The Commentariat -- Nov. 2, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

Ben Geman of the Hill: "President Obama on Friday demanded 'new strategies' to boost the nation's resilience to powerful storms, drought, heat waves and other dangerous weather linked to climate change. Obama issued a wide-ranging executive order designed to support 'climate resilient' infrastructure investment in states and communities. It also calls on federal agencies to change their policies and rules 'to make the Nation's watersheds, natural resources, and ecosystems, and the communities and economies that depend on them, more resilient in the face of a changing climate.'"

Sarah Wheaton of the New York Times: "A federal court on Friday ruled that the health care law's mandate that employers provide free coverage for contraception infringed on individual religious liberty. The case, Gilardi v. the Department of Health and Human Services, was the latest setback for the Obama administration as it struggles to fix the crippled insurance enrollment website, HealthCare.gov. However, the fight over the mandate long preceded the law's enactment and will most likely go to the Supreme Court." CW: Here's a surprise: the two judges ruling in favor of the plaintiffs are Republican appointees; the dissenting judge is a Democratic appointee. Now try to guess why Republicans are filibustering President Obama's nominees to the D.C. court. Give 'em hell, Harry. ...

... ** Laura Tillman & John Schwartz of the New York Times: "On Monday, Judge Lee Yeakel of United States District Court in Austin blocked enforcement of the [Texas anti-abortion] law's requirement of physician-admitting privileges, saying it is 'without a rational basis and places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion.' On Thursday, three judges on the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans -- Priscilla R. Owen, Jennifer Walker Elrod and Catharina Haynes -- allowed enforcement to begin.... [Friday] many clinics across the state said they had stopped providing abortions and were preparing to shut down, leaving women seeking their services distraught." CW: All three of these compassionless judges are George W. Bush appointees. ...

... Charles Blow on federal judicial appointees: "This week we were reminded once again of how much sway federal judges hold as they dealt several setbacks to liberal causes." ...

... ** How did we get these winger judges? Rachel Maddow elaborates on the horrors of Dubya judicial nominations. Thanks to contributor safari for the lead:

... Emily Bazelon & Dahlia Lithwick of Slate have more. Read it all.

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "Next week -- soon after the [Supreme C]ourt's marshal announces a new session with the phrase 'God save the United States and this honorable court' -- the justices will once again tackle the role of religion in the public square."

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times debunks "another ObamaCare horror story.... The sad truth is that [ACA 'victim' Deborah] Cavallaro has been very poorly served by the health insurance industry and the news media.... The reporters who interviewed her without getting all the facts produced inexcusably shoddy work -- from Maria Bartiromo on down. They not only did her a disservice, but failed the rest of us too." ...

... Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: "Television news, the medium with the widest audience, has yet to get one of these stories right.... Maybe TV news reporters should just take to reading The LA Times on air." ...

Rich Guy Must Pay Higher Premium! Tommy Christopher: Best-selling author David Frum, who makes more giving one speech than the cost of his annual premium, will have to pay almost $200 more a month under ObamaCare for his family's health policy for approximately the same benefits as he had before. But Frum also has "some pre-existing condition," "so he's getting insurance he couldn't get before." In addition, Frum will be able to keep his adult kids on the policy, & all family members are now covered for "routine preventive care." Christopher calculates that Frum is actually saving out-of-pocket expenses, assuming the family avails itself of some of the routine benefits under ObamaCare. In other words, another crock. Read the whole post. ...

... Fox "News" Stars: Women should pay more for health insurance than do men because women are hypochondriacs or pregnant or something. Anyway, they're always going to the doctor, and they live longer and it isn't fair to be a rich white teevee star. Kat Stoeffel of New York reports. ...

... CW Healthcare.gov Question: If I get sick listening to these ObamaCare sob stories, will my new policy cover my illness? ...

... ** Jonathan Chait of New York: "If you believe the healthy are entitled to keep the financial benefits of their good health, then you must also believe the sick must be denied medical care. Should that principle be the foundation of our health-care system?"

Can the Major TV Media Get Anything Right? Media Matters: "Following the revelation that a key 'witness' featured in this week's CBS 60 Minutes report on Benghazi previously claimed that he never got near the besieged diplomatic compound on the night of the attacks, Media Matters chairman David Brock is calling on CBS to retract its story. On October 27, CBS aired a report on the Benghazi attacks that featured the claims of a supposed eyewitness using the pseudonym 'Morgan Jones.' Today, the Washington Post revealed that Jones, whose real name is Dylan Davies, previously filed a report with his security contractor employer saying that he 'could not get anywhere near' the compound the night of the attack. The flawed CBS report has since been trumpeted by conservative media and Republican politicians." The WashPo report, by Karen DeYoung, is here.

Do-Nothing Congress Decides to Do Less. Rachel Maddow reports. Next year's schedule isn't going to give the House much time to pass laws against lazy poor people:

CW: I've occasionally called Ted Cruz the Republican Party Leader. I've done so to be snide, but I didn't think the characterization was necessarily wrong. Turns out Republicans are happy with my snark. Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: "PPP's newest national survey finds that in the wake of the shutdown, Republican voters now view Ted Cruz as their party's leader.... 21% picked Cruz to 17% for Chris Christie, and 15% for John Boehner."

Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "In a warning shot to outside conservative groups, the National Republican Senatorial Committee this week informed a prominent Republican advertising firm that it would not receive any contracts with the campaign committee because of its work with a group that targets incumbent Senate Republicans. Even more striking, a senior official at the committee called individual Republican Senate campaigns and other party organizations this week and urged them not to hire the firm, Jamestown Associates, in an effort to punish them for working for the Senate Conservatives Fund, a group founded by Jim DeMint...." ...

... Bill Barrow: The GOP civil war plays out in an Alabama primary race for the Congressional seat vacated by Rep. Jo Bonner.

The Plagiarist, Ctd. Alexander Burns of Politico: "A top adviser to Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday night that the Kentucky Republican would be 'more cautious in presenting and attributing sources' in the future, after Politico confronted the senator's office with fresh examples of Paul speeches that borrowed language from news reports without citing the original source." In one speech, Paul borrowed word-for-word from an AP report; in another, he spoke verbatim from a Focus on the Family publication. In neither case, did he attribute his source. "And even as Paul's chief adviser promised greater caution in the future, the senator's political operation also disputed the idea that he had done anything wrong.... 'Only in Washington is something this trivial a source for liberal media angst,' said Paul adviser Doug Stafford, the senator's former chief of staff." CW: Yes, Politico is part of the "liberal media." Ha!

Alison Smale of the New York Times: "Edward J. Snowden ... has appealed to Washington to stop treating him like a traitor for revealing that the United States has been eavesdropping on its allies, a German politician who met with Mr. Snowden said on Friday." ...

... Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker speaks with Ryan Lizza & Steve Coll about the NSA spying:

Frank Rich talks about things.

Edward Wyatt of the New York Times: "The Federal Communications Commission, seeking to revive the sagging fortunes of AM radio, has proposed removing or updating regulations that station owners believe have left many AM channels on the precipice of death. The commission is seeking public comment on numerous changes, required before it adopts its final rules."

Presidential Election 2012

Jonathan Allen of Politico: "President Barack Obama 'never considered' replacing Vice President Joe Biden on the 2012 ticket with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Friday in response to a report in the forthcoming book 'Double Down: Game Change 2012.' ... 'The president never considered that,' Carney said, adding that if it had been brought to Obama, 'he would have laughed it out of the room.'"

Gubernatorial Races

Dana Milbank: "If Ken Cuccinelli II loses his bid to be the next governor of Virginia on Tuesday..., the date of the Republican defeat will be traced back to May 18.... Supporters of Cuccinelli, the state attorney general, had scrapped the GOP gubernatorial primary, which probably would have resulted in the nomination of Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a mainstream conservative who likely would have cruised to victory. But Cuccinelli's supporters forced the party to cut the electorate out of the process, replacing the primary with a convention. There, a smaller number of tea party activists handed the nomination to Cuccinelli...." ...

... Washington Post Editors: "... Mr. Cuccinelli's interest in jobs and the economy is an 11th-hour political makeover, developed for electoral purposes, that bears no resemblance to the agenda he has pursued aggressively in public office for more than a decade. Mr. Cuccinelli did not become a hero to the tea party by accident; he earned that distinction with a sustained focus on conservative social issues. As a state senator, his motivating passions were God, guns, gays and abortion; as attorney general, he won notoriety mainly by fighting the Obama administration over health care and climate change.... There's no reason to be fooled now."

     ... CW: I absolutely love that this ad, which liken Cuccinelli to Rick Santorum, centers on Google searches ... because you know what you get when you Google Santorum.com

Adam Smith of the Tampa Bay Times: Charlie Crist, the former Republican governor of Florida turned-Democrat, has officially filed as a Democratic candidate for governor. He will make an announcement Monday morning in St. Petersburg, Florida.

News Ledes

Guardian: "Pakistan's security forces have been put on high alert after a CIA drone attack killed the leader of the country's Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, in the lawless tribal areas. A Pakistani government minister said the strike by an unmanned aircraft on Friday had destroyed attempts to hold peace talks with the militants which began this week."

Los Angeles Times: Witnesses recount their close encounters with the LAX gunman

The Commentariat -- Nov. 1, 2013

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked the confirmation of two of President Obama's nominees, one to a powerful appeals court and another to a housing lending oversight post, setting up a confrontation with Democrats that could escalate into a larger fight over limiting the filibuster and restricting how far the minority party can go to thwart a president's agenda." ...

... Niels Lesniewski of Roll Call: "'I think it's worth considering it,' Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said of changing Senate rules on nominees after Republicans filibustered two nominees." CW: Biden is, of course, president of the Senate. ...

... John Stanton of BuzzFeed: "Senate Republicans Thursday successfully blocked the nomination of Rep. Mel Watt to head up the federal agencies overseeing the real estate industry, only the second time a sitting member of Congress has had a nomination blocked since before the Civil War." ...

... Susan Davis of USA Today: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., vowed to try again after Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked the nomination of Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., to head the agency that oversees mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at a critical time for the industry. 'Republicans' unprecedented obstruction continued today with a step that we have not seen since the Civil War,' Reid said."

Mike Lillis of the Hill: "Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pushed back hard Wednesday against those hammering ObamaCare for forcing some patients out of their current insurance plans. The House minority leader said the number of patients who will have to change plans under the law is small, and they will ultimately benefit by moving into new plans with better coverage.... Pelosi said the sharp rise in medical costs, combined with the transient nature of the individual insurance market, would eventually have forced people out of their individual plans -- ObamaCare or not." ...

** Todd Purdum in Politico: "To the undisputed reasons for Obamacare's rocky rollout -- a balky website, muddied White House messaging and sudden sticker shock for individuals forced to buy more expensive health insurance -- add a less acknowledged cause: calculated sabotage by Republicans at every step." Purdum outlines many of the sabotage tactics.

... David Firestone of the New York Times: "The so-called cancellation letters waved around at [Wednesday's] hearing [on the ACA] were simply notices that policies would have to be upgraded or changed. Some of those old policies were so full of holes that they didn't include hospitalization, or maternity care, or coverage of other serious conditions. Republicans were apparently furious that government would dare intrude on an insurance company's freedom to offer a terrible product to desperate people.... In the face of absurd comments and analogies..., Ms. Sebelius never lost her cool in three-and-a-half hours of testimony, perhaps because she knows that once the computer problems and the bellowing die down, the country will be far better off." ...

... The "Daily Show" issues a correction:

... Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker interviewed "Jonathan Gruber, an M.I.T. economist and an architect of both Mitt Romney's health-care plan in Massachusetts and Obama's Affordable Care Act" about the "winners & losers" ObamaCare will create. CW: Gruber's assumptions about the "losers" so annoyed me that I wrote to him about it. ...

... Update: I wrote to Gruber:

From the Ryan Lizza piece...:

... three per cent of the population, will have to buy a new product that complies with the A.C.A.'s more stringent requirements for individual plans. A significant portion of these roughly nine million Americans will be forced to buy a new insurance policy with higher premiums than they currently pay. ...

Gruber summarized his stats: ninety-seven per cent of Americans are either left alone or are clear winners, while three per cent are arguably losers. 'We have to as a society be able to accept that,' he said. 'Don't get me wrong, that's a shame, but no law in the history of America makes everyone better off.

Wait a minute. These people are 'giving up' their junk policies, some of which don't even pay for hospitalization, to get -- and pay for -- more comprehensive policies. Some of these 'losers' will also get tax subsidies and/or Medicaid assistance. (Yes, there may be some real losers in those states that refuse to accept the Medicaid expansion, but they still can get the tax breaks, at least at this point.) Most of those among the 3 percent who don't get assistance can afford to pay for their own insurance -- so the rest of us don't have to cover their hospitalizations, maternity complications, etc., -- via higher premiums on our own policies -- when they get sick & can't afford to pay the resulting huge medical bills.

These people, for the most part, are 'losers' only if you mean by losers that they're financially-comfortable jerks complaining about having to pull their own weight. What's a shame is not that they have to pay more for better policies but that they are caterwauling about it.... Your characterization of the 3 percent as losers is misleading.

Gruber responds,

that is a good point. Really it comes down to whether these folks were in crappy policies that they misunderstood, or whether they were rationally buying very skinny coverage. If the latter they have some complaint, but to my mind it is pretty small relative to the gains to everyone else. ...

     ... Ed Kilgore makes pretty much the same point I made to Gruber: "The bottom line is that the 'losers' are people with really bad individual insurance policies that expose them to ruinous out-of-pocket costs.... But these 'victims' do get to buy much better insurance without fear of being disqualified for pre-existing conditions, and if their incomes are below 400% of the federal policy level, they qualify for tax credits to help pay for it." ...

     ... Turns out bloggers were much taken with Lizza's piece; economist Justins Wolfers even created a pie chart reflecting Gruber's numbers. ...

     ... Josh Barro of Business Insider claims -- accurately, I think -- that Gruber's analysis is even worse than I realized. Barro asserts that Gruber's "numbers are garbage," & explains why. CW: How could this happen? Gruber is the expert's expert on the ACA & RomneyCare. AND he's an MIT professor. So the tendency is to defer to him. The Villagers simply accept an argument from authority -- which is no argument at all. Paul Krugman wrote an excellent blogpost a few weeks back (I think I linked it then) or "experts" v. "just bloggers" that applies here. ...

... Joshua Holland of Moyers & Co. debunks the latest ObamaCare horror claim, this one by conservative "intellectual" Avik Roy. ...

... Henry Aaron, in the New York Daily News, has a good piece that explains those policy cancellations to the somewhat dimwitted: "Obamacare is removing insurance products from the market that are bad for your health." You could send it to your somewhat dimwitted friends. ...

... AND a reminder from Josh Barro: "The American health care system sucks."

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "In recent stump speeches and policy remarks, Bill and Hillary Clinton have offered sharp criticisms of the partisan gridlock paralyzing Washington, signaling a potential 2016 campaign theme if Hillary Clinton chooses to run for president. The Clintons' critiques in recent days have been explicitly aimed at congressional Republicans, who helped spur a 16-day government shutdown and potential debt default in October. But their remarks also seem to contain an implicit rebuke of President Obama's failure to change Washington as he pledged when first running for the White House." CW: Right. Because Obama should have been able to turn sludge into honey. ...

... Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "President Obama's top aides secretly considered replacing Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Hillary Rodham Clinton on the 2012 ticket, undertaking extensive focus-group sessions and polling in late 2011 when Mr. Obama's re-election outlook appeared uncertain.... The idea of replacing Mr. Biden with Mrs. Clinton had long been rumored, but the journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, in their new book, 'Double Down,' provide a detailed description of the effort inside the senior circle of Obama advisers. It was pushed by the chief of staff at the time, William M. Daley...." ...

... Sean Sullivan & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post outline a few more revelations from the Halperin-Heilemann book.

** Paul Krugman: "Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn't really stand for anything else -- and only willfully blind observers can fail to see that reality." ...

... War on Poor People, Ctd. Alex Rogers of Time: "Just as Congress sits down in a new bipartisan conference committee to the hard work of funding the future of the food stamp program, benefits are set to drop Friday as stimulus spending dating from the 2009 recession expires. The cut of $5 billion for fiscal year 2014 equals 21 fewer meals a month for a family of four, or 16 fewer meals for a family of three, according to the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.... The decline in benefits is unlikely to be reversed anytime soon. In fact, Congress is preparing to impost [sic.] further cuts in the coming years."

Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker has some thoughts on "What did the President know & when did he know it"?

They could well be spying on the president, for all I know. He has a cell phone, and, in fact, my guess is that they have collected data on the president's phone. -- Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.), on the NSA

Here is one instance where Rick Hertzberg & I more-or-less agree with Li'l Randy (tho neither of us assumes the NSA is listening in to the President's calls). But do read on. We ain't with Sen. Conspiracy Theories on much. -- Constant Weader ...

... CW: The Plagiarist. Aah, I was wrong. I said Rand Paul learned everything he knows about science from science fiction movies. Forget the movies. Li'l Randy doesn't have time to go to the movies. Turns out he learned everything he knows about anything from copying -- verbatim -- Wikipedia movie synopses. Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed elaborates. Thanks to contributor Tommy Bones for the lead. Sorry I missed it earlier. ...

Well, we, we borrowed the plot lines from 'Gattaca,' a movie, and I gave credit to the people who wrote the movie. I think they're arguing about whether things are properly footnoted. And there are technicalities to this. But nothing I said was not given attribution to where it came from.... The rest of it is making a mountain out of a molehill from people I think basically who are political enemies and have an ax to grind. -- Rand Paul responding to a Rachel Maddow segment in which she outed him for plagiarism

This is something that high school students know not to do. And you are presenting yourself as potential candidate for president. -- Rachel Maddow, responding to Rand Paul

The speeches do appear on Paul's website, without footnotes. -- Andrew Kaczynski ...

If I didn't care so much about our country, I would hope he would get the Republican nomination for president, because that would mean the end of the Republican Party. -- Give-'em-Hell Harry (Reid, that is), on Ted Cruz

... The Essential Cruz. David Korn of Mother Jones: Ted Cruz's father Rafael Cruz, "speaking to the North Texas Tea Party on behalf of his son ... [while Ted] was then running for Senate, called President Barack Obama an 'outright Marxist' who 'seeks to destroy all concept of God,' and he urged the crowd to send Obama 'back to Kenya.' ... It's appropriate to take Rafael Cruz into account when evaluating his son the senator. Ted Cruz ... has often deployed his father as a political asset. He routinely cites his Cuban-born father, who emigrated from the island nation in 1957, when he discusses immigration and justifies his opposition to the bipartisan reform bill that passed in the Senate. (Ted Cruz hails his father as a symbol of the 'American dream' ....) Moreover, Ted Cruz campaigns with his father.... Rafael Cruz regularly speaks to tea party and Republican groups in Texas as a surrogate for his son...." ...

... ** "Sins of the Father." Ed Kilgore has an excellent take on Corn's report.

Brad Plumer of the Washington Post: A Brookings Institution study finds that the "Cash for Clunkers" program of 2009 wasn't a very efficient stimulus.

Senate Race

Charles Pierce is thrilled that some crazy teabaggers will or may primary Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). Pierce is particularly happy about the potential candidacy of "historian" David Barton, whose "life's work is dedicated to proving that the Founders were as god-nutty as he is."

Local News

Joseph Goldstein of the New York Times: "A federal appeals court on Thursday halted a sweeping set of changes to the New York Police Department's practice of stopping and frisking people on the street, and, in strikingly personal terms, criticized the trial judge's conduct and removed her from the case. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, 'ran afoul' of the judiciary's code of conduct by compromising the 'appearance of impartiality surrounding this litigation.' The panel criticized how she had steered the lawsuit to her courtroom when it was filed nearly six years ago." ...

... Scheindlin's removal outrages Jeff Toobin.

News Ledes

CBS News: "A gunman walked into Terminal 3 at Los Angeles International Airport Friday morning, pulled an assault rifle out of a bag and opened fire, killing a Transportation Security Administration officer at a security checkpoint and wounding three other TSA officers, authorities and law enforcement sources said. U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed to CBS News correspondent Bob Orr that the suspect has been identified as Paul Ciancia, 23, of Pennsville, N.J. Officials said he also spent some time in the Los Angeles area. A preliminary review of government terror databases and watchlists found no connections to Ciancia, and he does not have a significant police record, Orr reports."

     ... The Los Angeles Times story is here.

Washington Post: "A U.S. drone strike killed the chief of the Pakistani Taliban on Friday, local intelligence officials said, in an attack that could cripple the group but undermine an effort by Pakistan’s government to engage militants in peace talks. If verified, the death of Hakimullah Mehsud would be a victory for U.S. officials who have spent years hunting down a leader implicated in a 2009 attack that killed seven Americans at a CIA outpost in eastern Afghanistan. But the drone strike also threatened to add to strains between the United States and Pakistan, whose new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, had announced earlier in the day that his government would begin talks aimed at reaching a negotiated settlement with the group."

New York Times: "An international scientific panel has found that climate change will pose sharp risks to the world's food supply in coming decades, potentially reducing output and sending prices higher in a period when global food demand is expected to soar."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 31, 2013

This came to me via democrats.org with a request for a donation at the bottom. Naturally, I cropped that out. But feel free to give.

... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama on Wednesday offered an impassioned defense of his Affordable Care Act, promising to fix the malfunctioning health care website but pledging to 'grind it out' over the weeks and months ahead to prove the law's Republican critics wrong. Speaking at Faneuil Hall, where Mitt Romney, his onetime rival for the White House, signed into law a similar health care program for Massachusetts, the president accused his opponents of trying to undermine the national law. But he said the experience in the Bay State gives him hope." ...

... Justin Sink of the Hill: "Vice President Joe Biden apologized Wednesday for the botched rollout of HealthCare.gov, calling the technical issues plaguing the website 'inexcusable' ... during an interview with HLN. The vice president said President Obama 'tried to get online'" to check out the website glitches.... He also depicted the president as diligent in the weeks leading up to the debut of the website. 'We were under the impression that it was ready to go,' Biden said. 'We had the president to his credit almost seven weeks out asking, was it ready, and we were told by the pros we were all ready to go -- all online.'"

... John Dickerson of Slate: "What started as a website debacle is growing into a relitigation of the underlying operation. The Affordable Care Act passed with cracks and inconsistencies that are now re-emerging in the context of the website's bad launch. In some cases that simply gives Republicans new lines of attack. In others, like this argument over keeping your old health care, the failure of the site is weakening the administration's ability to engage in those old debates.... When the website doesn't work and the promises of 2009 and 2010 are revised, questions of credibility infect everything the administration says.... This debate over his initial claim lends credibility to [Republicans'] longstanding opposition to the law." ...

... Ed Kilgore: "... most of the caterwauling is over a small minority of a small minority of a small minority: people who don't have employer-based insurance, and want bare-bones policies (or no insurance at all), and don't qualify for the Obamacare subsidies.... There's scarce an argument about the horrific 'rate shock' facing healthy individual policyholders that isn't ultimately an argument against insurance -- risk-spreading via broadly constituted pools of people -- itself." ...

... ** Reality Chek. Jonathan Cohn: "Republicans have repeatedly endorsed proposals that would take insurance away from many more Americans -- and leave them much, much worse off. Start with the federal budgets crafted by Paul Ryan.... According to projections prepared by Urban Institute..., between 14 and 20 million Medicaid recipients would lose their insurance. And that doesn't even include the people who are starting to get Medicaid coverage through Obamacare's expansions of the program. That's another 10 to 17 million people. And it's not just people on Medicaid who would lose coverage if Republicans got their way.... Under the Republican plan..., people losing employer insurance would end up in the dysfunctional, non-reformed individual market -- the one full of confusing, junk policies that might not cover basic services.... The people losing Medicaid ... would end up with ... nothing at all." ...

... Gail Collins: "'In almost every case, you can argue that the second terms have been pretty dreadful,' said Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian. Think about it. Richard Nixon had to resign. Bill Clinton got impeached. George W. Bush had an average second-term approval rating of 37 percent, which the Gallup people say was the worst presidential plummet in modern history. Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and spent much of his second term in the bedroom."

... William Branigin & Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "New problems emerged Wednesday with the implementation of President Obama's health-care law even as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius assured lawmakers that 'miserably frustrating' problems with a nearly month-old health-insurance Web site would soon be fixed. The Web site, HealthCare.gov, was down again most of the morning while Sebelius was testifying before a House committee. And new security issues with the site were raised Wednesday after an internal memo obtained by The Washington Post and other media outlets showed that, days before the Web site's launch, administration officials knew it put the privacy of user data at risk.... [See also AP story linked below.] Sebelius, testifying Wednesday morning before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, offered assurances that consumers' personal data were safe." ...

... Humor Break. Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post highlights "five genuinely bizarre topics that have occurred this morning." ...

... Dana Milbank: "... whoever came up with House Republicans’ plan to deal with Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday didn't have a brain. It was their big chance to flambé the secretary of Health and Human Services and the person who has overseen the disastrous launch of Obamacare.... The hearing ... didn't turn out to be the humiliation for Sebelius that Republicans had in mind.... Sebelius doused her questioners with an unexpected and extended confession of responsibility. This was a sneaky and dastardly thing for her to do: sneaky, because it wasn't in the advance testimony she gave the committee, and dastardly, because in today's Washington, any acceptance of responsibility is so rare that the Republicans -- who were counting on her evading and deflecting -- were caught off-guard."

... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "... Kathleen Sebelius repeatedly told the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday that it would be 'illegal' for her to sign up for coverage in Obamacare's health care exchanges, raising eyebrows from health care journalists and pundits. The Washington Examiner’s Phil Klein wrote that 'in reality, as stated on Healthcare.gov, she would be eligible to obtain coverage through an Obamacare exchange. She just wouldn't be able to claim government subsidies to help her purchase insurance,; he claimed. CNN made a similar claim. But ThinkProgress has confirmed that Sebelius, who turned 65 in May, is enrolled in Medicare and is thus ineligible to enroll for insurance through the exchanges." ...

... Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar & Jack Gillum of the AP: "An internal government memo obtained by The Associated Press shows administration officials were concerned that a lack of testing posed a 'high' security risk for President Barack Obama's new health insurance website. The Sept. 27 memo to Medicare chief Marylin Tavenner said a website contractor wasn't able to test all the security controls in one complete version of the system." ...

... As contributor P.D. Pepe suggests, the video below is an amazing thing to see. Fox "News"'s Greta Van Susteren partially debunks Jan Crawford's misleading CBS "News" report about Floridian Diane Barrette, who is unhappy with ObamaCare because the new plan her insurer offered her cost ten times the premium of her current junk plan. As soon as Crawford ran her phony story, Fox "News" was anxious to interview Barrette. After Van Susteren's interview, Fox "News" cancelled another interview Fox had scheduled.

... Humor Break. Matt Miller of the Washington Post imagines a "Crossfire" segment of December 1936 as Americans begin signing up for FDR's new "Social Security" program. Clever. ...

... How Not to Respond to the GOP Talking Point of the Week. Manu Raju of Politico: "Sen. Mary Landrieu said Wednesday she would propose legislation to ensure all Americans could keep their existing insurance coverage under Obamacare, a fresh sign of the political problems the law&'s rollout has created for congressional Democrats. Landrieu, a Democrat who faces a tough reelection in Louisiana in 2014, said she would either offer her own bill or formally sign onto another measure that would ensure that the law would not force anyone off of their existing health policies." CW: For the most part, the policies people are "losing" are junk policies that will either (a) force the policyholders to pay expensive medical bills should they become ill, or (b) force the well-insured to pay the bills of the underinsured (or essentially uninsured), as we're doing now thru increased costs for medical services, which translate into increased premiums. ...

... Sabrina Siddiqui of the Huffington Post: "For all their fury, most of the House Republicans who had demanded their own closed-door briefing from the administration on President Barack Obama's struggling health care rollout were no-shows on Wednesday. Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) told reporters that 'about 20 members' attended the House GOP briefing, at which senior Health and Human Services Department official Mike Hash laid out some of the issues facing the Healthcare.gov website. The meeting was scheduled after House Republicans cried foul when they weren't included in last week's closed-door session with Democrats." CW: They were going to show up -- till they found out "closed-door" means there are no cameras to ham for. ...

... Humor Break. Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney took to Facebook Wednesday to troll President Obama, arguing that while his health care reform plan in Massachusetts is an example of good reform, it should not be used as a model for the nation." Kaczynski goes on to link numerous stories about Romney's urging Obama to copy RomneyCare for the national program.

"In this slide from a National Security Agency presentation on 'Google Cloud Exploitation,' a sketch shows where the 'Public Internet' meets the internal 'Google Cloud' where user data resides. Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing." -- Washington PostBarton Gellman & Ashkan Soltani of the Washington Post: "The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials. By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot." ...

... Gellman, et al., provide a graphic here charting how the NSA infiltrates private networks. ...

... Tony Romm of Politico: "A new report that the U.S. government had infiltrated links to Google's and Yahoo's data centers around the globe drew a sharp rebuke Wednesday from the National Security Agency.... The program ... relied on a broad, decades-old executive orderand allowed the NSA access to data-center connections in secret outside the United States, according to The Washington Post.... Asked about the leak, Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA's leader, said earlier Wednesday he was unaware of the Post's report -- adding the NSA is 'not authorized' to access companies data centers and instead must 'go through a court process' to obtain such content. The NSA, meanwhile, emphasized it hadn't tried to circumvent U.S. law under the executive order.... 'The assertion that we collect vast quantities of U.S. persons' data from this type of collection is also not true,' a spokeswoman said. But the NSA aide declined to discuss further whether the agency -- perhaps under other authorities -- had infiltrated data center connections at all." ...

... The Washington Post has the full NSA statement here. ...

... Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "The director of the National Security Agency conceded on Wednesday that it may need to scale back some of its surveillance operations on foreign leaders, in the wake of an international outcry. Launching a public defence of the NSA for the second time in as many days, [Keith] Alexander acknowledged that limiting the program may be necessary in order to maintain diplomatic relations. 'I think in some cases the partnerships are more important,' he told an audience in Washington." ...

... NEW. Mark Mazzetti & David Sanger of the New York Times: "How the N.S.A. continued to track [Angela] Merkel as she ascended to the top of Germany's political apparatus illuminates previously undisclosed details about the way the secret spy agency casts a drift net to gather information from America's closest allies. The phone monitoring is hardly limited to the leaders of countries like Germany, and also includes their top aides and the heads of opposing parties. It is all part of a comprehensive effort to gain an advantage over other nations, both friend and foe." ...

... Michelle Nichols of Reuters: " The United Nations said on Wednesday that the United States has pledged not to spy on the world body's communications after a report that the National Security Agency had gained access to the U.N. video conferencing system." ...

... Adam Taylor of Business Insider: "According to a new report in Italian magazine Panorama..., the NSA ... is believed to have been intercepting calls within the Vatican before and during the [Papal] Conclave. There are also suspicions that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who would later be chosen as Pope Francis, was under surveillance for a number of years." CW: If true, that would be too much. I don't want my taxpayer dollars wasted spying on cardinals. And, can we have a teensy bit of respect for religious freedom? ...

... NEW. Steven Myers of the New York Times: "Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor living in asylum in Russia, now has a job at one of the country's major Internet companies, a lawyer who has represented him since he arrived here as a fugitive from American prosecution four months ago said Thursday.... [The lawyer's] assertion about the employment offer could not be verified. Other claims about Mr. Snowden's secretive life here have turned out to be unsubstantiated."

Mike Lillis of the Hill: "New revenue must be part of any bipartisan agreement to eliminate the sequester, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday. Although President Obama has reportedly signaled an openness to tackle the across-the-board cuts without hiking taxes, Pelosi warned that such a strategy wouldn't fly with House Democrats." Contributor James S. wrote in yesterday's Comments that Democrats finally seem to have a leader in Harry Reid. May I remind him that Nancy Pelosi was standing tough when Harry Reid was still dancing with Mitch McConnell -- and letting McConnell lead. ...

... Sahil Kapur of TPM: "Paul Ryan killed any lingering hopes of a grand bargain within moments of the budget conference kickoff on Wednesday. In his opening remarks, the Wisconsin congressman and chairman of the House budget committee laid down a firm marker against new taxes, which are essential to any major deficit reduction proposal that can pass Congress and be signed into law."

Erik Wasson of the Hill: "The federal budget deficit for fiscal 2013 was $680 billion, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday. This is the first time that the deficit has fallen below $1 trillion during President Obama's time in the White House."

Congress of the Absurd: 27 Senators in Search of an "Out" Clause. As if they were characters in a Beckett or Ionesco play, all 27 GOP Senators who voted to allow President Obama to raise the debt ceiling & re-open the government voted on Tuesday to "disapprove" of the bill they voted for. Sahil Kapur reports, "The purpose was to give these senators political cover to say they disapprove of a debt limit hike." ...

     ... Charles Pierce: "... the people who did the right thing, and helped the country avoid the fiscal abyss, find themselves obligated, essentially, to apologize to the people who did the most damage, and to the people who supported them, because, otherwise, there might be a political price to be paid for not wrecking the economy. This is not leadership. This is submitting to an ideological show trial because you want to keep your job at the expense of actually doing your job."

Hunter Walker of TPM: "Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker submitted a resignation letter to the city clerk ahead of his swearing in as a U.S. Senator on Thursday."

John Harwood of the New York Times: "American politics has grown increasingly polarized by race, as well as by party and ideology." CW: Yeah, depending upon the setting, of course, I generally "suspect" every white person I meet is a Republican/conservative & every black person I meet is a Democrat/liberal. Of course I know that isn't true, but my suspicion works pretty well in Southwest Florida.

A People in Transition. Ta-Nehesi Coates goes to homecoming at Howard University.

Linda Greenhouse: when history proves judges' and justices' assumptions wrong.

Gubehrnatorial Race

Roanoke College: "Democrat Terry McAuliffe has opened a 15-point lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli (46%-31%), while 14 percent of likely voters in Virginia remain undecided in the 2013 Gubernatorial election, according to The Roanoke College Poll. Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis claimed 9 percent of respondents." CW: Hmm. So was the Quinnipiac poll I linked yesterday, which showed Kenny closing in on Terry an outlier? I hope so. (Never thought I'd be rooting for Terry McAuliffe.) ...

... Hoist with His Own Pen. Paul Schwartzman of the Washington Post: "For years, [Ken Cuccinelli] articulated [his] conservatism in the Cuccinelli Compass, honing a combative political persona and providing opponents with material that has now driven up his negative poll ratings and lifted McAuliffe." ...

     ... CW: Turns out Cooch has a macabre sense of humor which, not surprisingly, involves offing a prominent woman. Schwartzman writes, "In 2008, as the Democrats convened for their national convention, Cuccinelli relayed in his newsletter a satirical schedule of events, including, '1:35 am -- Bill Clinton asks Ted Kennedy to drive Hillary Clinton home,' a joke that evoked reminders of a fatal accident in which Kennedy drove off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, Mass., nearly 40 years earlier. In a subsequent issue, he ... [wrote] 'How to Start Each Day with a Positive Outlook,' which involved naming a computer file after the former first lady and sending 'it to the trash. Your PC will ask you, "Do you really want to get rid of Hillary Rodham Clinton? (Firmly) Click "Yes."'"

News Ledes

AP: "Government safety rules are changing to let airline passengers use most electronic devices from gate-to-gate. The change will let passengers read, work, play games, watch movies and listen to music -- but not make cellphone calls."

AFP: "US Secretary of State John Kerry will launch a nine-day trip by traveling to Riyadh for talks on Sunday with King Abdullah amid tensions with the Gulf Kingdom."