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Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R) on Thursday warned his colleagues in the Senate that people who were "wearing some form of turban" were illegally immigrating into the United States by crossing the Southern border.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to consider amendments to the bipartisan immigration reform bill, Cornyn asserted that he had "anecdotal" evidence that only 25 percent of undocumented immigrants crossing the border were caught by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

"In fact, anecdotally, the border patrol last -- on Sunday and Monday were telling me, they think they maybe catch one out of every four people coming across the border," he declared. "Maybe one out of every three. And that's a problem."

The Texas senator argued that this made the case for an amendment offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), which establishes "triggers" that prohibits legalizing undocumented immigrants until the Department of Homeland Security has established "effective control" of the border for six months.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), however, pointed out that a 2012 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that the Border Patrol had a 82 percent effectiveness rate at catching illegal border crossings.

"I would love to see that report because I don't believe that's the case," Cornyn replied. "The problem is the effectiveness rate you referred to doesn't take into account the people that cross illegally and the department is not tracking. In other words, it doesn't take into account the people that get away, which could, according to the anecdotal reports, be two out of every three, three out of every four."

Cornyn added that he had also been told during his recent visit to the southern border in Texas that "we're not just seeing the border penetrated by people from Mexico or Central America."

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I'm quite sure that there are plenty of constructive things you could say about President Obama's recent trip to Mexico and what policies would actually benefit the citizens of both countries, such as our trade laws and our drug policies among other things, but you weren't going to find that on this Saturday's Fox & Friends.

Hosts Tucker Carlson, Alisyn Camerota and Clayton Morris opened up the segment by using the speech as an opportunity to trot out the old "apology tour' attacks. Then after playing a portion of President Obama's speech where he said this:

In the United States, we recognize our responsibilities as well. We understand that the root cause of much of the violence here—and so much suffering for many Mexicans— is the demand for illegal drugs, including in the United States. [...]

We also recognize that most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.

...they of course had to bring up one of Fox's other favorite faux scandals, the trumped up Fast and Furious failed gun trafficking sting. And for good measure, heaven forbid a former Mexican diplomat and writer that Obama quoted in his speech said something critical about the United States thirty years ago, so therefore Obama must be siding with anti-American radicals.

They did their best to twist what the president said in his speech as well, and claimed that his comments about the drug trade and guns meant he was blaming the United States for all of their problems, which, as anyone can read for themselves, is not exactly what he said to the audience there, to put it charitably. He said we shared some responsibility for those specific problems.

As I already said, there are plenty of legitimate items to criticize about our relationship with Mexico. You'd never know it listening to the garbage being spewed by these clowns.

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A gun store owner near Austin, Texas -- who has previously refused to do business with Muslims or Obama-voting liberals -- is offering teachers a discount on training for conceal-carry permits because he believes the solution to mass shootings is to have more guns in schools.

Keller's Riverside Gun Store owner Crockett Keller told KRLD on Monday that the recent slaughter of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut had prompted him to offer a special deal to teachers.

"As we do with veterans, I would offer them a discount," Keller said. "Our normal rate is $110. So, I would give them a rate of $90. If they are teachers, we would be more than happy to do that."

"I think we need to lobby our various state governments to allow teachers to be armed," he added. "We have airline pilots that now carry pistols or weapons of some sort -- firearms -- and same thing to, I think, need to happen in these gun-free zones that are so dangerous."

But Houston Federation of Teachers President Gayle Fallon told the station that the idea of arming teachers was crazy.

"I knew this would come up at some point, there would be people who think the answer is to put guns on campus," Fallon explained. "Frankly, I think it’s absurd."

"In a lot of cases, the perpetrator is a kid. Look at Columbine, it was a 14-year-old kid. You tell me a teacher is going to look in the eyes of a 14-year-old and pull the trigger — it’s not in their emotional make up."

Keller, however, insisted that any place without guns was "at risk."

"I don't go to Mexico anymore because I can't carry my weapon there," the Texan said. "It's a killing field within itself. We need to start thinking out of the box and deal with this violent culture."

In a radio advertisement for concealed-carry classes last year, Keller vowed not to instruct anyone who was a "socialist liberal and/or voted for the current campaigner-in-chief."

"Also, if you are a non-Christian Arab or Muslim, I will not teach you the class," he said in the ad. "Once again, with no shame, I am Crockett Keller. Thank you and God bless America."

The Texas Department of Public Safety briefly investigated Keller but dropped the investigation after they said he "affirmed that he would not refuse instruction to anyone based on national origin, race or religion."

Keller's Riverside Gun Store continues to sell a T-shirt that reads: "If you are Muslim and will not pledge allegiance to the United States of America, I will not sell you any firearm or accessory. -Crockett Keller, Jesus Akbar."

Republican Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert on Sunday also said that schools would be safer if the principal at Sandy Hook had been armed with an M4 carbine assault rifle designed for urban warfare.

"I wish to God she had had an M4 in her office locked up," Gohmert opined. "So, when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids."

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At two separate events in recent days, Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher has proposed to "put a damn fence on the border going to Mexico and start shooting."

Wurzelbacher first made the remarks during a campaign rally for Arizona Republican state Rep. Lori Klein on Friday, according to video published by Prescott eNews.

"For years I've said, you know, put a damn fence on the border, going to Mexico and start shooting," he insisted.

Wurzelbacher then repeated the remarks at a so-called "Patriot Rally" with Klein on Saturday.

"I'm running for Congress. How many congressmen or people running for Congress have you heard, put a fence up and start shooting? None? Well you heard it here first. Put troops on the border and start shooting, I bet that solves our immigration problem real quick."

While Klein refused to condemn the call for border violence, her District 11 opponent, Republican state House Speaker Andy Tobin, called for Wurzelbacher to apologize or go back home to Ohio.

"I would ask for him to retract the statement as made in jest, and if not made in jest, I'm appalled at him," Tobin told KTVK. "We don't do that in Arizona."

Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) launched Wurzelbacher into fame during the 2008 presidential election when he repeatedly referred to "Joe the Plumber" during a debate with then-Sen. Barack Obama. McCain's daughter, Meghan McCain, called Wurzelbacher's latest idea "ridiculous." She had previously said that he was a "dumbass" who should "stick to plumbing."

Klein, who is running for re-election in the 11th District, drew charges of racism in 2011 when she read a controversial letter on the state Senate floor, asserting that "[m]ost of the Hispanic students do not want to be educated but rather be gang members and gangsters."

She is also known for pointing a loaded gun at the chest of Richard Ruelas, a reporter for The Arizona Republic, while he was interviewing her at the state Capitol.

“Oh, it’s so cute,” Klein said of the raspberry-pink .380 Ruger that she carries in purse at all times, later explaining that Ruelas had no need to worry because "I just didn’t have my hand on the trigger."

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Fox is always terrible when it comes to letting little Joe McCarthy Jr. Bachmann run amok with wild accusations against the Obama administration, but this one with Uma Pemmaraju from this Saturday's America's News Headquarters was particularly awful. Bachmann is now calling the Mexican drug cartels "terrorists." She's pretending that Republicans have an ounce of concern for gun control or that the problem with the guns showing up in Mexico is not something they and the NRA have created themselves with terribly weak gun control laws.

She asserts criminal behavior because President Obama used his powers of executive privilege all of one time to ward off a Republican witch hunt, never mind the fact that she made no such assertions when her best buddy George W. Bush invoked it six times.

She also thinks there is some conspiracy theory behind the media giving more attention to the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act instead of the contempt vote against Eric Holder, blaming the media of course and ignoring that John Boehner was the one who decided to intentionally schedule the vote on the same day, knowing full well it would get buried because he wanted it to be.

She also had the audacity to complain about the administration leaking given her track record, or the fact that it's ridiculous to pretend that they all don't leak when it's politically convenient for them. Regardless of Bachmann's assertions here, this is not the first or the worst, or sadly the last administration that's going to leak classified information when it suits them. The fact that this woman was given a spot on the House Intelligence Committee is a tragedy in its own right.

Rough transcript below the fold.

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The Young Turks Cenk Uygur did one of the better summations of just what went wrong with this Fast and Furious operation and on Fortune Magazine's investigative report: ‘The Fast and Furious program as you know it is a myth’ :

Cenk digs into Fortune Magazine’s report following a six-month investigation into claims that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sold guns to straw purchasers for Mexican cartels during Operation Fast and Furious. Attorney General Eric Holder may be held in contempt, but Fortune concludes that ATF agents never purposely sold to cartels. Instead, their efforts to track purchasers were often blocked by weak gun control laws. “You want to know the irony of this? The NRA had those weak laws passed in the first place,” Cenk says. “Do you know that, in Arizona, all you need to do to buy a gun is to be 18 and pass a background check? In fact … you can buy 10 guns — 100 guns, if you want.”

Here's more from Dave Dayden over at FDL's News Desk: On Eve of Contempt Vote, Revelation that Fast and Furious Is a Convenient Fiction:

White House officials have been in consultation with the GOP House leadership in advance of tomorrow’s contempt of Congress vote for Attorney General Eric Holder over the Fast and Furious scandal and the Justice Department’s response to an Oversight Committee investigation and document request. However, the two sides have not reached an agreement, and as of now, the contempt vote will be held as scheduled. Even though the White House provided access to 30 new documents, that was not enough to delay the contempt vote, suggesting that the vote itself and not the investigation is the end goal here.

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After a round of jokes on everything from James Cameron's deep sea exploration, to the new Dallas series, to the New Black Panther Party, Ted Turner's mustache and the Pope's visit to Mexico, Bill Maher again went after these "stand your ground" gun laws which encourage the type of vigilantism we saw from George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin during his New Rules segment on Real Time this Friday evening.

Maher also repeated his criticism of the Democrats for ceding the fight on gun control as he did during his interview on CNN's HLN earlier this week.

Warning, the language is definitely not safe for work.

Looks like Gingrich might have just had his John Boehner "So be it" moment here. From Raw Story -- Whoops: Gingrich praises NAFTA for shipping out American jobs:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich found himself in a bit of a log-jam with his inner-conservative Monday night.

Appearing on a conservative talk radio program, Gingrich praised the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), taking the decidedly internationalist view that it was positive because it created jobs in Mexico.

Whether the economy or even the job market overall benefited from the agreement has been the subject of intense debate ever since, but most economists agree that the trade agreement has resulted in the loss of many low-skill jobs to Mexico.

But Gingrich's position on the arrangement, which succeeded in dramatically expanding the value of trade between the US, Canada and Mexico, isn't common among Republicans, today or in the lead-up to the agreement's passage.

Raw Story has the full transcript in the link above.

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After being asked by Jake Tapper why President Obama is bringing up the issue of immigration reform now even though it doesn't appear there's any chance that something is going to get passed in the Senate, Al Hunt takes John McCain to task for his fear mongering interview earlier in the show where he lied about the crime rate in Arizona.

HUNT: I must say, John McCain, in his interview with you, Jake, that was extraordinary to say that crime is up there. He's talking about Mexico. Crime is down in Arizona. Every single academic study that's been done shows that immigrants commit fewer crimes.

RAMOS: That's right.

HUNT: We have a system where there are now three-and-a-half-fold more illegal immigrants than there were 20 years ago. It's a system that's broke. And for John McCain to say that there's been a dramatic change just simply is not the case.

It's too bad Al Hunt is the one bringing this up instead of Jake Tapper calling out McCain while he had him on the air.

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Rachel Maddow shows us some footage from 1979 Ixtoc I oil spill and as she notes it's pretty obvious the only thing we've learned is how to drill more deeply but absolutely nothing about how to stop a blowout or contain the oil.

This didn't make me feel any better about this latest move of they're calling "top kill" working. We're seeing mud come out of the pipes but they haven't sealed the well by any means.