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From this Monday's Andrea Mitchell Reports, Rep. Marsha Blackburn did her part to make sure that the Republican party remains the "stupid party." I don't think remarks like this are going to help them much with making inroads with women and minority voters.

GOP Congresswoman: I Opposed Domestic Violence Bill Because It Protected Too Many Groups:

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Monday openly admitted that she opposed the latest reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) because it included protections for LGBT, Native American, and undocumented victims of domestic violence.

In an appearance on MSNBC, Blackburn pointed out that the latest iteration of the law protects “different groups” and thus dilutes funding for straight, non-Native American women with the proper documentation:

When you start to make this about other things it becomes an “against violence act” and not a targeted focus act… I didn’t like the way it was expanded to include other different groups. What you need is something that is focused specifically to help the shelters and to help out law enforcement, who is trying to work with the crimes that have been committed against women and helping them to stand up.

Domestic violence is domestic violence, period. And there is no way to justify Blackburn’s suggestion that some victims of this violence are more deserving than others. Read on...

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Officials in Texas announced on Thursday that state troopers would no longer be allowed to open fire on suspects from helicopters after the recent killing of two immigrants.

While announcing the new policy, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw insisted that the ban on aerial shootings had nothing to do with the October 2012 death of two Guatemalan immigrants, who were gunned down by troopers in helicopter while they were hiding in the back of a speeding pickup truck near La Joya.

"I’m convinced that now, from a helicopter platform, that we shouldn’t shoot unless being shot at, or unless someone is being shot at," McCraw told the state House Committee on Appropriations. "Last Friday, after a review of the policy and looking at all of the different things, and this is not a reflection of what happened there, I’m a firm believer they did exactly what they thought they needed to do."

ACLU of Texas Executive Director Terri Burke welcomed the change, but faulted the Texas Legislature for not moving to force the policy earlier.

"We were shocked. We’re thrilled, but we were surprised," Burke said in a statement "We hope that this decision is a step, if only a small one, toward ending the culture of violence that pervades enforcement of border security in Texas.

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Stephen Colbert told his audience Monday that like most conservatives, he's "long had respect for the Hispanic community, ever since they voted Barack Obama in for a second term" and said that was a "sobering moment" -- at least, it would be if he could stop drinking.

Colbert then opined that he thought Hispanics came to the United States to do the jobs that other Americans did not want to do, like voting for Mitt Romney, whose name he couldn't remember as usual, and he played footage of some of the political pundits out there, claiming that Hispanics should naturally be a part of their coalition. Colbert agreed.

COLBERT: Yes, Hispanic and Republicans go together like beans and very, very white rice... that is very suspicious of the beans. Now granted, we conservatives may have said a few things about immigrants in the past, but now that is just agua the Spanish word for bridge. Because Republicans have now reached out to a group they trust even less than Mexicans -- Democrats.

After showing the Republicans out there talking about their newfound embrace of immigration reform and the right wing pundits explaining how this is just going to make all of the racist statements in the past go away, Colbert made note of why they still might have some problems with those voters.

COLBERT: Yes, Republicans will take racism off the table, or have their bus boy do it. Either way it's gone.

After showing the yappers over at Fox attacking President Obama for coming out with his own plan and basically telling the President to sit down and shut up, Colbert got to the root of their problem and this recent pandering we've seen by Republicans.

COLBERT: Hispanic voters know that immigration reform is moving forward only because Republicans decided to quit blocking it. They're not going to give Obama credit for supporting it all along. That would be like passing a kidney stone and then thanking your doctor, instead of thanking the kidney stone for taking you on such a character building adventure of agony.

Colbert wound things up explaining that there is still another hitch for the GOP, which is actually following through and voting for any of this, which is the President's plan wanting to give visas for same-sex partners. As I already noted here, Harry Reid might have expressed some optimism (heaven forbid, as Colbert noted) for "treating gay people as people," but I don't share it. I don't see Republicans doing anything else but continuing to treat just about everyone other than old white men as second-class citizens if they think there's any political benefit in demonizing them.

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After a couple of her well known on-air brain farts, I wonder Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is the one that we should be worried about being on the road, not the deferred-action immigrants who are just trying to get to work in her state. Arizona Governor Compares Undocumented Immigrants To Drunks And Children:

Since President Obama issued an administrative directive allowing some undocumented young immigrants to temporarily remain in the country, states have adopted policies to ensure they have equal work opportunity. But on Thursday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) reiterated her opposition to granting driver licenses to the eligible immigrants and compared them to children or people with a record of driving under the influence.

Speaking on Fox News, Brewer suggested that she would never issue licenses to undocumented immigrants because that’s what state law says, despite the fact that it was her executive order that interpreted state law to mean that:

BILL HEMMER (HOST): In June the White House announced a new plan if you were here in the U.S. before the age of 16, and you are younger than the age of 31, and you’ve been here at least five years, you can stay. That is the broad outline of his proposal passed over the summer. What you’re arguing is that the law of the land in Arizona if you’re illegal you don’t get the same rights as those who are legal, correct?

BREWER: The state is the one who licenses the people to be able to drive, it’s not the federal government. And we don’t license kids under 16. We don’t license DUI drivers. And our laws are very clear and I took an oath to uphold that.

[...] These laws have been passed for reasons of public safety; lawmakers believe that unlicensed adult immigrants are likely to drive anyway because they need to get to work, risking increased accidents and higher insurance costs. Public safety concerns, of course, run the opposite direction with children and serial drunk drivers, who cannot ever be trusted to drive safely and hence must be kept off the road.

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Conservative columnist Ann Coulter asserted on Sunday that Democrats were making a mistake by "dropping the blacks" in favor of Hispanics because rights for LGBT people and immigrants are not true civil rights.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Coulter what she meant in her lasted book, "Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama," when she wrote that feminists, LGBT activists and immigrants rights groups had "commandeered the blacks' civil rights experience."

"The way that liberals have treated blacks like children, many of their policies have been harmful to blacks," Coulter declared. "We do have a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws. We don't owe the homeless, we don't owe the feminists, we don't owe women who are desirous of having abortions or gays who want to get married to one another. That's what 'civil rights' have become for much of the left."

"Immigrant rights are not civil rights?" Stephanopoulos pressed.

"No, I think civil rights are for blacks," Coulter insisted. "What have we done to the immigrants? We owe black people something, we have a legacy of slavery. Immigrants haven't even been in this country."

Univision's Jorge Ramos pointed out that if Republicans continued to refuse to embrace Latinos, "they're going to lose not only this election, they might lose the White House for a generation."

"That's why Democrats are dropping the blacks and moving on to the Hispanics," Coulter explained. "There are a larger group of Hispanics now."

"You can have open borders or you can have a welfare state. You cannot have both," she added. "When you have a big government giving out all sorts of things then you have to care very much who the immigrants are -- and it ought to be for something other than who lives within walking distance."

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New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says that the Republican Party has adopted extreme anti-immigrant positions to appeal to their base, "which is, by and large, elderly white people arguing with empty chairs."

During a Sunday panel segment on ABC News, Krugman pointed out that Clint Eastwood's bizarre conversation with an empty chair at the Republican National Convention last month was illustrative of the party's base.

"Arizona is a third Hispanic," conservative columnist George Will noted. "The Republican Party spend 20 debates in the primary competing to see who could build the longest, thickest, tallest, most lethally-electrified fence. And Hispanics said, 'I detect some hostility here.' And it's going to take a long time to undo that."

Krugman agreed that the the GOP's move to the extreme right during the primary had hurt their standing with minority voters.

"The Republican Party is where it is because that's where the base is," Krugman agreed. "You watch that whole primary process, Republican candidates had to appeal to their base, which is, by and large, elderly white people arguing with empty chairs."

Tea party favorite Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also lamented that the Republican Party had completely given up on winning certain parts of the country.

"So what I keep telling them is, maybe we need some libertarian-type Republicans who might be popular in those areas," he explained. "Maybe a less aggressive, more socially tolerant, but still fiscally conservative policy that that may be more libertarian might do better in California, might do better in Oregon, Washington, New England."

"Our problem in the presidential election is we've given up 150 electoral votes before we get started."

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Maricopa Country Sheriff Joe Arpaio is insisting that he "saved" a 6-year-old girl, who he believes was brought to the country illegally, by arresting her.

The Arizona Republic reported last week that the controversial Arizona sheriff's office had arrested the 6-year-old and 15 other people on the very day that President Barack Obama announced a new policy halting the deportations of many young immigrants.

On Sunday, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera asked Arpaio if he arrested the girl because he wanted to "stick it to the president."

"I don't think I did a Fast and Furious in reverse and arranged these 15 smugglers with a girl that is unaccompanied -- nobody knows who she is, where she's from -- into the United States of Amerca," Arpaio quipped. "I enforce the illegal immigration laws every day, Geraldo. So, that made a coincidence."

"I should be thanked by that congresswoman that you just had on for saving this girl," the sheriff added. "That's what they should be doing, these activists that don't like me enforcing the illegal immigration laws, including the president who mentioned me several months ago on the 1070 [anti-immigrant law] and what I'm doing."

Arpaio also promised to continue arresting young immigrants regardless of the president's new immigration policy.

"I will continue to arrest illegal aliens that violate the state laws of this state. So, nothing will change," he explained. "If we come across them again and they are in violation of any state law, they're going to be arrested are put in jail in my jails, and I presume if they're turned by over to the [federal] immigration, nothing will happen. So, that's the system we have right now."

Over the weekend, thousands of demonstrators had gathered in Phoenix to protest Maricopa County's "tent city," where inmates are forced to wear pink and live in canvas tents.

For his part, Arpaio defended the un-air conditioned tents by saying that the military also uses tents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It 130 [degrees] here," he told Rivera. "Do they have air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan for our troops?"

"Yes," Rivera pointed out. "In the tents, they do have air conditioning. I haven't been in an un-air conditioned tent in 10 years. Don't you think that's inhumane, sheriff?"

"No, why?" Arpaio replied. "I had a half a million people come through those tents. And they survived the weather and controversy. It's a good program, saved millions and millions of dollars."

The United States Supreme Court on Monday gutted (PDF) most of Arizona's controversial SB 1070 immigration law, but upheld that police could be required to inquire about immigration status when they stop suspects.

(h/t: Mediaite)

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Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Sunday accused President Barack Obama of essentially breaking his oath office by refusing to "faithfully execute" U.S. laws.

Article II of the U.S. Constitution requires each president to recite the following oath before taking office: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

During an interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked Santorum to respond to an Obama administration policy that would halt the deportations of certain young undocumented immigrants.

"You need to hammer the president on this now habitual abuse of power, saying that he's not going to defend the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA]," the former candidate explained. "You know, 'I'm not even going to go to the Supreme Court and stand up for the law that, you know, I'm charged as the chief executive to do.' So you're seeing a pattern where the president says, 'I'm going to pick and choose what laws I'm going to enforce, what laws I'm going to stand up and fight for in court.' That is not the job of the president."

"There's a difference between saying, 'I don't like the law, I wish the law were different, but I'm the president. My job is to faithfully execute.' And he has not faithfully executed," Santorum added.

As for Mitt Romney's position on immigration, the former Pennsylvania senator said that the Republican presidential candidate was trying to "walk a line as not to sound like he's hostile to Latinos."

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Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday referred to young undocumented immigrants with the word "illegals," a term that many consider to be a slur.

"The president announced a new immigration policy this week to stop deporting illegals who have been brought into this country as children and and who have good records, no criminal records, law abiding," Wallace told White House adviser David Plouffe. "What's changed from last year other than the fact that the president now needs Hispanic voters to get re-elected?"

"Nothing's changed," Plouffe insisted. "The president can't change the law on his own. This is not a permanent fix. This was prosecutorial discretion announced by the Department of Homeland Security, not a change in the law."

"There's one way to fix this permanently -- only one way -- and that's for Congress to pass the DREAM Act, which is something that, unfortunately, Gov. Romney said he would veto if he becomes president," he added. "Gov. Romney essentially said the 11 million people here should just go home, they ought to self deport. So, this is someone you're not going to be able to trust."

"President Romney -- if he's elected -- is not going to fix our immigration system."

In a online video produced for the Drop the I-Word campaign, Baruch College Professor Robert Smith explained why the word is so dangerous in political discourse: “‘Illegal’ functions like a racial epithet. It’s a way of legitimizing violence against a particular group of people because of what they are. That the definition of a hate crime.”

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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Sunday repeatedly refused to say if he would dismantle a recently-announced Obama administration policy that allows certain young undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S.

During an interview on CBS, host Bob Schieffer asked the candidate if he would repeal the order.

"Well, let's step back and look at the issue," Romney replied. "First of all, we have to secure the border. We need to have an employment verification system to make sure those that are working here in this country are here legally. And then with regards to these kids that were brought in by their parents through no fault of their own, there needs to be a long-term solution so that they know what their status is."

"But would you repealed this?" Schieffer pressed.

"Well, it would be overtaken by events, if you will, by virtue of my putting in place a long-term solution with legislation that creates law that relates to these individuals such that they no what their setting is going to be," Romney explained.

"I don't want keep on about this, but just to make sure I understand, would you leave this in place while you work out a long-term solution or would you just repeal it?" the CBS host asked again.

"We'll look at that setting as we reach that," Romney insisted. "My anticipation is that I would come into office and say, we need to get this done on a long-term basis, not this kind of stopgap measure. What the president did is he should have worked on this years ago. If he felt seriously about this he should have taken action when he had a Democrat House and Senate, but he didn't."