Tag: Open Thread

Punting the Pundits

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: That Old-Time Whistle

There are many negative things you can say about Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee and the G.O.P.’s de facto intellectual leader. But you have to admit that he’s a very articulate guy, an expert at sounding as if he knows what he’s talking about.

So it’s comical, in a way, to see Mr. Ryan trying to explain away some recent remarks in which he attributed persistent poverty to a “culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working.” He was, he says, simply being “inarticulate.” How could anyone suggest that it was a racial dog-whistle? Why, he even cited the work of serious scholars – people like Charles Murray, most famous for arguing that blacks are genetically inferior to whites. Oh, wait.

Joseph E. Stiglitz: On the Wrong Side of Globalization

Trade agreements are a subject that can cause the eyes to glaze over, but we should all be paying attention. Right now, there are trade proposals in the works that threaten to put most Americans on the wrong side of globalization.

The conflicting views about the agreements are actually tearing at the fabric of the Democratic Party, though you wouldn’t know it from President Obama’s rhetoric. In his State of the Union address, for example, he blandly referred to “new trade partnerships” that would “create more jobs.” Most immediately at issue is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, which would bring together 12 countries along the Pacific Rim in what would be the largest free trade area in the world. [..]

Controversy has erupted, and justifiably so. Based on the leaks – and the history of arrangements in past trade pacts – it is easy to infer the shape of the whole TPP, and it doesn’t look good. There is a real risk that it will benefit the wealthiest sliver of the American and global elite at the expense of everyone else. The fact that such a plan is under consideration at all is testament to how deeply inequality reverberates through our economic policies.

Worse, agreements like the TPP are only one aspect of a larger problem: our gross mismanagement of globalization.

Robert Kuttner: The Democrats’ Obama Problem

With the loss of a close House special election in Florida, the entry of several strong Republican contenders in close Senate races, and continuing fallout from flaws in the Accordable Care Act, Democrats are in a panic about their president dragging down the Democratic ticket in this November’s mid-term elections.

Many Democrats have joined Republicans in criticizing Obama Care. Several Democratic incumbent senators in swing states have already moved to distance themselves from President Obama in key confirmation votes. [..]

It’s a tricky business when a president’s unpopularity hurts members of his own party. If a Democratic candidate criticizes him, the president and his party appear even weaker. But supporting an unpopular president does rub off on down-ticket officials.

What to do?

Richard (RJ) Eskow and Robert Fowler: Dear Abby: An Open Letter to MSNBC’s Huntsman About Social Security

Last week MSNBC’s Abby Huntsman expressed some strong opinions about Social Security. That’s her right and her privilege. Unfortunately, she also made some inaccurate and misleading statements. (See Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times for details.)

As the saying goes, we are entitled to our own opinions but not to our own facts. We have written this open letter in order to ask for a correction.

Dear Abby:

We’re writing you as members of two different generations — Boomer and Millennial — to ask you for an on-air correction to your recent segment on “The Cycle” focused on millennial and earned benefit programs. It was frustrating to see you unquestioningly repeat so many misleading talking points about one of our nation’s most successful programs: Social Security.

Even more importantly, it was disappointing to see you repeat the phony claim that there is a “generational war” between the young and the old. The real “war” in this country is between the haves and the have-nots, and it’s no secret who’s winning that one. In fact, this notion of a “generational war” was dreamed up in the think tanks and PR firms of billionaires, so that credulous journalists, politicians, and yes, news anchors, would pick it up and repeat it endlessly.

Norman SolomonWhen hope turns rancid: LBJ and Obama

Hope makes history. So does betrayal of hope.

Early in his presidency, Lyndon Johnson inspired enormous hope. But the promise for a Great Society imploded – and disappointment jolted many former supporters, with trust and optimism turning into alienation and bitterness. The negative ripple effects lasted for decades.

Fifty years after Johnson entered the White House, the corrosive aspects of his legacy are easy to discern. A political base for progressive social change eroded as he escalated the Vietnam War and bought time with shameless deceit. For many people, distrust of leaders became the essence of realism. [..]

Forty years later, the new presidency of Barack Obama was awash in a strong tide of good will, comparable, in its own way, to the wave of public sentiment that lifted Johnson as the new president after the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of John F. Kennedy. Obama had run and won on hope, and his victory – while not of Johnson’s landslide proportions – provided major momentum.

David Wise: Can Congress control the CIA?

The current fight between the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA – each accuses the other of spying on it – is part of the deep, continuing struggle between the legislative and executive branches of government over the wide-ranging power of the intelligence agency in the post-9/11 world.

The immediate dispute is about the committee’s lengthy study of the CIA’s harsh interrogation policies, used during the Bush administration. But underlying all the charges and counter-charges is a larger question: Can Congress genuinely exercise  its authority if the intelligence agencies can classify, and so control, the committee’s oversight efforts?

Ari Melber: Our fierce fight over torture

The new Congress versus the CIA battle over “hacking” Senate computers and “spying” isn’t about surveillance. It’s about torture.

We have never had a full reckoning for our government’s use of torture on terror suspects after September 11. There were no prosecutions of military officers or senior officials. (One soldier was imprisoned for abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, former Corporal Charles Graner, while four officers received administrative demerits, not prosecution.) Remarkably, there has not even been a full release of classified government investigations into U.S. torture. It’s hard to get accountability in the dark.

That repressed history is the real context for the remarkable fight that spilled into public view when Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) spoke on the Senate floor on Tuesday.

On This Day In History March 17

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.

March 17 is the 76th day of the year (77th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 289 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 461, Saint Patrick, Christian missionary, bishop and apostle of Ireland, dies at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland.

Much of what is known about Patrick’s legendary life comes from the Confessio, a book he wrote during his last years. Born in Great Britain, probably in Scotland, to a well-to-do Christian family of Roman citizenship, Patrick was captured and enslaved at age 16 by Irish marauders. For the next six years, he worked as a herder in Ireland, turning to a deepening religious faith for comfort. Following the counsel of a voice he heard in a dream one night, he escaped and found passage on a ship to Britain, where he was eventually reunited with his family.

According to the Confessio, in Britain Patrick had another dream, in which an individual named Victoricus gave him a letter, entitled “The Voice of the Irish.” As he read it, Patrick seemed to hear the voices of Irishmen pleading him to return to their country and walk among them once more. After studying for the priesthood, Patrick was ordained a bishop. He arrived in Ireland in 433 and began preaching the Gospel, converting many thousands of Irish and building churches around the country. After 40 years of living in poverty, teaching, traveling and working tirelessly, Patrick died on March 17, 461 in Saul, where he had built his first church.

First St. Patrick’s Day parade

In New York City, the first parade honoring the Catholic feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is held by Irish soldiers serving in the British army.

Early Irish settlers to the American colonies, many of whom were indentured servants, brought the Irish tradition of celebrating St. Patrick’s feast day to America. The first recorded St. Patrick’s Day parade was held not in Ireland but in New York City in 1762, and with the dramatic increase of Irish immigrants to the United States in the mid-19th century, the March 17th celebration became widespread. Today, across the United States, millions of Americans of Irish ancestry celebrate their cultural identity and history by enjoying St. Patrick’s Day parades and engaging in general revelry.

Rant of the Week: Bill Maher’s New Rules: Noah’s Ark, God and Religion

Bill Maher – New Rules: Noah’s Ark, God and Religion

“What kind of tyrant punishes everyone just to get back at the few he’s mad at? I mean, besides Chris Christie.”

“Hey, God, you know you’re kind of a dick when you’re in a movie with Russell Crowe and you’re the one with anger issues.”

“You know conservatives are always going on about how Americans are losing their values and their morality, well maybe it’s because you worship a guy who drowns babies.”

“If we were a dog and God owned us, the cops would come and take us away.”

“I’m reminded as we’ve just started Lent, that conservatives are always complaining about too much restraining regulation and how they love freedom, but they’re the religious ones who voluntarily invent restrictions for themselves. On a hot summer day, Orthodox Jews wear black wool, on a cold winter night Mormons can’t drink a hot chocolate… isn’t life hard enough without making shit up out of thin air to fuck with yourself?”

On This Day In History March 16

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.

March 16 is the 75th day of the year (76th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 290 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1802, The United States Military Academy, the first military school in the United States, is founded by Congress for the purpose of educating and training young men in the theory and practice of military science.

Colonial period, founding, and early years

The Continental Army first occupied West Point, New York, on 27 January 1778, making it the longest continually occupied post in the United States of America. Between 1778 and 1780, Polish engineer and military hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko oversaw the construction of the garrison defenses. The Great Hudson River Chain and high ground above the narrow “S” curve in the river enabled the Continental Army to prevent British Royal Navy ships from sailing upriver and dividing the Colonies. As commander of the fortifications at West Point, however, Benedict Arnold committed his infamous act of treason, attempting to sell the fort to the British. After Arnold betrayed the patriot cause, the Army changed the name of the fortifications at West Point, New York, to Fort Clinton. With the peace after the American Revolutionary War left various ordnance and military stores deposited at West Point.

“Cadets” underwent training in artillery and engineering studies at the garrison since 1794. Congress formally authorized the establishment and funding of the United States Military Academy on 16 March 1802,. The academy graduated Joseph Gardner Swift, its first official graduate, in October 1802; he later returned as Superintendent from 1812 to 1814. In its tumultuous early years, the academy featured few standards for admission or length of study. Cadets ranged in age from 10 years to 37 years and attended between 6 months to 6 years. The impending War of 1812 caused the United States Congress to authorize a more formal system of education at the academy and increased the size of the Corps of Cadets to 250.

In 1817, Colonel Sylvanus Thayer became the Superintendent and established the curriculum still in use to this day. Thayer instilled strict disciplinary standards, set a standard course of academic study, and emphasized honorable conduct. Known as the “Father of the Military Academy”, he is honored with a monument on campus for the profound impact he left upon the academy’s history. Founded to be a school of engineering, for the first half of the 19th century, USMA produced graduates who gained recognition for engineering the bulk of the nation’s initial railway lines, bridges, harbors and roads. The academy was the only engineering school in the country until the founding of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1824. It was so successful in its engineering curriculum that it significantly influenced every American engineering school founded prior to the Civil War.

The Mexican-American War brought the academy to prominence as graduates proved themselves in battle for the first time. Future Civil War commanders Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee first distinguished themselves in battle in Mexico. In all, 452 of 523 graduates who served in the war received battlefield promotions or awards for bravery. The school experienced a rapid modernization during the 1850s, often romanticized by the graduates who led both sides of the Civil War as the “end of the Old West Point era”. New barracks brought better heat and gas lighting, while new ordnance and tactics training incorporated new rifle and musket technology and accommodated transportation advances created by the steam engine. With the outbreak of the Civil War, West Point graduates filled the general officer ranks of the rapidly expanding Union and Confederate armies. Two hundred ninety-four graduates served as general officers for the Union, and one hundred fifty-one served as general officers for the Confederacy. Of all living graduates at the time of the war, 105 (10%) were killed, and another 151 (15%) were wounded. Nearly every general officer of note from either army during the Civil War was a graduate of West Point and a West Point graduate commanded the forces of one or both sides in every one of the 60 major battles of the war.

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

Punting the Punditsis 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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Sunday’s guests are billionaire Bill Gates; House Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee Chair Rep. Peter King (R-NY); and Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT).

The roundtable guests are ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd; Georgetown University professor and MSNBC political analyst Michael Eric Dyson; Weekly Standard editor and ABC News contributor William Kristol; editor and publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel; and Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffers’ guests are Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI); and former national security advisor for President Obama, Tom Donilon.

His panel guests are Capt. Sully Sullenberger, former NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker and Bob Orr.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Guests are White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer; Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ); and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL).

The roundtable guests are NBC News Political Contributor Robert Gibbs; the Heritage Foundation’s Israel Ortega; Jon Ralston of “Ralston Reports;” and New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Carolyn Ryan.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Senator John McCain (R-AZ); former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte; Commander William Marks, aboard the USS Blue Ridge in the Indian Ocean; Colleen Keller, who helped find Air France Flight 447; Steven Wallace, who investigated crashes for the FAA for eight years; and Richard Aboulafia, an expert on the 777.

Her panel guests are Charles Blow, Ana Navarro and Ron Brownstein.

What We Learned This Week

The host of MSNBC’s “Up” Steve Kornacki and his guests share what they have learned this week.

Punting the Pundits

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Daphne Eviatar: The Trial of Bin Laden’s Son-in-Law and Why Not to Torture a Terrorist

Sniping between lawmakers and the CIA over a report on the U.S. torture of terror suspects reached a fever pitch this week, as Senator Dianne Feinstein accused the CIA of spying on her intelligence committee as it was investigating the agency’s activities. But even as the infamous Senate torture report remains classified, a story unfolded in a U.S. federal court this week that provides a powerful example of why the Bush administration’s torture tactics were such a bad idea.

For the last two weeks, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti imam and alleged “spokesman” for al Qaeda, has been on trial in a New York courtroom. A son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, Abu Ghaith is allegedly the most senior leader of al Qaeda ever to face charges in the United States. When he was arrested last year, administration critics such as Senator Mitch McConnell complained Abu Ghaith was “an enemy combatant and should be held in military custody,” where he could have been “fulsomely and continuously interrogated without having to overcome the objections of his civilian lawyers.”

This week, we heard testimony that demonstrates exactly why the Obama administration was absolutely right not to do that.

Robert C. Koehler: Poster City of Abandonment

White flight, corporate flight . .

I grew up just outside Detroit and have felt an ache in my heart for this bleeding city for so many years now. It’s long been one of the country’s designated loser cities, beginning in the 1960s, when change hit it hard. The phrase at the time was “urban blight,” a social cancer with unexamined causes that, in the ensuing years, has gotten progressively worse.

A year ago this week, the city, which is predominantly African-American, lost its self-governance when the Republican governor of Michigan appointed an emergency financial manager, an overboss with powers superseding that of all elected officials – including the ability to rewrite laws, break contracts, privatize services and much more – on the premise that only an autocrat could straighten out the city’s disastrous finances. Four months later, Detroit made headlines as the largest city to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, but of course it wasn’t “the city” that did so; it was the emergency manager.

The city, in all its soul and complexity, had been reduced to a single voice: the voice of austerity and, of course, corporate interests.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Can a Divided Left Become a Populist Movement?

The echoes of Adolph Reed’s critique of the left in Harper’s magazine continue to reverberate. At its fringes, where the heat’s generated, it’s an argument about the relationship between the progressive movement and the Democratic Party. At its center, where there have been occasional glimpses of light, the talk is about building an independent populist movement that can affect real change.

That’s where the conversation should have been all along.

My initial assessment of Reed’s essay hasn’t changed. It started an important conversation — this one — and makes some telling points, but it’s diluted by score-settling and needless divisiveness. Unfortunately those flaws are also reflected in many of the responses to it.

There’s an element of vehement agreement in all this. Reed doesn’t dismiss electoral politics, and his left critics uniformly agree on the need for a strong independent left. So what are we really arguing about? People seem to have brought years of smoldering resentment to this conversation. It’s turning into a debate, not among people, but among peoples’ shadows.

Jill Richardson: Why California’s Drought Affects Us All

With so much of the nation’s food supply concentrated in the “Shake and Bake” state, its good weather is bad news for us all.

As a Californian, I have not gotten too much sympathy from friends and family about our rotten weather this winter. Yes, I said rotten weather. It’s been incredibly pleasant- except for a few times when the temperature crept up to 90 – but we’ve hardly had any rain.

Cry me a river, you might think. Especially if you live in a part of the country where the term “polar vortex” was added to your vocabulary in the past few months. Boo-hoo. It was too sunny and perfect every day.

California’s climate problems have nothing to do with human comfort – but they have everything to do with human food. And not just for California.

Unfortunately for the rest of the country, Californians provide a huge share of the nation’s fruits and vegetables. If we can’t grow crops because we have no water, everybody misses out.

Robert Reich: The ‘Paid-What-You’re-Worth’ Myth

It’s often assumed that people are paid what they’re worth. According to this logic, minimum wage workers aren’t worth more than the $7.25 an hour they now receive. If they were worth more, they’d earn more. Any attempt to force employers to pay them more will only kill jobs.

According to this same logic, CEOs of big companies are worth their giant compensation packages, now averaging 300 times pay of the typical American worker. They must be worth it or they wouldn’t be paid this much. Any attempt to limit their pay is fruitless because their pay will only take some other form.

“Paid-what-you’re-worth” is a dangerous myth. [..]

The “paid-what-you’re-worth” argument is fundamentally misleading because it ignores power, overlooks institutions, and disregards politics. As such, it lures the unsuspecting into thinking nothing whatever should be done to change what people are paid, because nothing can be done.

Don’t buy it.

Ralph Nader: What a Destructive Wall Street Owes Young Americans

Wall Street’s big banks and their financial networks that collapsed the U.S. economy in 2008-2009 were saved with huge bailouts by the taxpayers, but these Wall Street gamblers are still paid huge money, and are again creeping toward reckless misbehavior. Their corporate crime wave strip-mined the economy for young workers, threw them on the unemployment rolls and helped make possible a low-wage economy that is draining away their ability to afford basic housing, goods and services. Meanwhile, Wall Street is declaring huge bonuses for their executive plutocrats, none of whom have been prosecuted and sent to jail for these systemic devastations of other peoples’ money, the looting of pensions and destruction of jobs.

Just what did they do? Peter Eavis of the New York Times provided a partial summary:

   Money laundering, market rigging, tax dodging, selling faulty financial products, trampling homeowner rights and rampant risk-taking — these are some of the sins that big banks have committed in recent years.

Mr. Eavis then reported that “regulators are starting to ask: Is there something rotten in bank culture?”

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Health and Fitness NewsWelcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness News 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.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Ancient Grains for Breakfast

Ancient Grains for Breakfast photo recipehealthpromo-tmagArticle_zps31ba0eac.jpg

I had already decided that this week I would play around with breakfast grains when I noticed that food manufacturers are also coming up with new ideas. I rarely look at the breakfast cereals on the shelves in the supermarket or at Trader Joe’s, as it’s easier and cheaper for me to put together my own combos. But this week, as I reached for a container of steel-cut oats, I noticed several prepared mixes of grains and seeds like oats, quinoa and flax, mostly for hot cereal, that I hadn’t seen before. [..]

When I’m planning on porridge for breakfast on a weekday morning I begin the process the night before. I pour boiling water over the grains and cover the bowl with a plate. The next morning all I need to do is heat the mixture in the microwave for two to four minutes. I might also grate in some apple, but basically, hot cereal made this way requires no more fuss than a bowl of cold cereal with milk.

Sweet Oven-Baked Grits and Millet With Pecans and Maple Syrup

This sweet and grainy polenta makes a delicious brunch dish.

Rolled Oats With Amaranth Seeds, Maple Syrup and Apple

Amaranth and apple contribute texture and sweetness to this morning bowl.

Steel-Cut Oats With Amaranth Seeds, Chia Seeds and Blueberries

Amaranth and chia seeds pump up the nutritional content of this sweet and hearty morning bowl.

Oatmeal and Teff With Cinnamon and Dried Fruit

Cinnamon and dried fruit sweeten this oatmeal/teff mix.

Breakfast Wheat Berries

These fragrant Middle Eastern wheat berries can be stirred into yogurt or eaten on their own.

On This Day In History March 15

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.

March 15 is the 74th day of the year (75th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 291 days remaining until the end of the year.

In the Roman calendar, March 15 was known as the Ides of March.

On this day in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to urge the passage of legislation guaranteeing voting rights for all.

Using the phrase “we shall overcome,” borrowed from African-American leaders struggling for equal rights, Johnson declared that “every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.” Johnson reminded the nation that the Fifteenth Amendment, which was passed after the Civil War, gave all citizens the right to vote regardless of race or color. But states had defied the Constitution and erected barriers. Discrimination had taken the form of literacy, knowledge or character tests administered solely to African-Americans to keep them from registering to vote.

“Their cause must be our cause too,” Johnson said. “Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

The speech was delivered eight days after racial violence erupted in Selma, Alabama. Civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King and over 500 supporters were attacked while planning a march to Montgomery to register African-Americans to vote. The police violence that erupted resulted in the death of a King supporter, a white Unitarian Minister from Boston named James J. Reeb. Television news coverage of the event galvanized voting rights supporters in Congress.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. §§ 1973 – 1973aa-6 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S.

Echoing the language of the 15th Amendment, the Act prohibits states from imposing any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure … to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” Specifically, Congress intended the Act to outlaw the practice of requiring otherwise qualified voters to pass literacy tests in order to register to vote, a principal means by which Southern states had prevented African-Americans from exercising the franchise The Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, who had earlier signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.

The Act established extensive federal oversight of elections administration, providing that states with a history of discriminatory voting practices (so-called “covered jurisdictions”) could not implement any change affecting voting without first obtaining the approval of the Department of Justice, a process known as preclearance. These enforcement provisions applied to states and political subdivisions (mostly in the South) that had used a “device” to limit voting and in which less than 50 percent of the population was registered to vote in 1964. The Act has been renewed and amended by Congress four times, the most recent being a 25-year extension signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006.

The Act is widely considered a landmark in civil-rights legislation, though some of its provisions have sparked political controversy. During the debate over the 2006 extension, some Republican members of Congress objected to renewing the preclearance requirement (the Act’s primary enforcement provision), arguing that it represents an overreach of federal power and places unwarranted bureaucratic demands on Southern states that have long since abandoned the discriminatory practices the Act was meant to eradicate. Conservative legislators also opposed requiring states with large Spanish-speaking populations to provide bilingual ballots. Congress nonetheless voted to extend the Act for twenty-five years with its original enforcement provisions left intact.

Punting the Pundits

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Guardian Editorial Board: The Double Life of Dianne Feinstein

Senator Dianne Feinstein is frequently exasperating. The Democratic senator from California is one day ultra-liberal, in the lead in calling for gun reform. The next she is ultra-conservative, one of the staunchest defenders of the embattled National Security Agency.

The senator’s contradictory nature was on show for all to see on Tuesday, when she delivered an extraordinary speech from the Senate floor. It amounted to the biggest and most public rift between Congress and the spy community since the 9/11 attacks. Ms Feinstein, who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, which has oversight of America’s myriad spy agencies, accused the CIA of breaking into the committee’s computers. It is an extremely serious charge: a breach of the constitution, the executive branch tampering with the elected branch. She described it as “a defining moment for the oversight of our intelligence community”. [..]

It is about time Ms Feinstein used her powers as the democratically elected head of the intelligence committee to question the NSA with the same vigour – or even a small part of  it – that she is displaying towards the CIA. That would, indeed, be a defining moment for the oversight of the US intelligence community: all of it.

Paul Krugman: Fear of Wages

Four years ago, some of us watched with a mixture of incredulity and horror as elite discussion of economic policy went completely off the rails. Over the course of just a few months, influential people all over the Western world convinced themselves and each other that budget deficits were an existential threat, trumping any and all concern about mass unemployment. The result was a turn to fiscal austerity that deepened and prolonged the economic crisis, inflicting immense suffering.

And now it’s happening again. Suddenly, it seems as if all the serious people are telling each other that despite high unemployment there’s hardly any “slack” in labor markets – as evidenced by a supposed surge in wages – and that the Federal Reserve needs to start raising interest rates very soon to head off the danger of inflation.

Amy Goodman: If Feinstein and the CIA kiss and make up, will America up and forget torture?

Like all DC infighting, this will blow over, But we’ve already lost sight of the lives that have been ruined by interrogation

“What keeps me up at night, candidly, is another attack against the United States,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein said last month in what was, then, her routine defense of the mass global surveillance being conducted by the National Security Agency and other US intelligence agencies.

All that has changed now that she believes that the staff of the committee she chairs – the powerful, secretive Senate Select Committee on Intelligence – was spied on and lied to by the CIA. [..]

This week’s public spat between CIA-loyalist Feinstein and that agency might briefly upset the status quo, but they will make up. Sadly, it obscures a graver problem: the untold story of the United States’ secret policy of torture and rendition (the latter is White House lingo for “kidnapping”).

Ana Marie Cox: Paul Ryan’s ‘inner city’ comment might mean he’s racist, but he sure is classist

Does he think black people are lazy? He definitely thinks poor people are. And laws reinforce lawmakers with logic like that.

Poor Paul Ryan, in trouble again for saying something stupid about poverty. If only Paul Ryan knew more actual poor people.

Yesterday, in an interview on Bill Bennett’s radio show, Ryan unselfconsciously asserted the insight that conservatives seem to believe is theirs alone: work offers people dignity. Ryan, with an equal lack of thoughtfulness, went onto diagnose “generations of men” in the “inner cities” as “not even thinking about working or learning the value and culture of work”.

It’s this last bit that’s gotten Ryan in the most trouble, stirring up accusations of intentional (if subtle) racism. The logic is transitive and not direct: by “inner cities” Ryan meant black; by describing black men as not “learning” the “value and culture of work” – and since Charles Murray has called poor people “lazy” – Ryan was saying black men were lazy. So: “inner cities” = black people; “inner cities” = not valuing work; not valuing work = “lazy”; therefore what Paul Ryan really meant is “black people = lazy”.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: The White House Budget: A View From the Left

Republican House Speaker John Boehner calls President Obama’s new budget “irresponsible.” A New York Times headline calls it a “populist wish list.” But it’s neither of those things. The White House’s fiscal proposal is a cautious foray out of the president’s reflexive “compromise” mode.

Unfortunately, it also repeats and reinforces the deficit-reduction rhetoric which has misdirected the political debate for the last four years. It is limited in its scope and overly cautious in its sweep.

The nation is still in an economic crisis – a crisis of jobs, social mobility, wages and growth. We need to start focusing more on the lives that are being devastated by this crisis, and less on the artificial crisis of “debt reduction.” President Obama’s budget does too little, both rhetorically and economically, to address this crisis. At the same time, it contains changes that demonstrate populism’s growing power and influence, and it’s good to see that the President finally recognizes that the GOP will reject anything he proposes – even their own ideas.

How should the independent left respond? Unaligned populists and progressives must not lose sight of the need for a more transformative economic vision. The Democratic Party, and especially President Obama’s wing of it, must not define the leftmost boundary of political debate. If we are to see a “dream budget,” we need to dream bigger than this.

Jeff Bryant: Mayor De Blasio Has It Right On Charter Schools

It was Monday morning, and the folks at Morning Joe were already steamed. Joe Scarborough had his Very Serious scowl face on while Mika Brzezinski’s eyes were flashing with poised rage.

Their target: newly elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio who had arrived for the ritual grilling now so popular on broadcast television. And the topic: first, a softball lob about expanding pre-k education (“Who would be against that?”) with some polite back-and-forth about “how are we going to pay for it.”

But the real matter at hand was the subject of charter schools (starting around the 9:00 minute mark in a 28-minute segment). After a brief video clip of Governor Andrew Cuomo speaking at a rally of charter school fans in Albany, Brzezinski started the accusations toward de Blasio, “Are you against charter schools?” Doesn’t your position seem “personal?” And from Scarborough, “Doesn’t it look like your targeting Eva Moskowitz … What don’t you like about Eva Moskowitz?” [..]

Regarding new charter school applications, “of 17 charter schools that applied, 14 were approved,” and the charter chain operated by Moskowitz, Success Academy, won five out of the eight new schools it wanted.

Does that sound anti-charter to you?

This is what the debate about education policy – and charter schools in particular – so often comes to: So much sturm and drang about a favored trinket from the “education reform” tool box while matters of way more importance get neglected or even abused.

What could be more important than charter schools?

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