Time has the details, but the top line is:

When given a choice, 61 percent of Americans say they are more concerned about the government enacting new anti-terrorism policies that restrict civil liberties, compared to 31 percent who say they are more concerned about the government failing to enact strong new anti-terrorism policies.

Only 32 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. government can prevent all major attacks, down from an average of 40 percent in 2011 and 41 percent in 2006. And by contrast with polls taken in the wake of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, when only 23 percent of voters polled showed reluctance to give up civil liberties to protect terrorism, 49 percent said they were not willing to give up such rights, as opposed to 40 percent who were.

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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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Fifty-two percent of voters surveyed said that they support allowing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. When the same question was asked on April 4, 59 percent said they supported it.

From the poll:

Illegal immigrants should be required to leave, 30 percent of voters say, up from 25 percent four weeks ago.

Creating a path to citizenship for illegal aliens would increase the likelihood of terrorism, 22 percent of voters say, while 66 percent say it will not make a difference. And 23 percent of voters say that the Boston bombing has changed their mind on whether there should be a path to citizenship for such immigrants.

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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 will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important,” Paul declared. “That your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

Even though I disagree with Paul on virtually every other issue and generally consider him to be kind of a joke, I’d have been happy to be proven wrong. Maybe he had a conscience. Maybe he would become a much needed civil liberties leader on the right.

Alas, I haven’t been proven wrong. Mr. Filibuster, the tribune of civil liberties, now says that drones should have been used against the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston – not only that, he told Fox’s Neal Cavuto they should even be used against someone robbing a liquor store.

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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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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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“In the wake of this week’s terrorist attack in Boston, some have already suggested that the circumstances of this terrible tragedy are justification for delaying or stopping entirely the effort for comprehensive immigration reform," the two senators wrote in a statement. "In fact the opposite is true: Immigration reform will strengthen our nation’s security by helping us identify exactly who has entered our country and who has left – a basic function of government that our broken immigration system is incapable of accomplishing today."

Sen. Chuck Grassley was the first to link immigration reform to the Boston bombings, saying earlier today during a Senate hearing on the legislation: “We also appreciate the opportunity to talk about immigration. Particularly in light of all that’s happening in Massachusetts right now and over the last week.”

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"Linking something like that to other legislation I think is probably not appropriate at this time," Diaz-Balart told ThinkProgress. "In the first place, we don’t have the facts. What I will tell you is, what is indisputable, is that we have an immigration system that is broken."

He continued that, "If somebody is here today in the United States and commits a crime, it is under the current immigration system," so "what does that lead me to believe? That we have to fix the current immigration system, if in fact there is any connection between immigration at all."

Grassley kicked off the Senate's Friday hearing on immigration reform by saying: “We also appreciate the opportunity to talk about immigration. Particularly in light of all that’s happening in Massachusetts right now and over the last week."

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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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This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings -- even though most come at the hands of white dudes.

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“Some of the speculation that has come out is that yes, it was a foreign national and, speculating here, that it was potentially a person on a student visa,” King, R-Iowa, told the National Review's Robert Costa. “If that’s the case, then we need to take a look at the big picture.”

“We need to be ever vigilant,” King continued. “We need to go far deeper into our border crossings. . . .We need to take a look at the visa-waiver program and wonder what we’re doing. If we can’t background check people that are coming from Saudi Arabia, how do we think we are going to background check the 11 to 20 million people that are here from who knows where.”

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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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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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The bill expected to be unveiled next week would bar anyone who arrived in the U.S. after Dec. 31, 2011, from applying for legal status and ultimately citizenship, according to the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposals had not been announced.

It also would require applicants to document that they were in the country before Dec. 31, 2011, have a clean criminal record, and show enough employment or financial stability that they're likely to stay off welfare.

Those requirements could end up excluding hundreds of thousands of the 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally from the path to citizenship envisioned by the bill, the aide said.

Although illegal immigration to the U.S. has been dropping, many tens of thousands still arrive each year, so the cutoff date alone could exclude a large number of people. That may come as a disappointment to immigrant rights groups that had been hoping that anyone here as of the date of enactment of the bill could be able to become eligible for citizenship.

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Confused? I can explain. The Romeike family aren’t just any immigrants. They are evangelical Christians from Germany. And, oh yeah, they’re white.

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike are devout Christians who want to home-school their five children. But under German law, attendance at an officially recognized school — whether a public school or a private religious or secular school — is mandatory. Facing over $10,000 in mounting fines and police escorting their children to school daily, the Romeikes were contacted by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association — which was looking to expand its work internationally --  and suggested the Romeike’s resettle in Morristown, Tenn., and apply for political asylum.

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