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There are reports that the Administration will delay Obamacare once more, to allow people to keep non-qualifying plans past the mid-term elections.

The Obama administration is set to announce another major delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act, easing election pressure on Democrats.

As early as this week, according to two sources, the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet ObamaCare’s minimum coverage requirements.

Prolonging the “keep your plan” fix will avoid another wave of health policy cancellations otherwise expected this fall.

The cancellations would have created a firestorm for Democratic candidates in the last, crucial weeks before Election Day.

The White House is intent on protecting its allies in the Senate, where Democrats face a battle to keep control of the chamber.

And the report suggests that the goal of this change is political (no surprises there).

“I don’t see how they could have a bunch of these announcements going out in September,” one consultant in the health insurance industry said. “Not when they’re trying to defend the Senate and keep their losses at a minimum in the House. This is not something to have out there right before the election.”

The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services on Monday both said they had no updates to announce.

I’m sure we’ll get a blog post from HHS on a late-Friday afternoon.

After my previous post on the Justice Stevens’s new book, I requested a review copy from the publisher, which I have now received. Here are his six proposed Amendments. I’ll avoid commenting until I read the entire book (a fairly breezy 133 pages, followed by the Constitution as it stands now, and a list of all JPS clerks).

1. The “Anti-Commandeering Rule” (Amend the Supremacy Clause of Article VI) This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges and other public officials. in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
2. Political Gerrymandering – Districts represented by members of Congress, or by members of any state legislative body, shall be compact and composed of contiguous territory. The state shall have the burden of justifying any departures from this requirement by reference to neutral criteria such as natural, political, or historical boundaries or demographic changes. The interest in enhancing or preserving the political power of the party in control of the state government is not such a neutral criterion.
3. Campaign Finance – Neither the First Amendment nor any other provision of this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit the Congress or any state from imposing reasonable limits on the amount of money that candidates for public office, or their supporters, may spend in election campaigns.
4. Sovereign Immunity – Neither the Tenth Amendment, the Eleventh Amendment, nor any other provision of this Constitution, shall be construed to provide any state, state agency, or state officer with an immunity from liability for violating any act of Congress, or any provision of this Constitution.
5. Death Penalty– (Amend the 8th Amendment) Excessive Bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments such as the death penalty inflicted.
6. The Second Amendment – (Amend the 2nd Amendment) A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.

I’ll have more thoughts later.

I will note that his biography, which says he “Retired from the Supreme Court on June 29, 2010” is inaccurate.

The Hearts of Atlanta Motel, located at 255 Courtland Street NE in Atlanta, was owned by Atlanta lawyer Moreton Rolleston Jr. This was a segregate hotel. Rolleston represented himself all the way to the Supreme Court. The location is currently a Hilton.

During a recent trip to Times Square, I saw huge billboard with a photo of Gabby Giffords and her husband, next to a headline asking for support in stopping “gun violence.” This phrase is often used interchangeably with mass shootings. For example, consider the President’s remarks in January 2013:

And that’s why, last month, I asked Joe to lead an effort, along with members of my Cabinet, to come up with some concrete steps we can take right now to keep our children safe, to help prevent mass shootings, to reduce the broader epidemic of gun violence in this country.

Notice the pivot. The goal is not merely to prevent “mass shootings,” but to “reduce the broader epidemic of gun violence in this country.” Mass shootings are certainly a subspecies of gun violence, and the type that garner the most attention. But, as I document in The Shooting Cycle, they represent a tiny sliver of death by guns. Roughly .1% of deaths from gunfire take place during a mass shooting (defined as 4 or more deaths in a single event). The overwhelming majority, 99.9% are not during a mass shooting. This much is straightforward statistics.

A point that I didn’t address in The Shooting Cycle, but will elsewhere, is how politicians conflate the steps needed to stop mass shootings, with the steps needed to stop gun violence. In short, they are not the same discussion.

Politicians hold out proposals, such as bans on assault weapons and bans on high-capacity magazines as ways to stop “gun violence.” But really, they are holding out these measures as a ways to stop “mass shootings.” I’ll assume for the moment these steps will stop mass shootings (I am seriously doubtful here. Deranged people intent on killing two-dozen children are not likely to be deterred by background checks, and will find alternative means, such as the shooter in Araphoe who used a shotgun, the very weapon VP Joe Biden recommended we buy instead of an AR-15). But even so, this will only address a tiny, tiny percentage of deaths by guns. As Professor Winkler noted,  “Even if the law could be passed, it wouldn’t have made any dent in gun violence statistics because these guns are rarely used in crime.” Everyone knows this. Even the people at Brady.

Further, I’ll assume that banning high capacity magazines makes it more difficult to inflict mass casualties (Again I am doubtful. Reloading can be done fairly quickly, and it is very easy to carry multiple weapons, as most shooters do). The overwhelming majority of gun deaths involve one, maybe two bullets being fired. That’s it. (With civilians. When police officers shoot, they fire hundreds of rounds. I suspect people would be more amenable to a debate about gun control for the police). So a ban on high capacity magazines would only have the effect of criminalizing the overwhelming majority of semiautomatic pistols, that take magazines with more than ten rounds. Of course, this is not a bug, but a feature .

In short, all of these efforts are aimed at disarming the overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens, and doing little to stop the actual causes of gun violence. But again, the gun control advocates realize this.

The reasoning for these moves is accurately summed up in a quotation from 1996 by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who conceded that the assault weapons ban would not result in a decrease in violence, but it served as an important symbolic step in desensitizing Americans towards the path of banning all guns.

“Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed in sister democracies like Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily. It certainly cannot be done radically. It will probably take one, maybe two generations. It might be 50 years before the United States gets to where Britain is today.

Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic — purely symbolic — move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation. Its purpose is to spark debate, highlight the issue, make the case that the arms race between criminals and citizens is as dangerous as it is pointless.

De-escalation begins with a change in mentality. And that change in mentality starts with the symbolic yielding of certain types of weapons. The real steps, like the banning of handguns, will never occur unless this one is taken first, and even then not for decades….

Laws aimed at stopping mass shootings are not actually about stopping gun violence, directly at least. They are about desensitizing us to incremental laws, until the American culture has shifted enough that registration and confiscation are options. When members of the Brady Campaign speak about patience, and a long, drawn-out process, this is their end goal.

Nelson “Pete” Shields III, a founder of Handgun Control, Inc.—the progenitor of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence—openly advocated for the elimination of all handguns: “‘We’re going to have to take this one step at a time. . . . Our ultimate goal—total control of all guns—is going to take time.’ The ‘final problem,’ he insisted, ‘is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition’ for ordinary civilians ‘totally illegal.’” John Hechinger, a sponsor of the D.C. handgun ban and a board member of Handgun Control, Inc., put it simply: “We have to do away with the guns.”

Here’s a discussion you don’t see often in statutory interpretation cases: what is the value of captions in a statute. RBG opines in Lawson v. FMR LLC:

Second, FMR argues that the statutory headings support the exclusion of contractor employees from §1514A’s protections. Although §1514A’s own heading is broad (“Civil action to protect against retaliation in fraud cases”), subsection (a) is captioned “Whistleblower Protec- tion for Employees of Publicly Traded Companies.” Simi- larly, the relevant public law section, §806 of Sarbanes- Oxley, is captioned “Protection for Employees of Publicly Traded Companies Who Provide Evidence of Fraud.” 116 Stat. 802. The Court of Appeals described the latter two headings as “explicit guides” limiting protection under §1514A to employees of public companies. 670 F. 3d, at 69.

This Court has placed less weight on captions. In Trainmen v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 331 U. S. 519 (1947), we explained that where, as here, “the [statutory] text is complicated and prolific, headings and titles can do no more than indicate the provisions in a most general manner.” Id., at 528. The under-inclusiveness of the two headings relied on by the Court of Appeals is apparent. The provision indisputably extends protection to employ- ees of companies that file reports with the SEC pursuant to §15(d) of the 1934 Act, even when such companies are not “publicly traded.” And the activity protected under §1514A is not limited to “provid[ing] evidence of fraud”; it also includes reporting violations of SEC rules or regula- tions. §1514A(a)(1). As in Trainmen, the headings here are “but a short-hand reference to the general subject matter” of the provision, “not meant to take the place of the detailed provisions of the text.” 331 U. S., at 528. Section 1514A is attended by numerous indicators that the statute’s prohibitions govern the relationship between a contractor and its own employees; we do not read the headings to “undo or limit” those signals. Id., at 529.12