President Obama: Congress may not have an “appetite” for immigration reform this year. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Robert Reich denounces the astroturfers behind ‘Stop too Big to Fail’ for using his name and likeness in their campaign to fool people into thinking they’re for financial reform when in fact they’re trying to kill it.

The Republicans have folded in the Senate. Throughout the afternoon, every indication was that the GOP’s filibuster effort had crumbled and that several, perhaps many, Republican senators would cross over and vote to bring financial reform to the floor for debate. We were expecting a vote at this hour. But the Senate is dispensing with a vote entirely, and will bring the bill to the floor by unanimous consent (meaning everyone agrees and there’s no need to even vote on it).

That doesn’t mean the fight is over. There will be another 60 votes needed now to cut off debate and actually vote on the bill. That is another opportunity for the GOP to delay and posture. But that is appearing less likely as time goes by.  What we anticipate is several days of Senate debate, with a long series of votes on various amendments to the bill, followed by a cloture vote that a handful or more of Republicans join Democrats on, then a final vote passing the bill along roughly the same margins, maybe late next week, probably the week after.

Okay, it seems I was right. Whatever Iowa congressional hopeful Pat Bertroche thinks, you wouldn’t be able to track illegal immigrants if you actually followed through on the idea of forcibly implanting them with microchips. As I suggested, the kind of microchips we’re talking about here aren’t transponders. They’re passive beacons. You have to run a decoder gizmo over them to get any info from them. In other words, it’s not going to turn into an illegal immigrant LoJack system — a Bertroche fantasy simultaneously comical and grotesque.

TPM Reader UF gives us some background on how these gizmos actually work … Read More

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) says he supports deporting American citizens whose parents are illegal immigrants.

You can see the video here.

You may be thinking of the old Duncan Hunter. But this is actually his son, who the old guy passed his seat to under congressional primogeniture rules.

When the Ohio GOP photoshopped a fake pro-Steve Stivers sign into a photo of a recent Tea Party rally, it probably wasn’t a good idea to make the sign appear to be well over thirty feet tall.

John McCain’s approval rating has plummeted into deep negative territory in the latest poll out of Arizona. I mean really bad.

Reports out of Florida that Gov. Charlie Crist is telling his key financial backers that he will announce an independent run for U.S. Senate at his press conference scheduled for tomorrow.

The Senate GOP blocked financial reform for the third time this week in a floor vote a few minutes ago. The final was vote was 56-42 (no significant defections from the previous votes).

If you’re not an Apple-obsessive, you might not have been following closely the legal and journalistic controversy surrounding Gizmodo’s acquisition of and reporting about the secret new iPhone prototype. It’s an interesting story, and Justin Elliott gets you up to speed.