On April 2, 2013, the Associated Press announced amendments to its style book, effectively banning the use of the word “illegal” to describe a person as in “an illegal immigrant.” This announcement was followed by similar pronouncements from other news sources, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Denver Post.

A lot of Republicans seemed genuinely surprised that they lost, that Mitt Romney was defeated by President Obama, and that Republicans lost seats in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. They actually thought they were going to win!

As I write this, residents of the Mid-Atlantic states are being warned to prepare themselves for a long-lasting power outage because of Hurricane Sandy, billed as “the perfect storm” and the storm of the century. When Hurricane Irene roared through New England last year, many residents were still without power after a week. And Hurricane Irene was a relatively weak Category 1 hurricane.

In its eagerly awaited decision on the Affordable Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare, the Supreme Court’s decisive swing vote surprisingly belonged, not to Justice Anthony Kennedy as expected, but instead to Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush.

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled against key parts of an Arizona law intended to deter illegal immigration in the state. As you can imagine, this ruling has wide-ranging effects for the ability of all states to fight against the tidal wave of illegal immigration locally.

There are three ways to analyze President Obama’s new policy of prosecutorial discretion against seeking the removal of illegal immigrants who meet certain requirements: politically, legally, and as policy.

The Obama administration’s challenge to the Arizona immigration statute SB 1070 is not about its popularity, or whether the statute is wise or unwise policy. Legislatures are permitted to enact laws thought unpopular or unwise by others. And as Chief Justice Roberts observed, and the administration’s lawyer agreed, the challenge is also not in any way about civil rights or racial profiling.