Monday Reading

As always, please check out the full articles at the links.

Dara Lind at Vox has a fairly straightforward and detailed description of what to expect in the immigration debate set to start later today in the Senate, and the prospects beyond that in the crackpot caucus- controlled House.

On Monday night, the US Senate will start debating immigration. 

It’s not debating any specific bill or a specific set of policy proposals. The debate is likely to range from the scope of a legalization program for unauthorized immigrants brought to the US as children, to asylum policy, to cuts to future legal immigration. But the heart of the debate is a pair of questions. First, how — if at all — should Congress protect young immigrants facing the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program? Second, what restrictionist policies are an appropriate “tradeoff” for those protections?  [snip]

Remember, the Senate is only going to pass a bill if it gets 60 votes — which means a large handful of Democrats, in addition to dovish Republicans like Graham and Flake, would have to sign on. So it’s not going to be the bill that immigration hawks would desire. And in the House, the immigration hawks hold sway — and Ryan has promised that on immigration, he’ll stick to the Hastert Rule — a House Republican tradition that says bills will only be brought to the floor if a majority of House Republicans support them. 

It’s not even clear that a Senate-passed immigration bill would make it to the House floor. Unlike McConnell, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) hasn’t made any promises to Democrats on immigration. The only promise he’s made is to the conservative House Freedom Caucus to hold a vote on (and whip Republicans to vote for) a bill called the Securing America’s Future Act, written by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA). (Goodlatte’s bill is far more aggressive on interior enforcement and far more restrictive in legalizing DACA recipients than anything being pushed in the Senate.) 

It's not advised that you hold your breath waiting for a humane bill to be regurgitated out of the Republican- controlled Congress, much less be signed by white supremacist bomb thrower Donald "Rump" Trump, Dreamers be damned.  We need a majority Democratic Congress to make this happen, and may be left to hope in the interim that as many Dreamers as possible can get renewals of their DACA protections before Gestapo ICE goons pick them up.

Is Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker (or, as middle school bully Donald "Rump" Trump called him, "Liddle Bob Corker") reconsidering his decision not to run for re-election this year?

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker has had conversations with a few colleagues in recent days about whether he should reconsider his decision to leave Congress and not seek re-election this year, GOP sources tell CNN. 

Whether it is a serious reconsideration, or just chatter with colleagues is the subject of some disagreement. There are also conflicting accounts of whether Corker has initiated the conversations, or whether he has had them with colleagues who are pushing him to think again.

Wingnut Rep. Marsha "A Thousand Holes In" Blackburn has already declared her candidacy, so it might make for a delicious bloodletting in the Republican primary if the rumor holds up.  Corker in the Senate has been all hat no cattle when it comes to standing up to Rump when it counts, so es macht nichts in the end.

Following up on our post yesterday about incompetent hack Rep. Devin "Sherlock" Nunes (R- Kompromat) setting up his very own fake news site (which, BTW, went down yesterday afternoon), some legal experts are raising the issue of Sherlock's being vulnerable to an obstruction of justice charge, especially if it can be proven he colluded with the White (Supremacist) House in his most recent humiliation -- the "Nunes memo":

As public scrutiny exposes deep flaws in the memo from the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, about alleged F.B.I. surveillance abuses, the committee’s Republicans are increasingly downplaying its significance. Mr. Nunes’s colleagues are right to seek some distance from this caper — not to mention other similar memos he has hinted at releasing. That’s because by writing and releasing the memo, the chairman may just have landed himself, and his staff members, in the middle of Robert Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation.

We would die very happy campers to witness this treasonous POS frog marched into a paddy wagon someday (but we'd settle for him losing his seat in Congress).

Last but not least, we recommend the comprehensive link round- up over at Infidel 753.  It's guaranteed to fill you up for the rest of the day.