The debate between Key and Coxe crystallized how radical new ideas of rights introduced by the free people of color and their white allies in the early 1830s had galvanized popular thinking in America. These ideas  divided Americans into two broad political tendencies that would endure into the 21st century. Key and Coxe were exemplars of what we now know as red and blue politics.

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As the New York Times reported yesterday

 A Pakistani Taliban commander has banned polio vaccinations in North Waziristan in the tribal belt, days before 161,000 children were due to be vaccinated. He linked the ban to U.S. drone strikes and fears that the CIA could use the polio campaign as cover for espionage.

The announcement, made over the weekend, is a blow to polio vaccination efforts in Pakistan, one of just three countries where the disease is still endemic, accounting for 198 new cases last year — the highest rate in the world, followed by Afghanistan and Nigeria.

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It matters mostly as an occasion for patriotic pomp and circumstance in the mid-Atlantic states and Canada where the war was fought. Maryland has issued a commemorative license plate, complete with bombs bursting in air. Replicas of the tall ships of that era are sailing in Baltimore Harbor. But the war also has some historical relevance. In Foreign Policy, James Traub calls the War of 1812, the "most important war you know nothing about."

The War of 1812 matters because it was America's first war of choice. The United States did not have to declare war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812, to survive as a nation and indeed President James Madison did not want to. The newly founded United States was growing westward but the "war hawks" in Congress pressed for a conflict with America's former colonial masters in the hopes of gaining even more territory to the north. The term "hawk" was coined in the run-up to the War of 1812 and the hawks of U.S. foreign policy have been with us ever since.

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“People are going to say to me, ‘Why are we going to need to do anything on this now? It has been dealt with. We can wait until after the election," he said. "And it is going to be hard to argue against that.”

As Rubio's efforts to influence the party's position on immigration come to naught, so have his prospects for being Mitt Romney's running mate.  "His chances of staying on the vice presidential short list are shriveling fast," says Roll Call, "because there’s no percentage in Romney picking a lawmaker whose signature legislation is now officially anathema to the party."

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Obama's announcement marks "a shift in how immigration is talked about," said Gaby Pacheco, a Miami student and leader of the movement that persuaded Obama to abandon his previous insistence that he did not have the legal power to protect undocumented students. "We are no longer what people call a minority. Our community is part of this country and we cannot  continue to be ignored."

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"Is the government holding back crucial JFK documents," asked Russ Baker in a WhoWhatWhy piece that Salon published last month. The answer, unfortunately, is yes. In a letter released this week, Gary Stern, general counsel for the National Archives and Record Administration, said the Archives would not release the records as part of the Obama administration's ongoing declassification campaign. Stern cited CIA claims that "substantial logistical requirements" prevented their disclosure next year.

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At issue is the future of the U.S. military's unmanned aviation training programs in the United States and the privacy rights of Americans. The Air Force plans to bring an estimated 500 large drones from overseas war zones to the United States by 2015, while the Army plans to buy up to 120 new drones in coming years, according to Steve Pennington, director of bases, ranges and airspace for the U.S. Air Force. In an interview at his Pentagon office, Pennington said the military needs to fly these massive unmanned aircraft at home  to prepare U.S. troops for future combat missions overseas.

"We in the Air Force and DOD [Department of Defense] believe the vast majority of the unmanned aircraft can be integrated" into U.S. airspace," he said. "They can fly just like a Cessna or a 737."

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Glenn Greenwald blames the authoritarian mind-set of the Washington policy class, while Chris Hedges blames the death of the effective liberal class, both of which are factors. But there's another less judgmental explanation. Liberal Americans, like conservatives, prefer instability (and randomized violence) overseas to a diminishing of their sense of security at home. Destabilization as security policy may be shortsighted but it is recognizably American.

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“Drone attacks do raise serious questions about compliance with international law,” the U.N.'s Navi Pillay told a news conference in Islamabad, according to AFP. It was the U.N.'s strongest condemnation yet of President Obama's remote control war that has killed four top al-Qaida commanders in recents months and scores of bystanders.

Chris Woods of the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported this week that the CIA has resumed the practice of attacking rescuers who come to the aid of victims of the strikes as well as funeral goers who mourn them. The attacks were front-page news in Pakistan during Pillay's four-day visit to the country.

“I see the indiscriminate killings and injuries of civilians, in any circumstances, as human rights violations," she said.

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"Senator Gramm is one of the most innovative policymakers of our time," said AEI president Arthur Brooks in a press release. In much the same way, subprime mortgages were one of the most innovative financial instruments of our time.

Certainly, few can match Gramm's accomplishments. While still a congressman, he co-sponsored President Reagan's tax cuts in 1981, which launched the era of growing inequality that we live in, and increased government deficit spending to then-record highs. In Gramm's defense, AEI notes that he "authored the Gramm-Rudman Balanced Budget and Deficit Control Act, the first congressional effort to rein in the deficit."

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There's no telling what role Kobach might have in a Romney administration. While Romney echoed his rhetoric on immigration, his campaign also made an effort to downplay his influence, telling Politico in April that he was a "supporter," not an "advisor." Kobach countered by citing a campaign press release in which Romney said he was "part of the team." Kobach said he remained in regular contact with campaign officials, a claim that Romney aides did not dispute.

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First, it was Charles Krauthammer saying he was "going ACLU" and calling for an outright ban on drones in the U.S. airspace. (The ACLU doesn't go that far, but never mind.)

Now, former Bush administration official Jack Goldsmith writes at Lawfare that revelations about the Obama administration's drone war are making him sympathetic to an ACLU lawsuit that seeks to force disclosure of the legal basis for the aerial war against suspected militants in Pakistan and Yemen. Even Goldsmith, who defended much of the Bush administration's war on terror, says secrecy has gone too far under Obama.

The administration is resisting the ACLU by saying it will neither confirm nor deny the existence of the drone program, which is known in Freedom of Information Act law as a "Glomar Defense." With the story of Obama's "kill list" going from the New York Times around the world, that defense would seem to be getting weaker. But Goldsmith observes that:

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While the Florida senator's much-touted but still vague plans to offer a GOP version of the DREAM Act have yet to materialize, Rubio's friend Rep. David Rivera of Miami introduced the Studying Towards Adjusted Residency Status (STARS) Act, which would allow undocumented high school graduates who arrived here at a young age and are accepted into a university to apply for conditional non-immigrant status that could put them on an eight-year path to citizenship.

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This summer, they will begin competing for approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to run one of six unmanned aviation test sites around the country. Mandated by Congress earlier this year, the test sites are intended to demonstrate that unmanned vehicles can be integrated safely and quickly into U.S. airspace.

The domestic drone market is still small. In 2012, the civil unmanned aviation vehicle (UAV) market will account for only 1.4 percent of the $7 billion-plus drone industry, according to a recent industry survey. This year 98.6 percent of all UAV spending will pay for military applications. But the burst of interest in funding the establishment of the UAV test sites indicates many businesses and elected officials expect that to change soon.

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Behram Noor, a Pakistani journalist, went to the hospital and took a picture of Fatima shortly before her death. Then, he went back to the scene of the explosions looking for evidence that might show who was responsible for the attack. In the rubble, he found a mechanism from a U.S.-made Hellfire missile and gave it to Reprieve, a British organization opposed to capital punishment, which shared photographs of the material with Salon. Reprieve executive director Clive Stafford Smith alluded to the missile fragments in an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times last fall. They have also been displayed in England.

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But a closer look at the numbers is not so reassuring for the president. Much of the growth in the Latino population has occurred in California, Texas, Illinois and New York, which are not likely to be competitive come Election Day. While the Latino population is growing fast, the Latino electorate is not. Compared to other ethnic/racial groups, Latinos are more likely than whites to be under 18 years of age or to be non-citizens. "For every 100 Hispanic residents in the United States, only 44 are eligible voters aged 18 and over and U.S. citizens," notes William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution. "In contrast, 78 of every 100 white residents are able to vote."

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"We're going to do a much better job of educating people about unmanned aviation, the good and the bad," said Michael Toscano, president of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the industry's trade group in Washington. "We're working on drafting the right message and how to get it out there."

The P.R. blitz comes after drones suffered a round of negative attention last week. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer called for a ban on drones in U.S. airspace, and two other conservative commentators endorsed the idea of shooting down unmanned aircraft flown by U.S. law enforcement agencies. (Opposition to the U.S. government's deployment of unmanned vehicles had previously come from left-liberal groups concerned about civilian casualties in the drone war in Pakistan and potential threats to civil liberties at home.) The nation also witnessed drone "scares": An unidentified flying object nearly collided with a plane over Denver, and rumors circulated of a surveillance drone flying near the NATO summit in Illinois.

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As reported by a Denver TV station this week, the pilot of a Cessna flying at 8,000 feet over Denver told air traffic controllers he had just seen an unidentified object pass by.

"A remote controlled aircraft, or what?" a nervous-sounding pilot said in conversation captured by LiveATC.net, a website that monitors air traffic control traffic. "Something just went by the other way ... About 20 to 30 seconds ago. It was like a large remote-controlled aircraft."

The station's aviation analyst said the object could have been one of three things: "A military or law enforcement drone, a remote controlled aircraft, or a large bird."

An FAA spokesman in Washington said, "We reviewed radar and audio communications but found no unidentified targets in the area where the Citation pilot was flying, and no other pilot reported seeing an unidentified aircraft."

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That wasn't supposed to happen under a policy of "prosecutorial discretion" announced by ICE director John Morton last June. The goal of the policy, announced with much fanfare in the Spanish language media, was to spare "longtime lawful residents" from deportation and to focus on criminals.

Since then, the adminstration has deported many fewer non-criminal aliens. But non-criminals remain the vast majority of those deported. And those with no criminal record now actually comprise a slightly larger percentage of those forced to leave the country than they did before Morton's announcement.

In the three months before the policy was announced last summer ICE filed for deportation proceedings against 61,192 people of whom 15 percent had criminal records. In the first three months of 2012, ICE sought 37,659 deportations orders, 14 percent of which involved people with criminal records.

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Admitting that he was "going ACLU," conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer called Monday for a total ban on the use of drones in U.S. airspace. As reported by RealClearPolitics, Dr. K said:

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