The Cooler

There's a surprising lack of any interesting news this morning. This is all I could round up for you.

A- Palm Beach Post: Editorial, armed officers in schools.

The Palm Beach County School Board is right go slow in deciding whether to put armed police officers in every elementary school. Doing so would cost an estimated $7 million a year, and the benefit is not clear.

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An armed officer might — might — have killed the shooter and lowered the death toll. The fear for policymakers is publicly opposing the addition of armed officers if someone later shoots up a school. Spending millions and millions year after year supposedly to counter such a threat, however, is not the best policy.

Smart restrictions on weapons and ammunition would protect children not just in schools but in their homes and on the streets. No amount of gun control will stop all atrocities. Neither will turning schools into armed fortresses. Debate about stationing armed officers in elementary schools means less talk and less pressure to deal with the wider issue of firearm violence.

B- Palm Beach Post: When you've lost Rick Scott...

Washington — President Barack Obama’s health care law had no more vocal critic than Gov. Rick Scott. His state led the legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, filed minutes after Obama signed it into law. Scott had a personal stake in its failure, too. He founded a group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights to oppose the law before he was governor. And after he became the state’s chief executive, Scott famously declared Obamacare was not the law of the land.

But on Wednesday, Scott dropped the mantle of chief opponent and agreed to a three-year expansion of the Medicaid program. It was a crucial victory for the Obama administration, eager to bring a big-state Republican on board. Sweeter yet because Scott seemed to so relish his role during cable TV appearances as fiercest opponent.

Scott’s reversal makes him the seventh and highest-profile Republican governor to agree to expand the program. Analysts say the reshaped Medicaid could provide health insurance to an additional one million poor Floridians.

“It is not a white flag of surrender to government-run healthcare,” Scott said in announcing his decision. Instead he called it a “compassionate, common sense step forward.”

C- WSVN: Video, South Beach Wine and Food Festival kicks off.




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