I am not surprised that both Messrs Carter and Johnson have chosen to quit the immigration reform panel. The Republican Party was never in favor of legalizing the millions of undocumented people living in this country and has grown even more hostile to the idea--even with the 13-year combination marathon-and-obstacle course being put forward to legalize those here--since the Tea Party became a force to reckon with inside the GOP.
The reader is left with two depressing conclusions: either that Messrs Johnson and Carter were dealing in bad faith from the very beginning or that they are so afraid of being primaried by rabid-righters that they took their marbles and went home.
I hope the good and decent people living in their districts do the decent and patriotic thing, go down to the polls next year, and remove them from office.
The French philosopher Voltaire once said that France's royal Bourbon dynasty learned nothing and forgot nothing. I say that the Tea-publicans have done one better than France's Bourbon kings--they've learned nothing and have forgotten quite a bit. The Tea-publicans deserve some old-time learnin' in the school of hard knocks.