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- To follow up on yesterday's question of why Mitt Romney thinks states are better than the federal government as agents of implementing health care, it's worth noting that under the Affordable Care Act, states will be overseeing a lot of the nuts and bolts of setting up the exchanges and regulating insurers. What the federal government is doing is providing the framework and the funding for something that will make a difference in people's lives at the state and local level.
- A bold prediction: If Republicans actually get the votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they will complain that the inevitable Obama veto is evidence of yet another "unprecedented" violation of the Constitution and the will of the people.
- Charles Lane on extremism: "I am not suggesting a moral equivalency between the anti-slavery and pro-slavery forces. But I am suggesting an attitudinal equivalency -- one that has been played out repeatedly in our history, and that may play out again." And for a bonus dose of ridiculous centrist posturing, Wingnuts author John Avlon: "Bush Derangement Syndrome, though, was slower to boil than Obama Derangement Syndrome. In the wake of 9/11, the far left's insatiable appetite for moral equivalency made little impact, but, of course, the blame-America-first crowd did their best."
- Jonathan Chait touches on something important when he writes that liberals, unlike conservatives, do not view ideologically friendly blogs and cable anchors as replacements for the news. Back during the Great Blogger Revolution of the early naughties, the impetus behind startup liberal blogs was a frustration with reporting that was incredibly deferential to the Bush administration. Conservative blogs, by contrast were predominately of the "warblogger" variety, and these days are fashioning themselves as alternatives to the "liberal media." Yes, I know that Media Matters and Think Progress function under the assumption that conservative points of view are overrepresented, but I don't believe this is "conservative bias." The only bias in the news is, and always has been, toward power. The fact that people like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich remain newsworthy goes to show that the power structure in Washington is still, as the saying goes, wired for Republican rule.
- Remainders: "The group called the Guardians of the free Republics wants to 'restoreAmerica' by peacefully dismantling parts of the government, accordingto its Web site. It sent letters to governors demanding they leaveoffice or be removed"; somebody should ask Michael Steele when, exactly, the president "declare[d] economic success"; this Dan Quayle op-ed in The Washington Post does little to reverse his image as a dunce; nobody could have predicted that the "climategate" "controversy" would be deemed baseless; retraction: this wins the unofficial April Fool's Day contest; and Time magazine tackles the toughest questions of our day, such as which haircuts were the most politically scandalous.
--Mori Dinauer
