On Feb. 5 one of the biggest national drugstore chains announced something that would once have been unthinkable: It will cease selling one of its most in-demand items, simply because the company believes that’s the right thing to do. Sounds hard to believe, right? Sure does. But could CVS Pharmacy's decision to quit selling cigarettes as of Oct. 1 be a major turning point in our country’s quest to become a healthier America? Absolutely.

This country has come too far since the Voting Rights Act's initial passage in 1965 to move backward. House Democrats will continue to fight to ensure that participation in our democracy remains unfettered and that all votes will be properly counted. During President Obama's first term, Republicans made their top priority loud and clear: to make President Obama a one-term president. We’re all glad they failed. But if Republicans maintain or build on their majority after November, President Obama’s legacy—and the nation’s economic recovery—will be in jeopardy.

All eyes are on President Barack Obama’s itinerary for his planned trip to Asia in April as Korea and Japan are now embroiled in a fierce historical and territorial battle of nerves.Obama is widely expected to visit Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines and Malaysia as well as Japan. Of interest is whether or not his stops will include Seoul and how long he will stay in Tokyo.

A frank admission that the laws are biased and unfair, and have not done much to combat the drug plague, would be an admission of failure. It could ignite a real soul-searching over whether all the billions of dollars that have been squandered in the failed and flawed drug war -- the lives ruined by it, and the families torn apart by the rigid and unequal enforcement of the laws -- has really accomplished anything. This might call into question why people use and abuse drugs in the first place. 

Obama’s vow to wield the executive pen whenever and wherever he thinks he must amounts to a frontal challenge to the GOP to cease its relentless, dogged, and destructive campaign of dither, delay, denial, and obstructionism to anything that has the White House stamp on it. The GOP knows this but that won’t stop it from eagerly spinning its politically self-serving line of Obama the dictator. 

The relentless flow of good news about Obamacare may explain why a growing number of elected Republicans are walking away from the issue.  Two new bits of insurance news suggest progress that backers of reform find quite encouraging. The first explains how governments are competing in the insurance exchanges, simultaneously giving shoppers greater choice and potentially providing profit that can help fund services to indigent Medicaid recipients.  In essence this is the public option that liberals fought hard for, but failed to get into the legislation that was enacted.

The GOP has ruthlessly sold the outlandish myth to millions that a hike in the minimum wage is a huge job killer. It has been so effective in its hard sell that President Obama and Congressional Democrats have repeatedly been stymied and frustrated in every effort they’ve made to boost the minimum wage nationally. And almost certainly, Obama in his State of the Union Address later this month will again demand that Congress, meaning House and Senate Republicans, immediately raise the minimum wage. 

While the week before Christmas is a time when most Americans begin to pay less attention to the outside world in order to focus on friends and family, 1.3 million people will find that nearly impossible. That’s the number of the long-term unemployed—individuals who’ve been jobless for more than six and a half months—-whose unemployment benefits will expire just days after Christmas. The long-term unemployed are disproportionately people of color.

Media reporters and experts cover, weigh and analyze each day’s events, and that’s appropriate.  But many of them use the day’s events to issue pronouncements about the future, picking winners and losers in an off-year election 11 months away or deciding who’s ahead in a presidential race three years from now.  It’s like a movie critic reviewing an entire two-hour film after looking at one frame. Some of this is intrinsic to modern journalism. News is what’s happening right now, or just happened, or is about to happen.  

The center is holding.  Despite the enormous stresses of responding to a deep, painful recession while awkwardly implementing a long-sought national health insurance program, America’s politics are moving back toward the middle, fueling frustrated responses from fringe elements who see opportunities for fundamental change evaporating. The economy is coming back.  Threats of a government shutdown – or even default – seem to be receding.