What's Wrong With Politics-Driven Policy?  Today's big news is
that the Obama administration, through executive action, is
enacting a kind of mini-DREAM Act to help undocumented
immigrants who were brought to America as children. We'll get to
the details in a moment, but one thing we know for sure is that
Republicans are going to be very, very mad, or at least they'll
sound very, very mad. They'll make three separate arguments:
First, they'll have a substantive argument about why it's a bad
idea to allow any undocumented immigrant to work here legally.
Second, they'll have a process argument about why it's an
appalling power-grab for Obama to do this without congressional
approval. Of course, they're quite happy with all sorts of
executive orders and similar actions when a Republican is in the
White House, but that hypocrisy doesn't necessarily make them
wrong on that point. Finally, they'll say this is blatant
"election-year politics" meant only to secure Latino votes in
the fall election.  Which it may well