It’s only the first day, and we’ll have to wait for the numbers over a longer time horizon; but if these lines and these stories are any indication, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program inaugurated yesterday was a wild success. Thousands of young illegal immigrants packed government centers across the nation Wednesday and [...]

Just because the Supreme Court didn’t strike down the “papers please” provision in Arizona’s SB1070 before implementation doesn’t mean that the provision is in the clear. The Supreme Court gave stringent guidelines for how to proceed in seeking proof of citizenship from arrested suspects, and said they would hold open future challenges to the law. [...]

Yesterday we had a big national discussion about the choices women make in their lives. Ann Romney at one point said right-out, “We need to respect the choices that women make.” At the end of yesterday, Arizona’s female Governor, Jan Brewer, signed a bill banning abortions after 18 weeks and creating a new definition of [...]

When I first heard about the proposed anti-union laws moving through the Arizona legislature, I was fairly resigned to their passage. Arizona has huge Republican majorities in its legislature, and they already passed a major anti-immigration bill, though they obviously weren’t shy about courting controversy. But then a funny thing happened. The Republicans couldn’t find [...]

I’m not going to get into the drama of Barack Obama’s run-in with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer at the airport. It’s just cable news fodder, so let them handle it. What does interest me is the fact that the biggest sub-group of Arizonans fascinated with the exchange are the Latino community, an indicator of why [...]

A couple weeks back, Arizona Republicans impeached an independent redistricting commissioner because they didn’t like the maps she helped draw. One would think that cuts against the entire concept of “independent” redistricting. And according to the Arizona Supreme Court, one would be right. The Arizona Supreme Court Thursday evening reinstated the chairwoman of the Arizona [...]

Arizona has an independent redistricting commission, initiated by a vote of the people in 2000. The commission, by statute, includes two Democrats, two Republicans and one independent. This year the Independent Redistricting Commission came up with a map that, as David Nir explains, contained four safe GOP seats and two safe Democratic seats, with three [...]

Jan Brewer, with her re-election campaign behind her, has become slightly less crazed. What else to account for the fact that she vetoed a so-called “birther bill”: The bill would have required presidential candidates to present their birth certificates or other birth records to be eligible to be on the ballot. “As a former Secretary [...]

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court held a hearing on the Arizona immigration law, and the results appeared mixed. The Washington Post reports that Judge John T. Noonan Jr. expressed skepticism over some of the Justice Department’s argument: Judge John T. Noonan Jr. grilled administration lawyers at a hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for [...]

Gov. Jan Brewer followed up her trainwreck debate performance with a vow never to debate again. The kicker is that this small-government conservative admitted that she only participated in the panel at all because she, get this, wanted to qualify for public money to finance her campaign. Incumbent Republican Jan Brewer said Thursday she has [...]

Let’s start with Larry Sabato’s latest forecast for the 2010 elections: Given what we can see at this moment, Republicans have a good chance to win the House by picking up as many as 47 seats, net. This is a “net” number since the GOP will probably lose several of its own congressional districts in [...]