AP News in Brief
Immigration focus shifts to uncertain future in House after Senate passes historic overhaul
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attention is shifting to the House and its conservative majority after the Senate passed a landmark immigration bill opening the door to U.S. citizenship to millions while pouring billions of dollars into securing the border with Mexico.
• The bill's prospects are highly uncertain in the Republican-led House, where conservatives generally oppose citizenship for immigrants living in the country unlawfully. Many also prefer a step-by-step approach rather than a comprehensive bill like the legislation the Senate passed Thursday on a bipartisan vote of 68-32.
• Following the Senate vote, President Barack Obama, who's made an immigration overhaul a top second-term priority, called on the House to act.
• "Today, the Senate did its job. It's now up to the House to do the same," Obama said in a statement issued as he traveled in Africa. "As this process moves forward, I urge everyone who cares about this issue to keep a watchful eye. Now is the time when opponents will try their hardest to pull this bipartisan effort apart so they can stop common-sense reform from becoming a reality. We cannot let that happen."
• Members of the Senate's so-called Gang of Eight, the senators who drafted the bill and hoped a resounding vote total would pressure the House, echoed the plea.
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Obama and the 'hacker': President recasts chase for Snowden as unworthy of exceptional effort
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The last thing President Barack Obama wants to do is turn Edward Snowden into a grand enemy of the state or a Daniel Ellsberg-type hero who speaks truth to power.
• In the shifting narrative of the Obama administration, the man whose leaks of top-secret material about government surveillance programs have tied the national security apparatus in knots and brought charges under the Espionage Act has now been demoted to a common fugitive unworthy of international intrigue or extraordinary pursuit by the U.S. government.
• A "29-year-old hacker," in the words of Obama; fodder for a made-for-TV movie, perhaps, but not much more.
• "This is not exceptional from a legal perspective," the president said Thursday of
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