Happy Thursday Morning! Today is Use Less Stuff Day — what are you planning not to use? While you think it over, here are some of our morning reads…
Roadmap –> Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jonathan Weisman report for the NYT on a memo revealing Republicans’ highly-coordinated, anti-Obamacare messaging plans for the next few months.
Uneven arc of justice –> Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn will sign state’s marriage equality law on Lincoln’s desk, according to Michael Sneed writing in the Chicago Sun-Times. Meanwhile, Mark Joseph Stern reports for Slate that Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin will deny family benefits to all of her state’s National Guard troops, gay and straight, in order to make sure same-sex couples don’t get them as the Pentagon has ordered.
Guilt trip? –> That’s what The Hill’s Carlo Muñoz is calling a Pentagon plan to pressure lawmakers to ease the sequester by threatening to cut troops’ benefits. ALSO: NPR reports that food-stamp cuts are leaving rural areas — and the grocers that serve them — “reeling.”
Movement on Gitmo? –> Three Senate Republicans joined most Democrats in support of an amendment that would loosen restrictions on transferring prisoners out of the Guantanamo Bay naval base. If the measure survives a conference with the House, it could lead to Gitmo’s closure, reports Massimo Calabresi for Time.
Dirty 90 –> The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg reports that just 90 companies are responsible for two-thirds of man-made climate change emissions. ALSO: 132 poor countries walked out of UN-sponsored climate negotiations after rich countries refused to talk about compensation for the damage they’ve wrought.
Deadly inequality –> At The Nation, Zoë Carpenter runs down testimony given this week to a senate committee about how poverty raises one’s risk of serious illness and death.
Pareene’d –> Salon’s Alex Pareene dings the political press for pretending that Paul Ryan has serious policy ideas as opposed to a bunch of budget numbers that never seem to add up.
Cost curve –> In the midst of all this brouhaha over Obamacare, the projected costs of US health care keep dropping. Sarah Kliff reports for The Washington Post.
Well, he did win a couple of elections –> Paul Waldman argues at TAP that the current filibuster fight is unprecedented because Republicans aren’t objecting to Obama’s judicial nominees so much as they’re rejecting his authority to nominate them in the first place.
Guns don’t sue people –> NRA suing San Francisco over the city’s limit on magazine capacity, reports Catherine Thompson for TPM. And Sunnyvale, California, is next.
Buying elections is OK –> At The Washington Post, Harold Meyerson argues that voter suppression and dark money groups are making it easier to buy an election than to vote in one.
Oops! –> Speaking of which, the mayor of Utah town “forgot” to hold an election for the second time in a row, and will remain in office until the next time he remembers. Via Gawker.
Who says you can’t make new real estate? –> Agence France Presse: volcanic eruptions result in new islet off the coast of Japan.
What else is happening? Tell us in the comments!
