The Senate voted to make English the "national language" of the U.S. (Jonathan Weisman and Jim VandeHei, "Senate Votes English as "National Language", Washington Post).

It's not quite clear what this means. It seems current laws for multilingual services can remain in effect. The Language Log blog has several posts looking more in depth (with links to other articles) at what it all might mean: What does "offical mean?, English: official, national, common, unifying, or other?, and Senate votes for official English.

From the Washington Post article:

"In my view, we had it watered down enough to make it acceptable," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of the chief architects of the immigration bill.

I'm reading into this statement, perhaps more than I should, but questions that come to my mind are, Why is it that things need to be "watered down"? Why is politics a matter of competing factions rather than of people seeking the common good?