Conservatives to women: Lean back, Dana Milbank, Washington Post, March 31, 2014

The conservative minds of the Heritage Foundation have found a way for Republicans to shrink the gender gap: They need to persuade more women to get their MRS degrees.

The advocacy group held a gathering of women of the right Monday afternoon to mark the final day of Women’s History Month — and the consensus was that women ought to go back in history. If Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg’s mantra is “lean in,” these women were proposing that women lean back: get married, take care of kids and let men earn the wages.

Paul Ryan’s April Fool’s joke, Steve Benen, MSNBC, April 1, 2014

Unlike most years, there’s no real point to the House and Senate Budget Committees presenting budget blueprints this year. Federal spending levels for this fiscal year and the next were already established in an agreement that was approved months ago.

But House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) today unveiled a 99-page document (pdf) anyway, not because he had to but because he wanted to. This is a political exercise, intended to make an election-year point. That’s not intended as criticism, per se – political exercises in election years are hardly outrageous – but it’s important to realize this is more of a Republican fantasy. There’s no pretense that this will actually become the nation’s budget.

Obamacare: Will The Haters Ever Stop Hating?, The Economist, April 1, 2014

Before it will be judged a historic success, Obamacare has more hurdles to clear (Charles Ornstein lays out a few). But the catastrophic-failure scenario envisioned by the ACA’s critics, in which low enrollment composed of disproportionately sick people leads to premium hikes and an adverse-selection “death spiral”, now seems unlikely (though it isn’t entirely out of the question, as our health-care correspondent writes). The solid enrollment is all the more striking given that Republican states have largely rejected the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid, and many Republicans and well-funded conservative groups (like the one that brought me that irritating ad) have fought implementation tooth and nail. Indeed, surging enrollment has spooked a number of Republicans into claiming that the registration numbers aren’t real.

Photo credit: By Saffron Blaze (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.