It is "major Supreme Court decision season" once again, and the high court just punted on a very big issue, issuing a split decision (4-4) that allowed the lower appellate court's decision to stand on President Obama's plan for immigration. This is bad news for Obama (since the lower court ruled against him, and he likely won't get another chance to act before he leaves office) and also bad news for the almost five million people affected, but it might wind up being a silver lining for Democrats this fall. The decision itself is a non-decision, merely stating "we are deadlocked on the issue," which only serves to draw attention to the vacancy on the court (and the Senate Republicans' refusal to act on Obama's nominee). The impact of the decision may just cement Latino support for Democrats tighter than even Donald Trump has already made it. And for non-Latino voters, the focus on the president's ability to name Supreme Court justices may also serve to benefit Hillary Clinton at the voting booth. Politically, the stakes are high, and this time more voters might take that into consideration when casting their ballot in November.

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As I write this, a protest is occurring on the floor of the House of Representatives. Democrats, led by John Lewis, Jim Clyburn, Nancy Pelosi (and many others), are staging a "sit-in" to protest Republicans' refusal to even hold a vote on any gun control legislation. Their battle cry is "No vote, no break" -- a veiled threat to keep the protest going right into the next one of those too-frequent vacation weeks Congress regularly awards itself. Whether the protest is ultimately successful or not, it shows a renewed vigor in the Democratic Party to push back against the do-nothing party in the majority. This could bode well for their chances to retake control of both chambers of Congress this fall, in fact.

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What is largely missing in this raging debate, however, is an issue I explored last week -- the constitutionality of government watchlists in the first place. I was convinced to revisit the issue after watching all the Sunday political chatfests on television, and reading a letter to my local paper today. What the letter-writer pointed out (and what all the talking heads almost universally missed) was that "freedom to travel" is also a constitutional right. The discussion so far on the gun control measures centers around the question of whether the government can explicitly deny a right written into the Constitution (in the Second Amendment) to people it has not offered the slightest bit of due process whatsoever. Indeed, this is almost the entirety of the Republican argument on the issue.

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Before we begin, we should mention that this week's talking points section consists of a few extended excerpts from President Obama's recent speech on fighting the Islamic State. What he had to say was important, and it counters several insidious talking points that have been used against him in the past, so we felt it was worth taking over this week's talking points. Just to warn everyone up front.

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As I write this, there is a filibuster currently going on in the Senate. Senator Chris Murphy and other Democrats launched this filibuster to draw attention to the fact that suspected terrorists in America can still legally buy guns. Murphy represents Connecticut, where the Newtown massacre happened, and thus he feels very strongly about the issue of gun control.

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Newt Gingrich is a smart guy, Washington insiders will tell you. He's certainly smarter than Donald Trump, based on nothing more than vocabulary and the complexity of ideas he is able to comprehend. Newt is currently on Trump's vice-presidential shortlist, which makes sense if you believe what Trump's been saying about his veep pick for months now -- he wants someone with experience dealing with Congress. Newt, being a former Speaker of the House, certainly fits that bill better than most.

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Whither the fabled "Party of Lincoln"? That was the question on the minds of many Republicans this week, at least based on how often they used the phrase. Now, we're used to scathing attacks on character being hurled in the frenzy of a presidential campaign. Indeed, it's woven into the fabric of American politics. It's just that in normal years, these attacks are flung across the aisle, at the other party's nominee. It is extraordinary that all of the vicious attacks we're going to feature in our talking points section this week came from Republicans, all aimed squarely at their own party's presidential nominee. Seriously, when in the past have you ever heard the term "unendorse" used? We haven't checked, but we believe it just got coined and added to the political lexicon. It hasn't existed before because the concept hasn't ever existed before (again, in our own memory, at the very least). But we're going to get to all this in great detail later, so let's just move along for now.

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California's relatively new primary system is unfair and needs to change back to the way it used to be. I say this not out of partisanship -- quite the opposite, in fact. The benefits of California's so-called "jungle primary" have all gone to the Democratic side, but basic fairness demands I stand up for the rights of California Republicans, third-party voters, and independents, because theirs are the rights which are being abridged.

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Senator Bernie Sanders, barring extraordinary unforeseen circumstances, is not going to be president. He has fallen short of his goal of winning the nomination of the Democratic Party. No tricky delegate math is going to save him now. His campaign is now over, whether he wants to admit it or not quite yet. But I for one am thankful he ran, and thankful for what he did manage to accomplish. Because though his campaign is done, his political revolution should continue.

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Once again, we've got a rather long end section today, so we're going to present our wrap-up of the week's news in rather abbreviated fashion. This is because we are finally (only a few weeks late!) unveiling the finalists in our "come up with a playground taunt for Trump" contest (which initially ran back in FTP [391]), so there's that to look forward to, down in the talking points section.

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