We stand at the beginning of a grand debate on immigration. America goes through these grand debates every generation or so, and what remains constant is that both sides in the fight can be counted upon to accuse the other side of "playing politics" with the immigration issue. This has, indeed already begun.

Republicans are offering up a splendid display of doublethink on the issue, in order to be able to say: "Hah! We were right all along," no matter what happens. Republicans make two accusations, which are completely contradictory (which doesn't seem to bother them at all), that the whole thing is just a cynical political game: (1) Obama and the Democrats want to legalize 11 million people who will then immediately become reliable Democratic voters, and/or (2) Obama and the Democrats will somehow find a way to scuttle the deal because they really don't want to pass any law, they just want to use the issue to beat up Republicans, in election after election. As I mentioned, no matter what happens, they'll be able to fall back on one of these tropes. Democrats, however, are using the second of these (with slight modification) to explain their own wariness: Republicans just want to be able to say: "We tried something" during the next election, and they will find a way to scuttle the deal in the end while blaming Democrats for the legislative failure.

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Call me biased, I suppose. Biased against ignorance, perhaps. To be less snarky, biased in favor of geography and Irish people. I am so biased in favor of Irish people, in fact, that I married one. So I guess I'm not the best neutral observer. But having fully admitted that, I still feel duty-bound to point out how last night's NBC News broadcast made a basic and truly ignorant geographical mistake, as anchor Brian Wilson read the lead-in to a story on President Obama's overseas conference with the Gang of Eight (no, not that Gang of Eight... meant to say "the G-8," sorry...) over in Northern Ireland.

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Just for fun, today I'd like to use my column to skate perilously close to the edge of rampant paranoia. I'm really doing this to make an ironic point, at the end, but I can't deny that this type of thing is certainly fun to write. Especially when I'm stating up front that what we'll be exploring is territory only those in tinfoil hats usually set foot in.

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Frank Luntz, celebrated spinmeister, has taken on a new task, it seems. He'll be in charge of figuring out a way to convince the public that a blatantly racist major sports team's name is really nothing to get upset about.

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Every so often as I sit down to write these Friday columns, the spirit of the rant overtakes me. Instead of our usual Talking Points section this week, I offer up such a rant, on the death of the Fourth Amendment. You have all been warned. I did consider calling this rant an "Ode To Dianne Feinstein," but then I thought that was too limiting -- she certainly isn't the only one out there singing from the same hymnbook. And I certainly wouldn't want to have anyone feel left out.

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President Obama should really stop fighting against the idea of making the morning-after pill available to anyone who needs to buy it. He really should instruct Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder to admit defeat on the issue, and to just move on. Because what he's fighting for, ultimately, is his own political hypocrisy. Politically, this should be reason enough to throw in the towel on this fight.

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"You know, after watching the popularity arc of such Tea Party favorites as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, I can't help but wonder why they don't just skip over what appears to be the hardest part of becoming famous for them -- the part about serving in office. Why not just go straight towards being a media darling on the Right? The Fox network could get in on the action in a big way, and broadcast a reality show once a year to search the nation for the next Tea Party superstar. They could call it 'So You Think You Can Rant?' and hire Palin, Bachmann, and Donald Trump to be judges. I bet it'd be a ratings smash, personally."

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Michele Bachmann has announced her retirement from Congress. I consider this good news for a very selfish reason: her name is just too easy to misspell. You're typing along, and where there should be a double letter there isn't... and then a little later there is one where there shouldn't be. It's annoying.

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Mister Attorney General, the reason I have such a problem with issuing warrants or subpoenas for news reporters is because I am aware of the history of the laws being used to do so. I have a hard time believing that you or your boss (a former constitutional professor) are completely unaware of these precedents in American history, but I haven't heard anyone else mentioning them, so I thought it fell to me to bring them up.

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On a lonely hill outside the small town of Cobh, Ireland (pronounced: "cove"), is a mass grave marked by three somber headstones. As mass graves go, it's a fairly small one; holding not tens of thousands or even thousands, but merely a few hundred bodies. But the relative size of the grave on the scale of human misery is beside the point -- because while few, their deaths had monumental consequences for America. The dead were civilians, not soldiers (more on them in a minute). But their deaths deserve memorializing today just as much as those we remember who wore the uniform of our country. Because this is the final resting place of the people onboard the Lusitania.

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