Dick Morris says Hillary officially declared her candidacy last Sunday so that she can pay her staff. Seems like a good reason! Better than stiffing them. Ask D.C. hairdressers about that bad habit. …

Fox Makes It Easy for Amnesty, Part XXVIII: I had forgotten this fairly explicit paragraph from Ryan Lizza’s 2013 article on the Gang of Eight Amnesty-First bill:

McCain told me, “Rupert Murdoch is a strong supporter of immigration reform, and Roger Ailes is, too.” Murdoch is the chairman and C.E.O. of News Corp., which owns Fox, and Ailes is Fox News’s president. McCain said that he, [Lindsey] Graham, [Marco] Rubio, and others also have talked privately to top hosts at Fox, including Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Neil Cavuto, who are now relatively sympathetic to the Gang’s proposed bill. Hannity voiced support for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, which he previously dismissed as “amnesty,” on the day after the 2012 election. “God bless Fox,” Graham said. “Last time, it was ‘amnesty’ every fifteen seconds.” He said that the change was important for his reëlection, because “eighty per cent of people in my primary get their news from Fox.” He added that the network has “allowed critics to come forward, but it’s been so much better.”  [Emphasis added]

Now they seem to have clamped down on the ‘allow the critics to come forward’ part. … Alternative ledes: 1) Rubio lobbied Ailes for amnesty. Hear that, Iowa? 2) Things Daily Caller can’t cover. ….

Picking up where Eric Cantor left off: AP’s Erica Warner reports on Twitter that at his “pen and pad” press conference today, GOP House Majority Leader McCarthy, “hedged on whether House will pursue legal action against Obama on immigration, saying they already achieved what they wanted.” And what was that, exactly? A District Court judge has held up Obama’s executive amnesty, but it’s by no means dead. McCarthy (and his sidekick, Rep. Renee Ellmers!) will apparently pass up no opportunity to talk tough and then wimp out on immigration. …

P.S.: Warner also tweets that McCarthy “said … he will bring back the border security bill abandoned when conservatives balked, combined with Goodlatte bills.” It was widely — and rationally — feared that these bills are seen by the House leadership as a precursor to passing some kind of amnesty before the 2016 election ( ‘See, the border is secure!’).

The Boehner/McCarthy drive for amnesty hasn’t gone away. Stay paranoid. …

538‘s Nate Silver to Ezra Klein’s Vox: Quit jacking our charts!  First Vox steals from Slate. Now Nate. I sense a pattern. Also a subtle undercurrent of desperation! I don’t think they’d do this unless they thought they had to …