On Thursday in the Daily Beast, writer Jonathan Rauch called Flake's "deal-breaker" misguided -- and a GOP "suicide mission" (emphasis mine):

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Obama was to fly to Mexico City on Thursday to meet with President Enrique Pena Nieto, eager to promote Mexico's economic success and the neighboring country's place as the second largest export market for U.S. goods and services. Mexicans will be hanging on the president's words, but Obama also has in mind an important audience back in the United States.

Though the role played by Latino voters in last year's U.S. presidential election gets much credit for the current momentum for changing immigration laws and providing a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally, another reason for the change in attitudes is that stronger border protections and the recession have been disincentives to cross into the U.S. As a result, illegal immigration has declined.

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The measure excludes a provision to allow American citizens to sponsor their same-sex partners for legal permanent residency. To do so, Republicans among the "Gang of Eight" allege, would be legislative suicide.

“There’s a reason this language wasn’t included in the Gang of Eight’s bill: It’s a deal-breaker for most Republicans,” Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) told the New York Times. “Finding consensus on immigration legislation is tough enough without opening the bill up to social issues.”

Flake's "social issues" refer, more directly, to the very existence of gay immigrants and their families, a reality that many Republicans and Democrats seem eager to overlook in the name of political expedience.

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On Syria:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on CBS' Face The Nation that without some international involvement in Syria, "the whole region's gonna fall into chaos."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., argued that the solution is not sending American troops to Syria, because that would be the “worst thing America could do right now."

“I think that the American people are weary," McCain said on NBC's Meet The Press. "They don’t want boots on the ground. I don’t want boots on the ground."

But Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said we can't rule anything out. "I don't think you want to ever rule it out," she said on Face the Nation. "Obviously, we don't want to do that unless it's absolutely necessary." Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., who appeared with McCaskill, disagreed: "I would go even beyond that, I would say no" boots on the ground. "We don't need to put boots on the ground but we need to enable their neighbors, the neighbors of Syria, to bring some sort of peaceful resolution to this."

On the Boston bombings:

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“I want to thank you for your efforts, when president, to reform our immigration system, and keep America a nation of immigrants and I hope that Congress will follow President Obama’s efforts to follow the example you’ve set,” Clinton said.

President Obama expanded, lauding Bush's "commitment to reaching across the aisle," and his belief "that we have to repair a broken immigration system, and that this progress is only possible when we do it together."

Obama continued:

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“I think we really have to consider, given the fact so many people hate us, that we're going to have to cut off Muslim students coming to this country for some period of time so that we can absorb what we've got and look at what we've got and decide whether some of the people here should be going, be sent home or sent to prison."

Later, Beckel took a moment to clarify and backpedal a bit "before I get complaints." Instead, he added Chinese students to the list of personas non grata, because, he said, they will just end up hacking us:

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Walden's move was understandable, though. He's in a bit of a predicament: On one hand, Republicans want to reform (i.e., cut) entitlement programs, but on the other, Walden needs to get Republicans elected to Congress and the public hates the idea of cutting Social Security. What's an NRCC chairman to do? Go with the poll numbers, and forget your party, apparently.

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The men had health insurance from jobs at one of the nation’s largest pork producers. But neither had legal permission to live in the U.S., nor was it clear whether their insurance would pay for the long-term rehabilitation they needed.

So Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines took matters into its own hands: After consulting with the patients’ families, it quietly loaded the two comatose men onto a private jet that flew them back to Mexico, effectively deporting them without consulting any court or federal agency.

When the men awoke, they were more than 1,800 miles away in a hospital in Veracruz, on the Mexican Gulf Coast.

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Schumer was giving a statement on the bill, and said that Americans "will not be satisfied with calls for delays and impediments towards the bill.  I would say to my colleagues - and I understand their views are heartfelt - the chairman has a very open process, so if you have ways to improve the bill, offer an amendment." He continued: "Those who are pointing to the terrible tragedy in Boston as, I would say, an excuse for not doing a bill or delaying it many months or year--"

Grassley interrupted: "I never said that! I never said that!"

Schumer shot back: "I didn't say you did sir!" Once order was restored, Schumer continued: "Those remarks were not aimed at anyone on the committee or the three witnesses. There were people out there, you read it in the newspapers, who have said it."

Watch:

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As Stephen Colbert noted on "The Colbert Report," the president’s plan said it would treat “same-sex families as families.”

“What’s next, Mr. President,” Colbert jested, “treating gay people as people?”

But now that the Senate’s Gang of Eight has introduced its immigration bill and it notably excludes the provision that would allow U.S. citizens to sponsor their same-sex partners for residency, the White House appears to be wavering.

When asked last week whether the president was willing to “let that provision go” at a White House briefing, press secretary Jay Carney responded, “It is certainly the case, as the president said in his statement, that not everything in the bill reflects how he would write it, but it broadly is consistent with his principles.”

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John Keating's narration of Jim Crace's "Harvest" falls into the latter category. His eminently pleasant voice, with an Irish lilt that he turns up and down at will, is more or less the same whatever book he's reading. In the case of "Harvest," a deceivingly simple account of the implosion of a small rural community, it is exactly the right voice to convey a story with some of the qualities of a fairy tale. Small things here have big meanings, and Keating, who imparts the flavor of a bedtime story to the proceedings, adds to the novel's archetypal resonance.

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In their desire to find a compromise acceptable to the chronically short-sighted and self-destructive Republican Party, Democrats have crafted an immigration bill that is for the most part as unobjectionable as it is uninspired. The bill cobbles together a series of pragmatic concessions that, while perhaps sufficient to overcome conservative objections, will likely prove wholly insufficient at actually addressing the problem it was designed to solve — that is, fixing our broken immigration system. The tangle of hurdles and exclusions, loopholes for businesses and pitfalls for immigrants, is precisely the mess we should be cleaning up, not making worse.

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The Gang of Eight's bill is aggressive and outrageous amnesty," said King. "It is instant legalization of all illegal immigrants in the United States, with very few exceptions. It contains only promises: the promise of a plan for border security, of a backup plan for the border security, and of workplace enforcement in the form of making E-Verify mandatory. What makes anyone think President Obama would enforce any future immigration laws when he has violated his own oath of office to take care that the laws be 'faithfully executed'?

I expected this from Democrats...It is the Republicans who should know better. Republicans who support this bill have effectively said to Americans, 'we are prepared to sacrifice the Rule of Law on the altar of misguided and erroneous political expediency'.

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Remember the "Obama phone" -- the completely ridiculous right-wing obsession on the idea that the Obama administration was handing out free phones to welfare recipients? Which turned out actually to be a Reagan-era program that provided discounts to low-income phone users?

Well, now there's a "Marco phone" -- as in Sen. Marco Rubio, proponent of a new immigration bill filed this week.

The Florida politics website the Shark Tank "reports":

According to the newly filed bill, immigrants who are allowed to enter the United States under a work visa, will be "granted" a taxpayer funded cellular phone. Move over “Obama phone,” we present the new ‘Hola, Como Estas?!’ MarcoPhone.

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Speaking on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Gohmert, R-Texas, said: "We know Al Qaeda has camps over with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border. We know that people are now being trained to come in and act like Hispanic [sic] when they are radical Islamists. We know these things are happening. It is just insane not to protect ourselves, and make sure that people come in as most people do ... They want the freedoms we have."

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When the waiter brought us our bottle of wine we filled our glasses to the brim, mused about the end of an era, and raised a toast: “To divorce!”

After a Mediterranean feast we headed over to her apartment nearby so I could finish up some work emails, and over some more wine flipped through our old wedding album, giggling at some of the cheesy photos from the reception. Conspicuously absent from our little album, which a federal bureaucrat had paged through some years back while scrutinizing us closely, were pictures from our honeymoon, a wild Saturday night spent at the Cubbyhole, a popular lesbian bar in the West Village where, incidentally, we also first decided to get married.

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The organizing body pledges to run the maration next year. Here's the complete statement from Thomas Grilk, Executive Director of the Boston Athletic Association.

The Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) extends its deepest sympathies to all those who were affected by Monday's tragic events. Those who lost their lives and were injured are in our thoughts and prayers.

It is a sad day for the City of Boston, for the running community, and for all those who were here to enjoy the 117th running of the Boston Marathon. What was intended to be a day of joy and celebration quickly became a day in which running a marathon was of little importance.

We want to express our deepest gratitude to all of the B.A.A. medical personnel and volunteers and the City of Boston’s first responders who reacted so courageously to help save lives. Special thanks to the loyal Boston Marathon community – over 8500 volunteers, 1000 medical personnel, the organizing committee, and hundreds of thousands along the race route – who make the experience what it is for all our runners, who are hurting today.

We would like to thank the countless people from around the world who have reached out to support us over the last 24 hours.

We are cooperating with the City of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and all federal law enforcement officials in the investigation and the effort to bring those responsible for this tragedy to justice, so we are limited in what information we can provide.

Boston is strong. Boston is resilient. Boston is our home. And Boston has made us enormously proud in the past 24 hours. The Boston Marathon is a deeply held tradition – an integral part of the fabric and history of our community. We are committed to continuing that tradition with the running of the 118th Boston Marathon in 2014.

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The bill would put the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally on a 13-year path to U.S. citizenship that would cost each $2,000 in fines plus additional fees, and would begin only after steps have been taken to secure the border, according to an outline of the measure.

The sweeping legislation also would remake the nation's inefficient legal immigration system, creating new immigration opportunities for tens of thousands of high- and low-skilled workers, as well as a new "merit visa" aimed at bringing people with talents to the U.S. Senators had planned to formally introduce the bill Tuesday, but after Monday's bombing at the Boston Marathon a planned press event was delayed until later in the week.

Employers would face tough new requirements to check the legal status of all workers. Billions of dollars would be poured into border security, and millions of people who've been waiting overseas for years, sometimes decades, in legal immigration backlogs would see their cases speeded up.

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But Rubio did Ginsburg one better during his immigration reform-themed media blitz. Two better, actually.

In addition to appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press," CBS' "Face the Nation," ABC's "This Week," CNN's "State of the Union" and "Fox News Sunday," Rubio stopped by Univision and Telemundo to promote a bipartisan package and swear up and down that he was really, really not offering amnesty to more than 11 million undocumented immigrants.

A roundup of Rubio's tough talk on immigration.

Rubio boasts to "This Week" that his reform package still makes it pretty hard to be an undocumented immigrant in America 

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As reported by The New York Times:

On Wednesday, evangelical pastors will converge on Washington for a day of prayer and lobbying on Capitol Hill.

Guiding the campaign is a coalition called the Evangelical Immigration Table, which includes the top pastors of more than two dozen evangelical denominations and at least 20 heads of Christian colleges and seminaries. “It is very remarkable the degree to which there is consensus,” said Galen Carey, the vice president of government relations for theNational Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group for the churches. No prominent pastor has spoken out against the immigration effort, although some pastors of the largest churches have remained silent.

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