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President Obama's job approval polling was down a bit last month, ending three months of positive news. He didn't slip back much, but the reversal does bring up a serious question: is Obama stuck in a "new normal" of job approval numbers in the low-40s range? We'll take a look at possible answers to this in a moment, but first let's take a look at the new monthly chart.
Everyone's talking about Obamacare today, since it is the deadline for signing up for health insurance in the first "open enrollment" period for the marketplace exchanges. The final numbers aren't in yet (and won't be for at least another few weeks), but from the numbers already released, the Obamacare website seems to have made an impressive turnaround from its ignoble beginnings. What will be interesting about the final numbers is that since Obama announced late last week that they had already hit the 6 million mark, we'll be able to see exactly how big the wave of last-minute signups has been for the final four days of the official signup period. If the final number comes in at, say, 6.5 million, then half a million people will have successfully signed up in four days. That is a small miracle in and of itself, since on the first day the website went live, it only managed to sign up a total of six people.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases where corporations are requiring certain women to wear a scarlet "A" on their uniforms... um, no wait... that can't be right... let me check my notes....
The Media files were made public in large part due to a few journalists (and a few brave editors) at the Washington Post who received them and reported on them. Attorney General John Mitchell personally called up the editors at the Post in a last-minute attempt to quash the story multiple times the day they arrived, but in the end the decision was made to go ahead and publish. Incredibly, at this time Mitchell didn't even know what was in the burgled files, and even though it was two weeks after the burglary, he had apparently just become aware of it. The event explored new territory in both journalism and in the legal world, because it was the first time secret documents had ever been provided to news organizations after having been stolen from the government. There simply were no precedents to follow.
But it's really nothing new to point out the ludicrous nature of what is billed as "breaking news." In fact, I can end precisely where I began this rant. Back in its infancy in the 1970s, "Weekend Update" had a running joke parodying such "breaking news" idiocy. Chevy Chase would be handed a piece of paper (which just goes to show you how long ago this was) at his news desk, and he would glance at it and then report: "This just in... Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!"
Has it really been a whole year since the Republican Party put out their "post-mortem" document, which tried to identify why they got shellacked so badly in the 2012 election? Since it's not a big date on my political calendar, the one-year anniversary kind of snuck up on me, I'll admit. But since the Republican National Committee used the term "post-mortem" in the first place, I guess it's now time for a post-mortem on the post-mortem (insert your own zombie or "dead man walking" joke here, if you must).
Today is 3/14, therefore a happy Pi Day to all! Next year will be even more fun, though, since it'll be 3/14/15....
Attorney General Eric Holder today called for shorter sentences to be handed down for non-violent drug offenses, which would reduce prison time for many people caught with drugs. By doing so, he has taken another step in the right direction: away from the worst aspects of the "War On Drugs," and towards a more sane federal policy. The Obama administration -- Holder in particular -- has been charting a new path for the past year or so on this subject, and it is a welcome change. The new changes won't go far enough, though. Much more work needs to be done. How much of that will happen in the next year is open to speculation.
Over a decade ago, the federal government did something which made people's lives better. A law was passed by a Republican House and a Republican Senate and signed by a Republican president, and it has demonstrably made people's lives better. It was called the "Do-Not-Call Implementation Act" and it created a government database where private individuals could voluntarily add their phone number to block its use by telemarketers. So far, it's been a smashing success, and the law was improved by making the list permanent (so people don't have to keep signing up for it) in 2007. Also in that year, a survey showed that 72 percent of Americans had registered for the list. The time has now come to build upon this landmark legislation and create a "Do Not Track" list, to further protect consumers' privacy.
Is the gay marriage issue beginning to disappear from the Republican Party's playbook? Are Republicans on the verge of admitting defeat and deciding to move on? The answer is likely "not quite yet" to both of those questions, but the fact that they can even now be seriously asked seems like progress of a sort. It'll likely be years before we see Republicans (at least on the national stage) boldly taking pro-marriage-equality stands, and it'll likely take at least one more groundbreaking Supreme Court decision before the issue loses all of its political weight in the party. But glimmers of such a future can at least now be seen, which wasn't true even as recently as one year ago (the first two landmark Supreme Court gay marriage case decisions were announced only at the end of last June). Previously unimaginable, these questions are now in the realm of the possible, to put it another way. Because (to borrow President Obama's term) the Republican Party has finally started to "evolve" on the subject.