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Unlike many of the other groups, however, Heritage isn't urging people not to enroll in the exchanges. It's concentrating on getting grassroots support to get Congress to pull the plug on the law's funding.

"Right now there's a viable legislative strategy to go ahead and halt the implementation of Obamacare," Holler said. "And we want to drive that as hard and as far as we possibly can. And the town halls are an effort to do just that."

And what does the Obama administration think of all these efforts to interfere with the law's rollout? Not a lot, at least according to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

"I don't think we're going to spend a lot of time and effort trying to estimate who they may discourage from getting health insurance to provide security for themselves and their family," she told reporters on a conference call Monday. "I think it's a pretty dismal effort underway."

The administration does have backup, though. Groups like Protect Your Care will be out countering the Republican efforts, says spokesman Eddie Vale.

"When Republican members are having town halls we will have local people come to them to ask why they keep trying to take away their health care," he said. "When Heritage or Americans for Prosperity are doing their events, we will of course send people out to those."

And Vale wonders about the irony, in particular, of the FreedomWorks card burning effort.

"They're asking people literally to play with fire and burn Obamacare documents while at the same time telling these very same people that they shouldn't have health care," he said.

For the record, FreedomWorks officials caution people not to burn themselves while they're burning their cards.

Russia's immigration issues would be familiar to Americans. Millions of impoverished migrants have come and found low-wage jobs. Some are in Russia illegally and are exploited by their employers. Many are Muslims from the former Soviet republics, and a growing number of Russians fear this influx is changing the face of the country.

At 3:30 on a recent morning, the train from Dushanbe, Tajikistan, pulls into Moscow after a four-day journey. The passengers hauling their bags out onto the damp, ill-lit platform are mostly men. Russian police eye the new arrivals with suspicion.

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It's being called a destroyer, or perhaps a helicopter carrier. But by any name, Japan's new warship, unveiled Tuesday, is the largest it has built since World War II. The ship was shown to the public on the anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and at a time of escalating tensions with China.

"Though the ship—dubbed 'Izumo'— has been in the works since 2009, its unveiling comes as Japan and China are locked in a dispute over several small islands located between southern Japan and Taiwan," The Asahi Shimbun reports. "For months, ships from both countries have been conducting patrols around the isles, called the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyutai in China."

With a flat flight deck — but reportedly lacking catapults or other means of launching fixed-wing aircraft — the Izumo could be used against submarines, or to deliver large loads of supplies and people to disaster areas, officials say.

The ship measures 248 meters (814 feet) in length; in comparison, the largest U.S. aircraft carriers are between 1,000 and 1,100 feet long.

"We express our concern at Japan's constant expansion of its military equipment. This trend is worthy of high vigilance by Japan's Asian neighbours and the international community," China's defense ministry tells Agence France-Presse. "Japan should learn from history, adhere to its policy of self-defense and abide by its promise of taking the road of peaceful development."

Japan's military is collectively known as the Self-Defense Forces, a name that reflects its pacifist constitution. But in recent years, the country's leaders have shown a shift in how they view that document, which dates from the end of World War II.

Over the weekend, a Japanese official who heads an advisory panel said it will urge a reinterpretation of Japan's constitution later this year, a move that would allow the country to engage in "collective self-defense," such as attacking a nation that attacks an ally, The Japan Times reports.

Also from The Japan Times comes news of a joint poll of citizens in China and Japan which found that, "Over 90 percent of Japanese and Chinese have an unfavorable impression of each other." The number is the highest in eight years, according to the newspaper.

President Obama has canceled a one-on-one September summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the White House says.

It's the most dramatic effect so far on U.S.-Russian relations in the wake of Russia's decision to grant "NSA leaker" Edward Snowden temporary asylum while he tries to get safe haven in some third country.

Word of the decision not to meet with Putin was first reported by The Associated Press earlier Wednesday morning. The White House then confirmed the news in statements sent to NPR and other news outlets.

Obama is still set to attend the G20 summit of world leaders in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Sept. 5 and 6 — which Putin will host. The meeting that's being canceled was to have been between Obama and Putin in Moscow while the president is in Russia.

As NPR's Michele Kelemen and others have reported, and as the president said Tuesday on NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the U.S. is disappointed in Russia's decision to give Snowden temporary asylum. Snowden, a former contractor for companies that do business with the National Security Agency, earlier this summer shared secrets about NSA surveillance programs with The Guardian and The Washington Post.

Update at 9:35 a.m. ET. White House Says Decision Came After "Careful Review."

This statement was just emailed to reporters from the White House press office:

"Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a U.S.-Russia Summit in early September. We value the achievements made with Russia in the president's first term, including the New START Treaty, and cooperation on Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea.

"However, given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last twelve months, we have informed the Russian government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda.

"Russia's disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship.

"Our cooperation on these issues remains a priority for the United States, so on Friday, Aug. 9, Secretaries Hagel and Kerry will meet with their Russian counterparts in a 2+2 format in Washington to discuss how we can best make progress moving forward on the full range of issues in our bilateral relationship.

"The president still looks forward to traveling to St. Petersburg on September 5-6 to attend the G-20 Summit."