DRIVING THE DAY: At 11:25 a.m., Pres. Obama speaks on the Affordable Care Act, in the East Room

..." His message, from a White House fact sheet out this a.m.: "Middle Class Americans Saving Billions under the Health Care Law's Medical Loss Ratio Refunds ... President Obama will deliver remarks to discuss how the Affordable Care Act is putting money back into the pockets of over 8.5 million Americans. The President will be joined by families who have benefitted from a provision in the health care law that ensures insurance companies spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars go to medical care and health care quality improvement, rather than on administrative costs. A broad coalition of community groups who will be working on the ground across the country to help enroll Americans in the new Health Insurance Marketplaces this fall will also attend." ...

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Also...

..."RICH LOWRY, writing on POLITICO, "A national conversation ": "Let's take the advice of the attorney general of the United States. Let's have a national conversation about race in the wake of the Zimmerman case. Let's make it a painfully honest conversation - except about all the things that are painful for us to admit. .... Let's act as if the main threat to young black men in America is overzealous neighborhood watch volunteers who erroneously consider them suspicious, call the police and follow them, then shoot them in self-defense after a violent altercation in confusing circumstances that will never be entirely disentangled. Let's pretend that this happens all the time. ... In short, let's take a terrible event and make it a festival for all our ideological and racial ax-grinding and a showcase for our inability or unwillingness to reason clearly. Let's do it in perpetually high dudgeon and while simultaneously patting ourselves on the back about our fearlessness and honesty." ...

http://politi.co/12JSAmZ