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Honestly, I can't remember a time where one candidate managed to offend so many people in such a short time. Mitt Romney acknowledged in his fundraiser tape that the Hispanic vote is key not only to his election, but also to the survival of the Republican party. So you'd think he'd try to at least take a neutral stance with regard to the DREAM Act, but no.

In response to a direct question on the DREAM Act, he said, "for those that are here, that are undocumented, that were brought here by their parents, and therefore are illegal aliens...my view is that we should put into place a permanent solution."

Most kids who would be covered under the DREAM Act do not consider themselves illegal aliens. They've grown up in this country. They've been educated in our schools. They pledge allegiance to our flag. Some of them serve our country. Others of them want to.

They are caught in an unfair web, but they are not "illegal aliens." And why on earth would Romney think it was a good idea to say that to the Univision audience?

He goes on in this segment to extol Marco Rubio's solution while blaming Democrats for the stall on the DREAM Act and immigration reform. Rubio's solution doesn't give anyone, including DREAMers, a path to citizenship. It just keeps them from being deported. What kind of solution is that?

It gets worse, though. When asked if he was ducking the question and whether he would deport immigrants, he feigned outrage at the thought, and then yammered about a 'permanent solution' that makes cannon fodder of kids brought here with their parents as a condition for citizenship. After all, if Mitt wants to do battle with Iran, he'll need fresh troops to fight it. It appears he wishes to mine the groups of immigrants in this country who would just like a way to apply for and work toward citizenship.

What Mitt didn't say is as important as what he did. He never said the word "citizen." He said they'd receive "permanent resident" status, which is not citizenship and does not confer the rights of citizenship. One might get the impression that Mitt doesn't especially care for the idea of Latinos having voting rights or something.

What a disaster.

I have a bit in common with Lauren Gray, a young woman from Trenton, Missouri, who immigrated from Great Britain with her parents when she was four who now faces becoming an illegal overstayer because of a glitch in US immigration policy. I’ve been an ex-pat most of my adult life, and negotiating the hazardous maze of just about any country's immigration department is nightmarish, exhausting, expensive and frustrating – although some countries are more reasonable than others, I’ve found. It doesn’t seem the States, though, is one of them.

See, Lauren’s problem isn’t that she was brought to the States as a toddler illegally – far from it. Her parents scrupulously adhered to proper rules and regulations. She’s done everything right, but under the DREAM Act, only those children who entered the States illegally are eligible for residency. Like Lauren, they must have arrived before they were 16, resided continuously in the US for at least five years, graduated high school, be law-abiding, with no felony convictions or significant number or types of misdemeanours, and not a threat to national security.

Lauren’s grandparents became naturalized American citizens in 2003, and immediately filed green card applications for their daughter, Ali, and her two young daughters, Lauren and Gemma. Lauren was 12. Nine years later, Lauren is about to turn 21, and will no longer be eligible to remain in the States on her parents’ visa. Lauren’s family has spent more than $20,000 on six lawyers and badgered every lawmaker in Washington they could, trying to find a way past this immovable road block, to no avail. In three years, her younger sister, Gemma, may face the same dilemma.

The media has been rather quick to point out that no federal agents have knocked on her door, she’s received no phone calls or letters from the DHS demanding she leave the United States. Hey, she’s blonde and pretty and white and a former cheerleader and a star student in her dance college, her parents own a business that employs 28 people. Their neighbours love them. Who’s going to object if she just becomes an overstayer?

But those who haven’t gone through this predicament don’t seem to understand what Lauren does – if she stays illegally, she risks being turned down for a green card forever. So, like I’ve done as well, while waiting in the limbo-land of immigration applications, she’s doing the sensible thing – she’s going on a reluctant Gap Year tour, leaving the country and going back to where her passport says she’s a citizen, to sleep on her Aunt Sue’s couch in a small London flat.

I have the utmost sympathy for Lauren, but I’m aware it could be so much worse... and quite possibly is... for those children caught in the same trap who aren’t blonde and pretty and white and a former cheerleader and a citizen of another English-speaking first world country. There are a lot of places to be deported to that won’t be as comfortable, or as safe, as Aunt Sue’s sofa in London.

She’s become a reluctant poster child for a faulty immigration policy – and I can only hope that in the media’s rush to resolve Lauren’s unfair deportation someone fixes what’s broken rather than simply wall-papers over one girl’s problem, so that all the other children whose parents played by the rules don’t get screwed over as well.

Update: Lauren has launched a petition on www.change.org in the hope of gaining attention for legal immigrants. While it's unlikely to affect her own situation, she hopes it will help others like her, including her own sister, Gemma. Meantime, the Grays are still waiting... and waiting... and waiting for their long-overdue green cards, while Lauren plans to get a job in London dancing professionally. Please feel free to sign her petition at:

http://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-allow-legal-immigrants-to-qualify-for-the-dream-act

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Some of you may have noticed that President Obama was interrupted and then heckled by a supposed "reporter" in the Rose Garden today as he announced his plans to help DREAM-eligible immigrants. And you probably wondered what the hell that was about.

Turns out it was Tucker Carlson and his squad of incompetent buffoons at work, according to David Graham at The Atlantic:

An extremely unusual occurrence happened today as President Obama spoke at the White House. The president was offering a statement on his executive order suspending deportations for certain illegal immigrants brought here as children ... when a reporter started heckling him and shouting questions.

The reporter has been identified as Neil Munro of the Daily Caller, a conservative online news outlet run by Tucker Carlson. Though it employs some talented journalists, the site has become known for partisan chicanery. Perhaps most notably, the DC ran a story alleging that the EPA planned to hire 230,000 new workers -- or roughly 10 percent of the entire federal workforce -- and then refused to retract the story in the face of widespread and justified mockery.

Interrupting the president mid-speech is considered a serious breach of etiquette, and Obama's reaction shows how peeved (and probably taken aback) he was. Munro, and the Daily Caller, have immediately come in for harsh criticism by a wide range of journalists, including conservative ones. The problem isn't that Munro was asking tough questions; it's that he interrupted the commander-in-chief to ask them and in doing so guaranteed that none of the assembled press would be able to ask any serious questions -- since it's fairly clear that Munro's query was intended as provocation.

U.S. News and World Report called it "a first for the White House Rose Garden":

The heckler, who challenged the president about how unemployed Americans could be affected, visibly upset the president, who said: "This is the right thing to do for the American people."

When interrupted by the heckler again, Obama got heated, saying: "It's not time for questions, not while I'm speaking," and "I didn't ask for an argument."

Before walking out of the Rose Garden, the heckler yelled out that he was an immigrant himself.

You can get a sense of the outrage from the reporters whose day got screwed by Munro over at The Washington Post.

Oh, but wait! The best part is that Carlson and Munro are unrepentant and unapologetic, claiming in their statement that Munro thought he had timed his question for the end of Obama's remarks!

Neil Munro, White House Correspondent: “I always go to the White House prepared with questions for our president. I timed the question believing the president was closing his remarks, because naturally I have no intention of interrupting the President of the United States. I know he rarely takes questions before walking away from the podium. When I asked the question as he finished his speech, he turned his back on the many reporters, and walked away while I and at least one other reporter asked questions.”

Tucker Carlson, Editor-in-Chief: “I don’t remember Diane Sawyer scolding her colleague Sam Donaldson for heckling President Reagan. And she shouldn’t have. A reporter’s job is to ask questions and get answers. Our job is to find out what the federal government is up to. Politicians often don’t want to tell us. A good reporter gets the story. We’re proud of Neil Munro.”

Neil Patel, Publisher: “The President today announced a very controversial policy and does not want to answer tough questions about it. Neil Munro is a veteran Washington reporter who today tried his best to time his question to be first as the President was wrapping up his remarks. He in no way meant to heckle the President of the United States.”

Go ahead and watch the video. As you can see, Munro chirps up well before there's any indication that Obama has wrapped up -- and indeed, does it while Obama is in mid-sentence!

Actually, it's being generous to presume that Munro was simply being incompetent. This looks like the typical kind of provocation we've come to expect from right-wing propagandists posing as real reporters.

It's rare that a criminal publicly announces his intent to commit a felony. But when it came to their scorched-earth campaign of obstructionism to destroy the Obama presidency, GOP leaders weren't shy about their plans. While 15 top Republicans schemed in private on the night of Obama's inauguration to "challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign," conservative mouthpieces like Bill Kristol and Rush Limbaugh promised gridlock at every turn.

Three years later, as Congressional scholars Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann suggest in their new book, the Republicans' foul deed is done. From its record-setting use of the filibuster and its united front against Obama's legislative agenda to blocking judicial nominees and its unprecedented (and repeated) threats to trigger a U.S. default, the most conservative Congress in over 100 years has stopped Washington dead in its tracks. But judging from the muted reaction from the press and a public evenly split in its Congressional preference, Republicans are getting away with their crime.

You don't need to work for CSI to identify the guilty party in the death of Washington.

Even before Barack Obama took the oath office, Republicans leaders, conservative think-tanks and right-wing pundits were calling for total obstruction of the new president's agenda. Bill Kristol, who helped block Bill Clinton's health care reform attempt in 1993, called for history to repeat on the Obama stimulus - and everything else. Pointing with pride to the Clinton economic program which received exactly zero GOP votes in either House, Kristol in January 2009 advised:

"That it made, that it made it so much easier to then defeat his health care initiative. So, it's very important for Republicans who think they're going to have to fight later on health care, fight later on maybe on some of the bank bailout legislation, fight later on on all kinds of issues."

And so, as the chart below reveals, it came to pass.

Time after time, President Obama could count the votes he received from Congressional Republicans on the fingers (usually the middle one) of one hand. The expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) to four million more American kids earned the backing of a whopping eight GOP Senators. (One of them, Arlen Specter, later became a Democrat.) Badly needed Wall Street reform eventually overcame GOP filibusters to pass with the support of just three Republicans in the House and Senate, respectively. Last summer, it took 50 days for President Obama to get past Republican filibusters of extended unemployment benefits and the Small Business Jobs Act. As for the DISCLOSE Act, legislation designed to limit the torrent of secret campaign cash unleashed by the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, in September Republican Senators prevented it from ever coming to a vote.

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Rick Santorum has finally sauntered off the big stage, leaving him with plenty of time on his hands to harass high-school girls about their skirt length and bark at the moon about its nocturnal promiscuity.

You'd think it would be high times for Team Romney. But you'd be wrong.

What once seemed like it would be the GOP's race to lose, or at the very least a spirited general election contest, has seen Mitt Romney and what remained of his party's brand deconstructed and defenstrated. To put it in Yogi-Berra parlance, for the Romney Campaign,"it got late early out there."

Sure Santorum is technically gone, but he'll be with Romney for the rest of this race. Every time the former Massachusetts Governor has to answer to independent women in the Milwaukee or Philadelphia suburbs about why he'd "get rid" of Planned Parenthood," and explain to Latino families in Las Vegas and Phoenix why he'd "veto" the Dream Act, the ever-cherubic apparition of Santorum will be smiling gaily over his shoulder.

There is no doubt that some things are beyond Romney's control. The falling unemployment rate. The Dow's hitting and now hovering around 13,000. The delay in creating those 3 jobs building the car elevator thingy that takes you to the stadium-sized basement in Romney's 3rd house. These were all unexpected.

But not putting Santorum away early even while outspending him like 9:1, so that the social-issue firebrand could stick around and pull the primary so far right that Vladimir Zhirinovsky would have seemed moderate. Mitt has only himself and his severely marvelous personality to thank for that.

The end result—because of Santorum's squatting in the race as long as he did, while taking a rhetorical hatchet to Romney in much the same language as Democrats have—Romney is so unpopular right now if his dog Seamus were still around he might put Romney in the dog kennel on top of the car.

According to CNN polling, the Governor will be the only presidential candidate since 1996 to exit the primaries with a net negative approval rating. If you want the thumbnail sketch, just take a look at North Carolina.

This is a state President Obama barely won in 2008, bringing it into swing state territory for the first time in a generation of electing right-winger Jesse Helms to the Senate consistently. Changing demographics have moved the state to the Left, no doubt, but going into this election most observers would call it a lean-Republican state if they were being honest.

Yet, at this point, Obama is up 5 points, 49 percent to 44 percent. But it is the internals of this poll, which must look to Romney like they've been infected by Ebola, that tell the story of how badly Romney is doing. He only is viewed positively by 29 percent of voters in the Tarheel State, with a whopping 58 percent viewing him unfavorably.

Basically, he'd have to make a pretty steep climb just to reach the favorability level of Kanye West, or Encephalitis.

It is not over yet for Romney, as there are many unpredictable things that can happen (think terrorist attack, economic crash, or mass hypnosis of American voters). But one thing is for sure—he'd better start Etch A Sketching, stat.

This piece was first published at Al Jazeera English

On Saturday morning Lidiane Carmo woke up in Florida, where she was attending a church conference with her father, mother, and sister. Carmo was the youngest in her family, and they had traveled to Florida with her pastor father, her aunt, uncle and cousins as well as several other other church members.

On Sunday morning, Lidiane woke up in a Florida hospital with broken bones and internal injuries after the van they were traveling in was involved in Sunday's horrendous highway pileup on I-75 near Gainesville, Florida. Her father, mother, sister, uncle, aunt and cousin were killed. She is the sole survivor in her immediate family.

Lidiane's parents came to the United States from Brazil 12 years ago, bringing five-year old Letiticia and three-year old Lidiane with them. They had legal visas which have since expired.

Lidiane is now an orphan. She has no health insurance. She has no legal status to remain in this country. And she has no family beyond those remaining members of her father's church. She is the sole survivor.

If we had a DREAM Act in place, Lidiane could petition for citizenship here since she entered the country legally. But we don't, and because of Republicans' insane need to pander to bigots and racists, we're unlikely to see it without a completely different Congress.

I'm writing about Lidiane because she puts a very human face on what they're doing when they block the DREAM Act. I wonder if any of these crazy Republican candidates could gaze into her frightened, hurting eyes, and tell her she has to go back to a country she doesn't even know. I think they could, and that should concern us all.

Congress forced a clause into the Affordable Care Act which excluded undocumented immigrants from coverage. The exclusion wasn't simply from federal funds for subsidies. They are barred from purchasing insurance on the state-based exchanges and the national exchange. Barred. Even if they pay with their own funds. Barred.

Today a 15-year old child is in a hospital in Florida, suffering from severe injuries, bereft of her family, in Rick Scott's state. What will become of her?

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A young woman, an undocumented immigrant identified only as Lucy, confronted Mitt Romney in New York on Wednesday about his repeated threats to veto the DREAM Act if he were president. As previously reported, Romney has said that he would veto the act because he thinks that giving "special benefits" to undocumented immigrants "contrary to the idea of a nation's laws." Lucy asked Romney why he opposed her dreams and when he began to go back to his same talking point about people being in the country "illegally." Lucy cut him off saying that she wasn't illegal. She was brought to the United States from Peru when she was 10. Romney's handlers then moved him along and he didn't respond to Lucy's comment.

According to a press release from the DRM Capitol Group, a voice for undocumented youth, Romney supporters harassed Lucy:

Lucy made her way out while Romney supporters berated her. They booed and hissed, saying that she was illegal and not worth keeping in the country. As she made her way out, she heard one man yell “Go back to Mexico.” She turned around and replied “I’m not Mexican, I’m Peruvian.”

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Gov. Brown did something right for California.

LA Times:

Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday granted illegal immigrants access to state financial aid at public universities and community colleges, putting California once again in the center of the nation's immigration debate.

But he vetoed a measure that would have allowed state universities to consider applicants' race, gender and income to ensure diversity in their student populations.

Deciding the fate of 50 education-related bills, the governor also rejected an effort to make it more difficult to establish charter schools. But he accepted a move to improve college life for gays, lesbians and bisexual and transgender people and a measure to restrict the privatization of libraries.

None of the other proposals, however, has drawn the attention — or rancor — surrounding the California Dream Act. Most Republican legislators voted against it, and anti-illegal-immigration groups denounced it as unfair.

Brown's signature on the bill fulfilled a campaign promise to allow high-achieving students who want to become citizens the opportunity to attend college, regardless of their immigration status....read on

[Please sign the petition, above, and ask Boston to stop allowing the federal government to turn our local police into border patrol agents.]

Boston has made one mistake too many in trying to enforce federal immigration law.

The city is currently enrolled in the federal program with the Orwellian name Secure Communities (S-Comm), which forces local police to check the immigration status of anyone they arrest. The Obama administration wants to force every local police force in the U.S. to enroll in this program by 2013, but states and localities across the nation are resisting. If migrant communities are afraid to go to their local police officers to report crimes, then all residents are less safe. Following the governors of Illinois and New York, the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, recently declined to participate in the program.

While the program is under review in Boston, the latest Boston Globe article from Maria Sacchetti makes clear that the time for Boston to terminate its S-Comm program is now. With DREAMer Lizandra DeMoura now in deportation proceedings, this program has manifestly done enough damage to our communities.

In 2006, one of the first official acts of Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis was to refuse then Gov. Mitt Romney's request to use local police forces to enforce federal immigration law. What wouldn't be made public until four years later is that while Davis was publicly decrying the involvement of local police in enforcing federal immigration law, privately, the Boston Police Department was the pilot for a program that would check the immigration status of everyone they arrested, a program which would later come to be known as S-Comm.

It's easy to understand why the federal government approached Boston about doing this. As one of the most pro-migrant major cities in the U.S., involving Boston early would blunt criticism against S-Comm later. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also promised all participants in S-Comm that the purpose of the program would be to target the worst of the worst for deportation.

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I dare anyone to watch this video and read the amazing story of Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer-prize winning writer while at the Washington Post, and an undocumented immigrant who was sent here from the Philippines to the United States by his mother to make a better life.

You cannot understand the shame or the fear these people endure because of decisions made when they were children and over which they had no control. Before he knew he was undocumented, he watched television shows to learn how to speak English without an accent, worked hard in school, earned his way to college and through college, and has established himself as a quality journalist in a time where we lack quality journalists.

He pays taxes just like the rest of us. And he will be deported if Republicans have their way.

It's a stupid, idiotic political stance, this xenophobic Republican whitebread ideal. It ignores the fact that undocumented workers are the ones breaking their backs in the fields to pick the food that ends up in our supermarkets and fattens the corporate farmers' profit margin. It ignores the fact that children of those undocumented workers actually go to school and actually learn something, because their parents have raised them to believe that if they work hard in school they can have a better life.

How would it feel to have to write this as a truth you live with every day?

There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.

Ironically, Vargas' hope of unraveling his immigration status came when Orrin Hatch and Dick Durbin introduced the original DREAM Act in 2002.

I was hopeful. This was in early 2002, shortly after Senators Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, and Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, introduced the Dream Act — Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors. It seemed like the legislative version of what I’d told myself: If I work hard and contribute, things will work out.

And here we are today in 2011, with wildly xenophobic Republican TeaBirchers waggling their finger and showing up on Fox News, wailing about "illegals" and ginning up fear and loathing.

I challenge any of them to actually read Vargas' story with an open mind, and stand in front of him and the countless others in his situation and tell them they aren't welcome here. I'll wait.