Wednesday, July 31, 2013

U.S. Outlines N.S.A.’s Culling of Data for All Domestic Calls

July 31, 2013

U.S. Outlines N.S.A.’s Culling of Data for All Domestic Calls


WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday released formerly classified documents outlining a once-secret program of theNational Security Agency that is collecting records of all domestic phone calls in the United States, as a newly leaked N.S.A. document surfaced showing how the agency spies on Web browsing and other Internet activity abroad.
Together, the new round of disclosures shed even more light on the scope of the United States government’s secret surveillance programs, which have been dragged into public view and debate by leaks from the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the newly declassified documents related to the domestic phone logging program at the start of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the topic. Simultaneously, The Guardian published a still-classified 32-pagepresentation leaked by Mr. Snowden that describes the N.S.A.'s XKeyscore program, which mines Internet browsing information that the agency is apparently vacuuming up at 150 network sites around the world.
The documents released by the government, meanwhile, include an April ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that supported a secondary order — also leaked by Mr. Snowden — requiring a Verizon subsidiary to turn over all of its customers’ phone logs for a three-month period.
It said the government may access the logs only when an executive branch official determines that there are “facts giving rise to a reasonable, articulable suspicion” that the number searched is associated with terrorism.
The releases also included two formerly classified briefing papers to Congress from 2009 and 2011, when the provision of the Patriot Act that the court relied on to issue that order was up for reauthorization. The papers outlined the bulk collection of “metadata” logging all domestic phone calls and e-mails of Americans and are portrayed as an “early warning system” that allowed the government to quickly see who was linked to a terrorism suspect.
“Both of these programs operate on a very large scale,” the 2011 briefing paper said, followed by something that is redacted, and then: “However, as described below, only a tiny fraction of such records are ever viewed by N.S.A. intelligence analysts.”
Both programs traced back to the surveillance efforts the Bush administration secretly started after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and which initially operated outside statutory authority or court oversight. The Bush administration later obtained orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to continue them.
The Obama administration has said it shut down the program that collected e-mail “metadata” in 2011, but it is not clear whether such collection has continued under a different program.
The newly disclosed XKeyscore presentation focuses in particular on Internet activities, including chats and Web site browsing activities, as intelligence analysts search for terrorist cells by looking at “anomalous events” like who is using encryption in Iran or “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”
In contrast to the domestic-call tracking program, the example cited in the XKeyscore presentation — which said it had generated intelligence that resulted in the capture of more than 300 terrorists — appeared to be focused on overseas activity.
A map showed 150 network sites around the world at which the N.S.A. is collecting that information; it is not clear whether the governments in those places are aware of the spying.
The volume of data is so vast that most of it is stored for only three days, the presentation said, although “metadata” — information showing log-ins and server activity, but not content — is stored for a month.
Several of the pages on the presentation were redacted by The Guardian.
But the presentation shows that while much of the focus from Mr. Snowden’s revelations so far has been on communications — whether calls or e-mails — that are linked, directly or indirectly, to a known suspect, the N.S.A. is also collecting and searching through massive amounts of Web-browsing activity.
“A large amount of time spent on the Web is performing actions that are anonymous,” the presentation explains, saying that the XKeyscore system can extract and store retrospective activity from “raw unselected bulk traffic.”
One example of how analysts might use the system is to search for whenever someone has started up a “virtual private network” in a particular country of interest; VPNs are pipelines that add greater security to online communications. N.S.A. analysts are able to use the system to extract the activity retrospectively from “raw unselected bulk traffic” and then decrypt it to “discover the users.”
It also cited using the system to locate a target who speaks German but is known to be in Pakistan by looking for German-language Internet activity in that country, or to uncover where and by whom a Microsoft Word document was created that had passed through several users’ hands.
Yet another slide said: “My target uses Google Maps to scope target locations — can I use this information to determine his e-mail address? What about the Web searches — do any stand out and look suspicious?”
At the start of Wednesday’s hearing, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, expressed deep skepticism about the domestic phone records program. He criticized intelligence officials and defenders of the program for misleadingly saying it helped prevent 54 terrorist events, a number that conflates the usefulness of N.S.A. surveillance activities targeted at noncitizens abroad with the usefulness of the database of Americans’ phone calls.
A classified list of “terrorist events” that N.S.A. surveillance helped to prevent, he said, “simply does not reflect dozens or even several terrorist plots” that the domestic call log program “helped thwart or prevent, let alone 54, as some have suggested.”
Citing the “massive privacy implications” of the program, Mr. Leahy said: “If this program is not effective it has to end. So far I’m not convinced by what I’ve seen.”
But Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who is also on the judiciary panel, said that while the program could be changed with greater restrictions and safeguards, it should be preserved because it would place the nation “in jeopardy” to eliminate it.
Robert Litt, the top lawyer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, testified that the Obama administration was also “open to re-evaluating this program” to create greater public confidence that it protects privacy while “preserving the essence of the program.”
Last week, the House of Representatives voted narrowly to defeat an amendment to shut down the N.S.A.'s domestic phone record tracking program. The 217-to-205 vote was far closer than expected and came as members of both parties defied their leadership to oppose continuing the domestic call logging program, suggesting that momentum against it was building.
Before Mr. Snowden’s leaks made clear what the government was doing with the Patriot Act program, several senators on the Intelligence Committee had made cryptic warnings that it was interpreting the law in a twisted way to do something alarming and made reference to the2011 briefing paper. The New York Times filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain that document.
The lawsuit contended that the abstract legal analysis outlining what the government believed the Patriot Act meant could not be withheld from the public as properly classified and should be released, even if the passages detailing the program that relied upon that interpretation were redacted.
The Obama administration had argued that it could withhold that document entirely, and in May 2012 a Federal District Court judge, William H. Pauley III, agreed to dismiss the lawsuit after reading the briefing paper, finding that the details of the classified program were “inextricably intertwined” with the rest, so releasing it in redacted form was “neither feasible nor warranted.”
The newly declassified documents about the call logging program do not go into great detail about the legal analysis on which it is based. The court’s order was rooted in a surveillance law that allows the F.B.I. to obtain records that are “relevant” to an investigation.
A key question has been how the judges justified stretching that term to encompass collecting records of all calls. Government officials have explained that a subset of those calls will later turn out to be relevant when analyzing who has links to a suspected terrorist.
By putting them all into a single database, the N.S.A. can preserve the records for later analysis for up to five years; look at circles of callers up to three “hops” removed from the target, even if they are subscribers to different phone companies; and search for patterns that may indicate that a suspect is trying to hide his communications, like cycling through throwaway “burner” phones from different providers.
Mr. Leahy asked whether by the same legal logic, the government could not obtain “virtually all available commercial data” like a comprehensive database of all Americans’ credit card records, Web site visits, medical records, or firearms. As an example, he asked whether the government would be justified in collecting records of all purchases in case someone was buying precursors to a bomb.
James Cole, the deputy attorney general, emphasized that the court had found the phone logs all to be relevant, and so lawfully collectable only “in the context of the restrictions and in the context of what it is you’re looking for.” Other kinds of records in a different context might not meet that same criteria, he said.
“We’re not collecting all their phone records so that we can wander through them,” Mr. Cole said. “The phone records are being done to look at the connections. If somebody’s buying things that could be used to make bombs, of course we would like to know that. But we may not need to do it in this fashion.”
Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the panel, also expressed skepticism about that theory. He asked how the calling records of innocent Americans could be considered relevant.
Mr. Litt explained: “It’s a well-accepted concept that if you need to get a large group of records in order to find a smaller group of records that actually provides the information you need to move forward, that the larger group of records can be relevant.”
But Mr. Grassley pressed on, asking whether there was any legal precedent to support such a broad conception of “relevance.”
Mr. Cole replied that judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had now signed off on the program 34 times because the orders have to be renewed every three months, and each was such a precedent.
“The legal precedent comes from the history of all the orders that have been issued,” he said.

Sorry, You Just Missed Your Chance To Buy A ‘Ron Mexico’ NFL Jersey

BY TRAVIS WALDRON ON JULY 31, 2013 AT 1:46 PM
ronmexico3
CREDIT: Nick Baumann
If you needed something else to blame on Anthony Weiner, he’s now the reason you can’t order customized Ron Mexico football jerseys from the NFL’s online store.
Last week’s news that Weiner used the alias “Carlos Danger” to send pictures of his junk (again) to women on the internet prompted Mother Jones editor Nick Baumann to wonder how long it would be before the NFL banned fans from customizing New York Giants jerseys with the alias on the back. It was a reference to the NFL’s 2005 decision to ban “Ron Mexico” customized jerseysafter the world learned of the alias then-Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick used to get treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.
After Baumann’s tweet, I checked to see if that ban still existed. It didn’t appear to, since NFLShop.com let me proceed all the way through to checkout with Ron Mexico printed on both Atlanta and Philadelphia jerseys, the two Vick has worn during his career. After some deliberation, Baumann went all the way and ordered one (on a Patriots jersey). The NFL sent it to him, and Tuesday, he wore it to MoJo’s office.
There won’t be a rash of Ron Mexico jerseys flooding stadiums this fall, though. An NFL spokesperson told me Wednesday that Baumann only got the jersey because of a computer glitch that occurred when NFLShop.com switched vendors in July 2012. “During the process some of our prohibited words for customized product did not upload properly,” Joanna Hunter, the spokesperson, said in an email. “They are fixing that so going forward you can no longer customize products with those words.”
It’s no secret why the league runs a tight ship on customized jerseys. The NFL is an $9 billion industry, and its jerseys and players are its most identifiable brands. Preventing fans from buying the jerseys of accused murderers like Aaron Hernandez, whose jersey the league quit selling in June, or customizing jerseys with mocking names or obscenities is nothing more than brand protection. It’s already easy enough to associate NFL players with crimes or other problems. Allowing their jerseys to become billboards for players accused of committing murder or spreading herpes would only make that worse.
If you’re disappointed that you can’t mock Mike Vick, though, don’t fret: the NFL apparently hasn’t gotten around to banning Carlos Danger jerseys. Yet.


UK set to ban Google Glass for drivers

UK set to ban Google Glass for drivers

Google's smart glasses will distract drivers, says Department of Transport
Charles Arthur testing Google Glass
Google Glass has yet to launch in the UK, but the Department of Transport says wearers are likely to be subject to the same penalties as drivers who use mobile phones. Photograph: Guardian
Google Glass is the highest profile product in a wave of new wearable technologies, promising to display everything from restaurant reviews to directions and allow automated video and photos wherever we go. But the internet-connected eyewear looks set to be banned on the UK's roads even before the product's 2014 launch, according to the Department of Transport.
A spokesman for the department told Stuff, a gadget magazine, that the device could distract drivers while they are behind the wheel, defining Glass as a similar distraction to a mobile phone.
"We are aware of the impending rollout of Google Glass and are in discussion with the police to ensure that individuals do not use this technology while driving," said the spokesman.
"It is important that drivers give their full attention to the road when they are behind the wheel and do not behave in a way that stops them from observing what is happening on the road."
He pointed to offences including driving without due attention and careless driving, which is due to become a fixed penalty offence in late 2013. Since a ban on using mobile phones while driving was introduced in 2003, more than one million drivers have been convicted – typically issued with a £60 fixed penalty notice and three points on their driver's licence.
The statement by the Department for Transport indicates that Google Glass users would be subject to the same penalty under the 1988 Road Traffic Act. It reflects similar concerns in the US, where Glass has been launched to a small trial group of "explorers". Politicians in Delaware and West Virginia have introduced bills that ban drivers wearing computing technologies while driving.
"We are thinking very carefully about how we design Glass because new technology always raises new issues," said Google in a statement. "Our Glass Explorer programme, currently only launched in the US, reaches people from all walks of life and will ensure that our users become active participants in shaping the future of this technology."
Technology fans argue that Glass, which displays simple, monochrome information in the wearer's peripheral vision, is less distracting than satellite navigation tools that include a visual interface designed to be used while driving.
Developers have already begun exploring applications for Glass, including GlassTesla, which allows owners of the high-end electric cars to remotely control the car's air conditioning, mileage and battery information as well as directions.

Federal Judge: Catholic Church Has A Constitutional Right Not To Compensate Victims Of Sex Abuse

BY IAN MILLHISER ON JULY 31, 2013 AT 2:05 PM
Cardinal Timothy Dolan allegedly transferred church funds into a separate trust in order to protect them from clergy abuse lawsuits
Cardinal Timothy Dolan allegedly transferred church funds into a separate trust in order to protect them from clergy abuse lawsuits
A federal judge in Wisconsin handed down an opinion yesterday granting the Catholic Church — and indeed, potentially all religious institutions — such sweeping immunity from federal bankruptcy law that it is not clear that it would permit any plaintiff to successfully sue any church in any court. While the ostensible issue in this case is whether over $50 million in church funds are shielded from a bankruptcy proceeding triggered largely by a flood of clerical sex abuse claims against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Judge Rudolph Randa reads the church’s constitutional and legal right to religious liberty so broadly as to render religious institutions immune from much of the law.
The case involves approximately $57 million that former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan transferred from the archdiocese’s general accounts to into a separate trust set up to maintain the church’s cemeteries. Although Dolan, who is now a cardinal, the Archbishop of New York and the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has denied that the purpose of this transfer was to shield the funds from lawsuits, Dolan penned a letter to the Vatican in 2007 where he explained that transferring the funds into the trust would lead to “an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.”
The issue facing the court is, essentially, whether the funds that Dolan split off into a separate trust can now be reabsorbed into the archdiocese’s assets in order to enable sex abuse victims and other creditors to be paid out of these assets. In holding that these funds cannot be so absorbed, Randa relies on a law that limits the federal government’s ability to “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion,” Randa cites to the current Archbishop of Milwaukee’s statement that “the care and maintenance of Catholic cemeteries, cemetery property, and the remains of those interred is a fundamental exercise of the Catholic faith,” and concludes that this statement alone is enough to shield the church’s funds. As Randa explains, “if the Trust’s funds are converted into the bankruptcy estate, there will be no funds or, at best, insufficient funds for the perpetual care of the Milwaukee Catholic Cemeteries.”
And Randa does not stop there. He goes on to argue that senior church officials get to unilaterally decide what constitutes a “substantial burden” on their faith for purposes of federal law — “Archbishop Listecki’s declaration stands unopposed, and on the issue of religious doctrine, it is unassailable. Moreover, the issue of substantial burden is essentially coterminous with religious doctrine.” In this case, an archbishop declared cemetery funds to be untouchable in a bankruptcy proceeding, but Randa’s reasoning could extend much farther. Nothing in his opinion would prevent a church’s officials from declaring that every single line in every single ledger kept by the church is mandated by the sacred word of God — and therefore every single dollar owned by the church is untouchable so long as the church engages in the kind of accounting gymnastics Dolan allegedly performed.
The same federal law that protects religious liberty also permits substantial burdens on religion when such a burden is “in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.” Randa largely glosses over this exception, however, holding that the “interests advanced by the bankruptcy system are not compelling.” That very well be true, but there is another, overriding interest in this case — whether an employer whose employees stand accused of widespread sexual abuse can evade accountability by engaging in accounting tricks. At least 45 Milwaukee priests face sex abuse accusations. One priest in particular was accused of personally molesting close to 200 deaf boys. Yet Randa does not even consider whether America has a compelling interest in deterring the church from allowing future such incidents to occur.
If Randa had stopped there, his opinion would still award the church — and, indeed, potentially all religious institutions — a breathtaking degree of legal immunity. Taken to its logical conclusion, Randa’s framework would allow a church to run up whatever debts it chooses, then effectively protect the entirety of its assets from its creditors through a combination of creative accounting and a bankruptcy filing. Yet Randa does not even stop there. After reaching this sweeping interpretation of federal religious liberty law, he then turns to the First Amendment of the Constitution. With little analysis, and in an almost certain conflict with a binding Supreme Court precedent, Randa concludes that the church has a constitutional right to shield its funds. By raising his opinion to constitutional status, Randa effectively strips Congress of its ability to correct his sweeping interpretation of the law.
Judge Randa, a George H.W. Bush appointee, has a history of being reversed by higher courts in cases involving hot button social issues, so there is a good chance that his opinion will ultimately be reversed on appeal. In the meantime, however, Randa effectively places the church above the law — and leaves what could be hundreds of sexual abuse victims in the cold.


Cops don’t need warrants to track your phone location

Cops don’t need warrants to track your phone location

Fourth Amendment protections dwindle again with ruling that no probable cause needed to track location records


Cops don't need warrants to track your phone location(Credit: Shutterstock)
Think of your phone as a tracking device. The idea that law enforcement agencies can access phone location data is nothing new. However, in a troubling ruling for privacy advocates, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that law enforcement agencies need not obtain a warrant of probable cause to access cell phone subscribers’ cellphone tower location information, including location histories.
The Fifth Circuit ruling is an important one, which once again illustrates how telecomms providers work in tandem with government efforts to be able to track, at any given time, the whereabouts and locational history of any given cell phone user — it’s all in the providers’ records. As Wired noted, “the 5th Circuit, which sets law in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, concluded today that the locational history of a mobile phone does not enjoy constitutional protections because the government has not performed the tracking, and that the data is simply a business record owned by carriers.” Wired reported that the “ruling comes as the authorities have widely adopted using warrantless cell-tower locational tracking of criminal suspects in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling 18 months ago that they need probable-cause warrants from judges to affix covert GPS devices to vehicles.”


As with the revelations that the government is, as daily practice, hoarding vast phone and online communications metadata, Tuesday’s ruling carries worrying implications for our ever dwindling Fourth Amendment protections in the digital age. As ACLU attorney Catherine Crump commented:
This ruling fails to recognize that Americans do in fact have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location information. Where you go can reveal a great deal about your life, and people don’t think that carrying a cell phone around means that someone can get a detailed record of their movement… The government should not be able to access this personal, sensitive information without getting a warrant based on probable cause. Unfortunately, the Fifth Circuit’s decision allows exactly that.

The First State that Tried to Defund Planned Parenthood is Officially Giving Up

The First State that Tried to Defund Planned Parenthood is Officially Giving Up
Published: Wednesday 31 July 2013
In addition to permanently blocking Indiana from stripping Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding, the proposed final judgment will also dismiss the women’s health organization’s claim that this type of state law is unconstitutional.

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After a legal battle that has stretched over the course of two years, the state of Indiana has agreed to put an end to its efforts to strip Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood clinics. Indiana was the first statethat attempted to target the national women’s health organization by blocking it from receiving state-level Medicaid dollars for the services it provides to low-income women.
In 2011, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) signed a law to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving any Medicaid funding simply because it is an abortion provider — even though that money actually funds general health screenings for thousands of low-income women, not abortions. That sparked a national trend. Anti-abortion lawmakers in states like Arizona, North Carolina, Kansas, Tennessee, and Texas followed suit, enacting similar laws intended to defund the women’s health organization by excluding it from their states’ pools of public insurance providers.
But those efforts have been largely unsuccessful. Multiple courts have determined that states aren’t allowed to discriminate against qualified Medicaid providers simply because of their stance on abortion rights, saying that low-income women deserve the freedom to choose their own doctors.
Indiana’s own law was temporarily blocked by a U.S. District Judge last year, and a federal appeals court decided to uphold that injunction. Indiana officials kept fighting, asking the highest court in the country to hear their appeal of the case — but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to do so in May. Now, the state of Indiana is agreeing to permanently end its failed legal crusade against Planned Parenthood.
Cecile Richards, the president of the women’s health organization, hailed the news as a victory for women across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood clinics for their preventative care. “This is not only a victory for Planned Parenthood’s patients in Indiana, it is a victory for the nearly three million people who turn to Planned Parenthood health centers each year across the country,” Richards said in a statement. “Politicians in all 50 states should take note: blocking Planned Parenthood from funding to provide preventive health care is both unlawful, and deeply unpopular.”
In addition to permanently blocking Indiana from stripping Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding, the proposed final judgment will also dismiss the women’s health organization’s claim that this type of state law is unconstitutional.

Family planning services saved the U.S. $10.5 billion, prevented 760,000 abortions in 2010

Family planning services saved the U.S. $10.5 billion, prevented 760,000 abortions in 2010

Surprise! Basic access to contraception saves taxpayers a ton of money each year and helps prevent abortions

 
Family planning services saved the U.S. $10.5 billion, prevented 760,000 abortions in 2010 Rick Perry (Credit: AP/Eric Gay)
Publicly funded family planning services, the kind currently being gutted by state lawmakers across the country, saved the government $10.5 billion and helped women prevent 2.2 million unplanned pregnancies and 760,000 abortions in 2010, according to a new study released by the Guttmacher Institute.
To break it down even further, taxpayers saved $5.68 for every dollar the government spent on contraceptive services that year.
Health centers that received some funding through the federal Title X program, which Republicans have also been working diligently to axe in the name of austerity, served 4.7 million women in 2010, helping to prevent 1.2 million unintended pregnancies, which would have resulted in an estimated 590,000 unplanned births and 400,000 abortions.
“Each year, millions of women are able to access highly effective contraceptive methods through these programs,” said Jennifer Frost, a senior researcher for Guttmacher. “Investing in family planning to help women avoid pregnancies they don’t want and for which they are unprepared is good public health policy. Saving money as a result of that investment is just common sense.”
This isn’t the first study to suggest that ensuring women have access to contraception has a positive impact on, basically, every single thing in the world.
According to yet another report from Guttmacher, this time a review of more than 66 studies conducted over three decades, a woman’s ability to control her fertility affects much more than just if and when she’ll start a family.


Access to contraception was found to be related to all sorts of positive outcomes in family, mental health, children’s well-being and general life satisfaction, as Adam Sonfield, lead author of the review, notes: “The scientific evidence strongly confirms what has long been obvious to women. Contraceptive use, and the ensuing ability to decide whether and when to have children, is linked to a host of benefits for themselves, the quality of their relationships, and the well-being of their children.”
Rick Perry, Trent Franks,  et. al., take note.
You can read the full report here.

How Republicans could actually derail Obamacare

How Republicans could actually derail Obamacare

Welcome to Health Reform Watch, Sarah Kliff’s regular look at how the Affordable Care Act is changing the American health-care system — and being changed by it. You can reach Sarah with questions, comments and suggestions here. Check back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon for the latest edition, and read previous columns here.
The Republican plan to defund Obamacare is running into some roadblocks on Capitol Hill. Some Republicans don’t like it. Some really, really don’t like it. President Obama near certainly wouldn’t sign off on it and, even if the government did shut down, it wouldn’t stop the law’s implementation.
So, in other words, there are obstacles to the defunding strategy. And, in general, it’s pretty difficult to stop Obamacare at this point. The law survived a Supreme Court decision and a presidential election, the two events that – had they turned out differently – could have lead to Obamacare’s full-scale repeal.
This isn’t to say that Republicans are completely out of options; there are ways to dismantle or at least disassemble a few pieces of the Affordable Care Act. While they’re certainly not surefire, here are some possibilities currently on the table.
1. Lobby hard against the Medicaid expansion. 
medicaid mapSix states, by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s count, have not decided yet whether to move forward with expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The Medicaid expansion is a hugely important part of the health-care law, responsible for about half of Obamacare insurance expansion. Without it, the law’s reach dwindles.
Stopping the Medicaid expansion would reduce Obamacare’s reach and create a messaging problem for health law supporters. “How do you explain this in a way that seems fair and reasonable, that the higher-income people get help but you don’t?” said Mike Perry, a founding partner at polling firm PerryUndem Research, told me recently. “Advocates on the ground are really struggling with that group. They want to have a positive message but don’t know what to say.”
2. Convince young, healthy people not to sign up for the law’s subsidies. Or do an enrollment drive with the old and sick. 
Don’t raise my premiums, bro. (Mark Gail/The Washington Post)
The White House has made no secret of the crucial role that young adults play in the Affordable Care Act’s success. Their low medical bills, if young adults sign up, would be expected to keep premiums down for everyone else. On the flip side, a marketplace filled with sick and elderly people would have really high health insurance costs.
There’s already some chatter about campaigns to dissuade people from enrolling in the health law’s program, including one that focuses on burning Obamacare draft cards. Some Republican offices say they won’t help constituents connect with the health law’s programs. The pitch to young adults, Obamacare opponents I talk to, would go something like this: Why spend hundreds, maybe thousands, on health insurance coverage when you could simply pay a $95 fine instead?
3. Chip away at the law piece by piece. 
If you can’t take away the whole puzzle, how about one piece? (Flickr)
Congress has had surprising success chipping away at small health law provisions. It has passed seven laws that have tweaked or repealed Affordable Care Act requirements. One killed the CO-OP program, which was meant to increase the number of health plans available on the insurance marketplaces. Another ended a long-term insurance program that the Obama administration had given up on implementing.
Are these changes that will kill the Affordable Care Act altogether? No. Do they chip away at its funding sources? Yes, and the Obama administration has already said it’s strapped for cash in the Affordable Care Act’s implementation. Some further repeal proposals, especially efforts to eliminate the medical device tax, have already gotten relatively strong bipartisan support. It’s not the whole law, but it’s something.
4. Elect a new president in 2016. Preferably, one who opposes Obamacare.
(Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
“Our view is that if you want to change the policies in Washington, you’ve got to change the players,” says Sal Russo, chief strategist for the Tea Party Express. “As long as you have a President Obama, you can’t really complain about the Republican House not getting things done. Obviously Obama is not going to get to a point where he decides this was a mistake.”
Russo says he now sees the best repeal strategy as one that rests on campaigns: namely, ones that lead to a Republican-controlled White House and Senate. One concern about this strategy, in Republican circles, is that it will be too little, too late. The health law’s subsidies will have rolled out, and Americans won’t want to give them up. Russo disagrees, saying, “My guess is they have more bad news than good news coming on implementation.”
5. Set expectations high for Obamacare’s rollout. Like really, really high. 
What if Republicans held these signs? Counterintuitive, right?! (Mark Wilson / GETTY IMAGES)
What if Republicans held these signs? Counterintuitive, right?! (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
A risky strategy, definitely, but an idea that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) raised with me in a recent interview.
“What I do know is if you do say it’s going to be terrible, terrible, terrible as Republicans have been saying, and it’s only one terrible, it’s going to look good,” Coburn says. “We shouldn’t overhype things. We should just watch.”
State officials working on the health-care law are worried about expectations being set to high. They speculate that having such a low bar to clear – Obamacare not being a complete and total disaster – actually helps them have a successful rollout.
KLIFF NOTES: Top health policy reads from around the Web. 
Medicare Part D premiums are really stable. “Medicare Part D premiums will average about $31 in 2014 — up from $30 for the past three years. The Part D deductible will fall from $325 to $310 in 2014. ‘There is continued very strong competition within the Part D plan,” said Jonathan Blum, deputy administrator and director for the Center of Medicare. When the coverage gap program began, ‘there was lots of concern that filling in the doughnut hole would cause Part D costs to go up.’” Kelly Kennedy in USA Today
Ted Cruz is battling Republican colleagues over Obamacare defunding. “The Texas freshman senator and his senior aides are unleashing a barrage of attacks on their fellow Republicans for refusing to support their plan to choke off Obamacare as a condition for funding the government. Cruz’s chief of staff is lambasting fellow conservatives like Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn for serving in the “surrender caucus.” His top political strategist has compared Mitch McConnell to Barack Obama. And the senator himself has said many Republicans are “scared” to wage this fight.” Manu Raju and Burgess Everett in Politico.
Boehner is planning more Obamacare votes. “Over the next few months, the House will vote to require verification for health care subsidies, stop the Independent Payment Advisory Board and eliminate funding streams, according to a source in the closed House Republican Conference meeting where he announced the strategy.” Jake Sherman in Politico.