Now discretion can trump legislatures and the courts?

What's next, jury nullification  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

"this can have the de facto effect of invalidating the statute."

If the government had done it's job; we wouldn't be in this moral quandary. 

Interesting that Al Jazeera English thinks it's a big enough story to headline over goings on elsewhere, like Egypt:

I think Garance Franke-Ruta over @ The Atlantic may have the right take on what's going on, sees a pattern developing:

Obama's Game Changer on Young Illegal Immigrants
Jun 15 2012, 11:18 AM ET 198

First, he came out for same sex marriage. Now a second bold move on behalf of a marginal group will dominate the conversation.

Game changer is a great description. It's cynical, but so far it does certainly appear like the campaign is studying the polls and seeing which demographics they can grab by throwing a bone without alienating other voters they need. If it's a demographic that they are not going to get anyway, they don't care if they alienate them. Also, if it focuses national news narratives for a couple days away from something to something they'd rather see people discussing, that's a bonus. Also, both things so far are where Obama is drawn as being moderate about the issue, at least to non-wingers (again, he's not after winger votes.)

A little proof of it being a studied campaign choice --just two days ago, I posted this Guardian story in this section:

Deportation of law-abiding immigrants may hurt Obama's re-election chances

Does anyone know, if this change will be impacted by the SCOTUS ruling, to be announced next week on Arizona SB 1070 ?

If this change takes place before, the ruling comes down, does it remain?

If the ruling goes against the Federal government, Obama still comes across as being a moderate and he can say to the Latino community "well at least I tried" ...(only after he caught wind that the SCOTUS ruling wouldn't be favorable)..

Doing this now was definitely was a checkmate against pro-Romney campaign plans; from page 8 of Ryan Lizza's New Yorker article, published for the New Yorker issue on the streets Monday:

“If we win, Latino voters will play a big role in that,” David Plouffe said. “The Republican Party is going to have to make a decision. I don’t think it’s much of a decision, actually. They’re going to have to moderate.” The White House is so convinced of the centrality of Hispanics to the current election and its aftermath that Plouffe told me he has been preparing for months for an onslaught of advertisements from a pro-Romney group attacking Obama from the left on immigration, arguing that Obama’s deportation and border-security policies have been too Draconian.

One of the lessons from “Mandate Politics” is that the magnitude of a victory is not as important as defying expectations. Republicans won’t coöperate with Obama simply because he’s won, just as Bush’s 2004 reëlection did nothing to move Democrats. But if the 2012 results reveal that the G.O.P.’s weakness among minority voters, especially Hispanics, is dire, political opportunities that seem unlikely today could quickly become conventional wisdom after November. Romney understands this. “We have to get Hispanic voters to vote for our party,” he recently said at a private fund-raiser, unaware that reporters could hear him. Failure to do so “spells doom for us,” Romney said. A rule that holds up quite well in American politics is that the longer a party remains out of power the more moderate it becomes.

But beyond the timing, it wasn't cynical; elsewhere in the article it's made clear by Lizza that immigration reform is one of the main things Obama would like to do in a second term. Also pointed out is that the issue is a bonus for Obama's way of thinking that this is one of the few that still cuts across party lines (even though the article quotes a campaign speech where he admits naivete about bipartisanship, he'd still like to see it happen sometimes.)

Definitely a good day for the hundreds of thousands of kids who will benefit from this.