Let me get this straight: the Democrats penalized Michigan and Florida for holding their primaries early, because those states wanted to have disproportionate influence on the nomination process. And the proposed remedy for the situation is that Michigan and Florida may get “do-overs” and thus have disproportionate influence over the nomination process—likely even more influence than they would have had their delegations been counted in the first place (or even if the DNC had been as sensible as the Republicans and just docked them 50% of their delegates, which would have knocked down all the silly Bush v. Gore II arguments that got us to this point).

Is there a planet in the universe where this makes any sense whatsoever? Your Democratic National Committee—making the rules up as they go along.

As you might appreciate, the immigration issue is a big deal in the environs of my future employer and residence. Today’s Laredo Morning Times carries three articles on the issue: one addressing unfunded mandates associated with law enforcement detention of illegals, and another features Washington kabuki theater on immigration reform, but I think the most interesting of the three is a report on a lecture by Edward Alden of the Council on Foreign Relations on the conflation of immigration, terrorism, and border security.

The race to replace Bobby Jindal in Congress has largely played out off of my radar screen, but the Times-Picayune reviews the recent round of mudslinging from the contenders. For some reason, I’ve only gotten mailings from the Scalise campaign; I guess the other Republicans are working from an older GOP registered voter list—I changed affiliations from Libertarian to Republican in January so I could vote in the February presidential preference primary, when I thought the GOP race would be more competitive than the Democratic one, and upcoming special elections.

In terms of my personal self-interest, I’m hoping that no candidate gets 50% of the vote so I’ll have another election in May—I’ll miss working on the April election date due to being at the Midwest, and if there’s no runoff the general election will be held then.