Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a bill into law today that grants hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants the right to drive. The new law makes Illinois the fourth state to allow driver's licenses or permits for undocumented immigrants and comes ahead of President Obama's  expected announcement on a plan for comprehensive immigration reform expected on Tuesday.

Quinn and the 

Morning Joe on MSNBC talks to Cristina Jimenez, who is one of the voices on immigration featured in Parade magazine's "How Latinos are Changing America" roundtable. The conversation is moderated by the Today Show's Natalie Morales, San Antonio mayor Julián Castro, Republican state representative Larry Gonzales, Linda Alvarado, president and CEO of Denver’s Alvarado Construction and a co-owner of MLB’s Colorado Rockies; and Jiménez, who is the managing director of United We Dream, a nationwide network of youth-led immigrant rights groups.

Dead minorities aren't really a problem for this country; otherwise we would be having a much different conversation about gun violence in America. Minorities are more likely to be victims of homicide, and non-whites are also disproportionately more likely to commit homicide, yet that has not reached the level of national discussion evoked by the massacre in Connecticut.

The president has made a clear distinction between the gun violence that plagues the poor and minorities in this country, and the fear of random events which are rare and singularly violent, but also tend to disrupt those white neighborhoods that are relatively free of gun violence.

Someone should ask the principled anti-gun responders why there is so much outrage at the thought of armed guards in schools when school districts throughout California and elsewhere, particularly where Latino and black children go to school, have had armed police forces dedicated to patrolling their schools for years now.

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner wrote in US News that the National Rifle Association's solution to gun violence was an “unequivocal message” that the NRA is not willing to end gun violence and that they are committed to policies that will kill our children.

Excerpts from a famous speech by FDR, delivered on January 6, 1941:

As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone. Those who man our defenses and those behind them who build our defenses must have the stamina and the courage which come from unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. 

What do you get when 92 percent of your colleagues in the Senate or 62 percent in the House disagree with you on an important roll call vote? The answer is the next aspiring candidates for President of the United States.

Both Senator Marco Rubio, the Tea Party darling of the GOP, and Xavier Becerra, the steadily influential Democratic wonderboy, voted against their respective bills on the fiscal cliff earlier this week for very different reasons.

After the defeat of the GOP in the last election, Republicans declared they are on a new mission to broaden their appeal to the middle class and to minorities. However, the focus of the GOP discussion has been less about a candid look at why their policies are unpopular, and more about how they can push the same agenda with a different message.

The NRA released their much-anticipated statement on the Newton tragedy today, in which the head of the NRA called for arming teachers. The overwhelming response from the anti-gun crowd was of disappointment, shock even, that the NRA's response to Sandy Hook would be pro-gun.

The president has called for a national discussion on gun control, and I'm sure the NRA would take this call seriously if the president began the discussion by suspending the armed security detail of each Congressman and declaring each building which he resides in a “gun free zone.” Until the secret service is armed with whistles and yellow vests with shiny pockets, I don't expect the NRA to change their tune either.

We're told America is a violent society with a “fatally counterproductive national identity”, says the German magazine Spiegel Online.

We certainly do have a violent cultural undertow in this country, though it has been getting less violent over the years. Americans are also culturally apathetic. Many more kids die every year to gun violence than did at Sandy Hook Elementary…

Life has just changed for "Dreamer" Uriel Rivera, who worked really hard and excelled in high school despite many sacrifices as the son of an undocumented family of limited means.  He was accepted and became a student at the prestigious University of California at Berkeley. Rivera could not keep up with the tuition, since he did not qualify for federal grants, loans or work-study programs due to his "Dreamer" status.