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On Wednesday, Ron Paul continued his push against immigration reform with an email promoting a conspiratorial video released in May by the Campaign for Liberty, the former Texas congressman's 501(c)(4) non-profit. In the video, Paul warns, without evidence, that "it's only a matter of time before 'ID scans' will be required to travel, attend public events, or even make routine purchases." Paul also claims that the Senate's bipartisan Gang of Eight immigration bill is a sneaky collaboration with President Barack Obama to create "by far the worst National ID scheme the statists have come up with yet."

The video was first posted to YouTube in May, and Paul's anti-immigration views are no secret. But the new email is notable given that Ron Paul's son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), has said he could support the Senate bill if it includes an amendment addressing Republican concerns about border security. Rand Paul has said repeatedly that he supports immigration reform, but has expressed concerns about a national ID system and wants the bill to include triggers that would restrict immigrants' path to citizenship if certain border security goals aren't met. But he hasn't echoed his father's most conspiratorial claims.

"Not only does this bill increase federal spending," the elder Paul says in the video, "it mandates every American carry a National ID card with their photo and creates a new federal database containing biometric information on every American, such as fingerprints and retinal scans. The card would be required for all US workers regardless of place of birth, making it illegal for anyone to hold a job in the United States who doesn't obtain an ID card."

That's not true. In reality, the Senate bill explicitly prohibits a national ID card. Some privacy advocates have argued the bill would create a de facto national ID system by requiring mandatory electronic employment checks against a federal database containing some biometric information, such as fingerprints and photographs. Ron Paul goes much further than the privacy groups, though, arguing, "This is exactly the type of battle that often decides whether a country remains free or continues down a slide to tyranny."

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Several people have suggested that President Obama will make climate change a key initiative of his second term. I've never really believed that, but today the New York Times reports that it might be for real:

President Obama is preparing a major policy push on climate change, including, for the first time, limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants, as well as expanded renewable energy development on public lands and an accelerated effort on energy efficiency in buildings and equipment, senior officials said Wednesday

Heather Zichal, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change [...] suggested in her remarks that a central part of the administration’s approach to dealing with climate change would be to use the authority given to the Environmental Protection Agency to address climate-altering pollutants from power plants under the Clean Air Act. She said none of the initiatives being considered by the administration required legislative action or new financing from Congress.

The EPA can actually do a fair amount if it decides to. And Republicans know it: it's one of the reasons they've held up the nomination of Gina McCarthy to head up the EPA. This announcement is likely to turn up the heat in that battle another notch or two.

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Elena Schweitzer/Shutterstock

The news cycle can be a silly place. The Republicans in recent months have sucked up a lot of oxygen with a phony scandal (Benghazi) and a trumped-up scandal (the IRS's improper targeting of tea party groups for scrutiny). The White House has been pinned down by some of this, while also contending with a very real and front-page debate over NSA surveillance prompted by leaks regarding two of its super-secret programs. Yet one matter that is perhaps more important than all of this and that is in the news for the moment registers much lower on the media Richter scale: trying to prevent humans from blowing up the one planet they have.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama announced a new guidance for US nuclear weapons policies, and it's a big deal. It follows Obama's 2009 Prague speech, in which he declared the long-term goal of zeroing out nuclear weapons. According to a White House fact sheet, the new guidance "narrows U.S. nuclear strategy to focus on only those objectives and missions that are necessary for deterrence in the 21^st century" and "directs DOD to strengthen non-nuclear capabilities and reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks." The fact sheet notes, "the guidance takes further steps toward reducing the role of nuclear weapons in our security strategy." In non-wonk terms that means the US military will alter its planning that might entail the use of a nuclear weapon. And Obama's new guidance declares that it would be reasonable to cut the level of strategic nuclear weapons by a third, beyond the lower levels Obama negotiated with the Russians for the New START treaty. Obama announced this proposed reduction in a Berlin speech.

All of this is receiving some news coverage today, but it won't draw a smidgeon of the attention the assorted quasi-scandals do. Yet the effort to lower the possibility of a nuclear war is one of the most noble and significant endeavors for a president. (Addressing climate change ranks high, too.) Still, not since the early 1980s, when literally millions of Americans took to the street to protest President Ronald Reagan's nuclear policies, has this been a hot political subject. It may be that the notion of a nuclear conflagration is too overwhelming to consider on a routine basis. Certainly, it's more fun to fret about a stolen (or not stolen) Super Bowl ring.

Arms controllers did hail Obama's actions. The Ploughshares Fund noted that the president "has finally replaced the nuclear guidance issued in 2002 by President George W. Bush with new policies that will reduce the roles, numbers and alert rates of nuclear weapons in US national security strategy." (The United States currently maintains 7000 nuclear weapons in its arsenal.) And the Union of Concerned Scientists applauded Obama's nuclear policy reform and urged him to go further, noting the United States "can maintain a robust deterrent with less than a 1,000 nuclear weapons—including strategic and tactical, deployed and stored—independent of Russia’s arsenal. Maintaining more weapons than needed undercuts U.S. security and wastes taxpayer dollars." Hawks, inevitably, will denounce Obama's attempt to reduce the United States' warehouse of nukes and to decrease the significance of nuclear weapons in contingency planning. Yet it's unlikely that a robust debate will erupt to equal the fuss over, say, Michelle Obama's latest hair style. But for anyone who is serious about divining crucial national security differences between Obama and his predecessors, Obama's new nuclear posture is significant and worthy of much notice.

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Here's the latest polling on the NSA surveillance program:

Most Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll support telephone and internet surveillance by the National Security Administration, but two-thirds also favor congressional hearings on the subject — indicating broad interest in more information about these activities.

The public by 58-39 percent supports the NSA collecting “extensive records of phone calls, as well as internet data related to specific investigations, to try to identify possible terrorist threats.” Support for the program is far higher among Democrats and liberals than among Republicans and strong conservatives, reversing Bush-era political divisions on issues of privacy vs. security.

It's now been two weeks since the original Guardian story, and several recent polls have produced similar results. For now, then, I think we can say that we have a pretty good idea of what the public thinks. They favor surveillance by about a 2:1 margin, and now that Obama is president that margin is much higher among Democrats than Republicans.

On interesting tidbit about this: on most issues these days, opinion among independents is closer to Democrats than to Republicans. On this one, just the opposite is true: Independents are aligned almost perfectly with the newly Foxified and skeptical Republicans. Politically speaking, this should be unsettling news for Democrats.

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