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- FactCheck.org has a useful chronology and correction of the right-wing meme that one consequence of passing the Affordable Care Act will be the hiring an additional 16,000+ IRS agents to enforce the individual mandate. And it's not as though this fiction is confined to Glenn Beck's chalkboard, it's been repeated by figures as prominent as George Will. Of course, partisan gamesmanship -- House Republicans extrapolated the figure from a wide-ranging CBO estimate -- was responsible for pushing this piece of propaganda, but it's proliferation was dependent on conservatives uncritically assuming that the ACA "takeover" of health care naturally requires G-men to crack down on dissent.
- Mitt Romney reads the writing on the wall and finally admits that there are some similarities between the health-care reform bill he signed into law as Massachusetts governor and the Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama. But Romney has a caveat: "I like states being able to do what we did -- not the federal government." Why? What is it about doing this at the federal level that makes it less desirable than doing it at the state level? I know this reflexive for the "states' rights" crowd, what is the precise, technical argument that states are better equipped to do health care? Is this just, again, about size?
- Speaking of state-level solutions to national problems, there are some serious implications for calling a constitutional convention, most of which Dylan Matthews recounts here. But Mori, don't you believe in democracy? Don't you believe politicians should "listen to the people?" But the public is largely uninformed about policy. You shouldn't take the lead of "the people" if they are ignorant. And more to the point, there is no consensus among "the people." All of which is to say, a constitutional convention is impractical in the absence of such consensus. In the meanwhile, as imperfect as it is, we'll just have to rely on our representatives doing "our" will and vote for somebody else when "we" believe they are failing in this capacity.
- The most amazing aspect of the fact that there is an ongoing "debate" in this country about how we need special rules to deal with terrorists is that it completely abandons several widely shared assumptions about crime and punishment in the United States. Innocent until proven guilty. The right to a fair trial. The right to be detained only when charges are brought against you. The illegality of cruel and unusual punishment, including torture. And most important of all, a point completely lost on the right-wing, the fact that if you give the president of the United States the power to declare anyone a terrorist and detain them for as long and as harshly as he wishes, then the President of the United States can declare you a terrorist for any reason, detain you, and torture you. And there would be nothing you can do about it.
- Remainders: I think the Pew Research people definitely win the informal April Fool's Day contest; Democrats are losing their brand advantage; Ross Douthat is still unable to distinguish between consensual and non-consensual sex; the RNC sure has flourished under Chairman Steele; and the new theory emerging from the libertarian right: the FBI is infiltrating the Tea Party movement.
--Mori Dinauer
