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President Obama will visit Connecticut on Monday to keep pushing for new federal gun laws. The poster children for this campaign are just that — children.

The president has invited kids to the White House to watch him sign new executive orders on guns. And the images of the kids who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School are a constant reminder of the toll gun violence can take.

And it's not just the gun debate. Right now, children are also central to campaigns on immigration and same-sex marriage — demonstrating their effectiveness as political messengers.

A Time-Honored Tactic

In Miami in 1977, Anita Bryant started a campaign against gay rights. She gave her group a name that would resonate with parents in Florida and around the country: Save Our Children.

"Please join us in voting for the human rights of children — voting for decency," she urged during her campaign.

Kids are still a key part of this debate, but more often they show up on the other side, as part of the push for gay rights.

When the Supreme Court heard arguments on same-sex marriage last month, Justice Anthony Kennedy pointed out that California alone has some 40,000 kids living with two moms or two dads.

"They want their parents to have full recognition and full status," Kennedy said. "The voice of those children is important in this case, don't you think?"

Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia brought up kids, too, but in another context: "There's considerable disagreement among — among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a — in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not," Scalia said during arguments. "Some states do not — do not permit adoption by same-sex couples for that reason."

On almost any issue, kids can make an argument more compelling.

"Kids are more of a blank canvas," says Elizabeth Wilner, who studies political advertising for the firm Kantar Media CMAG. "The standard prejudices and thoughts people might bring to a particular issue tend to get left by the wayside when they're watching an ad that features a kid."

People can easily pass judgment on gays and lesbians or condemn those who came to the United States illegally. It's much harder to dismiss their children.

"I think it immediately unfangs the opponent," says Mark Fitzloff, an executive at the advertising firm Wieden + Kennedy. "Because what are you going to do? You're going to attack children? I mean, it's a smart chess move to anticipate your opponent's next move and pull the power out of it."

That's one reason the DREAM Act kids have been such an effective face of the immigration debate. They came to the United States illegally through no fault of their own. And people have seen that message online more than half a million times in this video.

Congress returns from a two-week recess amid reports that a gun deal in the Senate may have gained late momentum; a focus on immigration to include a rally on Capitol Hill; and a budget proposal from President Obama that already has some in his own party fuming.

Here's what's happening on key issues this week:

Guns
Obama travels to Connecticut on Monday to keep the focus on gun control in the state where, nearly four months ago, 20 young children and six educators were massacred. Last week, the Connecticut Legislature passed tough new state gun restrictions, a measure signed into law by Democratic Gov. Dan Malloy.

While some states have taken action to toughen and, in some instances, loosen gun restrictions since the Dec. 14 shooting in Newtown, Conn., Congress remains slowed by its own processes and the competing political pressure of interest groups.

The Washington Post and The New York Times reported Monday that despite opposition from the NRA, "fresh Republican support" could allow a bipartisan agreement on a measure to expand federal background checks for gun buyers. The idea has overwhelming public support in polling, and would close a loophole in current law that requires no such check for sales at gun shows.

The idea was considered an important but relatively middle-of-the-road proposal among post-Newtown calls for a new ban on assault weapons and a bullet limit in ammunition clips. But over time, support in Congress failed to materialize sufficiently to assure much of anything would become law. Now, background checks might form the framework of any deal on Capitol Hill. The Post reports:

"In a move that could draw other Republicans as well as Democrats from conservative states who have not yet backed Obama's agenda, Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a key Democratic broker, has spent the past few days crafting the framework of a possible deal with Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.).

"Manchin and Toomey are developing a measure to require background checks for all gun purchases except sales between close family members and some hunters, which addresses concerns of some conservatives."

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minster and "Iron Lady" who died on Monday, authorized a biography to be published after her death. Written by Charles Moore, it will be published by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin UK. Allen Lane said in a statement: "The biography was commissioned in 1997 on the understanding that it would not be published during Baroness Thatcher's lifetime. Charles Moore was given full access to Baroness Thatcher's private papers and interviewed her extensively." The book, titled Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume One: Not For Turning, will be published "immediately following her funeral" next week.

On a related note, let's all take a moment to remember the time Thatcher publicly spanked Christopher Hitchens. From Hitchens' "On Spanking," in the London Review of Books: "I stooped lower, with an odd sense of having lost all independent volition. Having arranged matters to her entire satisfaction, she produced from behind her back a rolled-up Parliamentary order-paper and struck — no, she thwacked — me on the behind. I reattained the perpendicular with some difficulty. 'Naughty boy,' she sang out over her shoulder as she flounced away. Nothing that happened to the country in the next dozen years surprised me in the least."

Victoria Beale takes down Paulo Coelho in a vicious essay for The New Republic titled, "The Gospel of Success: Paulo Coelho's Vapid Philosophy": "If you've absorbed any of Coelho's incredible commercial success, without actually reading the 65-year-old, Brazilian author, it's genuinely shocking to realize just how shoddy and lightweight his books are, how obvious and well-trodden their revelations." That is what Coelho gets for writing things like this in his latest book: "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

Robert Silvers, the founding editor of The New York Review of Books, tells New York Magazine about phrases he'd like to ban from his magazine: "Even more insidious and common is in terms of, a fine phrase if you are talking about mathematical equations or economic functions in which specific 'terms' are defined, but it is just loose and woolly when you say things like 'in terms of culture,' for which there are simply no clear terms."

President Obama launches a brain mapping initiative, but he can't concentrate enough to shoot better than 2-for-22 on the basketball court during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. Mark Sanford wins the GOP runoff in South Carolina and faces Stephen Colbert's sister next month. Plus, NPR's Ron Elving and health correspondent Julie Rovner on the NRA's proposal of having armed guards in schools.