To Talk of Many Things

- First, a hearty welcome to Joe Weedon, formerly of The Yellow Line, who's now blogging over at The Middle of DC. Joe's already got some great posts up on Tom DeLay, immgration, Cynthia McKinney, and many other topics. Make this a regular stop. Glad to have you back, Joe!

- All the papers this morning are highlighting a meeting among Senate Republicans yesterday to come to some agreement on an immigration bill (here's the NYT piece). McCain and Martinez, proponents of a wide-ranging guest worker plan, say they don't have enough votes to overcome a potential filibuster, so they've been discussing various options to gain additional support from Republican senators. This is all very much still in play and changing all the time, so what happens next is really anybody's guess.

- Senator McCain met with a tough crowd when he spoke to the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades department meeting in Washington yesterday; he was booed several times and even offered to cut the speech short, according to an AP report. After the speech though, McCain was positive: "I loved it. I love mixing it up like that." What other high-stature politician would go before a crowd so generally opposed to their positions? I can't think of any.

McCain also met with some good-natured but pointed ribbing from Jon Stewart on last night's "Daily Show" about his plans to give the commencement address at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. McCain looked genuinely pained about that, and said he plans to give the same commencement address he gives at colleges around the country, even if he doesn't agree with some specific policies of their institutions. Would I rather him avoid Falwell and his ilk like the plague? You betcha, because I believe what John McCain said back on February 28, 2000 is just as true today as it ever was. As Stewart said to him last night, "I hope you know what you're doing, senator."

- Don't miss David Broder's column. He suggests that the GOP needs a new game plan in the House now that DeLay is leaving the building: "The old game of muscling bills through by rounding up Republican votes through a combination of political and financial force - the game at which Tom DeLay excelled - is over. The question for the White House is whether it can come up with a different strategy that looks for support from at least some Democrats." Quite so. Read the whole thing.