on what we, in Emergency Medicine, are often confronted with and the split second decision making that’s involved. It is well worth reading. I congratulate them on a job well done.

Whole grains have higher fiber content than pasta and white rice, and because they’re slowly digested, they have less impact on blood levels of insulin than refined grains. They also bring more nutritional value. So if you’re mulling over ways to get more grains into your diet, think soups.

Even light soups can be transformed into more of a main dish with the addition of whole grains. Add quinoa to your garlic soup or bulgur to chicken broth. You can cook the grains separately and add them to the soup, or cook them right in the broth with the other ingredients. The grains will be particularly tasty, as they’ll absorb the flavors in the broth.

“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”.

Robert Naiman: Tunisian Protests Move Hillary’s Line on Democratic Reform

Yesterday, Secretary Clinton delivered what the New York Times called a “scalding critique” to Arab leaders at a conference in Qatar.

“The region’s foundations are sinking into the sand,” Clinton said, calling for “political reforms that will create the space young people are demanding, to participate in public affairs and have a meaningful role in the decisions that shape their lives.” Those who would “prey on desperation and poverty are already out there,” Clinton warned, “appealing for allegiance and competing for influence.”

As Secretary Clinton made her remarks, the Times noted, “unrest in Tunisia that threatened its government while serving to buttress her arguments” was among the events that “echoed loudly in the background.”

Today, Tunisian president Ben Ali has reportedly fled the country and the Tunisian prime minister says he is now in charge.

Popular protest can bring down the government in an Arab country. Who knew?

Paul Krugman: A Tale of Two Moralities

On Wednesday, President Obama called on Americans to “expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Those were beautiful words; they spoke to our desire for reconciliation.

But the truth is that we are a deeply divided nation and are likely to remain one for a long time. By all means, let’s listen to each other more carefully; but what we’ll discover, I fear, is how far apart we are. For the great divide in our politics isn’t really about pragmatic issues, about which policies work best; it’s about differences in those very moral imaginations Mr. Obama urges us to expand, about divergent beliefs over what constitutes justice.

And the real challenge we face is not how to resolve our differences – something that won’t happen any time soon – but how to keep the expression of those differences within bounds.

Bob Herbert: Helpless in the Face of Madness

In case we hadn’t noticed, a photo and a headline on the front page of The New York Times this week gave us some insight into just how sick our society has become. The photo showed 11-year-old Dallas Green weeping and using his left arm to wipe his eyes during the funeral for his sister, Christina-Taylor Green, who was 9 years old and was killed in the attack in Tucson that took the lives of five other people and left Representative Gabrielle Giffords gravely wounded.

Beneath the photo was the headline: “Sadness Aside, No Shift Seen On Gun Laws.”

What is the matter with us? Are we really helpless in the face of the astounding toll that guns take on this society?

More than 30,000 people die from gunfire every year. Another 66,000 or so are wounded, which means that nearly 100,000 men, women and children are shot in the United States annually. Have we really become so impotent as a society, so pathetically fearful in the face of the extremists, that we can’t even take the most modest of steps to begin curbing this horror?

Where is the leadership? We know who’s on the side of the gun crazies. Where is the leadership on the side of sanity?

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

January 15 is the 15th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 350 days remaining until the end of the year (351 in leap years).

On this day in 1559, Elizabeth Tudor is crowned Queen of England.

Two months after the death of her half-sister, Queen Mary I of England, Elizabeth Tudor, the 25-year-old daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, is crowned Queen Elizabeth I at Westminster Abbey in London.

Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen regnant of England and Queen regnant of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. The daughter of Henry VIII, she was born a princess, but her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed two and a half years after her birth, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her brother, Edward VI, bequeathed the crown to Lady Jane Grey, cutting his sisters out of the succession. His will was set aside, Lady Jane Grey was executed, and in 1558 Elizabeth succeeded the Catholic Mary I, during whose reign she had been imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.

Elizabeth set out to rule by good counsel, and she depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, Baron Burghley. One of her first moves as queen was to support the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the Supreme Governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement held firm throughout her reign and later evolved into today’s Church of England. It was expected that Elizabeth would marry, but despite several petitions from parliament and numerous courtships, she never did. The reasons for this outcome have been much debated. As she grew older, Elizabeth became famous for her virginity, and a cult grew up around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day.

In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and siblings. One of her mottoes was “video et taceo” (“I see, and say nothing”). This strategy, viewed with impatience by her counsellors, often saved her from political and marital misalliances. Though Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs and only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France and Ireland, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 associated her name forever with what is popularly viewed as one of the greatest victories in English history. Within 20 years of her death, she was celebrated as the ruler of a golden age, an image that retains its hold on the English people.

Elizabeth’s reign is known as the Elizabethan era, famous above all for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Sir Francis Drake. Some historians are more reserved in their assessment. They depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, who enjoyed more than her share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity to the point where many of her subjects were relieved at her death. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor, in an age when government was ramshackle and limited and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. Such was the case with Elizabeth’s rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, whom she imprisoned in 1568 and eventually had executed in 1587. After the short reigns of Elizabeth’s brother and sister, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity.

Human Rights First, a non-profit, nonpartisan international human rights organization, has issued it report card for President Obama on issues of human rights and the rule of law. The report overall is not encouraging for a President who as a candidate purported to restore the rule of law. His overall grade is “D”.

The President did garner two “A-“‘s with caveats. While he has denounced torture, detainee abuse and secret detention sites, there are still major concerns about “various interrogation techniques that are permitted by Appendix M of the Army Field Manual that are inconsistent with the Geneva Conventions requirement of humane treatment” and “the Joint Special Operations Command detention facility in Parwan, Afghanistan operates outside the authority of the Joint Task Force established to oversee detention.” “B” and  “C-” are given for transferring GTMO detainees cleared for release and trying terror suspects in Federal courts, respectively. He gets a “C” for establishing accountability and oversight of U.S. private security and other contractors but didn’t go far enough holding “private security contractors in zones of armed conflict and elsewhere accountable for violations of international and domestic law, including incidents involving allegations of torture.” The rest of the report is damning.

The President gets a failing grade for not closing Guantanamo although he promised to do that two years ago. Even though the President has publically argued for closure of Guantanamo, he has failed to do so.

The continued use of military commissions to prosecute detainees gets an “F”. The commissions constitute a war crime under international law for a number of reasons:

. . . (the commissions) prosecute as war crimes conduct that was not a violation of the laws of war at the time the conduct occurred. They fail to ensure exclusion of evidence gained through torture or other abuse. They do not ensure that an accused or defense counsel will be able to see all relevant inculpatory and exculpatory evidence. Permissive hearsay rules fail to ensure that an accused or defense counsel will be able to confront witnesses. New rules governing procedure were introduced in the spring. While the rules are an improvement over the past iterations, they do not cure the fundamental flaws of the commissions. The only way to ensure that detainee trials comport with applicable law is to end military commissions and transfer prosecutions to federal criminal court.

An “F” is given for not holding accountable those who authorized and perpetrated torture against prisoners in U.S. custody:

In November 2010, the Justice Department announced that there would be no prosecutions for destruction of CIA tapes that allegedly recorded acts of torture committed by employees or agents of the United States. Special Prosecutor John Durham has yet to release his report on the investigation into whether crimes were committed by U.S. officials during any interrogations that included “enhanced interrogation techniques,” such as waterboarding, a well-known form of torture. The failure to hold accountable those responsible for acts of torture and to provide redress to victims (see “State Secrets” below) is a violation of international law and diminishes the credibility of the United States as standard-bearer for human rights worldwide.

The abuse of states secrets privilege also gains an “F”:

The Obama Administration has repeatedly asserted the “state secrets privilege” to obtain dismissal of legal claims by victims of U.S.-sponsored torture. Although federal courts have procedures they can use to protect the disclosure of classified information, the Administration has instead successfully convinced courts to dismiss these cases in their entirety on state secrets grounds. This has made it impossible for victims of U.S.-sponsored torture to obtain any form of accountability and redress.

“D”‘s are given for:

Not ending indefinite detention:

It was reported on December 22, 2010 that the Obama Administration plans to issue an Executive Order that would provide for legal representation and a review process for the 48 Guantanamo detainees who have been designated to be held indefinitely without trial.

Not articulating a rule of law for targeted killings:

The Obama administration over the past year dramatically stepped up its secret program of targeted killings, particularly along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but has failed to adequately articulate the legal basis for the program and how its choices of targets meet the requirements of international law.

The continued use of extraordinary rendition and lack of diplomatics assurances:

The Obama Administration continues to assert the right to transfer detainees to other countries without the protections of legal process based on diplomatic assurances from the receiving country that the detainee will not be abused, even where that country is known to abuse and torture detainees.

The report gives the President an “Incomplete” on establishing due process in Afghanistan and the remainder of the report enumerates eight things the President can do in the future to improve his “grades”. I wouldn’t hold my breath.