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The sharper-eyed among you may have noticed that yesterday was supposed to be Obama Poll Watch day, where we offer up our monthly musings on the state of Barack Obama's public job approval rating. Well, since yesterday was a rather auspicious date on the calendar, we decided to push the poll-watching to Wednesday. Also, because we're still working on the charts.
Welcome to the Ides of March, now known as the day after "Pi Day." If you need to look up either of those references, may I humbly suggest that your pop-cultural education may not be quite wide enough. The Wides of March? Maybe I'm just being too snarky -- yet another of the Snides of March, perhaps.
Since it is indeed budget release week, we'd like to take the opportunity today to shine a spotlight on a budget which doesn't get the same amount of press as, say, what Paul Ryan's trying to peddle. While the Senate Democrats released their budget proposal yesterday, a group of Progressives in the House released their blueprint for a budget as well.
President Obama changed political gears last week, and decided to take a new direction in his dealings with Republicans in Congress. This "charm offensive" will either later be seen as a meaningless photo-op gesture, or a brilliant strategic maneuver on the political chessboard. Time will tell. That golf game with John Boehner didn't really gain Obama much, to put it another way. But the political winds are a-changin' in Washington (as they tend to do), and if Obama is really serious about developing personal relationships with those in the opposition party who might possibly be open to deal-cutting, this time around a charm offensive might bear some political fruit. Obama is attempting a bold plan to exploit the existing disarray in the Republican Party, and largely bypass the entire Republican congressional leadership. If it works (and even, possibly, if it fails), this will only serve to widen the chasms within the GOP right in time for the next election. That's some pretty juicy political fruit indeed.
Our column's subtitle this week is a silent homage to guitarist Alvin Lee of the band Ten Years After, who sadly died this past week. Anyone who has seen the movie Woodstock knows of Lee's incredible talent on the electric guitar, and we just wanted to begin by noting that Alvin Lee is "Goin' Home" for the last time. Requiescat In Pace.
We've got a number of oddities to dispense with before we get started this week.
President Barack Hussein Obama's second inauguration pretty much dominated the political news this week.
Last night, on a primetime television show, a character had an abortion. Does this shock you? It might, if only for the fact that such a plotline is so incredibly rare on American television. In less than two weeks, the Supreme Court decision in the landmark Roe v. Wade case will be forty years old. Four decades later, the debate over abortion still rages. But it is a debate which is largely silent on the small screen. Even last night, abortion did not really dare to speak its name.
President Barack Obama has it within his power to chart a new course for his administration on the Justice Department's continuing refusal to take into account the will of the voters in over one-third of the United States on medical marijuana. He could do so quite easily, by issuing a presidential pardon for Aaron Sandusky, who just received a 10-year prison sentence for running medical marijuana dispensaries in the state of California -- where such activities were legalized by the state's voters.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as "Obamacare") put Republican governors between an ideological rock and a very hard place for conservatives. After losing their court challenge on the constitutionality of Obamacare, each state's governor was faced with a clear choice: either set up a state-run health insurance marketplace (or "exchange"), or refuse to do so and pass the buck to the federal government, which will set up an exchange for states who opt not to create one on their own.