The polling wizards at Quinnipiac University have released a new poll assessing Americans' opinions of a wide array of hot button issues, including women in combat, gun control, and abortion. While there are some surprises here, there are also some major "ya doi"s. So let's get into it.

After encountering yet another group of illegal immigration protesters spouting off the usual xenophobic, jingoist bromides, a Native American man in Tucson, Arizona, decides to stage a poignant, if somewhat belated, illegal immigration protest of his own.

There is not a detail in the story of France's Orson Welles Gérard Depardieu's apparently-real move to Russia to avoid higher taxes that will not delight you. After President François Hollande attempted to make good on his campaign pledge to increase taxes on the wealthy, Depardieu announced plans to leave France for Russia's 13% flat tax and his new best friend Vladimir Putin.

Illegal immigrants seeking asylum in the Land of the Free may have this to look forward to.

Tuesday night self-proclaimed "America's Toughest Sheriff" and Department of Justice-proclaimed civil rights violator Joe Arpaio was re-elected in Arizona as Maricopa County's sheriff. Arpaio has become a highly controversial figure, primarily for his policing, which was the subject of a DOJ investigation last year.

Rampant violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras is being blamed for a huge increase in the number of unaccompanied children being held in American detention centers after sneaking into the country. From the LAT:

Sometime in the middle of this summer, I came up with the title "Confessions of a Part-Time Sexy Dyke" for my web series. I imagined the series remixing the traditional American queer coming-of-age narrative with my experience as a 21-year-old African immigrant. I came up with a theme song and even filmed an intro to the first episode. Then, I got stuck. I realized I couldn't go forward with the production before I really explored my relationship with the English language and my pervasive desire to be consumed by American audiences since I arrived in the states 11 years ago.

How desperate is crumbling Baltimore, Maryland for a population infusion now that those "see where The Wire was filmed!" bus tours are growing less popular? The city is actually not using every last dollar in its law enforcement budget to chase down and harass brown-skinned immigrants in a desperate attempt to focus the anger of the majority on a target that cannot fight back. Has Baltimore really fallen this far?

A pickup truck—not a van, or a semi truck, or a panel truck, but a pickup truck—ran off the road and crashed into roadside trees in Goliad County, Texas Sunday night. The death toll from this single wreck: 14 people. Fourteen dead people, in one crash.

Supporters of Arizona's mostly-struck-down immigration policies have continuously framed the issue as one of states' rights versus federal rights. On tonight's Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert suggested some other ways Arizona can assert its rights.

Both President Obama and Mitt Romney spoke at the NALEO conference last week just before the Supreme Court's decision about Arizona's controversial immigration laws. So who did a better job of getting his message across? On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart broke it down.

In a much anticipated ruling, the Supreme Court struck down major parts of Arizona's immigration law, allowing the federal government and not the state to set immigration policy. The controversial "show me your papers" clause, however, was left in.

Behold the first election-year bombshell: Barack Obama's White House will announce this morning that it will unilaterally begin granting work permits to as many as 800,000 illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States as children, graduated from high school, and stayed out of trouble with the law. He's essentially implemented the much-debated DREAM Act, only without the hassle of all that voting in Congress. He should have done this with health care!

America: a land of improptu hoedowns. A land of beach sand sculpturemaking. A land of nonthreatening motorcycle gangs. A land of multicolored hats.

Perhaps you have heard the news about this, the most destabilizing political scandal to hit American politics since Teapot Dome: President Obama and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer had a modest disagreement about her new book, Scorpions for Breakfast, on the tarmac yesterday. The photographers even captured her pointing at him. What is everyone's problem?

"Distraught over the loss of her grandfather and her parents' divorce," 14-year-old Jakadrien Turner ran away from home, WFAA Dallas reports. Arrested for shoplifting in Houston, she used a fake name that actually belonged to a 22-year-old undocumented immigrant wanted for arrest. What follows is a nightmarish series of mistaken identities and institutional failures, culminating in a teen girl trapped alone and pregnant in a third-world prison.

The other storylines are spent: Newt Gingrich surging, Herman Cain maybe dropping out, Mitt Romney hanging in there, still, while being hated by his political party. But about our man Rick Perry? Sure, he's a terrible candidate who screws himself over each time he does anything in public. And his campaign's funding has mostly dried up, although he still has a modest stack of summer cash in the bank. How will he come back, even though he probably won't? It is a three-part strategy.

Newt Gingrich is just a factory of rich, intellectual, stimulating ideas that no one has ever considered before, as Newt Gingrich is the only person who meets the intelligence threshold necessary to conceive him. Gingrich himself has been telling us this for 30 years, and finally — finally — we cretins have agreed to coronate him as president. Sorry, to keep you waiting, sir! Now that we've come to our senses, let's look at some of the impeccable policy ideas perfected each day in the Gingrich Idea Cave that will make it to the Gingrich Administration.

Alabama's draconian anti-immigration law has appropriately cleansed the state of brown-skinned immigrants, but has its enforcement gotten out of control? The recent arrest of a non-Hispanic, German Mercedes-Benz executive suggests that it has.

The rumors are true, Rep. Chad Campbell, the Democratic leader of the Arizona state House, told TPM Wednesday: the state best known for Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the toughest immigration law in the land really is a swing state in 2012. And Democrats have SB 1070 to thank for it.