It happens every time Celso Mireles, a tech consultant who runs a successful business in Phoenix, hops into his pickup truck and drives past a police car. His stomach turns. His chest tightens. He could be deported any minute. Mexican-born Mireles, 25, is among nearly 2 million immigrants in the United States illegally who were brought here as children by their parents. Without a path to residency or citizenship, these immigrants are prevented from getting regular jobs without lying or obtaining fake papers. Many are forced to become entrepreneurs. But increasingly hostile state laws have relegated these small businesses to the shadows, making it harder for them to prosper.
 

The battle over Social Security and Medicare has been resurrected in House and Senate races across the country, with candidates and their allies stretching the truth as they squabble with opponents about who would inflict the most damage on the nation's seniors. The scrap has worked its way into candidate debates, mailers and television ads — and prompted one senator's unsuccessful quest to have an attack pulled off the air. For both parties, the messaging in congressional races echoes that in the presidential race, where Republicans are hammering President Obama over the healthcare reform law he pushed through Congress, and Democrats are blasting Mitt Romney over his support for the budget proposal drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), which restructures Medicare.
 

How long does it take to flip flop and buckle under pressure from Tea Partiers? About a day, if you're Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley. On Friday, he signed a bill making flawed revisions to HB 56, the nation's most extreme anti-immigrant state law. Just a day earlier, Bentley had declined to sign the new measure, which was rammed through the Legislature on the last day of its 2012 regular session.
Instead, he summoned lawmakers to reconsider the bill in a special session in order to "prevent children from being interrogated" by school officials about their immigration status and the status of their parents. He also cautioned against the "public relations problem" that would ensue from a startling new requirement that the state Department of Homeland Security post online the names of every undocumented immigrant who appears in a state court.