Nov 14, 2014 3 min read

Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States as compiled by the Associated Press:

One of the Affordable Care Act’s bothersome traits is its reliance on numbers to judge its success – and those numbers vary, depending on who provides them.

That said, President Obama’s signature legislation is having a profound effect on health care in the United States. By any measure, more Americans have health insurance today than before the law went into effect – a 25 percent reduction in the uninsured this year, by most estimates. Obamacare may be a flawed law, but in that sense, it is working.

On Monday, the Obama administration estimated that 9.1 million people would sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act by the end of 2015. That’s several million fewer than most independent projections and those of the Congressional Budget Office, according to The New York Times.

The Obama administration’s reserved projections are in sharp contrast to its bold predictions of the past. Understandable? Yes. But it’s a byproduct of previous mistakes.

As we’ve seen for the last six years, this White House hasn’t excelled at messaging and timing, especially on matters as important as the Affordable Care Act. Low-balling its projections on Obamacare may limit future disappointments, but it’s hardly the act of a confident administration.

This week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing shows that Supreme Leader Xi Jinping was serious when he promised in January to become “proactive” in international affairs.

Xi’s vision includes a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific that is broader than the U.S.-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), as well as two new regional development banks. Beijing will create a $40 billion Silk Road Fund to build ports, roads and rail links to link up the region, a project some have dubbed China’s Marshall Plan.

With $4 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, China has the resources to buy some goodwill. Nevertheless, Beijing will do much good if it enables neighbors to lift themselves through trade. At first glance, this is the same win-win proposition that the U.S.-fostered system offered after World War II.

Will Beijing’s gambit work? Its belief that profit and development are the keys to international relations has persuaded it that the U.S. will soon become isolated in the region.

Then again, Asian nations have good reason to distrust an authoritarian government bent on recapturing past glories while ignoring international norms and the rule of law.

Americans of every stripe should echo recent demand by the Associated Press that the Federal Bureau of Investigation never present its agents as journalists again.

This appeal comes after the FBI acknowledged two weeks ago that one of its agents posed as an AP reporter to snare a teenager making bomb threats against a high school in 2007.

FBI Director James B. Comey argued in a letter to The New York Times that, when such tactics are employed, they are done “reasonably and legally,” and are subject to close court supervision.

Journalists disagree, and so should anyone who values the fundamental freedoms of American life. If sources think that journalists are cooperating with law enforcement, or actually are law-enforcement officers, those sources with important information to tell would not trust reporters.

Some of America’s enemies believe that American intelligence operatives often pose as reporters to affect credible and free-ranging cover identities. By using this ruse at home, the FBI legitimizes these suspicions abroad. And American journalists might be endangered because of it.

This deception undermines core American principles. It should stop.