Pursuing Holiness

Take your blood pressure medication before heading out to NPR for this story:

Immigrant Rights Groups Challenge ID Theft Arrests : NPR
A congressional panel is meeting Thursday to look at the controversial fallout from an immigration raid on an Iowa meat-packing plant in May. Not long ago, illegal immigrants swept up in such raids faced administrative charges and swift deportation. But in recent years, the Bush administration has started bringing criminal charges against immigrants who use fake documents, including stolen Social Security numbers.

… “If you want to think of it in legal terms, it would be that a person has to be put upon notice of what the crime is,” Koos said. “And in this case, it’s knowingly to use someone else’s identity. My client didn’t know he had someone else’s Social Security number, he just had a number.”

Koos lost the case on appeal, and his immigrant client is now serving five years in federal prison. But Koos’ argument has been backed by other appeals courts — and he thinks the Supreme Court may need to resolve the dispute.

Yet another example of how little the open borders crowd respects anyone’s intelligence, including the illegal aliens they’re fighting so hard to protect.  His client is so stupid that he didn’t realize the ID he “bought off the street” was illegal?  If he was really under the impression that he just needed “a number” why did he not simply make one up during his job interview?  We’re so stupid we’re expected to believe this ridiculous story?

If ignorance of the law is now going to be an acceptable legal defense, and someone’s claim to ignorance is acceptable proof, I’m going to have a ball with that.

• No, officer, I didn’t realize the speed limit was 35!  And you have a nice day, too!
• What taxes?  I didn’t get a bill, so I just assumed I didn’t owe anything.  When other people want money from me, they send an invoice, so I figured the government would too.
• Frank J. said it was our civic duty to punch hippies - you mean he wasn’t telling the truth?  Oops.  My bad!

Oh, yeah.  It’s a whole new day.

written by Laura

It’s not just the ridiculous way we teach - or don’t teach - math these days that causes concerned parents to teach long division to their children on the sly. People clearly don’t comprehend history either.

Althouse: 22% of Americans “believe any state or region has the right to peaceably secede and become an independent republic.”
22% of Americans “believe any state or region has the right to peaceably secede and become an independent republic.”
According to a new Middlebury Institute/Zogby International poll.

And it’s 40% among those aged 18 to 24, 43% among Hispanics, and 40% among African-Americans.

The Civil War was about slavery, wasn’t it? Just like World War II was to save the Jews from being slaughtered.   Look, a bright shiny object!! … I’m sorry, you were saying?

Yet another reason why over a million children in this country, including my daughter, are homeschooled.

written by Laura

Slidell Court Jesus painting

The entirely predictable outcome of the city of Slidell - just outside of New Orleans - hanging a painting of Jesus in the court. Even though they hastily added Confucius, Hammurabi and other “historical lawgivers” who appear on the walls at SCOTUS, they lost in court, of course, and had to pay the ACLU’s court costs.

The decision provided the ACLU with $1 in damages and allowed the organization to request reimbursement for the debt the ACLU incurred when it sued the court, Judge Jim Lamz, the city of Slidell and St. Tammany Parish in July 2007.

The ACLU had asked the judge to award more than $65,000 to cover its expenses, but the judge ruled that the ACLU asked for the attorneys working the case were unreasonable.

Lemelle lowered the amount to roughly $42,700.

Honestly, is this kind of nonsense worth it? You think people who end up in court aren’t praying already, even if they don’t know to whom they pray? Do you think unsaved people (having heard of and rejected Jesus their entire lives) are suddenly going to glance at a rather shoddy piece of art and suddenly convert? Sure, the Holy Spirit can do anything, even use a painting of Jesus.  In fact, the Holy Spirit can save those people without the city of Slidell effectively donating $42,000 of taxpayer funds to the ACLU.

written by Laura

We’ve been winning in Iraq all along. Right? That’s what the media would have us think, anyway, now that it’s both inevitable and also convenient for Obama.

I am still bewildered that the media believes this is somehow proper. They went from assuming the war was unwinnable — and frequently stating that explicitly — to assuming the war is unloseable, without once prominently reporting on the fact we’re winning the war, and in fact have nearly won in.

They do not report this directly. It’s always assumed as background information in reports on other matters.

I’m sorry, MSM, but this will simply will not do. You cannot assume a victory in a major war as background information without even actually reporting on that.

Think of how bizarre this is. Imagine if the media never actually bothered who’d won a presidential campaign, but instead simply changed one day from reporting on President Clinton to reporting on President Bush, without once providing an article explaining the reasons for the editorial decision to begin calling the president “George Bush” rather than “Bill Clinton.” *

Predictable. Literally:

As Soon As Obama Gets To Iraq, We’ll Win The War

I’m not claiming any great brilliance or the title of prophet! A lot of conservatives have been thinking along those lines. It was predictable. The media is just that corrupt, and they will stoop to whatever Orwellian level they have to in order to get Obama elected.

And you know what - the more I think on it, the more I blame Christians.  We’ve been engrossed in setting up our own little parallel society with our own bookstores, movies, jargon, and an entire culture that is largely detached from the nation in general.  We’ve done just what we deplore about enclaves of illegal immigrants, Muslims, or any other subculture.  Had we been sticking to our mission of being salt and light, and less dedicated to achieving our own comfort in society, we might have had more influence.  You want a mission field?  Attend journalism school and get a job at MS-NBC or the New Duranty Times.

written by Laura

It’s the hubris two-fer.

Over at Hot Air, it seems Obama’s staffers aren’t aware that the coronation election isn’t until November. And that Obama will, at most, only be President for eight years.

“It is not going to be a political speech,” said a senior foreign policy adviser, who spoke to reporters on background. “When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.[”]

“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter reminded the adviser.

When you’ve lost the mainstream media, you’ve lost middle America, eh?

And please, pay no attention to those tens of thousands of soldiers who made political reconciliation possible in Iraq. Because, really, their presence was incidental. Barack’s plan would have worked whether or not any soldiers were present. Believe it. He does! Oh, and he could have spent your tax dollars a whole lot smarter, by the way. (Not collecting them at all, in lieu of spending them in Iraq, is apparently not an option.)

Bonus: I thought the right was supposed to be the side doing all the fear-mongering.

Michelle Obama is in full panic mode. (And I don’t blame her - her husband ought to be stomping McCain right now, not hanging on to his lead by his fingernails.)

…”I wish we had time to be divided. I wish we had time to be upset. To be angry. To be disappointed. I wish we did,” Obama said. “Because if we had time for that, then things wouldn’t be so bad right now. Instead, we’re in a place where another four or eight years of the world as it is will devastate the life of some child.”

Because children aren’t going uneducated, being killed in gang fights, being abused, or anything like that already. We need to elect Obama because he can prevent it!  Elect Obama.  For the children.

Maybe time is running out on the love-fest. The media is now (correctly) being held up as an object of ridicule, and if they can get past the thrill running up their collective leg, they just might react. And since most of Obama’s gaffe-ridden campaign is a cult of personality, without the media support he’s going to be in a world of hurt.  And how much longer is the media going to open themselves up for criticism like this?

written by Laura

No, not that kind of payback - they haven’t massed, armed with pitchforks and torches, outside the Corps of Engineers’ offices. I mean the good kind of payback. Thousands - maybe tens of thousands - of volunteers have come from all over the country to help us gut houses and rebuild. And now folks from the New Orleans metro area are doing the same for Iowans:

N.O. volunteers bring knowledge, compassion to Iowa victims
Aldrich, one of thousands affected by river flooding June 11, said he spent days alone in his basement, using a brush to scrub away black mold and then dousing the plaster walls with potent Lysol. He had made three passes so far.

“Man, you don’t have to do that,” said Sidney Gonzales, an electrician whose home in Kenner took on 3 feet of water during Hurricane Katrina. “You get a spray and put it in a pressure washer. It’s a solution. They sell it at the hardware store. I used it when I did my house.”

Gonzales, 62, came to Cedar Falls with a group from The Vineyard Church to repay the generosity of volunteers from the same Christian community’s Boise, Idaho, congregation who helped him gut his house in the fall of 2005.

… In making the journey, Gonzales, along with myriad other New Orleans area volunteers who have headed north since last month’s historic Midwestern flooding, has gotten the chance to impart a measure of the expertise and sympathy gained during the past three years in the Louisiana flood zone.

From removing mold to securing a federal loan to fending off government bids to wipe a neighborhood off the map, southeast Louisiana residents have grabbed the chance to provide the kind of battle-tested assistance they received after Katrina from survivors of other disasters, including representatives from Kobe, Japan, who offered lessons gleaned from their own recovery from a massive earthquake in 1995.

Iowa flood photo via pyraxsys on Flickr

written by Laura