Interesting new numbers as reported by Reuters:

U.S. housing starts and permits for future home construction fell in April as an overhang of homes on the market discourages builders from taking on new projects, pointing to prolonged weakness in the housing sector.

The Commerce Department said on Tuesday housing starts dropped 10.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 523,000 units. March's starts were revised up to a 585,000-unit pace from the previously reported rate of 549,000 units.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast housing starts rising to a 568,000-unit rate. Compared to April last year, residential construction was down 23.9 percent, the largest decline since October 2009.

Residential construction is being crowded out by an oversupply of used homes on the market, in particular, foreclosed properties, which sell well below their value.

Home builders' sentiment was flat in May, the National Association of Home Builders said on Monday.

Though builders expected a modest improvement in sales during spring, they anticipated market conditions to weaken in the next six months.

Groundbreaking last month was depressed by a 24.1 percent tumble in volatile multi-family homes, where starts for buildings with five or more units dropped 28.3 percent. Single-family home construction fell 5.1 percent.

New building permits dropped 4.0 percent to a 551,000-unit pace last month. March's permits were revised down to a 574,000-unit pace and economists had expected overall building permits in April to remain unchanged at the previously reported 585,000-unit pace....

As I begin this post, Mitt Romney is giving his speech on health care designed to enable him to say "I dealt with this in my speech in Michigan, now let's change the subject to something more comfortable" during forthcoming Republican presidential debates.

Preceding the speech has been an all-out effort by Democrats who copied his plan (RomneyCare) federally and put Obama's stamp on it to defend it and make it look awesome. Here's an example-- former Hillary Clinton advisor and Center for American Progress policy person Neera Tanden on MSNBC today:

Ah, it sucks to be Mitt Romney.

But I pity poor Neera Tanden having to go make claims about how RomneyCare was a success, and how people in Massachusetts really, really, really think it's super-awesome, especially since she seems to unqualifiedly believe them.

Yesterday's brutal hanging, drawing and quartering by the Wall Street Journal of Romney on the health care issue lays out many of the ways in which RomneyCare is actually a pretty big fail (two sample items: It costs a bomb, and has resulted in more (not less) use of emergency rooms for non-emergency health problems).

And then there are pieces like this. 48 days is a lot longer than you wait to see your GP under the UK's NHS.

Those are but two recent pieces pointing out massive flaws in the program....

Last night, Ben Smith reported the following:

When I was down in South Carolina last week, a couple of prominent Republicans waved off the possibility of Jon Huntsman's getting the nomination because, they vaguely thought, he'd supported same-sex marriage in Utah.

The truth is that while he was liberal on the issue, he was liberal in the context of very conservative Utah. That meant signing civil union legislation that stops symbolically short of the current, fast-advancing battle lines, and is more or less the position of George W. Bush when he left office.

The Salt Lake Tribune, however, reports that Huntsman leaned a bit further forward in a letter to a gay supporter:

“I write to thank you for your leadership and outspoken support of civil legal recognition for same-sex couples,” wrote Page, who is raising twin sons he and his partner had adopted from Vietnam....

The Ambassador-select jotted a handwritten thank you note to Page, thanking him for his kind support.

“Let’s hope that someday — all people are seen as equal under the laws of our land. With very best wishes — Jon.”

Ben writes that:

That's a generic statement, not an explicit endorsement of same-sex marriage, though it's possible to read it that way. It also fits the Ron Paul libertarian position, which is that the state should leave marriage and its rules to churches, though that would require some unlikely fiddling with the tax code and other laws....