One of the most important events in the national gun violence debate will take place Tuesday — in the snows of Chicago, a thousand miles from Newtown, Conn., or Washington, D.C.
That's where Democratic voters will choose their nominee to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. Because the district is so heavily Democratic, the winner will almost certainly be sworn in at the Capitol following the April general election.
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It's not as elegant as some languages, but neither is it as impenetrable as, say, an economics textbook or the iTunes user agreement.
"We have our own language on Capitol Hill," says Don Ritchie, head of the Senate Historical Office.
That language — the budget terms and political euphemisms that fly freely through the air in Washington, D.C. — often ends up seeping into the nation's discourse.
Reporters and bloggers pick up and spread terms such as "sequester" and "debt ceiling limit." The next thing you know, you just might find yourself using such jargon as you talk with friends about what a mess the country is in. But most people understandably might not be able to tell a COLA from a COBRA. It's primarily Beltway insiders who speak fluent acronym.
"Politics, like any other field, has its own language, its own jargon," says Martin Medhurst, a professor of political science and rhetoric at Baylor University. "It would be an odd field that didn't."
Beltway Berlitz
Match these terms to their correct Washington meaning:
Conference
A) A meeting you hope to sneak out of to play golf.
B) The way the House and Senate align different versions of legislation.
Impoundment
A) What happens to your car after it gets towed.
B) A power presidents had not to spend funds approved by Congress, up until 1974.
Message
A) Something that pops up on your phone.
B) Any thought or idea expressed briefly in a plain or secret language and prepared in a form suitable for transmission by any means of communication.
Oversight
A) Something that has been overlooked.
B) Increased attention to an issue, say, the Benghazi killings.
Reconciliation
A) The course your marriage counselor hopes you'll take.
B) A procedure for matching new budget policies with existing law.
Answers: (B) in every case. The definition for "message" is official Defense Department language. "Oversight" is a trick question, because (B) is correct on Capitol Hill while (A) is correct everywhere else.
— Alan Greenblatt
In the back and forth between Congress and the White House over immigration, both sides seem to agree that people now in the U.S. illegally should wait at "the back of the line" for legal residency — meaning no green card until all other immigrants get theirs.
But that presents a problem, because the wait for a green card can take decades.
Maria has been waiting in line with her husband for 16 years and counting for what the government calls a priority date for legal residency. Because she is in the U.S. without documents, Maria asked NPR to use only her first name.
Her story, though, is typical: Maria's mother-in-law is a U.S. citizen. So Maria's husband, who was born in Mexico, is eligible for a green card. While he's waiting, he is in the U.S. illegally, running a small construction business and, Maria says, paying taxes. When her husband gets his green card, Maria can apply for one.
But their lawyer, Mo Goldman, says it will be a while longer before applicants from 1997 are eligible.
"The date that they're currently processing right now is back to 1993 — and it doesn't move," he says.
In other words, grown Mexican-born sons and daughters of U.S. citizens are at the front of the line for permanent legal residency after applying two decades ago. Different family categories have different "lines" — spouses wait less time than siblings. Different job categories also have different lines — college graduates wait less time than lower-skilled workers.
"So it turns out there are many lines," says Hiroshi Motomura, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is writing a book on the immigration system. "There's something certainly questionable in the logic of a system that, on the one hand, says you qualify, but ... you have to wait 20 years."
Lawyer Goldman says this isn't the way it was a century ago when immigrants came through Ellis Island.
"It's apples and oranges," he says. "There's no way of comparing that because we didn't have this quota system. People got off a boat, you know, they were processed through, they got their medical examination, and ... they became permanent residents."
That is, if you were from Europe. If not, it was tough to immigrate even back then.
So in the 1960s, Congress tried to make things more fair by granting an equal number of green cards for each country. That means there are country quotas now, on top of all those family and employment categories. But some countries are larger than others — or, as Motomura says, they have more people who want to immigrate because of geography or political and economic ties.
"Right now, those countries are China, India, Mexico and the Philippines," he says. "So if you're from those countries, you have to wait longer."
The total estimated backlog for legal immigration is 4 million people. And Motomura thinks that long wait may have fueled illegal immigration.
That's what Stuart Anderson thinks, too. He was an immigration official during the George W. Bush administration and is now with the nonpartisan National Foundation for American Policy, a Virginia think tank.
Anderson says people who need jobs or want to join their family won't endure a two-decade wait.
"The combination of that with increased border enforcement has led people to come in illegally and then end up staying once they got into the country because it's become more difficult to cross in the first place," Anderson says.
That brings us back to Maria and her husband from Mexico. They crossed and stayed in Tucson, Ariz., illegally at the same time his mother applied for him to live in the U.S. legally. And here's the kicker: Goldman, their lawyer, says if they do leave the United States and get caught coming back, the law automatically adds another 10 years to their wait.
"I stay here," Maria says. "I never come back to Mexico," even after deaths in her family.
Maria and her husband are not about to lose their place in line, even if they don't know how long the line is.
It's why almost everyone pushing an immigration overhaul says any new law has to ease the current backlog of legal green card applicants before putting the estimated 11 million undocumented in line behind them.
The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments next week in a case that tests the constitutionality of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the law considered the most effective civil rights statute in American history. At issue is whether a key provision of the statute has outlived its usefulness.
A staggering 49 friend of the court briefs have been filed, among them briefs from 11 states urging the court to either strike down or uphold the law. What is intriguing is that some of the states now arguing against the law were not troubled by its provisions just four years ago, the last time it was before the court.
In 2009, a small Texas utility district challenged the so-called preclearance section of the law, which requires nine states, most of them in the South, and parts of other states like California and New York, to get advance approval from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before changing any voting laws or regulations.
When the case got to the U.S. Supreme Court, only one state — Georgia — came out clearly against the law, claiming that the provision was unconstitutional. Alabama filed a brief echoing part but not all of Georgia's arguments. Both emphasized that their respective states have changed dramatically since 1965, and asked the court to seriously consider the legality of the preclearance section, given its burden on covered states.
The Supreme Court in 2009 dodged the preclearance question, but the issue is back this year in a challenge brought by Shelby County, Ala. And this time seven states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas — are asking the court to strike down the law.
Of the seven, Arizona has made the most noticeable switch between 2009 and 2013. In 2009, Arizona joined a brief supporting the law, along with North Carolina, California, Louisiana, Mississippi and New York.
Back then, Arizona and the other states said that the preclearance section of the law was "not onerous," and that indeed, preclearance had offered "some benefits," for example, protecting them from expensive litigation. The states supporting the law said that although some of them had expressed initial resistance to the preclearance process when the Voting Rights Act was originally adopted, "by 2006 the process for seeking preclearance had become painless and routine."
Today, however, Arizona is on the other side of the debate, saying something very different. The preclearance requirement, it now argues, is "arbitrary and burdensome," and unconstitutional.
Arizona's governor this time, as last, is Republican Jan Brewer. Though she was quite new to the job in 2009, she had previously held the job of Arizona secretary of state, the position that deals with elections.
Four other states — Alaska, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas — also seem to have changed their tune since 2009. Back then, Louisiana supported the law, while Alaska, South Carolina and Texas were silent on the issue, taking no position. This time, Louisiana is silent, while Alaska, South Carolina and Texas are urging the Supreme Court to strike down the preclearance provision.
Among the states that are fully covered by the preclearance requirement, Mississippi seems to be the only one that has consistently supported the law. The state signed on to briefs in 2009 and again this year urging the Supreme Court to uphold the law.
New York, California and North Carolina — states that are only partially covered by the preclearance mandate — also have remained true to the positions they took four years ago. Like Mississippi, they are supporting the constitutionality of the law, declaring that it is not unduly burdensome.