Talking 'bout our immigration

Still pretty much offline for the last few days so I'm late to the immigration bill. Was mildly surprised to see the Senate pull it off with a 68-32 vote. Obama is urging the House to pass it by the August recess.

Good luck with that. The new dynamic on Capitol Hill is Senate passes bills and they now go to Boehner's House of Dysfunction to die. The crackpot caucus isn't going to agree to do pass anything that doesn't piss off liberals and Boehner vows to uphold the Hastert rule for the bill. Last I heard they're going to try to write a new bill that can get the crackpots on board, but then he'll lose the Democratic votes and possibly even some from his own side. Hearing rumors there are a fair number of Republicans who are interested in passing something.

It's possible Boehner is just working the kabuki to buy time and eventually will bring something reasonable to the floor that can pass on a bipartisan vote, but by no means is that a given. The crackpots have been threatening to oust him if he does and for some reason he appears to want to keep his giant gavel.

Only thing that seems clear at the moment is it's going to be a long, hot, stupid summer on Capitol Hill.

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What's in a name

Biggest buzz on my interwebs today was about the super colossal revision of acceptable Big Media syntax. The AP Stylebook banished "illegal immigrant" from its lexicon. Meanwhile, the world breathlessly awaits to see if the NYT will follow suit. No. Seriously. Everybody is talking about it. I expect we'll have days of deep analysis on why it's good, bad or doesn't matter at all.

Haven't read a word beyond the headlines myself. All I have to say is, it's about damn time. Most of civil society stopped using it years ago. It's the contemporary version of wetback, mostly used to depersonalize a vital segment of our population pretty much for the sole purpose of justifying discrimination, if not obscuring criminal abuse. I'm glad AP did it, but can't help but think what took them so long?

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