This week’s most outstanding utterances, gibes and quips.

Eight of the nine Republican senators who bucked their party and played a pivotal role in defeating a package of immigration bills last session have the backing of the business community going into next year’s election.

Seventeen Arizona legislators have thrown their support behind Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, according to an announcement released this morning.

Two Arizona senators – one who spends his time in D.C. and one whose office is at the Arizona Capitol – were forced to clear their personal belongings out of family cabins in Eastern Arizona as the Wallow Fire has raged unchecked.

A slew of immigration measures, including legislation that supporters say would get the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the issue of American citizenship, survived rigorous questioning on Tuesday, when senators conferred with party-mates to discuss them.

A vigorous assault this year on the way Arizona chooses its judges has subsided to a handful of ballot measures and bills that have made their way through the Senate, but this year, the effort has more momentum than in past legislatures.

With Republicans in firm control of Arizona’s government apparatus and Sen. Russell Pearce leading the Senate, more aggressive laws against illegal immigration seemed certain to emerge from the 2011 legislative session. But cracks are showing in the reputed Republican bastion built on dominance in the Arizona Legislature and Governor’s Office.

A panel of Arizona senators on Monday rejected a proposal to require candidates for the U.S. presidency to prove that they are natural-born American citizens.

Those who watched the public hearing on the birthright bills in the Judiciary Committee on Feb. 7 were treated to a brilliant exposition of the 14th Amendment, its meaning and its history.

Frustrated by the federal government's refusal to solve illegal immigration, some lawmakers want the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve who exactly is an American citizen.

In trying to define citizenship, birthright busters will have to navigate not only through the U.S. Supreme Court, but the U.S. Senate, other states and even their own caucus.

RELATED: Birthright bills bring out the best in debate