Photograph by Sam Hodgson/Bloomberg

Pedestrians wait in line to cross the border into the U.S. at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in Tijuana, Mexico.

A majority of Americans favor giving undocumented immigrants legal status without first securing the borders, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll out today.

As the Senate prepares to take up legislation that passed the Judiciary Committee earlier this week, 51 percent of respondents said immigrants should either get a path to legal status now or at the time of a border security increase. Thirty-four percent said the borders should be secured first.

Most respondents, 58-38 percent, supported a way for undocumented immigrants to get legal status if “they pay a fine and meet other requirements.”

On another issue, 67 percent said senators were wrong to block consideration of a bill requiring expanded background checks for gun purchasers. Twenty-nine percent said the Senate was right.

Among those who said the Senate was wrong, 64 percent said Senate Republicans deserved the blame for the measure’s failure while 17 percent blamed President Barack Obama.

The poll of 1,001 adults was taken May 16-19 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Original post is Majority Supports Legal Status for Immigrants Before Securing Border by Political Capital.

Photograph by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo

President Barack Obama talks with Supercommittee Co-Chair Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., second from left, and Supercommittee member, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., center, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington, on Nov., 21, 2011.

If you’re planning on retiring from the U.S. Senate, and you want a nice send-off from the White House, you might want to consider supporting the president’s agenda — or more recently, voting for the gun bill.

“I want to thank Max Baucus for his nearly 35 years of service to the people of Montana,” President Barack Obama said today of the Montana Democrat who announced he will retire in 2014.

Baucus is one of just four Senate Democrats who voted against the background checks for gunbuyers, on principle, that Obama was attempting to secure in the aftermath of the Newtown schoolhouse shootings. (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid voted no to preserve the right to call for reconsideration of the bill.)

Baucus was among three of the four facing re-election next year — and it turns out he didn’t really face that threat.

Consider the statement that Obama issued on March 7 when Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan announced his retirement:

“If you’ve ever worn the uniform, worked a shift on an assembly line, or sacrificed to make ends meet, then you’ve had a voice and a vote in Senator Carl Levin. No one has worked harder to bring manufacturing jobs back to our shores, close unfair tax loopholes, and ensure that everyone plays by the same set of rules. As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Levin is a true champion for all those who serve, and his tireless work will be missed not just in his home state of Michigan, but by military families across our country. Michelle and I wish Carl, Barbara and their family all the best, and I look forward to working with Carl over the next two years as we continue tackling some of our nation’s toughest challenges.”

Or Obama, in February, on the retirement of Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey:

“Frank is a steadfast champion of the people of New Jersey. Throughout his time in the Senate, Frank has fought tirelessly for workers, veterans, members of our military and their families, and immigrants, and he continues to make extraordinary contributions to our nation’s safety, and the health and welfare of our citizens. His service in World War II is a testament to his character and deep commitment to public service. I look forward to working with Frank on critical issues before us these next two years, and Michelle and I wish him and Bonnie all the best.”

And Obama, in January, on the retirement of Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa:

“By the time Senator Harkin finishes his fifth term, he will have represented the people of Iowa in the United States Congress for an incredible 40 years. He has served in the U.S. Senate longer than any Democrat in Iowa’s history. During his tenure, he has fought passionately to improve quality of life for Americans with disabilities and their families, to reform our education system and ensure that every American has access to affordable health care. Senator Harkin will be missed, and Michelle and I join Iowans in thanking him for his long-standing service and wish him and his wife, Ruth, all the best in the future.”

Then, today, Baucus:

Not since Montana declared statehood has a patriot….

Ooops, just dreaming there.

This is today’s statement on Baucus:

“I want to thank Max Baucus for his nearly 35 years of service to the people of Montana. Max has made small businesses a top priority, often taking “Work Days” to visit local businesses across Montana and spend a day working alongside his constituents to gain perspective and help bolster the local economy. As Finance Committee Chairman and a senior member of both the Agriculture and the Environment and Public Works Committees, Max has been a leader on a broad range of issues that touch the lives of Americans across the country. Michelle and I commend Senator Baucus on his career, and wish him and his family well in the future.”

Original post is Obama’s Baucus Farewell: No Levin, Lautenberg or Harkin Homages Here by Political Capital.

Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., left, meets in his office with families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., including Nelba Marquez-Greene, mother of victim Ana Marquez-Greene and Mark Barden, father of victim Daniel Barden, on the day he announced that he reached a bipartisan deal on expanding background checks to more gun buyers, at the Capitol in Washington, on April 10, 2013.

A majority of Americans favor stronger gun laws and believe undocumented immigrants should get a path to citizenship, according to a poll released today.

As the Senate prepares to vote on whether to allow gun legislation to be debated, amended and voted on, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey showed 55 percent saying that gun laws should be made more strict. That’s six times the 9 percent who said they should be relaxed. Another 34 percent said the laws should remain unchanged.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and several of his colleagues have said that they will try to prevent a debate on strengthening gun laws following the mass shootings of elementary school children in Newtown, Connecticut.

The NBC/WSJ poll also showed 64 percent of Americans approving of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. The number grows to 76 percent when respondents are told that those immigrants would first have to pay fines, back taxes and undergo other steps.

Bipartisan groups of senators and representatives are working separately to draft immigration legislation.

The survey of 1,000 adults was taken April 5-8 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Original post is Majorities Favor Stronger Gun Laws Republicans Vowing to Block by Political Capital.

Photograph by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Senators Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman hold a press conference on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is part of an endangered species: A New England Republican serving in Congress.

There’s just two of them among the 33 Senate and House members representing the region’s six states — Collins and Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. Ayotte, swept into office in the 2010 Republican wave, won’t face voters again until 2016. Collins, first elected in 1996 — a time when it wasn’t quite so lonely for her party in her neck of the Maine woods – is up for a fourth term next year.

A lesser politician might already be exploring second careers. But Collins begins the campaign cycle a strong favorite for re-election, and an Associated Press story this week summing up her current stands on hot-button issues offered — in a single paragraph — ample evidence of her adroitness:

“She calls herself `a champion’ on equal rights for gays and lesbians but doesn’t openly support gay marriage. She favors changes to the nation’s immigration system but so far declines to endorse a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who live in the country illegally. And she wants to crack down on illegal gun trafficking, but warns that universal background checks might impose unnecessary burdens on some gun owners.”

Talk about threading the political needle.

Of course, some might call it dodging hard choices.

Regardless, it works for Collins, 60.

As Mike Cuzzi, a Maine Democratic strategist, recently told the National Journal, Collins’ constituents “appreciate” that she “is more of a pragmatic Republican and a little more centrist than the majority of her party.”

As that one paragraph makes so clear.

Original post is Maine’s Susan Collins Hones Formula for Political Survival by Political Capital.

Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Staff members sit behind a chart of guns during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on January 30, 2013 in Washington, DC.

The National Rifle Association today released a plan calling for more armed personnel in schools — and pitching itself as a school safety trainer.

The gun-rights lobby, which claims five million members, is spending $1 million on what it calls the National School Shield, accordingt to former Arkansas Rep. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican paid consultant to the NRA and director of its schools project.

In the days after a gunman killed 20 schoolchildren and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre said schools should increase security measures, including arming teachers and hiring more school officers, while opposing federal legislation such as expanded background checks for gun-buyers and limits on certain weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines.

At today’s press conference in Washington, Hutchinson reiterated that sentiment.

Among the eight recommendations in a 225-page report Hutchinson delivered to the NRA: The group should serve as the nation’s premier advocate and trainer for school safety while the federal government should focus on doling out money to school districts that need it to improve safety.

“The NRA has the nationally recognized expertise to develop and implement the stringent training courses” recommended by Hutchinson’s team, the report says. Grants to help pay for new school officers and security measures such as  heavier doors and metal detectors could be administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the report suggests. It doesn’t recommend a specific dollar amount.

The NRA released a statement after the press conference saying its officials “need time to digest the full report” yet is confident that Hutchinson and his team’s recommendations “will go a long way to making America’s schools safer.”

Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, called the NRA plan “radical.”

She called on Congress to “reject any proposal that militarizes our schools.”

Original post is NRA Training Your School Guards? by Political Capital.

Photograph by George Frey/Bloomberg

A man holds a semi-automatic assault rifle for sale at the Rocky Mountain Gun Show in Sandy, Utah.

Vice President Joe Biden, who has suggested that anyone interested in assault weapons for home protection should go buy a shotgun instead, also sees no value in mega-clips for hunters.

“If you can’t get the deer in three shots, you shouldn’t be hunting,” Biden says. “You are an embarrassment.”

Biden, in an interview airing on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” holds out hope that public pressure will prevail as Congress demonstrates diminishing resolve for any sort of new gun regulation in the aftermath of the Newtown schoolhouse killings.

Addressing the Senate leadership’s rejection of a vote on an assault weapons ban, Biden says:  “y experience, having been the only guy that did this once before, along with Dianne Feinstein and others, is that this doesn’t necessarily happen in one fell swoop.”

“”We are going to continue to push for logical, gun safety regulations,” Biden tells NPR. “Eventually the will of the people is going to prevail and we’re going to keep at it.”

On the proposal for universal background checks for gun-buyers, facing daunting odds in the House, he says: “When the Brady legislation passed back in ’94…the NRA and a significant portion of the opposition were absolutely opposed to it.”

On the checks: “Two million felons have tried to buy a gun and, because of the background check, have been denied. And even with that there is probably a 40 percent loophole that exists in the law.”

On high-capacity ammunition magazines: “It in no way violates anyone’s constitutional right. What is the downside of saying, you can have clips with only 10 rounds in it? What does that violate? Hunting? Sportsmanship? If you need more than 10 rounds to hunt, and some argue they hunt with that many rounds, you shouldn’t be hunting. If you can’t get the deer in three shots, you shouldn’t be hunting. You are an embarrassment.”

On the gun lobby’s fear of gun registration: “You don’t need to register guns to have logical gun safety laws. This is not – there is a healthy gun culture in this country with regard to hunters. They husband their guns and their weapons. They lock them up, they use them responsibly, they pass them down to their children, like my dad. This is about keeping guns out of the hands of people who, constitutionally, the government is able to prohibit from owning those guns.”

Original post is Biden on Gun-Rules: ‘Will of the People’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Attorney General Eric Holder during a news conference at the Justice Department in this file photo.

Attorney General Eric Holder has a message for the Republicans and Democrats who voted to hold him in contempt in 2012: You get no respect.

Holder, who has never made a secret of his displeasure with the 255 lawmakers who made him the first Cabinet member ever held in contempt by a chamber of Congress, said this week that the event actually didn’t faze him.

“I have to tell you that for me to really be affected by what happened, I’d have to have respect for the people who voted in that way,” Holder said in an interview with ABC News. “And I didn’t, so it didn’t have that huge an impact on me.”

It didn’t take long for some on Capitol Hill to take offense to the broadside.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who led the investigation into the botched federal gun probe known as “Fast and Furious”  that got Holder into hot water, said the attorney general is among the “highly partisan figures” in Washington “who are arrogantly dismissive of those who question them and demand transparency.”

“Attorney General Holder’s admission that he does not respect the Democratic and Republican Members of Congress who voted to hold him in contempt offers a window into why Washington is so dysfunctional,” Issa, whose committee has sued Holder for access to documents related to Fast and Furious, said in a statement.

Holder, who was cleared of any involvement in the bungled gun operation, probably could have timed his comments a little better. He testifies on Capitol Hill next week.

Original post is Holder to Congress: No Respect by Political Capital.

Photograph by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Students are viewed through a target at a class taught by King 33 Training at a shooting range on Feb. 24, 2013 in Wallingford, Connecticut.

Twitter is all atwitter over a social media campaign on gun-control legislation that’s being promoted by President Barack Obama’s new policy group.

In the past week, Twitter users have sent some 36,000 messages with the hashtag #wedemandavote, according to social media tracker Topsy — many of them directed to the official accounts of members of Congress.

Do the tweets demonstrate grassroots energy on gun control — or “astroturfing?”

Texas Rep. Steve Stockman, a Republican, suggested in a press release that Obama’s group is “using the same scam techniques that sell ‘male enhancement pills’” He said in the release that two-thirds of the #wedemandavote Twitter messages his office had received were from “computer-generated spambots.”

One way to detect a spambot is to look at the Twitter user’s profile and tweeting history. For example, @jimbormiller recently sent Stockman a message saying:

.@stevestockmanus I’m 1 of the 92 percent of Americans who
support universal background checks. #WeDemandAVote

— Jim Miller (@jimbormiller) February 25,
2013

That particular Twitter user has no followers and a history of tweets that reads like a list of infomercials. Here’s one: “OMG I just made $150 USD yesterday thanks to this” and includes a suspicious link.

Some pro-gun Twitter users have spent the afternoon warning members of Congress that the #wedemandavote hashtag shows “astroturfing” — that is, a phony effort to show grass-roots support for something.

Yet a review of the tagged tweets shows that many appear to have come from legitimate users.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal, a California Democrat, took the tag seriously enough to tell his Twitter followers:

To those who tweeted with #WeDemandAVote: I’m a proud cosponsor of @repmccarthyny‘s H.R. 137, Fix Gun Checks Act 2013 beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-con…

— Rep. Alan Lowenthal (@RepLowenthal) February 25, 2013

The tag is being promoted by gun-control groups, Democrats, unions and Obama’s Twitter account, which has more than 27 million followers and is now run by Obama’s re-election campaign-turned-policy group, Organizing for Action.

On Feb. 22, the @BarackObama account tweeted:

Newsflash for Congress: Universal
background checks for gun sales should not be controversial. #WeDemandAVote, twitter.com/BarackObama/st…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama)
February
22, 2013

A spokeswoman for Organizing for Action could not immediately be reached.

The #wedemandavote tag sounds a bit like Obama’s State of the Union riff on guns: “Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote.”

On Friday, Organizing for Action held a “National Day of Action” and began an online advertising campaign to press Congress to pass Obama’s proposals on gun control.

Original post is Obama’s Gun-Control Campaign, #wedemandavote: Astroturfing? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Second Amendment supporter and gun enthusiast, Derek Ringley, displays an unloaded pistol that was being sold in an impromptu auction across the street from a gun buy back program at the First Presbyterian Church of Dallas on Jan. 19, 2013 in Texas.

A Texas lawmaker wants to help the Lone Star State get around federal regulations of guns and other weapons made and used within the state.

The state’s 132 weapons manufacturers could sell to Texans without interference from federal regulation under a bill filed this week by state Rep. Matt Krause, a Fort Worth Republican. Similar bills have been filed in Missouri, Montana and Wyoming, permitting states to set their own rules while skirting existing and future federal rules, he said.

“Texans want to be able to control the debate,” said Krause, a first-term legislator and graduate of Liberty University School of Law. “We should let Texas control the gun laws within Texas.”

Constituents have emphasized that the Texas Legislature should defend the “right to bear arms” clause in the Second Amendment, rather than accept tighter controls on gun ownership, Krause said in an interview at his Capitol office. He said he opposes most of President Barack Obama’s recommendations to curb gun-related violence, including limiting the number of bullets in semiautomatic rifle magazines

“I’m a very strong proponent of law-abiding citizens being able to bear arms,” he said.

Krause compared his bill with the Texas Legislature’s approval in 2011 of a bill exempting the state from federal laws promoting more efficient light bulbs. The bill, which allows Texans to continue using incandescent light bulbs made in the state, passed by a vote of 142 to 3 and was signed in June 2011 by Gov. Rick Perry.

“A gun rights law might pass the Texas Legislature, but it would never pass constitutional muster,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “There are 70 years of federal court precedent involving interstate commerce. Any first-day, first-year law student knows that.”

Original post is Guns Like Light Bulbs: Texan Lawmaker by Political Capital.

“If you all both agree on that, why don’t we do that?” Landrieu said on “Political Capital With Al Hunt,” airing this weekend on Bloomberg Television. “Because when President Clinton was in office and Vice President Biden was a senator, they put cops on the streets of America and it reduced the crime rate.”

Landrieu also criticized those in Congress talking about cutting spending for programs like mental health services at a time when the debate over gun regulations involves trying to keep weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill.

“If you need mental health services, you can’t cut funding for mental health services,” he said.

Original post is New Orleans Mayor Sees One Area of Agreement in Gun Debate by Political Capital.