Next on Obama's To-Do List: Immigration Reform

(April 21) -- President Barack Obama must feel like he's on a roll. With health care reform signed into law and hints of progress toward new rules for Wall Street, he's preparing to tackle the hot-button issue of immigration.

Obama tipped his hand in a phone call from Air Force One on Tuesday to the newest member of the Senate, Scott Brown. The Massachusetts Republican told the Wall Street Journal the president asked him to give the hot-button issue serious thought because it was "coming down the pike." Brown said he'd look at the plan Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have been working on, but he made no commitment to back a bill.

Brown came to Washington this year billed as the 41st GOP Senate vote to block the president's agenda. Although he voted against health care reform, Brown sided with Obama on a jobs bill in February and an extension of unemployment benefits last week -- and he caught flak from conservatives for both votes.

Obama is either "playing a peculiarly wonkish practical joke" on Brown or he's really serious about overhauling immigration laws, wrote the Washington Post's Ezra Klein.

The call to Brown was "part of a quickly hatched, coordinated effort" that included meetings with top congressional Democrats late Tuesday, according to Politico. It said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., promised to bring an immigration bill to the floor this year.

Mother Jones blogger Suzy Khimm said Democrats are "defying expectations" by pushing the issue with mid-term elections just months away and a fight over the next Supreme Court justice on tap for summer.

Obama didn't keep his campaign promise to deal with immigration during the first year of his presidency. There's concern among Latino leaders that the White House is "doing the bare minimum needed to appease" them before the November elections while concentrating on other issues, Peter Nicholas reported in the Los Angeles Times.

Hot Air's Allahpundit suggested that the president has little to lose on this issue. If immigration reform passes, "Obama gets a big win and, presumably, a spike in Latino support," said the blogger. If it fails, he can tell reform advocates that he tried -- and blame Republicans. But Allahpundit added that it's also possible that Democrats have resigned themselves to big losses at the polls in November and may be driven by a "kamikaze mentality" to "go for broke and try to pass as much crap from their agenda as they can regardless of what it means for vulnerable Democrats."

In an interview with The Hill this week, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., warned that if Latino voters don't see action on immigration soon, "We can stay home ... We can refuse to participate."

Some bloggers, such as Lonely Conservative, suspect a direct connection between Gutierrez's threat and Obama's sudden interest in immigration reform. Others saw it as a reaction to passage of a bill in Arizona to crack down on illegal immigrants. Gutierrez has urged Obama to step in if Arizona's Republican governor signs the bill.

Graham is the lone Senate Republican pushing a comprehensive immigration bill, and he's pessimistic about passage this year because of the bad blood left from the brawl over health care, he told Politico. Graham's friend John McCain was another GOP maverick on immigration during the 2008 campaign, but the Arizona senator has taken a harder line lately. McCain and fellow Arizona GOP Sen. Jon Kyl unveiled a plan Monday that's all about border security.

Perhaps the strangest sidebar to the immigration story is the attack on Graham by William Gheen, head of the conservative group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC). Gheen charged at a weekend tea party rally in South Carolina that Graham is a secret homosexual.

"I hope this secret isn't being used as leverage over Senator Graham," Gheen told the crowd.

"Exactly what Graham's sexuality -- which has been the subject of rumors in South Carolina for years -- has to do with border security isn't particularly clear. (When asked, the unmarried Graham says he's not gay, he's just single.)," Salon reported.

Bloggers on the right and left blasted Gheen, and Lou Dobbs, a former ALIPAC ally, called for his resignation.