Immigration questions

James Todd over at Pewsitter has an interesting post up today on illegal immigration.  He poses some good questions at the end:

Catholic bishops studied moral theology in the seminary; I have not. I admit that I may be ignorant on this topic and am very much willing to be educated about the moral imperatives of this subject.  To that end I have a few questions to ask Your Excellencies.  The answers may help me understand your moral opposition to this law.

1. Is it moral for a state or the federal government to impose controls on immigration?
2. Is it moral for the government to enforce such laws?
3. Does the government have the moral right to deport people that have entered the US illegally?
4. Does the government have the moral obligation to give illegal immigrants amnesty?
5. Is it immoral to ask people to document or prove they are in the U.S. legally? If so, how is that different than a foreign government asking me to show my papers/passport and prove that I am in their country legally?
6. Is it immoral for a government to deny FREE medical coverage to illegal immigrants for non-life threatening conditions.
7. Is it immoral to deny illegal immigrants and/or their children access to our FREE public school system?

I have a couple questions of my own.  First, isn’t this something that the Catholic lay faithful are to be engaging in, and not the bishops?  Wasn’t one of the big points of the Second Vatican Council to explicitly encourage (dare I even use that curiously 20th century workhorse “empower”) us to engage the world with the gospel and use the ordinary means of grace to become Saints?  Second, shouldn’t these bishops be focusing on what is going on internal to the Church, leave the details to us, the laity, and correct and counsel individuals if they go too far afield?

These are not rhetorical questions.  I invite answers in the combox to all nine questions.

 

Whats in the box

A couple of weeks ago, I was going to post on the movie “The Box” and how it has a direct parallel to abortion.  Ending the life of an unborn child to “guarantee” a brighter future … what  could make more sense?  Caring folks like those over at feministing get upset when some dare to suggest that regret might knock at the door of conscience after such a decision.  Their promotion of a  response to the pro-life NYC subway advertising campaign is the work of genius, yes?  Reference above cartoon.  This is where our culture is at.

Abortion rights activists are livid over the new Oklahoma ultrasound law.  It is absolutely okay to show pictures of animals in the womb, as long as that animal isn’t an unborn baby.  After all animals are cute, right? Babies are something you kill so you can go to college and have a good life. Maybe those opposed could have proposed a law that the women be shown ultrasounds of cute, cuddly animals instead of their own budding babies.  Then, not only would their futures be brighter, but they’d have a cause they could get behind…stopping the destruction of helpless animals.  They have rights, too, you know.

But I’ll stop the snark.  This is, after all, a serious topic.  I just wonder who thought up this brilliant idea…

Throw a ball and kill a baby.  Nice.

 

Baby Survives for Two Days After Abortion

From Matthew Archbold over at CMR:

Baby Survives for Two Days After Abortion.

These are stark terms.  One day, in the hopefully not too distant future, people are going to look at our generation and just scratch their heads. A people promised life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness thought it was okay for women to pay someone to hack their babies from the womb and sell their parts to cosmetic companies so they could have softer, younger looking skin.

 

Ginsburg Update: Trouble with simple grammar

The aptly named website “Jezebel” has the Ginsberg eugenics faux pas wrapped up. Those of you who have taken logic at the undergraduate or above level might want to sharpen your pencils and take notes.

In a later interview, the author of the NYT piece, Emily Bazelon said:

“…it was clear that when Justice Ginsburg said ‘we,’ when she was talking about populations that we don’t want to have too many of, she meant some people in the world, not herself or a group that she feels a part of. That’s not how she sees the world, as you I’m sure know. Her point was about other people’s conception of who they thought should be encouraged to have children and who shouldn’t be, not her own.”

In other words, the Supreme Court Justice can’t convey the simple grammatical difference between first, second, and third person singular and plural.

“We” is the new “they” I suppose.

Somebody we really want on SCOTUS?

Do the people who work at sites like Jezebel understand that they’re making their subjects look even more stupid than they did before they started sucking on their toes?

 

State of the literacy address

What exactly is an "asocial work professor"?

Things are pretty bad when the largest newspaper in Indiana contains a typo in the second column of the day’s top story.  Don’t believe me?  Check out the picture to the left. 

What happened here?  Several possibilities come to mind:  The Indianapolis Star relies on spell check to proof copy; the editors all left their glasses at home that day; they were trying to save space by eliminating the real estate between “a” and “social”; they didn’t think anybody would notice since nobody in Indiana reads anymore; there actually is such a thing as an “asocial work professor”. 

If the last case is correct, I don’t know if Ms. Adamek appreciated being listed in the same category as disgruntled postal workers and bureaucrats. 

Dictionary.com (yes, I know I’m lazy) lists asocial thusly:

asocial (ey-SOH-sh-uhl):

–adjective

1.	not sociable or gregarious; withdrawn from society.

2.	indifferent to or averse to conforming to conventional standards of behavior.

3.	inconsiderate of others; selfish; egocentric.

Get on the ball, Ms. Adamek!  Your reputation is under attack.

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Kill Bill!

Should we look at this from a right/wrong perspective?  Or should we do what is in the “best interest” of the American public?  That really isn’t the full range of choices we face.  Have we really become that stupid?  Rescuing the crooks who got us into this mess isn’t going to solve anything.  I want heads on platters.  I want execs and CEOs doing jail time.  I want assets seized.  In a free market economy (play by the rules or there is no game) you go out of business because you deserve to go out of business.  It is a matter of right/wrong.  The bailout is wrong.