Good morning — and happy Ka Hae Hawaii Day to our friends in Hawaii! It’s also National Mutt Day, so if you’re in the market for a good companion keep in mind that there’s no breed quite as fine as the American Pound Dog.
Stat of the day: 58 percent — share of Californians who were uninsured at the beginning of the Affordable Care Act’s open enrollment period who report having coverage today, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Serious litigation –> On Wednesday, the Justice Department “sided with challengers of voting laws in Wisconsin and Ohio, saying in court filings that measures in those states unfairly affect minority voters,” according to the AP.
Frivolous litigation –> The House voted to sue Barack Obama over his decision to delay an Obamacare mandate. Amie Parnes reports for The Hill that during a speech earlier in the day Obama “asked Republicans to stop ‘hating’ and ‘being mad all the time.'”
Bloody –> Reuters reports that the UN is “outraged” over an Israeli strike on a UN shelter that killed 20 people in Gaza. As the Palestinian death toll approaches 1,400, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for “accountability and justice.” In another incident on Wednesday, Israeli forces shelled a market, killing 17. Fifty-six Israeli soldiers and three civilians have died during the three-week incursion. Meanwhile, a senior US defense official said that Washington has “allowed Israel to tap a local US arms stockpile in the past few weeks to replenish its grenades and mortar rounds.” ALSO: $225 million in additional aid for the Israeli military was tucked into an emergency border bill that passed the Senate on Wednesday, according to The Hill. AND: Peter Beinart writes for Ha’aretz about some of the “myths and facts” about the fighting in Gaza.
Suddenly, they like Big Gummint –> Ben Adler at Grist: “Oil refinery threatened by sea-level rise asks government [to] fix the problem.”
The next Hobby Lobby –> MSNBC’s Irin Carmon on what “promises to be the next big birth control fight after Hobby Lobby.”
“A chain of corruption” –> At The New Yorker, Nicholas Schmidle looks at the case of a Chicago man who may have spent the past two decades in prison for a murder he didn’t commit after police allegedly coerced witnesses into offering damning testimony against him.
Seems like a nice guy –> In the Los Angeles Times, Matthew Fleischer tries to understand conservatives’ fear and loathing of Neil deGrasse Tyson.
The next big fight –> At The New Republic, David Dayan looks at the battle being fought for a $15 minimum wage for the entire Bay Area.
Shock Doctrine –> Sally Kohn writes about the “Republican occupation of Detroit” for The Daily Beast.
“Myth and xenophobia” –> Brent Staples writes for The New York Times that the federal ban on marijuana “was passed in an atmosphere of hysteria during the 1930s and… was firmly rooted in prejudices against Mexican immigrants and African-Americans.”
Partisanship –> A House Republican tells The Hill’s Molly Hooper that a popular piece of legislation honoring Pope Francis is being blocked in Congress because some of his colleagues think the Catholic leader sounds too much “like Obama,” and constantly “talks about equality.”
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