Opinion: Critical Condition372 comments

When we saw the headline "Four Ways ObamaCare Could Still Fail," our reaction was that it sounded like an unrealistically low estimate. But we were intrigued enough to read the article because of the source: TalkingPointsMemo.com, a news site with a strong (and acknowledged) liberal Democratic slant. Its framing as friendly criticism makes the piece, by congressional reporter Sahil Kapur, a powerful indictment of ObamaCare.

To be sure, it's not clear Kapur intends to indict ObamaCare, and if he does, he downplays it, presumably in order to avoid alienating his liberal readers or his liberal editors. In his lead paragraph, he summarizes the problem as follows: "Republicans remain committed to botching its implementation, which--along with inherent complexities in implementing parts of the law--leaves in place significant obstacles to achieving its key goals."

When you read the rest of the piece, however, it's clear that the emphasis should be reversed: The law's deficiencies--or "inherent complexities," to use Kapur's obfuscatory euphemism--are the primary difficulty. The Republican commitment to botchery is real, and it does compound ObamaCare's problems, but it is a secondary problem.

Kapur lists "the four biggest obstacles the law faces in meeting its key goals." Let's go through them one by one:

"1) Ongoing Disapproval of the Law." Kapur quotes "two leading health policy experts," both ObamaCare proponents, who argue that, in Kapur's words, public disapproval is "the overarching threat to Obamacare."

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The president and his deadly pen.

Actually one of them, Jonathan Gruber, "a professor at MIT who helped craft the Affordable Care Act," argues just that, while the other, Washington and Lee's Timothy Jost, blames "the relentless negativity and opposition of the Republicans and their media outlets." But Kapur acknowledges that public disapproval of ObamaCare is a necessary condition for sustaining GOP opposition and obstruction. (Kapur notes parenthetically that ObamaCare supporters of the law are still waiting for Godot, which is to say they are "convinced" the public will "come around.")

"2) States Declining to Expand Medicaid." Although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld most of ObamaCare last year, by a 7-2 vote it ruled that Congress had exceeded its authority in threatening to cut off all Medicaid funds from states that declined to participate in the new law's expansion of the program. Thirteen governors (acting "under pressure from the right," according to Kapur) have announced that they'll decline to participate, and another 10 may yet do so. That leaves it "an open question how--or whether--Americans below 133 percent of the poverty line will obtain insurance" in those states.

"3) States Refusing to Build Insurance Marketplaces." ObamaCare "encourages" states to set up "exchanges" for the sale of one-size-fits-all health-insurance policies, but many states are balking. "The problem: The ACA [Affordable Care Act, an abbreviation for the law's formal title] lacks a funding mechanism for Department of Health and Human Services to set up exchanges for states that decline to do so themselves--and congressional Republicans are unlikely to appropriate additional money for that."

"4) Nullification of the Medicare Cost-Cutting Board." That would be the Independent Payment Advisory Board, colloquially known as the death panel, which would recommend which medical services to deny in order to cut costs. "The problem," according to Kapur, is that "Senate Republicans can--and have signaled their intention to--filibuster nominees to the board."

But that isn't the only problem. As Kapur notes, "even some House Democrats" have voted to abolish the board. Kapur ignores another problem, reported last month by the Washington Post's Sarah Kliff: ObamaCare proponents despair of finding enough experts to serve on the 15-man panel, "a federal job where the compensation is low, the political controversy high and the ultimate payoff unclear."

Kapur's argument amounts to the following: Democrats passed a law that had and still has insufficient public support (points 1 and 4), that cannot achieve its goals without unconstitutional means (point 2), that did not allocate the necessary resources to accomplish its objectives (point 3), and that lacks and still lacks even minimal support across the political aisle (all four points).

That sounds very much like the conservative critique of ObamaCare. At this point it's fair to say that ObamaCare opponents have won the argument. Of course, since supporters won the political battle three years ago (and Obama won re-election), this monstrosity is now the law of the land, ensuring that both sides' victories will have been Pyrrhic.

You Betcha "A former mayor of San Diego spent the last decade wagering more than a billion dollars at casinos across the country, eventually liquidating her savings, auctioning her belongings, selling off real estate, borrowing from friends and taking more than $2 million from a charity set up by her late husband, a fast-food tycoon," the New York Times reports:

The former mayor, Maureen O'Connor, 66, blamed an addiction to gambling aggravated by a brain tumor for the gargantuan spree. Her lawyers said that while she had made well over a billion dollars in bets at casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and San Diego, her actual net losses were around $13 million.

Most of the readers who emailed us this story faulted the Times or other news outlets for failing to disclose O'Connor's party. (She's a Democrat, surprise surprise.) But our reaction was different: She gambled more than $1 billion and lost only $13 million? It sounds as if she's a much wiser financial steward than the politicians in Washington.

If Maureen O'Connor had been administering the so-called stimulus of 2009, which involved several hundred times as much money as she ever gambled, the country might be a lot less broke than it is today.

Abortion Dead-Enders "One of the nation's most prominent abortion rights groups is working to remake its image in response to concern that it may be overtaken by a growing cadre of young anti-abortion activists," Roll Call reports. "Its message: This is not your mother's NARAL."

That's undoubtedly true. If you're under 40, NARAL's efforts make it much likelier that your mother didn't even have children. There's something both poignant and funny about a group devoted to abortion puzzling over its difficulty in finding young people to support it.

Whites Need Not Apply "A school principal said no white children were allowed at an after-school tutoring program, and now some parents call it discrimination," reports Denver's KCNC-TV. You've got to love that "some parents call it" qualification--as if discrimination could get any more blatant than a policy of excluding all persons of a particular race or skin color.

The district is now backpedaling. "We have had lots of students sign up for the tutoring," a district spokesman tells the station. "Many of them are white and we will be accepting all of them." But in a voicemail message to one of the parents, the principal acknowledged that the program is "focused for and designed for children of color." He said whites could be admitted, but only "if we have space."

Is there really any harm in a special tutoring program for minority kids? Perhaps not, but such a thing cannot be reconciled with the relentless antiracism that currently dominates most American institutions. A main goal of that antiracism, of course, is to benefit minorities (or give the impression of benefiting minorities). But such efforts cannot be sustained without constant appeals to fairness, and those appeals are irreconcilable with brazen antiwhite discrimination.

Will Naomi Wolf Wear a Veil? "Naomi Wolf, the author and activist, is in early-stage talks with the global news network Al Jazeera," reports Politico. In a way this makes sense: Wolf is a hysterical critic of America's antiterrorism efforts. In 2007 she published a book called "The End of America," in which she claimed that the Bush administration was taking us down the road to fascism.

Still, the first thing one thinks of upon hearing this news is the irony of a leading "third wave" (i.e., hypernarcissistic) feminist joining a pro-Islamist news network. Is she going to wear a veil? Probably not, but it turns out she doesn't mind if Muslim women do. She spelled it out in a 2008 Sydney Morning Herald article:

Are we in the West radically misinterpreting Muslim sexual mores, particularly the meaning to many Muslim women of being veiled or wearing the chador? And are we blind to our own markers of the oppression and control of women?The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality. But when I travelled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women's appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one's husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling--toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.

That used to be true in America and the rest of Christendom as well, until the first- and second-wave feminists came along to "equalize" the sexes. One wonders if Wolf is really as sympathetic to Muslim traditions as she tries to sound, or if her supposed sympathy to Islam really just reflects what she imagines to be a shared antipathy to Western traditions.

Fox Butterfield, Is That You?

• "Despite its partisan heckling of Republicans as 'The Party of White People,' The New Republic's editorial staff is a monochromatic swath of vanilla honkydom."--TheOtherMcCain.com, Feb.�14
• "The study also revealed something counterintuitive: The people most knowledgeable about science and who had the best grasp of math and numbers, were the ones least concerned about climate change."--Science News Prime, Feb.�11

They Must Be Very Precocious "Obama Bores Preschoolers"--headline, BuzzFeed.com, Feb.�14

Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead "Obama Waging an 'Endless Campaign'�"--headline, TheHill.com, Feb.�15

Shortest Books Ever Written "Obama, Winning the Argument"--headline, Washington Post, Feb.�15

So Much for the War on Drugs "Kerry Says Trip Will Focus on Finding Syria Solution"--headline, New York Times, Feb.�14

It's a Cookbook

• "Sen. Warren Grills Top Regulators"--headline, WSJ.com, Feb.�14
• "Think Again: The Mainstream Media Is Gobbling Up Conservative Crazies"--headline, Center for American Progress website, Feb.�12

With DNC in Mind, City Bans Carrying Urine, Feces "Carpenter Leaves Void in the Clubhouse"--headline, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb.�14

Sounds Like a Dangerous Contraption "Another Cog in the Machinery of Divahood"--headline, New York Times, Feb.�15

Samurai Bodega "Robber Pulls Knife, Store Clerk Pulls Sword in New Bedford"--headline, Boston Globe website, Feb.�13

Questions Nobody Is Asking

• "Does 'I Love You' Mean Your Relationship Is in Trouble?"--headline, ScienceDaily.com, Feb.�14
• "Why Are There So Many Bosnians in St. Louis?"--headline, TheAtlanticCities.com, Feb.�15
• "Why Should Banks Risk Capital on Innovative New Companies With Brilliant Ideas When Washington Dutifully Repays Interest and Principle [sic] on Those Boring Old Savings Bonds--Albeit With Freshly Printed Cash?"--headline, Deroy Murdock syndicated column, Feb.�15

Answers to Questions Nobody Is Asking

• "Where Does the President Go on Presidents Day? Palm Beach County"--headline, Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, Feb.�15
• "How Lay's Got Its Chips to Taste Like Chicken and Waffles"--headline, FastCoCreate.com, Feb.�13

Question and Answer

• "What Happens When Fish Get High on Discarded Drugs?"--headline, Seattle Times, Feb.�14
• "Experts Probe Cause of Lake Auburn Fish Kill"--headline, Associated Press, Feb.�14

Look Out Below! "Airbus to Drop Lithium-Ion Batteries From Newest Jet"--headline, The Wall Street Journal, Feb.�15

It's Always in the Last Place You Look "Where the Bonbons Are Buried"--headline, New York Times, Feb.�14

Too Much Information "Five Things We've Learned About Cruising"--headline, CNN.com, Feb.�15

Someone Set Up Us the Bomb "Downtown Restaurants Morton's, Ban Thai Refresh Properties"--headline, BaltimoreFishbowl.com, Feb.�14

News You Can Use "Pouring Granulated Sugar on Wounds 'Can Heal Them Faster Than Antibiotics'�"--headline, Daily Mail (London), Feb.�15

Bottom Story of the Day "Madoff: I Wish I Hadn't Pleaded Guilty"--headline, Newsmax.com, Feb.�13

Gangi ��r Vel, Herra Gorski Iceland's government "is considering introducing internet filters, such as those used to block China off [from] the worldwide web, in order to stop Icelanders downloading or viewing pornography on the internet," London's Daily Telegraph reports. "The unprecedented censorship is justified by fears about damaging effects of the internet on children and women":

Ogmundur Jonasson, Iceland's interior minister, is drafting legislation to stop the access of online pornographic images and videos by young people through computers, games consoles and smartphones.�.�.�."There is a strong consensus building in Iceland. We have so many experts from educationalists to the police and those who work with children behind this, that this has become much broader than party politics," Halla Gunnarsdottir, a political adviser to Mr Jonasson told the Daily Mail.

We doubt it can be done, but Gunnarsdottir says: "Surely if we can send a man to the moon, we must be able to tackle porn on the internet."

We didn't know the Icelandics had a space program, much less that they'd reached the moon.

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(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Rebecca Billings, Kenneth Kelly, Michael Nunnelley, Michele Schiesser, John Bobek, Rod Pennington, Eric Jensen, Mark Owen, Irene DeBlasio, Ed Lasky, David Hallstrom, Michael Segal, Ethel Fenig, Bill Schweber, John Sanders, Mark Sullivan, Arlene Ross, Mordecai Bobrowsky, Bruce Goldman, David Jelinek, Bob Walsh, Craig Iskowitz, Cris Lafferty, Michael Klarman, Jonathan Fashena, Zack Russ, Steve Thompson, Rick Wiesehan, Brian Warner, Dan Draney, Doug Helferich, Dan Rittenreiser, Mike Krupey, Hillel Markowitz and Harris Perry. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)