BOOM, there it is: AP/ABC News Confirm breaking 7M QHPs by Midnight | ACASignups.net

They underestimated Barack Obama again.  There are more brains in the White House now than at any time in history.  They know how to organize a camapaign - as they have proven by overcoming their own mistakes.  That takes teamwork. - gwc
BOOM, there it is: AP/ABC News Confirm breaking 7M QHPs by Midnight | ACASignups.net:

by Charles Gaba on Mon, 03/31/2014 - 10:58pm

Source: 

ABC News, 03/31/14: AP Sources: Health Law Sign-Ups on Track to Hit 7M

Beating expectations, President Barack Obama's health care overhaul was on track to sign up more than 7 million Americans for health insurance on deadline day Monday, government officials told The Associated Press.

...Two government officials confirmed the milestone, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter ahead of an official announcement.

OK, I've updated the "official projection" to 7,080,180 just for the hell of it, but I'm not trying to pretend that I had this thing nailed to the decimal point; my last real projection was between 6.9M - 7.0M, so I'm willing to divide 7,000,000 into whatever the final number is to find out how far off I am.

Believe me, I'd be perfectly happy if the final number as of 11:59pm ends up being 7.1M, 7.2M or even higher.

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Like Roads, Internet access should be free

The Constitution commands that there be a postal service.  That command today should include internet access.  Just like the mail, the government should deliver access to the internet to every home.

Susan Crawford, Former Special Assistant to President Obama on Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, talks to Ezra Klein about how the internet is too important to be left to the private market. 

An internet public option

16.75 Million insured thanks to Affordable Care Act

Charles Gaba, the uber ACA blogger, has compiled this chart.  The big number: 16,750,000 people have gained health insurance coverage thanks to the Affordable Care Act.  Democrats should be proud.  We have made a difference.  Despite the snotty disparagement and some self-inflicted wounds millions are now benefiting from this legislation - passed before the Tea Party surge of 2010.  - gwc

US News and World Report Law School Rankings: 2013 to 2014 Color-Coded Changes for All Reported Law School Statistics:

US News and World Report Law School Rankings: 2013 to 2014 Color-Coded Changes for All Reported Law School Statistics

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The American Scholar: Ten Best Sentences - Our Editors

I preach Strunk and White - short sentences, with active verbs, rhythm and sonority.  A good rule for essays, but perhaps not much else.  Read the ten and the many comments that follow.  Joan Didion's grabbed me because I just finished teaching a section on the Supreme Court's efforts to eliminate segregated education "root and branch". 1967 was not a very good year. 

And John Hersey captured the enormity of the ghastly way we finished what Japan started. 
- gwc

The American Scholar: Ten Best Sentences - Our Editors:

It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G.N.P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not.

—Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees—partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves.

—John Hersey, Hiroshima

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How Protestant Evangelicals shifted their abortion stance | GOPLifer

Chris Ladd is a blunt critic of the Republican Party but he is no RINO.  He really is a conservative - believing in things like small government, Edmund Burke, etc.  But he is not a racist and he opposes obscurantism.  This puts him in opposition to the GOP's most fervent base which formed as the result of a marriage between racist northern whites and racist southern whites.  They united around opposition to welfare, and integration.  But their shameless racism became unacceptable in polite society so they developed a code language, and added anti-abortion and an anti-tax sentiment that concurred with their opposition to spending for "them" but tolerated exceptions for the "deserving" like Medicare, Social Security, and veterans benefits. - gwc

How Protestant Evangelicals shifted their abortion stance | GOPLifer:

Abortion politics, like positions on school prayer, porn, divorce law, and other religious issues followed in the wake of segregation, not the other way around. The Southern Baptists declined to take an unequivocal stand against abortion rights for almost a decade after Roe v. Wade. The culture war got its impetus from desegregation, not from abortion.

By the late ’70′s, overt race-baiting was no longer tolerated on the public stage. The forces threatened by the Carter Administration’s decision were in no position to campaign openly in favor of segregation. They needed a proxy. In time, abortion and school prayer became convenient, race-neutral rhetorical banners beneath which Southern Protestant Evangelicals and Northern Catholics could march together, however uneasily. The tensions that once divided them have not faded away entirely, but have come to matter less and less as the “culture” issues they share in common take center stage.

That awkward marriage has in time produced a unique offspring, best symbolized by Sen. Rand Paul. The modern Neo-Confederate movement has now managed to synthesize an alliance between the conservative Northern Catholics who once supported George Wallace and Southern Dixiecrats on the basis of a shared interest in religious fundamentalism and a resentment of government efforts to strip religious groups of their policy influence.

Bouie is right to point out that evangelical abortion politics has changed dramatically over a single generation, but it was school segregation, not Roe, that provided the catalyst.

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Dignity Is a Constitutional Principle - NYTimes.com

`Dignity' is the demand of the subordinate and shunned everywhere.  It is the demand of striking workers, of, Black people in the civil rights movement, of women seeking equality, and of gay people.  Yet there are those in high places who disparage it.  Antonin Scalia spoke of "legal argle bargle" when gay rights were recognized in Windsor v. U.S..  His acolyte Kevin C.Walsh, now a law professor, recently disparaged Justice Kennedy's landmark opinions on gay rights "recognizable for "the glory and the annoyingness of their moral confidence and spiritual certainty".  Bruce Ackerman explains the core importance of the under-recognized dignity principle.  - gwc
Dignity Is a Constitutional Principle - NYTimes.com: 
by Prof. Bruce Ackerman

To be sure, the judges of the civil rights era also emphasized the link between institutionalized humiliation and the constitutional requirements of equal protection. Most famously, Brown v. Board of Education declared school segregation unconstitutional precisely because it stigmatized blacks, generating “a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” Yet once we recognize that Congress and the president broadened and deepened the nation’s commitment to Brown’s anti-humiliation principle, we can gain a larger perspective on contemporary civil rights struggles.

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Legal Ethics Forum: Proposed California bill would require advance fees to be deposited in the trust account

Amen. The proposed measure poses no significant burden, reassures clients, and motivates lawyers to get the work done.  An honest assessment of the ethical challenges of lawyers puts competence first, and procrastination second. - gwc
Legal Ethics Forum: Proposed California bill would require advance fees to be deposited in the trust account:
from the Legislative Counsel's digest of Assembly Bill 1515, introduced March 20, 2014

"This bill would additionally impose on an attorney the duty to deposit fees and expenses that have been paid in advance for legal services into a client trust account, which are to be withdrawn by the attorney only as fees are earned or expenses incurred. The bill would require the State Bar to adopt for approval by the Supreme Court any necessary amendments to its rules of  professional conduct to conform with this provision."

h/t John Steele

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Paul Griffiths on Richard Rodriguez - ReligiousLeftLaw.com

Thanks to Michael Perry who posted on Religious Left Law blog the Paul Griffiths (Duke) review of essayist Richard Rodriguez's book Darlings - a collection of meditations on being Catholic and Mexican and homosexual and American after 9/11. The review, titled Ulterior Lives, revealed Rodriguez and the reviewer to me. A particular pleasure is that this eloquent and generous piece appeared in First Things- a venue I am accustomed to spurning as the home of the willfully regressive. The excerpt below is essentially dust jacket copy. To get the magic you have to read the review - link below. - gwc
Paul Griffiths on Richard Rodriguez - ReligiousLeftLaw.com:
What kind of Catholic is ­Rodriguez? He is, by the account of this book (a more detailed account of his raising and formation can be had from Hunger of Memory and Days of Obligation) a regular Mass-goer; a lover of the Church; one who intends to stay in and with the Church until death; one who rarely goes to confession (he notes a thirty-two-year span when he did not go at all); one who loves the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (a ­gay-transvestite group that performs corporal works of mercy while also publicly mocking the Church), and Mother Teresa; and one who has deep and principled disagreements with some of the Church’s doctrinal positions on the nature and place of women, and on the acceptability of homosexual acts and the loves that accompany them. More important than all this, informing and subtending all this, is that he is the kind of Catholic who understands, represents, and tries to respond to the love of the Lord in a devastated world of pain.

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U.S. bypasses Korematsu plea : SCOTUSblog

My fellow student of Howard Zinn - Peter Irons - has waged a long campaign to erase the stain of the WWII Japanese incarcerations from our jurisprudence. He and others who represented Fred Korematsu and Gordon Hirabayashi gave it one more try in Hedges v. Obama as Adam Liptak recently reported in the Times. Hedges and other dissenting writers have often reported matters from "the other side".  Fearing that extensive contacts with `the enemy'  could be understood as support the writers challenged the statute embracing the principles of the post 9/11 authorization for the use of force.  - gwc
U.S. bypasses Korematsu plea (UPDATED) : SCOTUSblog:
by Lyle Denniston

The Obama administration, urging the Supreme Court to turn aside a new challenge to presidential power to detain individuals suspected of terrorism links, chose not to support a years-long campaign to get the Court to repudiate one of its most heavily criticized opinions from the World War II era.
In a brief filed this week in Hedges v. Obama (docket 13-758), the U.S. Solicitor General’s office said nothing about the 1944 ruling in Korematsu v. United States – a decision that upheld the conviction of a Japanese American for refusing to go to a wartime detention camp.

In January, government lawyers had been urged to use their reply to the Hedges petition to try to persuade the Court either to overrule outright the Korematsu decision, or at least to tell the Court that the government did not regard that precedent as support for any current detention authority.

The brief, filed Wednesday, did neither, focusing its argument mainly on the point that the individuals who filed the challenge — journalists, authors and political activists — did not have a right to sue because they actually were not threatened with detention and thus could not claim legal injury.
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Confirm Vivek Murthy for US Surgeon General : The Lancet

Confirm Vivek Murthy for US Surgeon General : The Lancet:

The Lancet

The first incarnation of the US Surgeon General was established in 1871 to oversee the administration of the US Marine Hospital System. In the intervening years, the role of the Surgeon General has evolved into “America's Doctor”—a spokesperson and advocate for the pressing public health issues of the day.

In 2013, Vivek Murthy was nominated by President Barack Obama as the next Surgeon General. A Harvard and Yale-educated internist and former emergency room physician who has served in a public health advisory capacity to the President, Murthy is a highly qualified candidate. The same passion for promoting and safeguarding the health of Americans that brought Murthy to the attention of the Obama Administration, however, has also put his confirmation in jeopardy.

At issue is a tweet that Murthy wrote after a mass shooting in December, 2012, that took the lives of 20 elementary schoolchildren and six staff in Sandy Hook, CT: “Tired of politicians playing politics w/ guns, putting lives at risk b/c they're scared of NRA. Guns are a health care issue. #debatehealth” and a January, 2013, letter on which he is a co-author that urges Congress to support an assault rifle ban and to require mandatory firearm safety training and waiting periods for those who wish to purchase guns. Seizing on this, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has charged that Murthy's fitness for the position is undermined by his support of “radical gun control measures” and has mounted an aggressive campaign to block his confirmation.

The NRA considers itself the largest and oldest civil rights organisation in America and has exerted that position in a long history of political advocacy. With a budget of around US$230 million and a membership of 5 million people, the NRA is a formidable opponent in numbers and in political sway. The simple senatorial majority required to confirm Murthy may well hinge on ten senators—all Democrats from conservative states such as Alaska and Louisiana where the influence of the NRA is most entrenched—who will be up for re-election this year. Under escalating pressure, there is a real concern that those ten senators may vote against Murthy, quashing his confirmation.

What is fascinating and chilling is the NRA's selective interest in the role of the Surgeon General. There is no precedent for a special interest group blocking a fully qualified candidate from the Surgeon General position. There is, however, a clear precedent for the Surgeon General to favour bold action, which may be counter to their brand of political advocacy.*****

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Live free and die - the price of voting Republican

The fourteen states where less than 10%  have obtained insurance under the Affordable Care Act.  Massachusetts has Romneycare so its numbers are low.  Hawaii is also a special case.  The basic message: voting Republican is dangerous to people's health. - gwc [graphic from the new York Times.]

PARTY OF GOVERNOR	STATE	WHO RUNS EXCHANGE	PCT. OF MARKET
D	Massachusetts	STATE	5%
R	South Dakota	FEDERAL	6%
R	Iowa	FEDERAL	6%
R	North Dakota	FEDERAL	7%
R	Oklahoma	FEDERAL	7%
R	New Mexico	FEDERAL	8%
D	Hawaii	STATE	8%
R	Alaska	FEDERAL	9%
R	Wyoming	FEDERAL	9%
R	Mississippi	FEDERAL	9%
D	West Virginia	FEDERAL	9%
D	Maryland	STATE	9%
R	Louisiana	FEDERAL	9%
R	Texas	FEDERAL	9%

John Boehner vs. the Tea Party, Part XVII | Mother Jones

How to get past the Tea Party caucus? Slip out the back, Jack. Kevin Drum has the details. - gwc
John Boehner vs. the Tea Party, Part XVII | Mother Jones:
It's hard not to laugh at this. The House Republican leadership needed to pass the annual Medicare doc fix, but they didn't want to raise taxes or cut other spending to pay for it. Nor did they want anyone to be forced to go on record voting for a bill that wasn't paid for. What to do?

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“The governor points out that the mention of a traffic issue in Fort Lee would not have been memorable or meaningful"

Randy Mastro - Gov. Christie's lawyer

“The governor points out that the mention of a traffic issue in Fort Lee would not have been memorable or meaningful” 

- Gibson Dunn Bridgegate report.

HERE is the REPORT
Governor Christie has gone from being blindsided to inattentive in his explanations of how such shenanigans as the George Washington Bridge closures were orchestrated by his staff and appointees. 

This is why you hire $650/hour lawyers: to blame it on the bad girl, Bridget Kelly, the woman scorned:

“Like the others involved in the lane realignment, events in Kelly’s personal life may have had some bearing on her subjective motivations and state of mind,” the report said.
“Her first known communication to [David] Wildstein about the lane realignment in mid-August 2013, for example, occurred around the time that her personal relationship with Stepien had cooled, apparently at Stepien’s behest and Stepien and Kelly had largely stopped speaking. Indeed, that fact may have affected how Kelly and Stepien conducted themselves and whether they communicated about the lane realignment,” the report stated.
“In sum, we find that Kelly approved the lane realignment plan, stayed involved throughout, and then participated in a cover-up of it afterward” .

Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer is another bad girl. She alleged that Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno told her that hurricane relief funds would be unlocked if she OK'd a deal for the Rockefeller Group, a client of Port Authority Chair and Christie finance chairman David Samson.

“Our investigation found that Mayor Zimmer’s allegations are, in material respects, demonstrably false,” the report said."

Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

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Obama greeted by Pope Francis

The Catholic rear guard was much agitated when Notre Dame University invited President Obama to speak.  No such scruples by the Pope.  His emphasis has been on dialog and openness.  Though actual doctrinal changes have been nil, the mood is much changed from that set by the censorious  inquisitor German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who preceded Bergoglio to the chair of St. Peter. - GWC

Supreme Court Oral Argument Shows How Religious Freedom Claims Have Become Ideologically Charged | Michael C. Dorf | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia

Liberals and conservatives have switched sides on the religious freedom debate, Cornell law prof Michael Dorf argues.  Liberals used to argue for the primacy of conscience (think loyalty oaths), and conservatives the opposite (national security trumps all).  But now liberals are pro-equality and conservatives pro-freedom.  More evidence that experience, not logic is the life of the law?
 - gwc
Torts Today: Supreme Court Oral Argument Shows How Religious Freedom Claims Have Become Ideologically Charged | Michael C. Dorf | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia:

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Torts Today: Labor Board Rules Northwestern Players Can Unionize - AFL-CIO

Torts Today: Labor Board Rules Northwestern Players Can Unionize - AFL-CIO: "The plantation that is major college football is a national disgrace.  As Dr. Andre Perry notes in the Hechinger Report "Black men among the top 25 BCS schools represent 3 percent of their student bodies but 60 percent of the football players. "  They are celebrated for their labor but slighted as students"

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Today's Oral Argument in Hobby Lobby - Nelson Tebbe - Balkinization

Updated to include transcript
Balkinization: Today's Oral Argument in Hobby Lobby: by Prof. Nelson Tebbe //Brooklyn Law School

" The oral argument in Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, which I attended today, provided some slight cause for optimism for those of us who have been arguing that accommodating the companies would raise serious concerns because it would mean shifting the cost of that accommodation onto third parties (the affected women employees). Not only did Solicitor General Verrilli open and close with the argument, but Justice Kennedy arguably displayed some sympathy for the point. First, Justice Kennedy asked Paul Clement (who was arguing for the companies) whether there are rules of statutory construction that should guide the Court in this case, such as the canon of constitutional avoidance. Later, Justice Kennedy asked directly what should happen when granting an accommodation for the companies would shift costs onto employees. Justice Kennedy asked whether the employer's interests should simply trump in such situations...."

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Mike Konczal for Democracy Journal: The Voluntarism Fantasy

The American rejection of socialism was so complete that it left those on the left weakened in the face of the essential conservative impulse: that government is best which governs least.  There are many manifestations: `libertarian' law professor Richard Epstein's "Simple Rules for a Complex World" rejects the fundamental premise of the New Deal: that social insurance and government regulation are necessary to humanize and limit the triumph of those who have property.  The basic contrast is between those who believe that social security rather than property-based individual liberty is the key to a decent society. This is celebrated by people like Tea Party Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) who opposes the New Deal and lauds "voluntary civil society".  Mike Konczal discusses the issues. - gwc
Mike Konczal for Democracy Journal: The Voluntarism Fantasy:

Ideology is as much about understanding the past as shaping the future. And conservatives tell themselves a story, a fairy tale really, about the past, about the way the world was and can be again under Republican policies. This story is about the way people were able to insure themselves against the risks inherent in modern life. Back before the Great Society, before the New Deal, and even before the Progressive Era, things were better. Before government took on the role of providing social insurance, individuals and private charity did everything needed to insure people against the hardships of life; given the chance, they could do it again.

This vision has always been implicit in the conservative ascendancy. It existed in the 1980s, when President Reagan announced, “The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern,” and called for voluntarism to fill in the yawning gaps in the social safety net. It was made explicit in the 1990s, notably through Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion, a treatise hailed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and William Bennett, which argued that a purely private nineteenth-century system of charitable and voluntary organizations did a better job providing for the common good than the twentieth-century welfare state. This idea is also the basis of Paul Ryan’s budget, which seeks to devolve and shrink the federal government at a rapid pace, lest the safety net turn “into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.” It’s what Utah Senator Mike Lee references when he says that the “alternative to big government is not small government” but instead “a voluntary civil society.” As conservatives face the possibility of a permanent Democratic majority fueled by changing demographics, they understand that time is running out on their cherished project to dismantle the federal welfare state.

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Contraceptive cases: One hearing, two dramas : SCOTUSblog

There's no doubt where I stand - NO business exception to the preventive care contraceptive mandate.  But there is a lot of doubt about Justice Kennedy and even about Justice Breyer (who is too rich a liberal for my taste).  Lyle Denniston does his usual masterful job in reporting on today's oral arguments in Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties. The stakes are high: Can an employer impose his/her own religious choices on employees, particularly women? - gwc
Argument recap: One hearing, two dramas : SCOTUSblog:
by Lyle Denniston

The Supreme Court, in a one-hour, twenty-eight minute session Tuesday, staged something like a two-act play on a revolving stage: first the liberals had their chance and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy gave them some help, and then the scene shifted entirely, and the conservatives had their chance — and, again, Kennedy provided them with some support.

So went the argument in the combined cases of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius.  The “contraceptive mandate” in the new federal health care law, challenged under federal law and the Constitution, fared well in the first scene, and badly in the second.

But the ultimate outcome, it seemed, will depend upon how Justice Kennedy makes up his mind.  There was very little doubt where the other eight Justices would wind up: split four to four.

In the first drama, Kennedy worried over the plight of women workers and he suggested that their interests could be protected with little cost to their employers.  In the second he worried over the plight of corporations owned by families opposed to abortion and he implied that forcing them to pay for it would be wrong.

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Live Blog: Contraception Cases at the Supreme Court -- Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties - Washington Wire - WSJ

Live Blog: Contraception Cases at the Supreme Court -- Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties - Washington Wire - WSJ:

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The Threat to the Palisades - Four Past Governors of New Jersey- NYTimes.com

Wow.  Four past governors of New Jersey in a Times Op-Ed call

on LG to abandon its (already approved) high rise headquarters design because it will mar the famous view of the Hudson River Palisades.  It is a NIMBY issue for me because I bought our apartment because of the view you see in the photos above. In the center of the frames would be LG's steel and glass tower unless the Appellate Division finds the heart to nix their plan. - gwc
The Threat to the Palisades - NYTimes.com:
by Brendan Byrne, Thomas Kean, Sr., James Florio, and Christine Todd Whitman

THE Palisades, a treasured American landmark, are under threat. The consumer electronics maker LG Electronics USA is preparing to construct a towering headquarters building along the Hudson River north of the George Washington Bridge, breaking the natural sweep of parkland and scenic vistas.

The project would set an unfortunate precedent for the construction of more high-rises along the ancient cliffs. But despite mounting public concern, this global manufacturer of TVs and appliances has refused to consider alternative designs that would preserve the historic setting.

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Amid Wave of Pro-Gun Legislation, Georgia Proposes Sweeping Law - NYTimes.com

I can't imagine how this man can be so gleeful at this accomplishment - passage of a guns everywhere bill.  I feel like we are living in some version of Day of the Triffids. The gun has become a talisman of some sort.  - gwc
Amid Wave of Pro-Gun Legislation, Georgia Proposes Sweeping Law - NYTimes.com: 
by Herbert Buchsbaum

"ATLANTA — Pro- and anti-gun forces do not agree on much, but they do agree on the breathtaking sweep of the Georgia legislation allowing guns in bars, schools, restaurants, churches and airports that is now awaiting the signature of Gov. Nathan Deal. Americans for Responsible Solutions, founded by Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman who was critically wounded in a mass shooting in 2011, calls it “the most extreme gun bill in America” and the “guns everywhere” legislation. The National Rifle Association, which lobbied for the bill, calls it “the most comprehensive pro-gun” bill in recent state history, and described the vote at the Capitol on Thursday as “a historic victory for the Second Amendment.”"

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Report Estimates Half of Vets on GI Bill Graduate - NYTimes.com

This is good news.  51.7% is a very respectable graduation rate.  I would like to think that it will be used to support the idea of providing more support to older college students.  Unfortunately many will draw the line at Vets because they are deserving.  True - but everyone deserves a chance.  - GWC
Report Estimates Half of Vets on GI Bill Graduate - NYTimes.com:WASHINGTON — A new report estimates that a little more than half of veterans who got college money under the GI Bill since 2009 eventually graduated, though many took longer to do it.

The report says the estimated vet graduation rate of 51.7 percent is slightly lower than traditional college students but higher than veterans' non-traditional peers — that is, other students who also tend to be older and have families and jobs.

The yearlong study was done by Student Veterans of America, an advocacy group, with help from the Veterans Affairs Department and the National Student Clearinghouse.

Officials say it's the most comprehensive study to date on graduation rates among vets under the GI Bill program, which has spent nearly $35 billion since 2009.

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The Catholic Roots of Obama’s Activism - NYTimes.com

President Obama will meet this week with Pope Francis whose turn toward the poor and toward reconciliation rather than denunciation has revived interest in the Catholic Church.  The Times reports that when he was a young community organizer he did that work on a church grant.  He has stayed closer to that mission than is often recognized.  Unlike the censorious Catholic law profs at Mirror of Justice, Obama like Francis recognizes the mission to help the weak as central to his work. That is why he retains the support of the Coalition of American Nuns.  They back his mandate of contraceptive benefits without cost sharing -  unlike the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.  The bishops adhere to the anti-birth control orthodoxy even though Catholics in the advanced countries have largely spurned the Church's teachings on sexuality.- gwc
The Catholic Roots of Obama’s Activism - NYTimes.com: by Jason Horowitz
"CHICAGO — In a meeting room under Holy Name Cathedral, a rapt group of black Roman Catholics listened as Barack Obama, a 25-year-old community organizer, trained them to lobby their fellow delegates to a national congress in Washington on issues like empowering lay leaders and attracting more believers.

“He so quickly got us,” said Andrew Lyke, a participant in the meeting who is now the director of the Chicago Archdiocese’s Office for Black Catholics. The group succeeded in inserting its priorities into the congress’s plan for churches, Mr. Lyke said, and “Barack Obama was key in helping us do that.”

By the time of that session in the spring of 1987, Mr. Obama — himself not Catholic — was already well known in Chicago’s black Catholic circles. He had arrived two years earlier to fill an organizing position paid for by a church grant, and had spent his first months here surrounded by Catholic pastors and congregations. In this often overlooked period of the president’s life, he had a desk in a South Side parish and became steeped in the social justice wing of the church, which played a powerful role in his political formation."

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Free contraceptives key to reducing abortion // Guttmacher Institute amicus brief

graphic by the Guttmacher Institute

The Guttmacher Institute is the leading non-profit educating people about sexual and reproductive health.  Its amicus brief in the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga wood cases to be argued this week shows the compelling interest in providing cost-free contraception to women.  Former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger explains that reducing unintended pregnancy will reduce abortions - since 40% of unintended pregnancies are aborted.

The most appealing argument made by the objectors is that since they believe that certain forms of contraception may prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus the medicine is an "abortifacient".  Since they consider that to be a sin, their consciences are burdened by complicity in making such an event possible.  As Marty Lederman explains here in his characteristically careful manner, the price that Hobby Lobby seeks to impose to salve the business owner's conscience is to deny all their female employees the right of access to approved contraceptives without cost-sharing provided by the Affordable Care Act - a/k/a Obamacare.


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In northern Maine, collaboration brings better health - latimes.com

In northern Maine, collaboration brings better health - latimes.com:

Many of the nation's healthiest communities are wealthy and have large numbers of college-educated residents. But northern Maine is among a handful of telling exceptions, making it an important guidepost as the country searches for ways to improve health.

Once a booming hub of America's lumber and fishing industries, the region now is among America's poorest. Smoking is common. So, too, is obesity.

Yet northern Maine ranks high on national measures of health, according to a yearlong review of healthcare data from communities around the country that The Times conducted with help from public health researchers.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-healthcare-collaboration-20140319-dto,0,2911326.htmlstory#ixzz2wfgUmzcv

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US first lady shows character during maiden visit to China[1]| Politics

US first lady shows character during maiden visit to China[1]| Politics: 

"US first lady Michelle Obama said she was amazed by the country’s culture when she tried her hand at Chinese calligraphy for the first time on Friday. "I want to try again, it’s beautiful," she said after writing the Chinese character 永 (yong), which means "forever" in English. She made the brush strokes under the guidance of a Chinese student at the Second High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University. The character she wrote was a typical one for calligraphy skills training. Yang Jie, the class teacher, said ancient Chinese calligrapher Wang Xizhi spent decades writing the character. "Mrs Obama has done very well as a beginner," she said."

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Mirror of Justice: How to explain the Justice Kennedy of Casey, Lawrence, and Windsor?

from the banner of Mirror of Justice
`a blog dedicated to the development of Catholic
legal theory'

The Catholic right is despairing, the world they seek to restore irretrievably lost to the rising 'secular religion of liberalism'.  Like others on the right they see virtue in jeopardy,  democracy nearly dead, a sort of apocalyptic thinking that fuels a view from the tower filled with laments.  This excerpt from the orthodox Catholic blog Mirror of Justice is by Kevin Walsh, a young Scalia vet who teaches at Richmond.  It captures both the despair and the disdain characteristic of the milieu. - GWC
Mirror of Justice: How would Bottum explain the Justice Kennedy of Casey, Lawrence, and Windsor?: by Kevin Walsh

"In their rhetoric at least, Kennedy's opinions in Casey, Lawrence, and Windsor exhibit "a sense of the sacred, but one that seeks the security of personal salvation through assuming the right stance on social and political issues." They exude "a self-perpetuating spiritual aura," and they reflect "social and political ideas elevated to the status of strange divinities . . . born of the ancient religious hunger to perceive more in the world than just the give and take of ordinary human beings, but adapted to an age that piously congratulates itself on its escape from many of the strictures of ancient religion." These opinions of Justice Kennedy's are recognizable for "the glory and the annoyingness of their moral confidence and spiritual certainty"." 

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Catholic Nuns Back Obamacare Contraception Access | Religion Dispatches

For a compendium of posts by Prof. Marty Lederman, the briefs, etc. go HERE.
Catholic Nuns Back Obamacare Contraception Access | Religion Dispatches:

The National Coalition of American Nuns has announced their support for women’s right to access contraceptives under the Affordable Care Act as the Supreme Court prepares to hear the historic Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood cases. While the plaintiffs in these cases are Mennonites and evangelical Christians, opposition to the contraceptive mandate was largely spearheaded by the Catholic bishops. Several key cases of Catholic non-profits, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, are making their way through the lower courts and may well end up in the Supreme Court themselves.“NCAN is dismayed that the Little Sisters of the Poor, the University of Notre Dame and other Catholic organizations are challenging the Affordable Care Act. Spurred on by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops these organizations are attempting to hold hostage all women by refusing insurance to them for contraceptives,” said the 2,000-member group in a statement.

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Vivek Murthy for Surgeon General — NEJM

Much of the impetus for automobile safety came from physicians in the 1950's who sounded the alarm about the slaughter on the highways which they correctly saw as a public health issue.  The Surgeon General's 1964 report Smoking and Health was transformative. Today's nominee for Surgeon General intends to focus on obesity, as he said in his Senate testimony.  But since he supports conventional measures to reduce gun violence he is anathema on the right - and losing support among Senate Democrats in states infected with Second Amendmentism.  - GWC
Vivek Murthy for Surgeon General — NEJM:
by Gregory D. Curfman, M.D., Stephen Morrissey, Ph.D., Debra Malina, Ph.D., and Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D

On February 27, a bipartisan group of senators on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee approved Murthy's nomination for surgeon general and forwarded it for a vote by the full Senate. But now, astonishingly, the nomination appears to be in jeopardy and may be delayed or withdrawn altogether. How could this have happened to such a distinguished and highly qualified nominee?

The answer lies with the National Rifle Association (NRA). It is of great concern to us and to many other members of the health care community that Murthy's nomination is in jeopardy because of NRA opposition. The NRA opposes Murthy solely on the grounds that he has advocated reasonable and mainstream forms of gun regulation, including an assault-weapons ban, a limit on ammunition sales, and required safety training. Given that there are more than 30,000 firearm deaths in the United States each year, Murthy's views on potential safeguards are unsurprising.

The critical question is this: Should a special-interest organization like the NRA have veto power over the appointment of the nation's top doctor? The very idea is unacceptable.

Despite the continuing American tragedy of mass shootings — Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech — the NRA has redoubled its efforts to prevent enactment of stricter firearm regulations. Lawmakers who run afoul of the NRA face political retribution. By obstructing the President's nomination of Vivek Murthy as surgeon general, the NRA is taking its single-issue political blackmail to a new level. With the record of past surgeons general as their guide, senators should do what is right for the health of our country by confronting the NRA and voting their own conscience. Dr. Murthy is an accomplished physician, policymaker, leader, and entrepreneur. He deserves the President's continued backing and should be confirmed.

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