Free Republic

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will meet with President Obama at the White House Thursday afternoon to plot strategy for passing comprehensive immigration reform. McCain said Obama requested the meeting, which comes at a time political momentum for immigration reform is flagging. McCain and Obama need to shore up the support of wavering allies such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has backed off the push to overhaul the nation's immigration laws in a 1,200-page comprehensive bill. Rubio has said the Senate should not try to merge its comprehensive bill with a piecemeal measure coming out of the House. McCain's ally,...

Southern California Congressman Darrell Issa is rumored to be cooking up his own immigration reform proposal. It’s reportedly designed to find some middle ground in the contentious debate over providing legal status to the more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. -snip- The details of Issa’s plan for immigration reform are still scarce, and his office didn’t respond to numerous requests for an interview. But the plan would reportedly include a six-year period of temporary relief from deportation for undocumented immigrants. During that time, they would be expected to find a legal way to stay here or leave....

More than 600 conservative-friendly officials and activists are descending on Capitol Hill Tuesday for a lobbying blitz targeting a wide range of House lawmakers, primarily Republicans, on immigration reform. The effort spans lawmakers from about 120 congressional districts in about 40 states, said Josh Breisblatt, the advocacy and policy associate for the National Immigration Forum. It’s meant to make the conservative case for immigration reform to lawmakers by bringing business experts, religious leaders and law enforcement officials to the Hill. -snip- “Failure to come up now with a solution to immigration reform is a sign of weakness, not of strength,”...

Ryan Streeter Follow Ryan on Twitter Yesterday I wrote about Rick Perry’s faith problem and what I see as an opportunity for him to speak openly about religion and the public square. It could help him regain some mojo. But even if he got his mojo back, and even if he got the next debate right, he would face one big obstacle that has conservatives in a tizzy about him: his statements on illegal immigrants – and more specifically, educating their children. Peter Robinson writes about this issue well this morning in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: Mr....