THE OBAMA administration remains on the defensive over the Justice Department’s decision to seize a wide range of the Associated Press’s phone records without prior notice to the news agency. Media organizations — this one included — denounced the apparent prosecutorial overreach in pursuit of alleged leakers of classified information about a successful CIA anti-terrorism operation. Many Americans who don’t make their living in journalism were justifiably concerned.

FOR THE FIRST TIME in nearly a half- century, a leader of the Southeast Asian nation of Burma will visit the White House on Monday. President Obama’s invitation is a sign of how quickly things have changed inside President Thein Sein’s nation of 50 million or so people and in bilateral relations. The visit should celebrate the progress — and spur further needed change.

ONE OF THE BIGGEST questions hanging over the health-care system is how many young Americans will sign up for coverage once the Affordable Care Act begins to phase in this October. If too few buy insurance on the markets that the government is creating, insurance companies would be stuck covering primarily the the old and the sick. They would have to pay out more per customer. Their customers, in turn, would have to pay more to those companies for coverage. The stakes for the Health and Human Services Department, which is overseeing the transition, are tremendous.