Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: How divided government works

Graphic from Jan 2013 polling by Gallup

Gallup:

Americans Widely Support Immigration Reform Proposals
Greatest support for employers' verifying new hires' legal status

NY Times:

House Republicans on Tuesday staked out what they cast as a middle-ground option in the debate over immigration, pushing an approach that could include legal residency but not a path to citizenship ' as their Democratic counterparts favor ' for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country.

Republicans also signaled that they are open to the idea of breaking immigration legislation into several smaller bills, which would allow them to deal with the question of highly skilled workers, as well as a farmworker program, without addressing what Democrats and immigration advocates say is the larger issue of potential citizenship. Immigration advocates favor a comprehensive measure to enable them to use elements that have bipartisan backing to build support for broader legislation.

BuzzFeed:

President Barack Obama appeared to bow to broad opposition to instituting a new Assault Weapons Ban Monday in a speech on his gun control plans in Minneapolis.
Addressing a law-enforcement-heavy crowd, Obama expressed optimism that a compromise can be reached to mandate universal background checks for gun sales, but tempered expectations for a new ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines, saying he just wants to see them come up for a vote.

"We don't have to agree on everything to agree it's time to do something," Obama said less than a month after he and Vice President Joe Biden announced their plans to address gun violence in the wake of the Newtown school shooting.

Sunlight Foundation:

As the Senate prepares to take up the first major gun control debate since last December's shooting massacre in Connecticut, a Sunlight Foundation analysis of the political pressures on 26 key senators paints a pessimistic picture for passage.

When you don't control both houses, you don't always get everything you want. But you get something.

More on important issues surrounding gun violence and some scholarly perspective on the events of 12/14 below the fold: