Baptist Pastor on Legal and Illegal Immigration

Tom Ascol is a reformed Southern Baptist pastor in south Florida who has grappled with issues surrounding flawed American immigration policies and illegal immigration, as they relate to the lives of real people in his community and congregation. The blog he wrote today merits reading by anyone with a concern or an opinion on the issue. Here's just a small snippet of what he wrote:

What do you say to a young man who has come to Christ through the church's outreach and wants to be baptized and join but whose visa has expired? He wants to become legal but every avenue he has pursued has resulted in a dead end. Talk of various types of amnesty has kept him hopeful, but he is here illegally.

What about the devoted Christian family that were working through what they were told was a legal channel to pursue permanent residency only to discover that they were scammed and are now left with no passport, visa, or any other form of legal identification. When we contacted legal authorities we were simply told that they were "small fish" and that, though it is unlikely, there is a slight possibility that in 10 years or so their case might come to light and receive some attention.

Bi-Partisan Hypocrisy

The U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday to put caps on contributions to "527 committees." These are political organizations, such as MoveOn.org and the group that ran the "Swift Boat" ads in 2004, whose contributions were unlimited due to a loophole in the McCain/Feingold campaign reform legislation. These unlimited contributions have disproportionately favored Democrats, due to large donations from billionaire George Soros and other wealthy Democratic supporters.

Political hypocrisy is sufficiently common that it should never be shocking. Even so, both Democrats, who mostly tried to kill the bill, and Republicans, who essentially passed it, showed surprising levels of it.

Thus, California Democratic Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, accused Republicans of "trying to muzzle the voices of American people who speak through 527s." Maryland Democrat and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer complained that Republicans were trying to "gag their opponents." Both of these representatives had supported McCain/Feingold. Proponents of McCain/Feingold previously ridiculed the idea that regulating political contributions amounted to regulation of political speech, but the use of terms such as "gag" and "muzzle" indicates that they have conveniently changed their minds. Will they now call for the repeal of McCain/Feingold and other laws regulating political speech?

Meanwhile, Republicans who rightly objected that McCain/Feingold regulated political speech now are supporting contribution limits on such speech via 527 groups. New York Republican Thomas Reynolds cynically managed to say that anyone that supported McCain/Feingold and opposed this bill was "a hypocrite." Perhaps, but hypocrisy seemed to be in wider supply than Rep. Reynolds imagined.

House Majority Leader John Boehner disconcertingly said that this legislation demonstrates that "the Republican Party is the party of reform." If only that were so. Alas, an act of political hypocrisy demonstrates a party of business as usual.

Nashville Newspaper Editorializes on Bryson Candidacy

In an editorial this morning, The Tennessean uses the following words to describe Republican Gubernatorial candidate Jim Bryson: intelligent, articulate, attractive to conservative voters, and involved and knowledgeable on TennCare.

This praise comes from a liberal editorial page that acknowledges that it has disagreed with Senator Bryson on some individual issues, such as putting a cap on how fast government spending can grow. Senator Bryson has proposed that government spending should not grow faster than the incomes of the people in the state.

The editorial concludes that Senator Bryson brings to the race for governor a "credibility and level of seriousness that will give voters a real choice." They are right. Democratic party leaders in the state are trying to whisper to the media that the governor has too much money and that Senator Bryson can't win. But those same leaders, immediately after his announcement that he was entering the race, launched a scurrilous and desperate sounding attack on the Senator's character. That would seem to indicate that they are more worried than they let on.

Lott to Taxpayers: Go to Hades

Mark Tapscott reports that Mississippi Senator Trent Lott sneaked into an appropriations bill that was supposed to fund the war in Iraq and Afghanistan a pet $700 million project to tear up a railroad line and build a highway in Mississippi. Asked about critics of these kinds of pork barrel projects, Lott stated:

I'm getting [expletive deleted] tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina.

One can favor legitimate assistance to the hurricane ravaged areas and oppose under the table spending projects such as this one. Senator Lott is set to run for Majority Leader when Bill Frist leaves the Senate in January. Those Senators who believe that election to the Senate is a foraging expedition for taxpayer money will support Senator Lott. Those who believe in principles of limited government will not.

Hat Tip: Ed Morrissey

Get It Together, or Else

I only recently discovered Scrappleface, a creative, conservative blogging satirist who now causes me to laugh out loud on a daily basis. Here is one item in today's post:

Senator John Kerry today called on President Bush to set a May 15 deadline for Iraqis to form a working government, or face an immediate pullout of U.S. troops. Age-old tensions and divisions among opposing political parties has made it impossible for the new Iraqi government to accomplish anything useful. The White House welcomed the Kerry plan, and offered a counter-proposal calling for U.S. lawmakers to form a working Congress by April 15, or face an immediate pullout of taxpayer dollars.

He is worth reading daily.

Love Not Lost

Glenn Reynolds aptly explains why many conservatives outside the Beltway aren't lamenting the downfall of Tom Delay. I think he is right on all counts.

Whenever I spend time around people who are absorbed with who the personalities are and how the games are played, I am reminded that I care far more about political principles than about the inner workings of the process. The gamesmanship is a necessary evil.

Feigned Ethics

I am removing a post that previously appeared in this spot, that provided thoughts on a bill that I believed was sponsored by Senator Bryson. I had performed my research using Lexis, a normally reliable legal research tool that identifies Bryson as the sponsor, but have since confirmed that Senator Ketron was actually the sponsor of SB 1776, as is indicated on the state legislature's website.

I apologize for the error.

A Contrast in Priorities

On the same day that state Senator Jim Bryson announced that he was running for governor in order to help restore ethics in state government, The Tennessean reports that the current governor has failed to meet a statutory deadline for appointing two members to the state's ethics commission. The stated reasons for this failure to comply with the law create more questions than they answer. The governor has had to ask the attorney general to opine as to whether potential nominees have prohibitive conflicts of interests, but Representative Donna Rowland is right to question why the governor "can’t find someone without a conflict in a state with 6 million people.” Furthermore, The Tennessean reports that the governor only requested the AG opinion the day before the deadline, a fact which would cause one to ask why ethics has not been higher on the governor's priority list.

The Timing of Delay

Matthew Continetti of The Weekly Standard has penned a brief, but excellent article on the timing of Tom Delay's resignation. Regarding arguments that Mr. Delay's resignation had nothing to do with the Jack Abramoff investigation, Mr. Continetti writes:

This, even though his decision comes about 72 hours after his former deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, pleaded guilty to corruption and bribery charges in connection with the Abramoff probe. This, even though DeLay personally made his debut in the numerous court filings re: Abramoff as "Representative #2" in the criminal information filed as part of Rudy's plea deal. This, even though his former press secretary, Michael Scanlon, pleaded guilty to related charges last November. This, even though his former chief of staff, Ed Buckham, is also under close scrutiny in the Department of Justice's public corruption investigation. And this, even though DeLay's last "resignation," when he told Republicans he would not seek to reclaim his majority leader post, came swiftly on the heels of Abramoff's January plea.

This morning, Rush Limbaugh was entertaining his audience with assurances that the resignation had nothing to do with renegade district attorney Ronnie Earle's charges in Austin, Texas. True enough, but Mr. Earle's charges were nothing more than a political prosecution and aren't going anywhere. The real action is in Washington with the Abramoff investigation.

A large percentage of Republicans are not lamenting the loss of Mr. Delay (see, for example, Blake Wylieand Bob Krumm). Mr. Delay has unfortunately become emblematic of the type of Republican who had betrayed party principles of limited government in favor of the perks of power.

No More Delay

Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay announced this morning that he would resign his seat in Congress and would not seek re-election. While those two issues are being compressed into one in most of the reporting, they are really separate.

Mr. Delay could have decided not to run for re-election, but retained his seat until the end of this term. Indeed, that would have been the more normal course to take.

One can only suspect that Mr. Delay is guessing -- or knows -- that the investigation related to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff will keep getting closer to him, and that as a result he is resigning both for the good of himself and the Republican Party. A former aid to Mr. Delay, Tony Rudy, pleaded guilty to corruption charges late last week.

Protecting Messy Democracy

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution provides for "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Similarly, the Constitution of the State of Tennessee guarantees the right of Tennesseans "to apply to those invested with the powers of government for redress of grievances, or other proper purposes, by address or remonstrance."

Those freedoms would have been endangered under little noticed legislation that would have permitted the Speaker of the House and the Lieutenant Governor to jointly order the state highway patrol to "take necessary measures upon all streets, roadways, intersections and sidewalks within or adjacent to the Capitol Hill complex" to clear out protesters.

This unconstitutional legislation came under public scrutiny after it was discussed by Steve Gill on his radio program and was written about by bloggers such as Blake Wylie, who is quoted in The Tennessean's story on the outcry this morning. The Senate, which had previously passed the measure, has recalled it from the House in order to attempt to amend it to make it more acceptable by limiting it to demonstrations impeding traffic.

Senator Mark Norris, according to The Tennessean, defended the bill, saying that he did not think the measure would be abused. While I generally find myself in agreement with Senator Norris, in this instance I do not. It would seem to be the point of having "a government of laws and not of men" that we not entrust that kind of power to government officials.

Peaceful demonstrations can be annoying, and I was one of those who argued that the recent wheel chair demonstration hurt the cause of those who organized it. That being said, the rights to free speech and to petition government are precious ones that cannot be discarded simply because they are inconvenient.

Inundated with Eroticism

A Hollywood director has found a new sort of excuse that can be used when a bad film is made and no one bothers to pay cinematic prices to see it: blame Christians and America's "puritanical" culture.

"Anything that is erotic has been banned in the United States," says Paul Verhoeven, who has evidently never surfed the internet. He adds, "We are living under a government that is constantly hammering out Christian values. And Christianity and sex have never been good friends."

On that last point, I would certainly beg to differ. Actually, Christians believe that sex is a gift of God.

Mr. Verhoeven's tirade follows the opening weekend failure of Sharon Stone's "Basic Instinct 2." While I have not seen the movie -- and don't plan to -- the critics, many of whom bear no resemblance to Puritans, are giving it an almost universal thumbs down. Mr. Verhoeven blames Christian morality, but, in fact, it is more likely true that people who might have 20 years ago gone to a bad movie just to see naked people now get all of the nudity they could ever wish for via cheaper and readily available sources. You can't sell Basic Instinct to a 21st century American for the same reason you can't sell a bottled water to a fish.

Ed Morrissey has further thoughts on Mr. Verhoeven's ideas.

Hard Line on Immigration both Bad Policy and Bad Politics

In my own postings on the immigration debate (see here, here, and here), I have advocated comprehensive immigration reform measures that would both address security concerns and streamline the process for bringing legal immigrants into the country. I have based that position on economic and pragmatic arguments about what is best for the United States, given current demographic trends that reveal the need for an influx of workers.

John Norris Brown also makes a strong argument that Republican hardliners on this issue may do permanent damage to the party's electoral position. Republicans risk driving away the Hispanic vote now in the same way they lost the black vote in the 1950's and '60's. That would be an enormous mistake.

Senator Jim Bryson Running for Governor

Senator Jim Bryson of Franklin is expected to announce tomorrow afternoon that he will run for the Republican nomination for Governor of Tennessee. In anticipation of that announcement, I have been asked by Bill Hobbs to participate in a blog supporting his candidacy. I have enthusiastically agreed to do so.

Book Review: "A Beautiful Mind"

Anyone wanting to read this book in search of anecdotes from the movie will be disappointed. John Nash was a socially challenged genius, a mathematician from West Virginia who went to Princeton, a paranoid schizophrenic, and a Nobel Prize winner. The book and the movie share those broad story lines. However, none of the details in the story match up.

Ms. Naser manages to write a biography that creates sympathy for a man who in many ways is not terribly likeable. Even before the evident onset of Professor Nash's disease, he was socially difficult, childish, and arrogant, while also being brilliant. His romantic encounters and fathering of children were self-centered and harmful to others. Even so, one cannot help but feel sad for the sense of loss that Profeessor Nash felt over the years and the opportunities wasted. Anyone who has either lost years to illness or bad decisions, or who has known someone who has done so, can feel the ache of that sense of loss.

The sections on Professor Nash's mathematical accomplishments are necessary to indicate the level of his brilliance in his field, but will be largely incomprehensible for those who have not engaged in the field. Even so, this is a book that can be enjoyed by the general reader.

The Blogosphere and Jill Carroll

The predictable news that kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll's favorable statements about her captors, made just prior to her release, were coerced and not reflective of her actual views has created substantial lamentations all across the blogosphere. A number of right wing bloggers had reacted quickly after her statements were published, accusing Ms. Carroll of all sorts of crimes against America. On the other hand, some bloggers on the left managed to explain that expressed concerns about her mental state were abhorrent, and that indeed her captors were kind and her homeland repugnant. All of this has turned out to be not only wrong, but unspeakably cruel to a woman who has endured the unimaginable.

In light of these happenings, Jim Geraghty has opined, "Rip the MSM all you want, but I read this stuff and I begin to appreciate editors." Rick Moran questions, "Are we nothing more than a pack of digital yellow journalists writing pixelated scab sheets vying to see who we can lay low next?"

Well, some among us are.

All of this serves as a reminder that the blogosphere, like Churchill said of democracy, is a terrible form of information sharing. It has many advantages over other methods, and is arguably better than any of the alternatives, but it has many weaknesses as well.

A decade ago, I read two books around the same time. One was Intellectuals, historian Paul Johnson's saucy summary of the lives of several public intellectuals who aspired for leadership, in spite of the personal limitations outlined by Mr. Johnson that might be thought of as disqualifying. The underlying message: intellectual leaders do not necessarily offer any better judgment on public policy matters than anyone else. The second was The Defense of Elitism, the late journalist William A. Henry's lament on the glorification of the mediocre by both the American left and right. I profited from reading these two books at the same time, as in combination they aptly revealed the limitations of the classes of both the elitists and the rabble.

Every communication revolution since Gutenberg as expanded knowledge and influence beyond a given intelligentsia, with both positive and negative consequences. When Wycliffe translated the Bible into English, he took the Bible out of the hands of elitist priests who misused it, and put it into the hands of sometimes ignorant people who misused it in different ways. Similarly, the blogosphere has given voice to many good writers and people with expertise and analytical skills, opening up information channels outside those of a mainstream news culture that had become increasingly smug and decreasingly competent. However, it has also opened avenues of communication for intemperate people who's skills and judgment are largely figments of their own imaginations. Where will we find a Simon Cowell in the blogosphere, someone who can tell the tone deaf that they really have no business doing this?

Of course, there is not one, but we can only hope that this will all work itself out in the wash. The public at large will eventually learn that much public criticism comes from yapping, self-important dogs, while that which is worth reading rises from writers that really have something to say. All of this will be a mess for a while, and some of the background static will always be with us, but ultimately the responsible voices, we can hope, will be heard above the noise.

Hat Tip: Allahpundit

Global Warming or Hot Rhetoric?

George Will has an excellent column in today's Washington Post regarding the group think journalism warning everyone to be "very worried" regarding global warming. The author of The Monroe Doctrine has never been quick to take sides on global warming -- there are both arguments that seem to express reasonable causes for concern, and there are clear examples of alarmist over readings of the scientific evidence. This author is also old enough to remember warnings in science magazines in the 1970's warning about a looming ice age, warnings that were buttressed by the three cold winters in 1977-'79. Mr. Will writes:

While worrying about Montana's receding glaciers, Schweitzer, who is 50, should also worry about the fact that when he was 20 he was told to be worried, very worried, about global cooling. Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age." The Christian Science Monitor ("Warning: Earth's Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect," Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers "have begun to advance," "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter" and "the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool." Newsweek agreed ("The Cooling World," April 28, 1975) that meteorologists "are almost unanimous" that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said "may mark the return to another ice age." The Times (May 21, 1975) also said "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" now that it is "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950."

There are many areas of both the physical and the social sciences that defy analysis due to the overwhelming numbers of variables involved. Given that models cannot be created that provide for all of these variables, the models inevitably reflect the biases of their creators, meaning that the results are frequently more or less, consciously or unconsciously, pre-ordained. Even worse, frequently studies that don't produce the expected results will be discarded as flawed. All of this means that there is little conception or consensus as to whether current warming is due to geological and cosmological factors, or due to human ones. For that matter, some argue that apparent global warming really is a matter of more sophisticated devices for measurement, placed more frequently in urban "hot spots."

In terms of politics, American politicians lack the foresight to act on Social Security, about which it is certain there will be a crisis within 30 years. Why should it be expected that they will act on global warming, about which there may or may not be a crisis more than a century from now?

God Not Manipulable

Last week Reuters reported on a study of 1,800 patients that showed that prayer by outsiders had no impact on patient outcomes.

Scrappleface had his own unique take on the study:

A team of scientists today ended a 10-year study on the so-called “power of prayer” by concluding that God cannot be manipulated by humans, not even by scientists with a $2.4 million research grant.

The scientists also noted that their work was “sabotaged by religious zealots” secretly praying for study subjects who were supposed to receive no prayer.

That sounds correct to me.

Hat Tip: World Mag Blog

Another Guilty Plea in Abramoff Case

Tony Rudy, who once worked as an aide for former House Majority Leader Tom Delay, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in conjunction with the investigation of corrupt Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the Washington Post reports. Prosecutors will seek a sentence of 24 to 30 months in prison and $100,000 in restitution. The charging documents claim that Mr. Rudy "routinely performed official acts" for Mr. Abramoff based on the value of gifts received.

Rep. Delay is referenced in the charging documents, but is not accused of any crime. Ohio Congressman Robert Ney is also referenced in the materials.

In related and discouraging news, political reform measures in the House of Representatives are stalling due to opposition from Republicans such as Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis to provisions that would require disclosures related to earmarks.

She Is Coming Home; Be Glad

Evidently, some people have been criticizing, or at least questioning, statements made by U.S. journalist Jill Carroll, who around the time of her release by Iraqi captors made statements saying that she had been treated well and opposing American war policy. Today, the Christian Science Monitor explains that her remarks were the coerced price for her freedom. From the CSM:

Ms. Carroll had been their captive for three months and even the smallest details of her life - what she ate and when, what she wore, when she could speak - were at her captors' whim. They had murdered her friend and colleague Allan Enwiya, "she had been taught to fear them," [her father] says. And before making one last video the day before her release, she was told that they had already killed another American hostage....In fact, Carroll did what many hostage experts and past captives would have urged her to do: Give the men who held the power of life and death over her what they wanted.

Several years ago I heard a speech given by a Vietnam veteran who had spent some years in the Hanoi Hilton. He made mention of the interrogation sessions, and said that he always returned disappointed that he had not held up better under the pressure. I have also read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, in which he expresses much the same sentiment.

Sure, there have been people throughout history who have displayed super-human courage in the face of death -- the Afghan Christian who refused to renounce his faith is a recent example. However, it is a mistake to criticize those who have not had that strength. Given the same set of circumstances, who are any of us to say that we would have done any better than Ms. Carroll.

Ed Morrissey agrees:

Not long ago, the US acknowledged that even its POWs had to make these kinds of bargains with captors to avoid torture and murder. Many brave men died at the hands of the North Vietnamese trying valiantly to remain defiant through years of captivity because of the prevailing orders at the time that forbade American servicemen from acting in their own defense, losses that inspire us to acts of courage but also in the end did nothing to prevent the enemy from using POWs as propaganda tools. By the time of the Gulf War, the American public had developed the sophistication to understand that programmatic answers videotaped by agents of tyranny meant nothing.

I wonder why we forgot it in this instance. Jill Carroll will have plenty of time to tell us her story, but I think we would all benefit by taking a deep breath and holding our fire until she's safely home and in a clearer mental state.

So does Ann Althouse: "We can't ask for more. We can imagine a bolder hero who would do more. But we should speak no ill of the person who does less."