Category: Current Affairs

The Republican candidate for congress in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is a gentleman named Vernon Robinson.

Whatever else one might say about the man (and I know basically nothing else about him), he’s got moxie. . . . or gumption . . . or chutzpah . . . or audacity . . . or whatever you want to call it.

Why do I say that?

Because he’s released one of the most provocative political ads in recent memory. (CHT to the reader who e-mailed.) It’s gotten noticed, gotten people stirred up, gotten talked about, and it’s going to get talked about more.

WATCH THE AD. (WARNING: Content may be disturbing/offensive.)

Whether Robinson wins this year with this kind of message will be interesting to see.

MORE ON VERNON ROBINSON.

I blog in the evenings, so I’m a day behind the news cycle, but in case you haven’t heard, our forces got "Abu Musab" al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qa’eda in Iraq and so he can’t kill any more innocents anymore!

WOO-HOO!!!

Now, I must say that I’m sorry that the chief head-hacker of Iraq didn’t repent of his ways and cease his head-hacking, terrorist actions, but given that he didn’t, I’m glad that he is no longer able to hack off people’s heads.

I don’t wish death on anyone–death is a grave physical evil–and I’d rather see them repent and live. I even hope for the salvation of his soul, despite the abominable actions he undertook (which is to say, I hope that he either repented at the last second or that he was so mentally scarred by previous life traumas that he was not sufficiently rational to be responsible for his horriffic actions). But killing people is such a serious matter that there are times when a person refuses to repent of their own death-dealing actions and they must be removed from the ranks of the breathing.

This is the basis of the Church’s just war doctrine. You can’t say that any war in history has been just unless you are willing to say that removing certain individuals from the ranks of the breathing is just. And if (regardless of what you think of the Iraq War as a whole) you don’t agree that a head-hacker like Zarqawi was such an individual then God bless you.

It is to be appreciated that Zarqawi can no longer harm anyone and that the forces that supported his campaign of terror have been dealt a major blow.

It may be an even larger blow than is apparent, since in a letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri (bin Laden’s #2 man) to Zarqawi last year revealed the senior al-Qa’eda leader asking for a donation of money from al-Qa’eda in Iraq to the parent organization, which was hard up for cash.

Depending on how well Zarqawi’s group is able to re-group in the wake of his demise, the decapitation of al-Qa’eda in Iraq thus may translate into a significant blow (by loss of revenues and further esteem in the Muslim world) to al-Qa’eda in general.

And that’s good news.

Fortunately, most individuals–Democrat or Republican or independent–can acknowledge this.

It is simply inexplicable–and despicable–that certain individuals in Congress would claim that this is a stunt or otherwise seek to portray it as anything but good news.

EXCERPTS:

"This is just to cover Bush’s [rear] so he doesn’t have to answer" for Iraqi civilians being killed by the U.S. military and his own sagging poll numbers, said Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat. "Iraq is still a mess — get out."

I have a difficult time regarding as anything other than the actions of asini those politicians who would be so focused on their own agenda that–regardless of what one thinks we should do at this point in the war–one could not agree with Democratic senate leader Harry Reid and say,

"This is a good day for the Iraqi people, the U.S. military and our intelligence community."

Indeed.

The chief head-hacker of Iraq can’t hack heads off anymore.

GET THE STORY.

and

GET THE LARGER STORY.

(NOTE: FWIW, this post was written several days ago, before the question arose about how often I say nice things about Latin Americans.)

When I moved to San Diego thirteen years ago, one of the things that I liked about the area was the ability it offered to listen to Spanish-language radio stations.

Faced with a lot of the junk on regular American radio, Spanish-language radio offered songs that were interesting musically and that featured lyrics that were often considerably more wholesome than what would be found on some English-language stations. (How many English-language songs have you heard about wearing a white shirt?)

But disturbing themes are present in the local Spanish-language radio market–like the image being projected by one of the most popular stations.

It’s call letters are XHTY (Mexican radio stations commonly begin with X instead of K or W) and its broadcast frequency is 99.7 FM, but it goes by the name "La Invasora."

What does "La Invasora" mean in Spanish?

"The Invader."

Here’s what the station’s web page says about it:

La Invasora is the fastest growing Spanish language radio station in San Diego. It’s the #1 Spanish language station in North County and #2 in the San Diego Metro area. *

San Diegans wake-up to El Levanton, one the best morning shows in town, which delivers humor, news, sports, great music and the hottest topics within the Hispanic Community with our popular personalities El Chon and La Chula.

La Invasora has high visibility in the market, obtained thru on going advertising campaigns on the top Hispanic television stations, print publications, billboards and community and grass roots events.

One of La Invasora’s specialties is producing high attendance events, such as Descarga Invasora Summer music festival in Tijuana had a crowd of over 45,000 in 2003 and our 4th of July music fest in San Diego drew over 25,000.

Station Profile:

La Invasora has a booming 60,000 watt Signal that reaches the greater San Diego/Tijuana area, the 3rd largest Hispanic market in the Country. Its format is the widely popular “Mexican regional” that plays a variety of today’s top Hispanic hits like Banda and Norteño collections.

Audience profile:

XHTY reaches a broad demographical and geographical are mainly composed 18-49 male and female demographic.

Now, the reason that radio stations adopt identities other than their call letters is because they think that the identity they craft for themselves will appeal to their target audience. For example, another local radio station (KPRI) has dubbed itself "Rock Without Rules," and it’s not hard to guess from its name that it wants to appeal to a younger, more rebellious audience than does station KMYT, which calls itself "Smooth Jazz."

Taking station marketing identities as a clue to who the station is trying to appeal to, what does it say when a local station starts calling itself "The Invader"?

In an English-speaking community in a radio market in the American Midwest, it might mean that the station is going after the same kind of young, rebellious market that "Rock Without Rules" is.

But when the language is Spanish and the market is mere minutes from the Mexican border and there are numerous people in the market who have crossed the border illegally, it takes on a different cast.

The cast is further affected when one realizes that there is an irredentist movement in the area in which some radical activists are advocating the idea that "Aztlan" (the American Southwest from California to Texas) should be flooded with illegal aliens who can one day gain sufficient strength to reclaim it for Mexico.

The fact that the station would conduct a massive marketing campaign for this identity, with logos like the one above put on busses, billboards, and auto decals, adds a rather brazen quality as well.

And the fact that the station is ranked as #1 or #2 in different regions of San Diego County in the Spanish-language radio market suggests that there are a significant number of individuals for whom the station and presumably  its identity are appealing.

Now, I have to issue

THE BIG RED DISCLAIMER: The identity a station crafts for itself is only a part of its success or lack of success. Not everybody who listens to La Invasora views himself or herself as an invader. There are undoubtedly many listeners who just like the music mix or the on-air personalities. Not all listeners are illegal aliens or even aliens at all. And not all listeners are supporters of the radical Aztlan irredentist movement; many are also undoubtedly patriotic Americans. So the mere fact that someone listens to and likes this station is NOT an indictment of that person.

But the fact that a station would choose a marketing identity of "The Invader" and be highly successful with it against a background of massive illegal immigration including radical activists who want to remove territory from the United States and add it to Mexico is at least disturbing.

It also, frankly, does not serve to foster good community relations between English-speakers and Spanish-speakers. Like the counterproductive wearing and waving of Mexican flags at the recent anti-immigration control rallies, having "Invader" logos all over busses and billboards and automobiles is more likely to inflame community relations than calm them.

Too much should not be made of the station and its chosen identity. It’s just a radio station and a marketing campaign. But it’s a straw in the wind that reflects a disturbing underlying situation.

Down yonder, a reader writes:

Honestly, Jimmy, I agree w/you about the immigration stuff, but I think it would help your cause if you would make better efforts to say nice things about Latin Americans once in a while. For example, no one would ever accuse me of racism, despite my views on immigration. I rather openly express my admiration for Latin American culture and all things Spanish. I live in Southern California, often shop at a Spanish-speaking grocery store, attend Mass with Latinos, eat various Mexican foods (not just tacos and burritos), have a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, and forcefully condemn the land grab of the Mexican-American War.

I appreciate what you’re saying, and I have often considered doing this. I may in the future.

Actually, I do say nice things about Latin Americans. I do that all the time.

But this is one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don’t" situations. If I were to go out of my way to praise the Mexican people while criticizing illegal immigration then people would accuse me of being a phony and of only including the praise as a hypocritical attempt to neutralize criticism of myself. On the other hand, if I don’t go out of my way to praise the Mexican people then this gets taken in and of itself as racism, so either way you go you are damned (i.e., condemned, look up the word damnatus in Latin).

Knowing this, my instinctive solution is to try to keep people and personalities largely out of it and stick as much as possible to talking about issues and principles. This is an extension of my general apologetic practice, which is to talk about issues and not people. If you listen to the radio show, you may notice that I try to avoid commenting on individuals (i.e., "So-and-so is a good guy" or "So-and-so is a bad guy") and instead focus on the issues that the caller has on his mind in connection with so-and-so. I find it is generally more productive this way.

Thus, while I can’t stop anyone who wants to commit rash judgment and accuse me of racism from doing so, I can try to keep my own hands clean by treating the subject on as abstract a level as possible that focuses on principles instead of ethnicities.

The issue is whether America should secure its borders and do its best to stop illegal immigration (it can never be stopped completely any more than other crimes can be stopped completely, but that’s not an excuse for not trying).

And the fact is that many illegal aliens are not Mexicans or even Latin Americans. They are people from all over the world who either crossed the border illegally or who overstayed their visas illegally.

I may document just how porous our border is, but a porous border doesn’t care whether you’re Mexican or Chinese or Arabic or Afghani. In fact, it would be the latter two groups of people who I would be more concerned about coming over the Mexican or Canadian borders illegally since they are groups which are more likely to harbor individuals wanting to blow up planes or buildings than the first two groups.

I may even comment on the particular problems concerning illegal immigration from Mexico and Latin America, but when I do I wish to treat matters as neutrally and matter of factly as I can, without seeking to offer character assessments of groups one way or the other, because character assessments tend to distract from the issue.

If I were to just call attention to positive things about a particular group then I would (a) open myself up to charges of pandering in order to deflect criticism and (b) paper over problems that may exist with the group (e.g., the fact that some of the people coming over the border are drug dealers and not hard working people seeking a better life).

If I were to just call attention to negative things about a particular group (e.g., the drug dealers among illegal aliens) then I would (a) get slammed for criticizing the group and (b) fail to call attention to its good points (e.g., the fact that many are hard working people seeking a better life).

One solution to this would be to offer an assessment that calls attention to both positive and negative things about the group but this would have its own problems–e.g., who am I to judge? and it would start arguments about whether the assessment is accurate or whether it is really balanced or not; and it would have to be re-issued every time I touch the subject and thus become a kind of obligatory "Let’s get the balanced character assessment out of the way so that we can prove we’re not racists and get on with the issue-discussing part of the post," and I just really don’t want those headaches.

To date I have found it better to stay out of assessing people’s characters altogether and just stick to the issues when possible (not that it is always possible).

I also have a good bit of trust in my readers that they have a sense of my own racial and ethnic openness as displayed on the blog and the radio show, where I have defended interracial marriages, referred to skin differences as simply cosmetic differences with no more intrinsic status than hair or eye color, defended  Masses that mix English and Spanish, talked a lot about cultural variability and that we need to seek to understand what other cultures are trying to accomplish with the way they write or speak or bury their dead and not automatically assume that our own way of doing these things is the right one and that we should not just evaluate them in terms of our cultural practices–and then there’s all the discussion of language that I get into, language being the central aspect of any culture.

Without going to the extreme of saying that you can never criticize anything another culture does (e.g., female circumcision in the Middle East leaps to mind as a cultural practice I would criticize), I tend to be on the more multicultural end of the spectrum, but I don’t feel the need to step forward and try to prove this each time I talk about illegal immigration.

I’m not the one who has something to prove.

I could, of course, go on the blog and point things out like the fact that I work with and socialize with folks of Latino origin, that I study Spanish, that I speak Spanish when around Spanish-speakers precisely in order to honor their culture, that I go to Spanish-language Masses, that I like Mexican music, that I like Mexican food, that I like travelling in Mexico, etc., etc., etc. But these things would get me absolutely nothing.

They would be twisted against me as an overanxious attempt to prove that I’m not a racist.

As an illustration of this point, consider the post I wrote yesterday about how the race card is being overplayed in the debate on illegal immigration.

Now, I’ve been doing a series of posts on illegal immigration (a series that will end once I’ve said what I have to say on the subject; this ain’t gonna be a perennial on the blog), and as part of that series I’ve been doing posts that point out bad arguments that are being used in the debate.

Allegations of racism are a bad argument. In fact, they aren’t arguments at all. They’re simply as ad hominem attacks on people one disagrees with. And I’ve been reading about these attacks in various newspaper stories and editorials online, and I’m thinking, "Man, that’s a really stupid argument. I’m going to do a blog post about it."

So I do a blog post about it, in which I never once mention the fact that I’m rather multicultural or the fact that I’m not a racist or anything like that, and I stick to talking about the issue, and one reader who was behaving like an asinus (look up that word in Latin if you need to), pops off with:

Oddly enough the racism charge is the only thing that has given pangs to your conscience.

which is a direct statement that I have pangs of conscience over the racism charge, which implies that I have a guilty conscience on this, which implies that I’m guilty of racism and am overcompensating, which is a rash judgment on the part of the commenter.

Excuse me, but I was talking about a dumb argument. I’m not overcompensating every time I comment on a dumb argument. The reader really should try out the Catechism’s giving a favorable construction to others’ words and actions idea.

Then there are some people who are just over the top, like this fine commenter:

For those who didn’t to bother reading the entire post, let me summarize:

1) I’m not racist.
2) If you accuse me of being racist, the Catholic church says you are a sinner.
3) Let me quote some church law.

Honestly Jimmy, if you want to debate whether or not you are racist, you can do better than threaten Catholics with church laws. You might try actually discussing the issue.

Respectfully,

NAME DELETED

who is simliarly behaving like an asina, and in a more heavy-handed way than the first commenter.

So you see what happens: I do a post pointing out the vileness of making unfounded allegations of racism because they’re vile and because they’re being made in the current debate, and two readers behaving like asini decide to make vile allegations against me to the effect that I must have a guilty conscience over racism and am therefore overcompensating by doing a post that is really all about me, though the post wasn’t about me at all. It was about a dumb argument–which is really an interpersonal attack rather than an argument–that is out there in the debate right now.

What these people were doing was making a personal attack on me by publicly suggesting that I’m a closet racist with a guilty conscience. It was an attempt to embarrass me in public and thus an attempt to hurt me emotionally. It wasn’t an attempt to engage in rational discussion. It was an attempt to shut down rational discussion by making an interpersonal attack.

That’s vile.

Can you imagine what these people would do if I started saying things they could translate into, "Hey, many of my best friends are Hispanics!"

My conclusion is thus that there are simply asini in the world who will behave in a vile manner no matter what you do, and as a general matter it is better to ignore the tea-leaf reading that the donkeys will try to do and just stick to the issue.

That way we don’t get distracted from the issue and if the donkeys try to distract us then they’re the ones who have been acting like asses.

Here in the San Diego area there is a special election today for the 50th Congressional District (which I don’t live in) where the two major candidates are Democrat Francine Busby and Republican Brian Bilbray.

At a recent meeting with a largely Hispanic audience, Mrs. Busby said something that could lose–or win–her the election.

When a man said in Spanish that

"I’d like to help, but I don’t have papers."

Mrs. Busby waited for the translation and then said:

“Everybody can help, yeah, absolutely, you can
all help. You don’t need papers for voting, you don’t need to be a
registered voter to help.”

On its face, that was an appeal for illegal aliens to vote for her in the election.

Mrs. Busby was disappointed when it turned out that someone was recording what she said, and the result ended up on the Internet, on local talk shows, and in the local paper.

She is now saying that she misspoke. She didn’t mean to encourage illegal aliens to vote for her.

Okay, so what did she mean?

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, her opponent seems to have got it pretty well summed up:

Bilbray said at worst, Busby was encouraging someone to vote illegally. At best, she was encouraging someone who is illegally in the country to work on her campaign.

Barring further clarification from Mrs. Busby, that’s the way it looks to me.

GET THE STORY.

I’ve written before about the over-use of allegations of racism. These are disturbing because racism is itself such a vile thing. To falsely accuse someone of racism is thus reciprocally vile. Falsely calling someone a racist is in this respect like falsely calling someone an adulterer or a child molester or a person given to any other form of moral turpitude.

Unfortunately, false allegations of racism are all too common in our society, and they appear in different contexts.

In the current debate over illegal immigration, for example, some have charged that those who want America to secure its borders and stop the influx of illegal immigrants are racists.

Such sentiments have even been expressed by some posters in the combox of late.

While there no doubt are individuals who harbor racial prejudice against Latin Americans, and while they no doubt disapprove of millions of Latin Americans entering this country illegally, it cannot be inferred that because someone disapproves of illegal immigration that one is racially prejudiced against Latinos.

Indeed, many Latinos who abided by the rules and entered this country legally–or whose parents or grandparents did–are opposed to illegal immigration, and it is hardly likely that they harbor such prejudice.

"Okay," one might say, "those who are Latino themselves should not be accused of racism if they oppose illegal immigration, but what about non-Latinos?"

It doesn’t make any difference. The formula "non-Latino + opposes illegal immigration" does not equal "racist."

The fact that one is white or black or Asian or what have you does not cause one’s brain to be unable to disapprove of millions of people entering one’s country illegally unless one is also a racist.

I’m quite sure that the vast majority of people who oppose the current influx of illegal aliens would be just as concerned if there were twelve million Canadians or Swedes or Germans or Russians or what have you who had entered America illegally.

In other words: Race has nothing to do with it.

At least in the mind of the great majority of people.

In view of how vile racism is, it is vile for anyone to carelessly lob charges of racism around, but it is particularly so for Catholics, who in the Catechism of the Catholic Church have a clear articulation of the following points:

2477 Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:

– of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;

– of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another’s faults and failings to persons who did not know them;

– of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.

2478 To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:

Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. and if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.

2479 Detraction and calumny destroy the reputation and honor of one’s neighbor. Honor is the social witness given to human dignity, and everyone enjoys a natural right to the honor of his name and reputation and to respect. Thus, detraction and calumny offend against the virtues of justice and charity.

To simply assume that someone who says he opposes illegal immigration is a racist is–in the absence of further evidence for racism (e.g., the use of racial epithets for illegal aliens)–is to commit the sin of rash judgment, which is a sin whether one expresses this judgment publicly or not.

If the charge of racism is publicly made against someone who is not, in fact, a racist then the sin of calumny is committed.

As the Catechism explains, we must be on guard against the rash judgment and calumny that are often involved in playing the race card.

Much good would be done if people–inside and outside the Catholic community–would take the Catechism’s advice and attempt to give a favorable construction of others.

Justice and charity require that those who say they are opposed to illegal immigration are to have their statements taken at face value unless sufficient evidence of a sinister motive is present. The mere opposition to illegal immigration is not enough to infer racism. To do so is rash judgment and to say so will be calumny more often than not.

On my recent trip from San Diego to Arizona I was using my GPS unit to navigate (I figured it was worth the expense if it helped me get out of the house and actually start taking my vacation hours) and I got a bit of a shock as I was heading out the I-8 toward Yuma.

I was so shocked that I took a picture of my GPS (left) to record the moment so that I could blog about it later. Sorry for the fuzziness of the photo, but I was driving and didn’t have time to manually focus my camera for such a close object (not that I’d know how to do that anyway).

I’d like to call your attention to three lines that are showing on the GPS screen. The first is the pinkish purple irregular line running from the top to the bottom of the screen. See it? That’s Interstate 8.

Right next to it is a dark line that is perfectly regular and also runs diagonally from top to bottom. Got that one? It’s the Mexican border.

Now look further to the right and observe the irregular yellow/orange line that mirrors Interstate 8. This line represents Mexican highway #2.

I’d also like to call your attention to a dark triangle that is located on the Interstate 8 line and that points toward the top of the screen. That represents the position of my pickup on the highway.

Now that you’ve got the lay of the land (so to speak), notice this: You see how close the pink line gets to the edge of the Mexican border? It seems to run right up to it, doesn’t it? And the tip of the triangle representing my truck seems to be touching the Mexican border as well. A couple of miles later, the tip of the triangle representing my truck was actually IN Mexico. (My truck wasn’t, of course, but the display icon for it was spilling over into Mexico.)

This gives you a sense of just how close a major American highway (a low-number interstate) is to the Mexican border–and how close a parallel Mexican highway (another low-number interstate) is to our interstate.

I mean, it would be very easy (in relative terms) to just drive up the Mexican interstate, cross the border, and have nearly immediate access to a U.S. interstate.

And bear in mind that there is NO FENCE out here. When you’re going east on I-8 and you look to your right, you’re looking DIRECTLY INTO MEXICO, with no barriers in the way (below).

Now, you might complain that the GPS screen doesn’t give you a sense of scale, so I’m prepared to help with that. Here’s a scan from my Southern California DeLorme atlas.

This is the same point that’s pictured on the GPS screen–the close pass of I-8 to the Mexican border just after the town of Jacumba (hah-come-bah).

I spliced the map’s scale into this picture so you can see just how close the interstate comes to the border at this point: It looks like about a mile and a quarter or 6600 feet (that’s about 2 kilometers for metric users).

So there you have it: At this point a major U.S. interstate is just two klicks from the Mexican border and NO FENCE.

But you might object that it’s rather rocky here and so the terrain is at least somewhat inhospitable to crossing naturally.

It’d be a moderate hike, as the mountains at this point are nothing like Everest and are easily climbable. You don’t need oxygen or anything (the elevation is only about 4000 feet above sea level).

But suppose you’re of a mind to think that the hills alone are enough to deter illegal aliens from entering here.

Okay, take a look at this map (click to enlarge):
This is a few miles further down I-8, near the Arizona border. In fact, it’s just a few miles west of Yuma, Arizona, just before you get to the Imperial Sand Dunes.

See how close it is here? (Be sure to look at the scale provided.)

It’s even CLOSER than the point near Jacumba!

Here Interstate 8 runs maybe a bit more than a quarter of a mile from the Mexican border, or 1400 feet. (That’s a bit over 400 meters for metric folks.)

And here there are NO mountains and we are right AT sea level, and once again there is NO FENCE.

You may hear people on the news talking about us having a porous, unsecured border, but the media isn’t telling you the half of it.

When you actually see it with your own eyes–when you look to your right and realize that you are looking right over into Mexico, with mile after mile of unsecured border and not even natural barriers like mountains in the way–you realize just how vulnerable to penetration the United States is.

It’s no wonder that there are over 10,000,000 illegal aliens in this country.

And at least some of those are likely to be terrorists.

Oh . . . and the immigration check points they have on I-8?

They’re closed half the time.

I didn’t get stopped at the checkpoints near Jacumba, either coming or going. They were all closed up.

MAKES YOU WANT TO MAIL A BRICK TO CONGRESS SO THEY CAN GET STARTED ON A WALL, DOESN’T IT?

A reader writes:

A good friend alerted me to a 3 day discussion of the marriage crisis among African-Americans that is going on Tuesday through Thursday this week on James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio show. (you can listen to it online via his website–though I warn you that the discussion only takes up about the last ten minutes of Tuesday’s show because he highlights a  wonderful anti-abortion effort done by some teenage homeschoolers).

During Tuesday’s episode, one of the pastors mentions a Washington Post editorial entitled (I am not making this up) "Marriage is for White People." Go Goolge the article. You have to see the article to believe it, but it explains the reactions I get from kids I substitute teach when they find out that not only am I not married, I also have no children. They don’t ask me why I don’t want to get married; they ask me why I don’t want any children!! The times they are a-changing, and NOT for the better.

I can’t wait to hear the rest of the discussion; I have alerted my niece (single black professional who is no closer to marriage than her aunt) to listen to it also. Drop in on it and see what you think.

Thanks for alerting me to this!

The institution of marriage has taken a huge hit in America in recent decades, but in the African-American community it has been hit particularly hard. The sentiment expressed by the student quoted in the editorial that "Marriage is for white people" is truly shocking.

It’s glad to see that the folks at Focus on the Family are trying to do something about the problem. They have had inner city outreach and have worked with African-American pastors for a long time.

I encourage folks to pray for their efforts, and for troubled families everywhere.

READ THE EDITORIAL.

LISTEN TO THE FOCUS ON THE FAMILY SHOWS.

Michelle here.

Confession time: I rarely keep up with secular news. I glance at the headlines on the Internet, scan the front page of the newspaper kept in the company break room, and very occasionally watch the local news, but for the most part I’m out of the loop on current events. So Al Gore’s prospects in the 2008 presidential election may be old news to you, but it threw me for a loop.

"The burst of enthusiasm for Gore owes much to his emergence, since 9/11, as one of the Bush administration’s most full-throated critics. On state-sanctioned torture, wiretapping, and, crucially, Iraq, his indictments have been searing and prescient, often far ahead of his party. He has sounded nothing like the Gore we remember — calculating, chameleonic, soporific — from the 2000 campaign. He has sounded like a man, in the words of a top Republican strategist, who ‘found his voice in the wilderness.’

"But the Gore boomlet is also being driven by another force: the creeping sense of foreboding about the prospect of Hillary Clinton’s march to her party’s nomination. ‘Every conversation in Democratic politics right now has the same three sentences,’ observes a senior party player. ‘One: "She is the presumptive front-runner." Two: "I don’t much like her, but I don’t want to cross her, for God’s sake!" And three: "If she’s our nominee, we’re going to get killed." It’s like some Japanese epic film where everyone sees the disaster coming in the third reel but no one can figure out what to do about it.’

"Gore’s loyalists take pains to avoid criticizing Hillary (on the record, at least). But many of them plainly see their guy as the solution to the Democrats’ dilemma. ‘If he runs, he’s certainly the front-runner or the co-front-runner with Mrs. Clinton,’ contends Ron Klain, Gore’s former vice-presidential chief of staff. ‘And, in the end, he would probably win the nomination.’"

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Katie Allison Granju for the link.)

The Democratic choice in ’08: Lady Macbeth or Treebeard.

Should be fun to watch them duke it out.

[JIMMY ADDS: Michelle wrote this piece last week and over the weekend Al Gore apparently said to "Tell everyone I’m not running." But then politicians frequently say that when they’re planning to run, so who knows?]

More wisdom from Thomas Sowell on immigration:

Of all the insults to our intelligence in the current discussions of immigration legislation, the biggest insult is the claim that border control legislation and legislation on the illegal immigrants already in the country must go together.

Why? What will happen if they are done separately? And who will be worse off?

The claim that the two pieces of legislation must be passed at the same time has been repeated endlessly. But endless repetition is not a coherent argument. . . .

Who would lose anything by this separate consideration of the two pieces of legislation? The country would not lose anything. Neither would the illegal aliens already in the country.

The biggest losers would be politicians. They could no longer be on both sides of the issue by voting for a package deal but would have to stand up and be counted on border control.

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