The Dish

Jonathan Bernstein listens to what Republican candidates for governor in states that expanded Medicaid are saying about it:

Nada. Zip. Nothing. None of these Republicans is pledging to repeal the Medicaid expansion put in place by a Democratic governor. Indeed, most of them don’t mention Obamacare at all, and only one even mentioned health care. I’m sure that most — if they want to win a Republican nomination! — would support Obamacare repeal, if asked. But that’s different from making repeal an actual priority.

He thinks this supports the view that “where it’s in place, Medicaid expansion is here to stay.” Sargent believes the expansion could benefit Democrats in red states:

The Medicaid expansion, as an issue, is kind of taking on a life of its own, independent of Big Bad Obamacare. In Louisiana, Senator Mary Landrieu has aggressively criticized the rollout of the law, but has also attacked Republicans for refusing to implement the Medicaid expansion. In Georgia, Dem Senate candidate Michelle Nunn has called for fixes to the law while also saying the state should expand Medicaid, which 57 percent of Georgia voters support, according to a recent poll. Democrats are attacking GOP governors over it, too, particularly in the bid to oust Florida Governor Rick Scott.

Drum thinks the issue could resonate:

Pushing for Medicaid expansion in the holdout states could turn out to be a solid populist issue for Democrats this year. The argument is simple: It’s free medical care and it doesn’t cost the state anything. Who’s against that? We’ll find out later this how well that argument works.

 

 

FINALLY!! RT @Dallas_Observer: Breaking — Judge Orders Marlise Munoz to Be Taken Off Life Support http://t.co/8iwsfMOo24

— Great Aunt Maude (@GreatAuntMaude) January 24, 2014

[Updated with tweet at 5.45 pm]

Marlise Munoz’s baby is not doing well:

“According to the medical records we have been provided, the fetus is distinctly abnormal,” the attorneys [for the Munoz’s husband] said. “Even at this early stage, the lower extremities are deformed to the extent that the gender cannot be determined.” The attorneys said the fetus also has fluid building up inside the skull and possibly has a heart problem.

Emily Bazelon pleads for the state of Texas to respect her and her husband’s wishes:

Marlise remains hooked up because the hospital is misreading Texas law. NYU bioethicist Arthur Caplan laid this out last week, explaining why the hospital is misinterpreting the law (and also why that law must be unconstitutional). “The fact that the fetus apparently has significant abnormalities shows just how awful, misguided and cruel the Texas law is,” he emailed me Thursday morning.

“The uncertainties about the pregnancy—damaged fetus, almost no cases of trying to bring a 14-week-old to term in this circumstance, what he the dad is able to cope with, his dead wife’s wishes about wanting to have a child if she cannot parent, the massive costs involved and the impact of a tragic outcome on his other child—they point clearly in the direction of who should be making the decisions and who should have been making them all along. Not the hospital, not the legislature, not pro-life or pro-choicers—the husband.”

Toobin takes a look at how anti-abortion ideology feeds into this tragedy and that of brain-dead California teenager Jahi McMath:

McMath’s family has no apparent politics; they are simply grieving. But their cause has been taken up by the anti-abortion movement, especially those members of Terri Schiavo’s family who sought to keep feeding her years after her brain activity ceased. As in the Schiavo case, the effort is to expand, or at least confuse, the definition of “life.” Brain death, though defined slightly differently throughout the country, has been accepted as actual and legal death for decades. There is no controversy about McMath’s status; the doctors and the coroner agree. Dr. Heidi Flori, a critical-care physician at the hospital, said in a declaration, “Mechanical support and other measures taken to maintain an illusion of life where none exists cannot maintain that illusion indefinitely.”

Earlier Dish on Munoz here.

When Republicans eventually retake the White House, Chait expects them to follow Bush’s example of fiscal recklessness. Douthat sees another way forward:

[T]he Bush playbook and the Tea Party playbook do not exhaust the options for the right.

The signal fiscal failure of the Bush era was not a willingness to spend more money in some areas (defense, education, foreign aid, prescription drugs) while cutting tax rates overall; it was the failure to successfully pair the rate cuts and new spending with the kind of tax and entitlement reforms that would have left the country on a sounder footing for the long term. (If the Medicare Part D expansion had been combined the reforms to Medicare the Bush White House originally wanted, if the push Social Security reform hadn’t gone nowhere, and if tax reform hadn’t died along with the rest of Bush’s second term ambitions, then the entire Bush agenda would have made more fiscal sense.)

So the question for our (still-hypothetical) future era of Republican governance is whether the right can combine a shift away from austerity-only policymaking with a continued commitment to the kind of entitlement reform proposals that the House G.O.P. has rallied around over the last few years. That’s the test: If you can introduce Ryan-style premium support for Medicare and do a real cleanup of the tax code, there’s room to experiment with a larger child tax credit or stronger work supports or payroll tax cuts or what-have-you without blowing out the deficit.

Mark Herring, Virginia’s new Attorney General, declared yesterday, as I noted in passing, that he will no longer defend the state’s same-sex marriage ban:

Lyle Denniston observes that this is “the first time that the top legal officer in a state in the South had begun supporting same-sex marriage under the Constitution.” What happens to the case challenging Virginia’s ban:

While the constitutional challenge goes forward, Herring said, state officials responsible for enforcing it will continue to do so, and its validity will be defended in court by private lawyers for county clerks in Norfolk and Prince William County.  Those clerks would have a legal right to appeal if the ban were struck down, he added. Herring said that he and other state officials will continue to work to ensure that the case moves forward to a final decision as “a fair and proper vehicle” for the constitutional test.

Weigel looks at how Virginia has changed since it passed its ban:

In 2006, 57 percent of Virginia voters approved the Marshall-Newman Amendment, adding the definition to their Constitution. Since then, lots of Virginians have, like Herring, changed their minds. As of six months ago, only 43 percent of Virginians opposed gay marriage—a 14-point swing. So Virginia’s one of those states that’s probably ready to wave in gay marriages, but can’t, because an older and more conservative electorate locked and bolted the door. Back in 2006, this was seen as a boon for Republicans. And now it’s left Republicans defending a pretty unpopular position.

Dreher is disturbed:

Whether you are for or against gay marriage, it ought to bother you that a state attorney general asserts a right not to defend the state constitution. What if a majority of Virginia voters had approved same-sex marriage, but Mark Herring were a gay-marriage opponent, and refused to defend the law against a court challenge from marriage traditionalists?

Josh Israel finds precedents:

Herring’s immediate predecessor, Ken Cuccinelli II, also refused to defend laws he deemed unconstitutional. Last year, one of his spokesmen noted, “If the attorney general’s analysis shows that a law is unconstitutional, he has a legal obligation to not defend it.” Indeed in 2009, Cuccinelli himself said in a debate, “I will not defend what I, in my judgment, deem to be an unconstitutional law.” “If I determine it not to be constitutional,” he explained then, “I will not defend it. My first obligation is to the Constitution and the people of Virginia.”

Pivoting off Leah Allen’s post about her father’s debilitating pot habit, Kleiman declares that full commercial legalization will create more problem users:

If you support making cannabis available from profit-seeking commercial vendors, heavily marketed, and cheap – which is the path Washington and Colorado are walking down right now – then the predictable result of your preferred policy will be more people with very bad cannabis habits. And there could be fewer such people if cannabis were kept expensive, if marketing were kept to a minimum, and if users were offered modest helps to their self-command, such as user-set periodic purchase quotas, or if we keep the commercial motive out of the business altogether with state stores or by limiting vendor licenses to consumer-owned co-ops and not-for-profit businesses with boards concerned with limiting drug abuse rather than maximizing revenue.

Of course you’re free to oppose all of that. But if you do so, you ought at least to acknowledge the inevitable human cost.

But the huge benefits of ending Prohibition and the tangible personal benefits enjoyed by the vast majority who consume marijuana responsibly still make an overwhelming case, to my kind, for legalization. Kleiman puts it this way:

As I keep saying: the evils of prohibition do not disprove the evils of substance abuse. In the case of cannabis, it’s probable that we could get rid of the former without greatly increasing the latter. But it’s not automatic.

Agreed. Brian Macaulay, a self-described recovering pot addict, wonders what that would mean for those like him:

While the consensus was once that marijuana is not an addictive drug in the same way heroin or alcohol are, society has come a long way in its understanding and definition of addiction. No longer is the condition a matter of simple chemical dependency. Addictions, be they to drugs, sex, food, gambling, or anything else, are now perceived as self-destructive behaviors a person is consistently unable to refrain from engaging in, despite negative consequences. The substance or action itself may be benign to ordinary people. From this point of view, the addiction is in the user, not what is used. So, for that addict portion of the population, what does a world with legal marijuana mean? …

“I see a lot of addicts from Colorado,” says Brooke Constable, an addiction treatment clinician in Orange County, California, “There are plenty who present with marijuana as their primary addiction.” Marijuana addicts may not often have parallel life problems to the more drastic ones of those afflicted with an addiction to harder drugs like heroin, but according to Constable, the difference is irrelevant in the broader picture of an addict coming to terms with their own powerlessness over drug use: “Addicts only find a true bottom when they have internal consequences. They need to want to change. If they don’t, things like family disapproval, career trouble, or the law won’t stop them.” Nor does she see the legal status of marijuana as particularly relevant to those already sober, “If they’re really working a 12-step program, it doesn’t matter. If someone is committed to their recovery, if they believe it’s what they need to do to take care of themselves and live a quality life, the legality of the drug doesn’t make any difference.”

Dish readers sounded off on Allen’s piece here.

Et tu with the etc, Jay? It’s et al. In response to me, Drum puts Ezra’s new enterprise in perspective:

[N]o one should feel like this is something new and unprecedented.

It’s the same thing that’s been happening to popular media for over a century. When radio was invented, it attracted young entrepreneurs like William Paley (using family money) and Richard Sarnoff (working his way up the ranks at RCA). The burgeoning market for middle-class reading material attracted young entrepreneurs like Henry Luce (magazines), William Randolph Hearst (newspapers), and Simon & Schuster (books). The film industry attracted young entrepreneurs like Walt Disney and Howard Hughes. Cheap four-color printing prompted Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson to start up the company that would later become DC Comics. Car culture produced car magazines. Computers produced computer magazines. Gaming produced gaming magazines. The rise of cable TV brought us CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. When politics collided with the rise of the internet, we got websites like Drudge Report, Talking Points Memo, the Huffington Post, and Politico.

Will Ezra Klein’s new venture succeed? Who knows. But I think it’s safe to say that some of these ventures will succeed, and they will indeed produce a realignment in the political media universe. They already have, after all: Fox News and Politico are probably more influential already than the entire old-guard newspaper industry combined.

But the best quote from the chatter on this comes from John Cassidy. Behold the paradox of Buzzfeed:

BuzzFeed and Upworthy aren’t really news sites: they specialize in listicles, lifestyle posts, funny GIFs, and celebrity stories. When I checked BuzzFeed’s home page on Monday afternoon, one of its featured headlines was “Ron Jeremy Does ‘Wrecking Ball.’ ” Over at Upworthy, there was this offering: “An Actor Who Got Super Famous Overnight Has Some Profound Thoughts on Celebrity Worship.” (Update: In fairness, and in response to some complaints from BuzzFeed writers, I should point out that BuzzFeed also puts out serious journalism, including political reports, dispatches from overseas, and long-form stories. Still, the lists and other lighter fare are what drive a lot of its traffic.)

How many complaints did he get, I wonder, from Buzzfeed readers?