Your one stop pundit shop.
Gail Collins takes a comical look at earmarks:
My own favorite target for extinction is a $9 million annual appropriation for museums and educational programs that highlight the “shared culture and tradition” of Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians and “children and families of Massachusetts.”
In other words, whaling.
This was originally the idea of Ted Kennedy and two colleagues from Alaska and Hawaii. Perhaps they had all just finished rereading “Moby-Dick” in a Senate book club. Or maybe somebody bet them they couldn’t think of an earmark that would apply to only their three states.
Timothy Egan has a scathing take on Sarah Palin and John Edwards:
Palin and Edwards are two of an American archetype, opportunists playing to outrage while taking care of themselves. They are both attractive, with that lucky combination of genes that rarely lands on more than one member of an extended family. They can both hold an audience without saying anything of substance, or even making sense.
They repeat certain phrases: “good people,” “real Americans” and “God’s will” for Palin; “hard-working folks,” “two Americas” and “millworker’s son” for Edwards. Code words, time-worn and simple, that say: I’m one of you. [...]
Political grifters, the smart ones, usually get out while the getting’s good. It’s always about timing: the trick is finding the mark, before the mark finds you.
John Bruton is disappointed that President Obama will not attend the upcoming EU-U.S. summit:
I am among those who believe that regular top-level contact between the European Union and the United States is a good use of time -- especially when there is no big announcement to be made. Routine meetings prevent misunderstandings from turning into crises. They also reduce the risk of megaphone diplomacy becoming the norm, because participants know they have other ways to get their points across.
Geng He wants the United States to help her get her husband back:
My husband, Gao Zhisheng, defied Beijing by representing people the government finds threatening. As a leading human rights lawyer in China, he fought for those who had been abused by police, those who had their land stolen by the government and those who were persecuted for their religious beliefs.
And now my husband is one of those persecuted people he so vigorously defended. Chinese authorities abducted Zhisheng on Feb. 4, 2009. But they did not officially arrest him and won't tell anyone where they've taken him. [...]
I must ask my new country to help my husband; the father of my two children. China won't listen to me. If our relatives who remain in China press the government too hard, they will be arrested. But China will listen to the United States.
E.J. Dionne says that an off-message Vice President Biden hit exactly the right note:
Vice President Biden is tired of seeing the Obama administration's economic stimulus plan demeaned, derided and dismissed, and he wanted to talk about it.
But a funny thing happened in the course of an interview at Biden's White House office on Tuesday afternoon. The vice president's passions poured forth not when he was offering his point-by-point defense of the economic recovery plan but on the question of whether the United States is in decline ... "I've sort of gotten off the Recovery Act," he said with a rueful smile. [...]
For Republicans, American power is rooted largely in military might and showing a tough and resolute face to the world. They would rely on tax cuts as the one and only spur to economic growth.
Obama, Biden and the Democrats, on the other hand, believe that American power depends ultimately on the American economy, and that government has an essential role to play in fostering the next generation of growth. [...]
Suddenly, Obama's approach is not about old-fashioned Democratic spending. It's about patriotism, competing successfully, investing to maintain American economic leadership. John F. Kennedy provided a slogan for such an effort 50 years ago: "Let's get America moving again." [...]
Transforming a listless national argument about the stimulus and health care into a larger debate over how to maintain American preeminence is both audacious and useful. Off-message, Biden found the right message.
Joan Vennochi wants the President to fight for change:
There’s still a universe of people who voted for the change Obama, not Brown, represents. That was clear in Nashua.
The crowd clapped politely during Obama’s prepared remarks when he talked about his plan to use $30 billion of repaid bailout loans to help community banks increase lending to small businesses.
But people stood up and cheered when he talked about “fixing a health insurance system that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people.’’ The president got another standing ovation when he said, “I am not going to walk away from these efforts.’’
The same thing happened when he took on Senate Republicans, criticizing them for backing away from a bipartisan fiscal commission as soon as he said he supported it. “You can’t walk away from your responsibilities to confront the challenges facing the country, because you don’t think it’s good short-term politics. We can’t afford that,’’ he said to applause and approving hoots. [...]
You don’t sell hope and change to a country and then back away from it just because Brown is going to Washington.
You fight for what you promised.
Lawrence Lessig thinks that what we need now is:
... a citizens movement to stop the Fundraising Congress. We need to demand change, including publicly-funded elections, a seven-year ban on lobbying for any member of Congress and amendments to the Constitution to assure that reform can survive the Supreme Court of John G. Roberts Jr.
Nor can one exaggerate the need for this reform. Our government is, as Paul Krugman put it, "ominously dysfunctional" at a time when the world desperately needs at least competence. Global warming, pandemic disease, a crashing economy -- these are not problems we can leave to distracted souls. We are at one of those rare moments when a nation must remake itself, to restore its government to its high ideals and the potential of its people.
Michael Traynor of the American Law institute says that the death penalty must go:
In the decade after the institute published its law, which was part of a comprehensive model penal code, the statute became the prototype for death penalty laws across the United States ...
Now, after searching analysis by our country's top legal minds, the institute has concluded that the system it created does not work and cannot be fixed. It concluded that we cannot devise a death penalty system that will ensure fairness in process or outcome, or even that innocent people will not be executed.
I am speaking for myself, not as a representative of the institute, but I can say with certainty that the institute did not reach these conclusions lightly ...
The death penalty cannot balance the need for consistency in sentencing with the need for individualized determinations. Its administration is unequal across racial groups. There is a grave lack of resources for defense lawyers. The law is distorted by the politics of judicial elections, and it consumes a disproportionate share of public resources. [...]
The American Law Institute could have chosen to do nothing. But having laid the intellectual and legal groundwork for the modern death penalty, it concluded that it had a responsibility to act now that the system's fatal flaws have fully emerged.
The withdrawal of the model death penalty statute recognizes that it is impossible to administer the death penalty consistently and fairly, and it therefore should not remain a punishment option in this country. The institute could no longer play a role in legitimizing a failed system. How much longer can any of us?