memeorandum: Jill Abramson Talks Obama Secrecy and Her New York Times Firing (Eleanor Clift/The Daily Beast)

3:20 PM ET, July 10, 2014

Top Items:

Gaining Ground: Americans' Health Insurance Coverage and Access to Care After the Affordable Care Act's First Open Enrollment Period — A new Commonwealth Fund survey finds that in the wake of the Affordable Care Act's first open enrollment period, significantly fewer working-age adults …

Discussion: addictinginfo.org, Bloomberg View, Washington Post, The Dish and Prairie Weather

Jonathan Chait Follow / New York Magazine:

Libertarian Accidentally Shows How Obamacare Is Succeeding — Reading months of doomsaying all at once tells a different story. — The Commonwealth Fund has a new survey showing that the proportion of adults lacking health insurance has fallen by a quarter, from 20 percent of the population to 15 percent.

Discussion: Washington Monthly and Lawyers, Guns & Money

Timothy Jost / Washington Post:

Courts won't void the Affordable Care Act over semantics — The Supreme Court's term ended in June with another Affordable Care Act ruling, and the ACA survived largely unscathed. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby has important ramifications for women's health and religious freedom but does not invalidate a single section of the law.

Discussion: National Review

Jonathan Cohn / The New Republic:

Obamacare Haters, Your Case Just Got Weaker — New report suggests number of uninsured declined, just as expected — Back in the spring, some conservatives insisted that Obamacare enrollment statistics were some kind of sham. Sure, people were finally signing up for the program.

Discussion: American Prospect, The Dish, New York Times and Business Insider

Margot Sanger-Katz / New York Times:
Newest Health Insurance Customers Are Generally Happy

Discussion: Daily Kos, ThinkProgress and The Incidental Economist

Catherine Thompson / Talking Points Memo:

CNN Host Confronts Rick Perry On His Obama ‘Conspiracy’ Theory (VIDEO) — CNN host Kate Bolduan confronted Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) in an interview that aired Thursday about his suggestion that President Barack Obama may have engineered the current immigration crisis at the Texas border.

Discussion: Liberaland and New York Times

James Oliphant / NationalJournal.com:

Obama's Texas Two-Step — Instead of focusing on the plight of children massed at the border, the president seems more intent on shifting blame and scoring political points against the GOP. — President Obama was 500 miles from the Mexican border when he spoke about the child-migrant …

Discussion: Fox News, Hot Air and RedState

Amie Parnes / The Hill:

Gov. Perry: The face of GOP opposition — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican who has seen thousands of unaccompanied children flood across his state's border, has seized the spotlight in recent days to become the national face of opposition to President Obama's immigration policies.

Discussion: CNN, Washington Post, Washington Monthly and ABC News

Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
Dana Milbank: In border crisis, Obama is accused of ‘lawlessness’ for following law

Discussion: The Mahablog, ABC News and Twitchy

Justin Sink / The Hill:
Obama: No interest in border ‘photo op’

Discussion: JustOneMinute, Wall Street Journal, Hot Air, Mediaite, Washington Post, Power Line, Politico and Talking Points Memo

New York Times:
Obama Presses Perry to Rally Support for Border Funds

Discussion: Hot Air, Fox News, USA Today, Talking Points Memo, NBC News, The Week, Politico, NewsBusters, Power Line, The Huffington Post and Weekly Standard

Justin Sink / The Hill:
Perry: Obama's Katrina

Discussion: Washington Post, ABC News and Mediaite

Eleanor Clift / The Daily Beast:

Jill Abramson Talks Obama Secrecy and Her New York Times Firing — Two months after her abrupt exit from the Gray Lady, the former executive editor delivered a speech about how different Obama is from Bush—and why she was dismissed from her post. — Aside from her unceremonious firing …

Discussion: Politico, Poynter, The Huffington Post and Washington's Blog

Journalism.org:

America's Shifting Statehouse Press — Can New Players Compensate for Lost Legacy Reporters? — Within America's 50 state capitol buildings, 1,592 journalists inform the public about the actions and issues of state government, according to new data from the Pew Research Center.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, CBS DC, Capital New York and Poynter, more at Mediagazer »

Reid Wilson / Washington Post:
The precipitous decline of state political coverage

Discussion: Washington Monthly and Bloomberg View

Washington Post:

Restore trust to douse the fire in Gaza — THE LATEST mini-war between Israel and the Hamas movement is as unwinnable for either side as previous rounds in 2009 and 2012. Though it has stockpiled thousands of rockets and some longer-range missiles, Hamas lacks the ability to inflict serious damage …

Discussion: Jerusalem Post, Guardian, Business Insider, New York Times and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion

USA Today:
Israel: Hamas firing rocket every 10 minutes

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, Reuters and Washington Free Beacon

Fairleft / Firedoglake:
53 Palestinians, 0 Israelis Die in Air and Missile Strikes ...

Discussion: Israel Matzav, Informed Comment and Guardian

Sasha Goldstein / NY Daily News:

Washington man first to buy legal weed in Spokane is fired after spotted on news — Mike Boyer, 30, was canned Tuesday after waiting 20 hours to buy pot and immediately going home to smoke. He was called up for urine analysis after he was spotted on TV buying the pot. Boyer told The News he ‘regrets nothing.’

Discussion: Liberaland, Mashable and The Raw Story

Nicholas Riccardi / Associated Press:

Colorado Clerk OK'd to Give Gay Marriage Licenses — A county clerk in a liberal Colorado college town can keep issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of the state's gay-marriage ban, a judge ruled Thursday, noting the ban technically still exists but is “hanging on by a thread.”

Discussion: ThinkProgress and Denver Post

Jordan Steffen / Denver Post:
ADAMS JUDGE TOSSES COLORADO GAY MARRIAGE BAN BUT STAYS RULING

Discussion: Outside the Beltway, Talking Points Memo, Liberaland, Shakesville, Associated Press and Towleroad News #gay

Niam Yaraghi / Brookings Institute:

Have the Anti-Obamacare Ads Backfired? — According to the recent report of nonpartisan analysts Kantar Media CMAG, ACA opponents have spent 450 million dollars on anti-Obamacare ads so far. Spending on negative ads outpaced positive ones by more than 15 to 1. This map shows the spending on negative ads in each state.

Discussion: Mediaite

Dylan Scott / Talking Points Memo:
Study: Anti-Obamacare Ads Might Have Actually Increased Enrollment

Discussion: Balloon Juice

Politico:

Todd Akin's only regret — “Doubt me? Google 'stress and infertility,” Akin writes of his rape comments. AP Photo — Close — Todd Akin takes it back. — He's not sorry. — Two years after the Missouri Republican's comments on rape, pregnancy and abortion doomed his campaign and fueled a …

Discussion: Yahoo! News, ThinkProgress, OnPolitics, Daily Kos and Washington Post

Ann Coulter / The Clarion-Ledger:

McDaniel backers killing his political future — By continuing the fight over the primary, Chris McDaniel and his supporters are risking a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, not to mention McDaniel's own political future. — CONNECT — Chris McDaniel, candidate for the U.S. Senate …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Liberaland, OnPolitics, Politico and Washington Post

Betsy McCaughey / New York Post:

ObamaCare: Death by paperwork — On July 3, with Americans preparing to celebrate freedom, the Obama administration reduced freedom by adding 1,296 pages of new regulations to ObamaCare. — It was a classic pre-holiday document dump, publishing the mind-numbing rules in the Federal Register …

Discussion: RedState