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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“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 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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Earlier this year I told everyone to be skeptical that immigration reform would pass, and one of the reasons I cited was the I thought rather obvious fact that House Republicans didn't support it. Now Rand Paul nearly has me convinced it could pass the House with more Republican than Democratic support.

Paul's primary argument was to convince very conservative politicians that they could get away with supporting immigration reform, even though the president wants it and many conservative voters don't. The strategy is to just use different words, basically.

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" I didn't run on jobs and the economy," King told CPAC, adding that he "stood on life and stood on marriage," unlike some of his colleagues in the House. "A bunch of people who have backed away from these challenges don't realize that I'm still here standing."

"Our job is to step up and defend our values and the full spectrum of constitutional conservatism," he said.

King is thinking about a run in 2014 to replace retiring Sen. Tom Harkin.

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"When somebody writes a background check law that doesn't prohibit me from giving my grandmother's .410, that she shot [chickens] with, to my grandson at the Christmas tree in my house without" getting the federal government involved, "then I'll take another look at it and perhaps have another opinion. Meanwhile, I don't want them to interrupt Christmas at the Kings'."

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From earlier:

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said that Karl Rove's plan to target far-right conservatives in the primaries, like potential Iowa Senate candidate Rep. Steve King, is "a fool's game because you can’t actually predict some of the things that go on.”

“Listen, I don’t think our platform is the issue,” Priebus said, Radio Iowa reports. “I think a lot of times it’s some of these biologically stupid things that people say, you know, that I believe caused a lot of the problems.”

He continued: "Personally, as an RNC [Chair], I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe the party should pick winners and losers in primaries and I think it’s, historically, if you look at it, it’s a bit of a fool’s game because you can’t actually predict some of the things that go on.”

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"I supported this legislation because I know how important it is to empower women in difficult situations,” Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said in a statement. “If a woman is at risk, she should know that she has a place to turn for support and assistance. I supported VAWA in 2005, 2012, and today I voted in support of the House version to see that victims of domestic violence and sexual assault have access to the resources and protection when they need it the most.”

“I am pleased to support efforts to protect all women in this country from domestic abuse and other forms of violence,” said Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo.

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King hasn’t announced yet, but has said he’s leaning toward a run. It’s enough to concern Steve Law, the president of the Karl Rove-affiliated American Crossroads, which has made it its mission to help non-Tea Party Republicans win GOP primaries. "We're concerned about Steve King's Todd Akin problem," Law told the New York Times. "This is an example of candidate discipline and how it would play in a general election. All of the things he's said are going to be hung around his neck."

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The official explanation from Al Cardenas, the conference’s chief organizer: “CPAC is like the all-star game for professional athletes; you get invited when you have had an outstanding year.” Christie, apparently thanks to his loud public criticism of House Republicans when they delayed passage of a Sandy relief package, was deemed to have had a sub-par year.

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And then you’d realize that every single one of them either lost their job or abandoned being a voice of the movement.

The 2012 election was devastating for the outspoken leaders in Congress. Allen West lost after a protracted battle, Joe Walsh was trounced by rising star Tammy Duckworth, and Ron Paul retired. Other, lesser-known members like Roscoe Barlett also lost. The two House Tea Party Caucus members who ran for the Senate last year both lost -- Reps. Denny Rehberg in Montana and Todd Akin in Missouri.

Meanwhile Jim DeMint, the most prominent Tea Party leader in the Senate, who funded primary challenges against more moderate Republicans, left the Senate a month after the election to head the Heritage Foundation.

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So it’s tempting to dismiss the broadside he leveled against Karl Rove and his Conservative Victory Project earlier this week as typical Gingrich grandstanding. And to a degree, that’s all it is. In a Human Events Op-Ed, the former House speaker and failed 2012 White House candidate accused Rove of employing “the system of Tammany Hall and the Chicago machine.” Anyone who’s been following Gingrich for a while is surely familiar with this line of attack; here, for example, he is in the summer of 1993 castigating Bill Clinton and “the Democratic machine” for forcing a tax hike bill through the House (a bill that ended up playing no small role in the balanced budgets of the late ‘90s – but that’s a story for another day).

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King, R-Iowa, invited the group's co-founder Jenny Beth Martin to be his guest at the State of the Union on Tuesday. And, the Hill reports, "an official familiar with the plans of the new TPP super-PAC, Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, says the group is looking to engage in the upcoming Iowa Senate race in favor of King."

Though King has not officially announced a run yet, he is an early front-runner in the race to replace retiring Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, in 2014.

The TPP super PAC was launched earlier this week  as a counterweight to the Conservative Victory Fund, an effort by the Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads to enlist GOP mega-donors to help ensure that candidates like Todd Akin or King don't make it through the primaries.

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King is a potential front-runner in the 2014 Republican primary to replace Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who is retiring. In an email obtained by the Des Moines Register, King told supporters that "I’m under attack and I urgently need your help to fight back." He added that he has not made a decision about a run, "but already Karl Rove and his army have launched a crusade against me."

"I’m no stranger to outlandish attacks like this," King wrote. "They said I couldn’t win in 2012 — the entire political machine was against me — but I soundly defeated my opponent by 8 percentage points. So let me be clear. Nobody can bully me out of running for the U.S. Senate, not even Karl Rove and his hefty war chest."

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The GOP’s magic number is six: Post a net gain of a half-dozen seats and control of the upper chamber will be theirs for the first time since 2006. This is actually a much weaker position than the party should be in, given the strong hands it was dealt in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

In each of those cycles, the GOP squandered several winnable races by nominating deeply flawed, polarizing candidates. Without Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, the party might today control the Senate; not only did those candidates lose races that generic Republican nominees would have won, the publicity they generated with their fringe antics helped poison the party brand and hurt Republican candidates elsewhere.

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“I want to get them the resources that are necessary to lift them out of this water and this sand and the ashes and the death that’s over there in the East Coast and especially the Northeast,” King said, Radio Iowa reports. “But they need to come with a plan on how to spend it.”

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Virgil Goode Jr. (Va.)

Office sought: President of the United States

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Back in December, the Wisconsin state representative had a few thoughts about a controversial high school sexual assault case and the questions about whether the 14-year-old girl at the center of it had in fact consented to sex. At the time, he dryly observed to the Chetek Alert that "If it's rape, it's rape. If it's not, it's not," adding that his father long ago warned him: "Some girls rape easy." Because apparently the Rivard men are as enlightened about sexual assault as they are about grammar.

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