Immigration reform is notoriously contentious. Yet it's hard to find anyone who doesn't think employers should be barred from hiring illegal immigrants — and sharply penalized if they do so

On the evidence so far, Power and the UN are indeed a perfect match. And yes, that's a compliment.

Ask Democrat Ed Markey or Republican Gabriel Gomez about guns or ObamaCare or each other's qualifications to be the next US senator from Massachusestts, and out come the canned talking points and put-downs that anyone following the Senate race quickly wearies of. But what if you toss them some questions from off the beaten path? I put some nonstandard queries to the two nominees, hoping their answers might be illuminating – or at least unexpected.

Give Stephen Fuller credit for this much: He's willing to admit he was wrong.

Is welfare corrupt? Of course it is, and in a damning report last week, the Massachusetts state auditor, Suzanne Bump, rounded up some of the scams.

It was during oral arguments in Hollingsworth v. Perry, one of two same-sex marriage cases the Supreme Court took up in March, that Justice Sonia Sotomayor raised the inescapable question, the one that has always loomed over the campaign to radically redefine marriage: Where would the changes end?

Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray is quitting his job next week, and I know how deeply worrying this must be to the good people of Massachusetts: How can we hope to survive the next 19 months with a vacancy in the lieutenant governor's office?

Broadcasting from Boston the day after the Marathon bombing, a correspondent for the French-Canadian TV channel LCN explained why Americans shouldn't be surprised when such atrocities occurred. It's the price they have to pay for being a superpower, Richard Latendresse told his viewers.

IN THE CLAMOR over immigration, the demand for more border security has been unrelenting.

According to a Washington Post-ABC poll released last week, 70 percent of Americans want Dzhokhar Tsarnaev put to death if he is convicted of the Boston Marathon bombing.

It's the Holy Grail that Massachusetts Republicans have been seeking for years: the blueprint for getting candidates elected to statewide office.

If truth-in-labeling rules applied to Congress, the proposed law giving states the power to collect sales tax from out-of-state online retailers would be named the Marketplace Unfairness Act.

IF KIM JONG UN thinks he can shake down Washington by threatening nuclear apocalypse, President Obama says, the belligerent North Korean dictator has another think coming.

SCARCELY HAD the terrible news from Copley Square broken when the somber prediction began to be heard everywhere: Boston will never be the same. The Marathon will never be the same. Patriots Day will never be the same.

In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," written behind bars 50 years ago this week, Martin Luther King invokes God 15 times and mentions the words "Christ" or "Christian" 21 times. But he refers to "law" 41 times – more than both of them combined – and thereby hangs a lesson.

So the Mayor of Boston, channeling his inner Captain Renault, is shocked – shocked! – to find that Boston's taxi industry is a rigged and pitiless racket.

Ten years ago this week, the United States led an invasion of Iraq with the explicit purpose of overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

HILLARY CLINTON STEPPED DOWN after four years as secretary of state amid swathes of flattery excessive even by Washington's sycophantic standards.

Lawyers representing three of the men charged in the New Delhi gang rape case said last week that they would enter pleas of not guilty on their clients' behalf. In most criminal prosecutions, that would be unremarkable. But the lawyers who stepped forward to represent the suspects in this case did so in the face of emotional protests by fellow attorneys, many of whom insisted that no one should defend those accused of such a terrible crime.

I DON'T FALL IN LOVE with politicians – the last presidential candidate I voted for with ardor was Ronald Reagan in 1980 – and my heart doesn't break when those I support don't win. Nor am I a party loyalist.