Vis Ezra Klein, link below
We'll get to the DOMA and Prop 8 cases that the Supremes seem reluctant (esp. with Prop 8) to rule on, but first, some other policy issues.
Guardian:
Guns don't offer protection – whatever the National Rifle Association says
Academics such as John Lott and Gary Kleck have long claimed that more firearms reduce crime. But is this really the case? Stripped of machismo bluster, this is at heart a testable claim that merely requires sturdy epidemiological analysis. And this was precisely what Prof Charles Branas and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania examined in their 2009 paper investigating the link between gun possession and gun assault. They compared 677 cases in which people were injured in a shooting incident with 684 people living in the same area that had not suffered a gun injury. The researchers matched these "controls" for age, race and gender. They found that those with firearms were about 4.5 times more likely to be shot than those who did not carry, utterly belying this oft repeated mantra.
Sarah Kliff:
GE could go to insurers and demand they change their payment models. It is, after all, the country’s sixth-largest company. That’s not a contract that a health plan wants to lose, but it still doesn’t have the clout of large government programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, which cover millions of Americans. Because of that, both have been able to launch more aggressive programs that require doctors’ performance to factor into their paychecks.
So, Galvin decided to do something a bit different, something that could make GE a bit more like those behemoth programs. He reached out to two-dozen other Fortune 500 countries and state agencies, who also had an interest in controlling health-care costs. That’s how, in 2010, nonprofit Catalyst for Payment Reform emerged.
Ezra Klein:
On Tuesday, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, and Alan Krueger, the chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, laid out their plan: Medicare. Or, to be more specific, Medicare plus the Affordable Care Act.
This isn’t, in their view, just a plan, or a theory, the way Ryan’s premium-support proposal is. It’s what we’re already doing, and there’s evidence that it’s already working — so why would we change course? If plan beats no plan, then surely ongoing success should beat untested new theory.
“Medicare and Medicaid are not the drivers of the health care costs,” Sebelius said. “They are growing more slowly than the rest of the health care sector overall. That’s been true for decades. Since the Affordable Care Act, they’re growing much more slowly than private sector spending.”
Roger Simon:
The ban on high-capacity gun magazines is also not in the base bill, but there is some hope for it. “It is uphill on gun magazines,” a source told me. “We are in the 40s (on senators willing to vote for it). By adjusting the number of rounds allowed in the clips, we can get to 50 votes and maybe then we can get to 60.”
This fight isn't over. The Connecticut effect, spurred by next week's CT state law passage, will be the next item that's part of the final push.
NY Times:
On the second day of intense arguments over the volatile issue of same-sex marriage, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who most likely holds the decisive vote, returned again and again to the theme that deciding who is married is a matter for the states. The federal government, he said, should respect “the historic commitment of marriage, and of questions of the rights of children, to the states.”
National Journal:
As attorney Paul Clement took to the Supreme Court to defend the Defense of Marriage Act on behalf of House Republicans, the lawmakers who hired him to do so stood silently by. It was the right thing to do, many Republican strategists say, to avoid distracting from the GOP’s core economic message.
But some members of the House Republican Conference thought their leaders should have done more to publicly stand behind an effort that is important to social conservatives.
“The silence was absolutely deafening and very disappointing to the millions of value voters that are in the party,” Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., told National Journal Daily.
Dana Milbank:
“To go back to Justice Kennedy’s point . . . ”
“With all due respect, Justice Kennedy . . . ”
“With respect, Justice Kennedy . . . ”
“As Justice Kennedy said . . . ”
May I take your coat, Justice Kennedy? What an elegant robe you’re wearing today, Justice Kennedy! You’re looking well today, Justice Kennedy.
The liberal justices were particularly solicitous of Kennedy on Wednesday because the Reagan appointee gave every indication that he would be voting to strike down DOMA, as it is known. Early in the oral argument, the conservatives — Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts (a silent Clarence Thomas can be assumed to be their tacit tagalong) — explored the idea that the case might be disposed of on the technical grounds that no injury had been proved, a technique that would avoid a ruling calling DOMA unconstitutional.
But Kennedy was having none of it. “It seems to me there’s injury here,” he said.
Social conservatives have already lost. Let's move on.