In Limbaugh Interview, Rubio Charms the Host

WASHINGTON â€" Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, continued his conservative media tour Tuesday with an afternoon telephone interview on Rush Limbaugh’s talk radio show. The back and forth went so well, from Mr. Rubio’s point of view, that at 6 p.m. his office was still tweeting out highlights from the exchange.

That Mr. Rubio was there to woo Mr. Limbaugh, who has been a constant opponent of an immigration compromise, became clear at the outset, when Mr. Rubio said he had been listening to Mr. Limbaugh’s chatter for a long while.

“I remember the TV program,” Mr. Rubio said. “Do you remember your TV program”

Mr. Limbaugh did indeed, laughing, “That’s way back,” he said. “That’s 20 years.”

Mr. Rubio laid out his broad principles for immigration legislation, including a precondition, popular with Republicans, than any pathway to citizenship could come only after additional border security and an employment verification program are instituted.

When Mr. Limbaugh worried aloud that real border security wouldn’t happen, Mr. Rubio quickly agreed. “This is going to be a challenge,” he said.

“If, in fact, this bill does not have real triggers in there, if there is not language in this bill that guarantees that nothing else will happen unless these enforcement mechanisms are in place, I won’t support it,” Mr. Rubio continued. “But the principles clearly call for that. Now, obviously, we have to make sure the law does, too.”

Mr. Rubio also sought to explain his decision to join a bipartisan group of eight senators pushing for immigration legislation as a politically savvy move. When Mr. Limbaugh warned that he thought President Obama and Democrats planned to use immigration as a wedge issue, “to continue to beat the Republicans up for two more years in hopes of winning the House,” Mr. Rubio acknowledged the possibility, before adding that it was one of the reasons he wanted to ge! t out ahead on an immigration overhaul.

“That’s precisely why I thought it was important that our principles be out there early,” Mr. Rubio said. “They can try to sell that,” he said, referring to Democrats, “but I doubt people are going to buy it because the reality is we have put something that is very common sense and reasonable. If you take our principles, 70 percent of the American people would agree, if not more, with the general principles that we have outlined. And if they want to go further than that, then I think they’ve got a problem because they can’t argue that we haven’t tried to do our part to come up with something reasonable here, which has always been our point.”

He continued, “Our point has always been we understand we have to fix this problem, but just because we’re not for what you’re for doesn’t mean that we’re anti-immigrant and anti-immigration.”

Mr. Rubio cast himself as the politician for the job â€" “Someone whose family are imigrants, married into a family of immigrants, my neighbors are immigrants,” he said. “I’ve grown up around it my whole life. I didn’t read about this in a book. I live this every day.”

Echoing a point he made at a news conference Monday, Mr. Rubio said, “I’ve seen the good that legal immigration has done for our country, and I see the strain that illegal immigration places on our country.”

By the end, Mr. Limbaugh seemed downright smitten.

“Well, what you are doing is admirable and noteworthy,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “You are recognizing reality. You’re trumpeting it, you’re shouting it. You have a difficult job ahead of you because you are meeting everybody honestly, forthrightly, halfway. You’re seeking compromise.”

Then, the talk radio host sent Mr. Rubio off with some well-wishes: “The country really does hinge on it, I think, so the best to you, and good luck.”

LaHood to Leave Transportation Department

Ray LaHood, the former Republican Congressman who has run the nation’s transportation department under President Obama, will not serve a second term, he told department employees in a letter Tuesday.

“I’ve told President Obama, and I’ve told many of you, that this is the best job I’ve ever had. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to work with all of you,” Mr. LaHood wrote in the letter. He cited the department’s efforts to curb distracted driving and to increase the efficiency of automobiles by raising emissions standards.

As the transportation secretary, Mr. LaHood was at the center of efforts to reduce fatigue among pilots and called for reater investment in high-speed rail. He also pushed for large fines against Toyota for safety problems and for a new transportation bill in Congress.

“We have made great progress in improving the safety of our transit systems, pipelines, and highways, and in reducing roadway fatalities to historic lows,” he said. “We have strengthened consumer protections with new regulations on buses, trucks, and airlines.”

Mr. LaHood’s decision makes him the latest in a series of members of the president’s original cabinet to announce their departure in the last several weeks.

In a statement, Mr. Obama praised Mr. LaHood, the sole Republican to serve in his first term Cabinet, as a public servant who has been more interested in practical solutions than in part! isan politics.

“Years ago, we were drawn together by a shared belief that those of us in public service owe an allegiance not to party or faction, but to the people we were elected to represent,” the president wrote. “And Ray has never wavered in that belief.”

Several people have been mentioned as possible replacements for Mr. LaHood at the transportation department. Among them: Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles; Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania; Debbie Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board; and Jennifer Granholm, the former Democratic governor of Michigan.

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

Q&A: Reading Google Books on an iPhone

Q.

I know Apple has its own e-book store, but can I download and read the free stuff from Google Books on an iPhone, or do I need an Android phone

A.

You do not need an Android device to get e-books from the Google Play store. You just need the Google Play Books app installed on your iPhone and a Google account, both of which are free. The Google Play Books app is available in Apple’s App Store and you can sign up for a Google account on the Web, or through the books app.

Unlike Apple’s own iBooks app and online iBookstore, you cannot browse and buy books directly through the Google Play Books app. To get new e-books on your phone, open the iPhone’s Safari Web browser and go to this site. From here, you can bowse Google’s collection and select the books (free or paid) you want to download and read on your phone. After you log into the Web store with your Google account, your books appear in the Google Play Books app on the iPhone.

Google has full instructions for using its books app here. You can get books from Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s e-book stores on the Web with the Kindle and Nook apps for iPhone, which are also available free in the App Store.

Q&A: How to Set Up Twitter Lists

Q.

Is there a way to filter my Twitter feed to see all of the sports-related people and sites I follow into one group

A.

Twitter lets you create “lists” of the people and sites that you follow, and you can organize these lists by topic â€" like sports, weather, humor, news and so on. When you select a list you have made, you just see tweets from the people you specifically added to it, and not from everybody on your main Twitter feed.

To set up a list, log into your Twitter account on the Web. On the left side of your profile page, click Lists and then click the Create List button. Give your list a name and save it.

To add users you already follow, click the Following link to see the full list of accounts you have added to your Twitter feed. Click the drop-down menu next to a username and select “Add or remove from lists.” In the box that appears, turn on the checkbox next to the name of the list you just created and then close th box.

When you have finished adding all the accounts you want on a list, you can see the finished collection by clicking the Lists button on your Twitter page and selecting the name of the list. Standalone Twitter programs for the computer usually have a List button in the toolbar or menus for viewing your user compilations. On the Twitter app for Android or iOS, tap the Me icon, flick down the screen and tap Lists to see your groupings.

Lists can be private (meaning only you can see them) or public so that others can share and subscribe to them. Twitter has detailed instructions for using lists on its site.

The Early Word: Gamble

Today’s Times

• Republicans are betting that the deep-seated resistance to immigration overhaul from their party’s base will have less impact because of the dire electoral consequences of continuing to take a hard line on the issue, Michael D. Shear reports.

• Four senators will introduce a bill on Tuesday that would address one dysfunctional aspect of the immigration system: a shortage of visas for highly skilled immigrants working in science and technology fields, Julia Preston writes. Lawmakers who have shied away from the issue in recent years are now offering proposals that they are framing as practical solutions to fix a failing system.

• An announcemnt from the State Department appears to signal that the Obama administration does not currently see the closing of the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as a realistic priority, despite repeated statements that it still intends to do so, Charlie Savage reports.

 Around the Web

• The 2012 Democratic National Convention gave Charlotte, N.C., an economic boost of $163.3 million, making it the largest event in the city’s history, Politico reports.

• Fox News paid Sarah Palin more than $15 per word, Smart Politics reports.

 Happenings in Washington

• Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer ! and rights activist from China, will receive the Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize at a ceremony at the Capitol Visitor Center attended by the actor Richard Gere who is on the advisory board of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice.

Obama Speech Expected to Embrace Immigration Plan

WASHINGTON - President Obama is expected to embrace an ambitious proposal by a bipartisan group of senators to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, using a speech in Las Vegas Tuesday as a call to arms for one of his top legislative priorities.

Mr. Obama differs with the group on some key issues, notably whether to make a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants conditional on further tightening the nation’s borders.

But administration officials said Monday evening that the principles in the Senate proposal were largely consistent with those in Mr. Obama’s 29-page blueprint for immigration reform, which he issued in My 2011 and made a plank of his re-election campaign.

The president’s goal, the officials said, will be less to underline differences with the bipartisan plan than to marshal public support behind immigration reform. Mr. Obama, having failed to achieve that in his first term, has put it at the top of his second-term agenda.

With the senators pledging to pass a law by this summer, the White House has shelved, for now, plans to introduce its own immigration bill, the officials said. Indeed, after two years of nearly constant feuding with Congress, Mr. Obama finds himself in rare alignment with Democratic and Republican lawmakers on a major issue.

That could make Mr. Obama’s speech, at a high school in Las Vegas, a novelty in his polarized presidency: a pat on the back to Congress and a pledge to work toward a shared goal.

On Monday, the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, went out of his way to say the president welcomed the senators’ plan, even though they rushed their efforts to get in front of his speech.

The four pillars in the bipartisan proposal - border security, employer enforcement, provisions for granting entry to farm workers and highly skilled engineers, and the pathway to citizenship - mirror the main components of Mr. Obama’s blueprint.

Administration officials said Mr. Obama would push for a clear path to citizenship from the outset for the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, suggesting he would reject any attempts to link that to improved border security. The White House insists it has already tightened the nation’s borders.

Plenty of other hurdles remain. Republican senators including Marco Rubio of Florida are putting together their own immigration proposals that are likely to be more restrictive than the plan put forward by the bipartisan group.

House Republicans are expected to resist the concept of offering a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, though there was talk on Monday of attempts to find a bipartisan approach in the House as well.

In his address, Mr. Obama is expected to fill in the details of his own plan, though the officials declined to give specifics in advance. They said the speech would be the first step in a months-long campaign to build public support for immigration reform.

The president’s choice of Nevada as the locale for the speech underlines the political threat that immigration poses to Republicans. Mr. Obama beat his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, by more than six percentage points in the state, though Nevada’s economy was devastated by the housing collapse. Much of the President’s was due to a surge of support from Hispanics.