Ending six decades of nearly-continuous increases, this is good news for everybody.

Spoiler alert: almost certainly not. Oh man, I want everybody in America to have to try this out.

Integrated, as in black kids and white kids at the same prom. It blows my mind that it’s 2013 and they still hadn’t gotten around to that.

Merit-based visas, higher caps on existing skilled-worker visas, and, at long last, a way for low-skilled workers to legally work in the country: the new “W” visa would last for three years and be renewable (the existing H-2B visa technically allows this but is a nightmare).

For the record, those four are all from deeply conservative states: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. Johnson might be considered an outlier, but he is retiring.

A single datapoint, to be sure, but an interesting one.

Doubtless there is some bias here, but it sounds like Portman really threw his vice-Presidential ambitions under the bus in favor of his son, which really is admirable.

The shortlist: stop hating immigrants, start listening to minorities, stop hating gays, stop blocking out opposing viewpoints, stop being all about rich people. As @eparillon put it, “stop being Republicans”.

Among the Meg Whitman, formerly opposed, and a lot of former governors.

His social liberalism mixed with economic conservatism means that neither party can love him, which is a shame.