President Obama is going to outline executive actions tonight with respect to immigration based mostly on the children of undocumented immigrants who have only known the US as their home. the steps he is taking are to prevent the deportation of the parents of these kids, something that should have been implemented for a long time but has not for various reasons. he is giving a kind of amnesty to these families, in the tradition of his predecessors, Ronald Regan and George Herbert Walker Bush, both of whom proposed very similar executive actions and implemented them with little to no fanfare or opposition. as usual, the far right wing of US politics is clamoring for Obama's removal by claiming that Congress should be making these decisions, not the President.

but the thing is, a bill has been sitting idle since Summer 2013 which was passed overwhelmingly by the US Senate by a 68-32 vote (http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/immigration-bill-2013-senate-passes-93530.html). it has taken some major inaction by House Speaker Boehner to prevent this bill from coming up for a vote, because he knows the only way this bill passes the House is with Democratic support, and he also refuses to allow a "win" to Obama, especially if it means giving the Democrats the chance to pass something his own caucus doesn't want.

as a result of this, we get statements that there will be an increase in anarchy and violence from outgoing Senator Tom Coburn (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/19/usa-today-capital-download-with-tom-coburn/19263969/) who warns us all that Obama is apparently ruling by decree, even though it's his own party's refusal to act that is forcing Obama to do something. other republicans in Congress are threatening another government shutdown, or at a minimum defunding other parts of the US federal apparatus as retribution for Obama's actions (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/us/politics/republicans-government-shutdown-obama-immigration.html?_r=1).

and so we get a Presidential action forced by a Congress which is too controlled by the wingnuts and too scared of losing to them in elections to do anything meaningful on their own, all while decrying the action their own blundering has brought about. maybe one day we will finally put to rest the lie that "both sides do it", because it should be increasingly clear that only one of the US political parties is actually interested in accomplishing something through governance.