Glenn Beck's Messiah Complex?

Remember Gomer Pyle? That big silly country hick from Mayberry who joined the Marines? One of his favorite expressions was - say it with me - "Sur-PRAHZ, sur-PRAHZ, sur-PRAHZ!"

Well, if good ol' Gomer had been watching right-wing TV personality Glenn Beck in Washington, DC this weekend, he'd have been as sur-PRAHZed as a lot of people were.

In place of the average liberal-bashing, right-wing pontificating, and pre-presidential-election posturing, Beck instead launched into a stunning flag-waving church revival. Who'd have thunk it: he fancies himself as some sort of Christian evangelist! While he insists his rally Saturday was some sort of mishmash of war hero, virtue-loving, non-political star-spangled Dr. Martin Luther King tribute, Beck sure sounded like a preacher in search of a pulpit.

And he found his congregation: an adoring crowd of "more than one thousand people," as Beck himself cleverly observed, who traveled from across the country and took his every word as gospel.

Which presents a conundrum to the non-church-going conservatives who have appreciated Rush Limbaugh's avoidance of Christian imagery and allegory. What do you do with a guy who gets up onstage and claims that returning to God will solve America's woes? About the closest Limbaugh gets to God is when he's going through his wedding chapel's revolving doors.

But more importantly, what do evangelical Christians do if they've become devoted fans of Beck and his patriotic swagger? Because, in case you haven't heard, Beck ain't what he claims to be. He's a Mormon.

Let's Get This Straight: Mormons Aren't Christians

Now, I know Mormons like to call themselves "Christians." They believe in historical people named God and Jesus, and they utilize many of the same Biblical buzzwords Christians use to describe salvation, atonement, and eternal life. But without faith in Who these Beings are and what they've done for their people, you aren't a "Christian" in the Gospel sense of the word.

A long-time friend of my family's who is a pastor's wife was gushing about the Beck rally Saturday on Facebook, and she marveled at how he was "doing church" there on the National Mall. When I cautioned that Beck is a Mormon, she replied that people could be both Mormon and saved (which is the Christian word for those who believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior). Another FB friend of hers chastised me for harboring even a speck of disagreement over Beck's rally.

I don't mind acrimony on FB, because I know that it is an imperfect medium for having a genuine dialog about topics like religion. Yet I was grieved for our family friend who proved her cluelessness when it comes to the Mormon faith.

Can it be emphasized too strongly that Mormons are not Bible-believing Christians? Can I share just two crucial proofs for why Mormons do not worship the God of evangelical Christianity? I'll prove my point by simply taking two elements from the Mormons' own Articles of Faith:

• Mormons do not believe in the Trinity. Without a triune Deity, any religion mocks Christianity. If you think it's OK for Christians to not subscribe to trinitarian theology, then quite simply, you're not saved, either. Hey - that's not my opinion; check out 2 Corinthians 13:14 and John 1:1.
  
• Mormons do not receive their salvation through the grace of God. They can get saved by both believing in Christ and following the "laws and ordinances in the Gospel." If you believe the grace of God isn't sufficient for salvation, then you're not saved, either. Again, that's not my opinion, it's in the Bible: Ephesians 2:8.

God's existence as Father, Son, and Spirit comprises Who He is, and contributes to His intrinsic character as our Savior by grace. If your god isn't the gracious trinitarian God, then you're not a Christian. This isn't my opinion; this is fact.

Many more examples of fallacies in the Mormon religion exist to prove they are not Christians, even though they like to think they are. If you don't believe me, check out Watchman Fellowship for yourself.

Is Glenn Beck a New Prophet?

Do you dismiss Beck as just the latest fad in a long line of harmless right-wing talking heads? Do you regard Beck as being antagonized by people like me, pessimistic finger-pointers with our own axes to grind? Or do you consider Beck to be a genuinely spiritual, revolutionary thinker with no other agenda than the welfare of the United States?

However you view Beck, my friends, consider the messianic attributions posters to Beck's blog have been heaping upon him (with all of the original typo's included):

• "Glen Beck you are a prophet of GOD."


• "I am thanking God for you to bring our country back to Faith in God."
  
• "Thanks again for being the voice of one crying in the wilderness to make straight the way of the Lord."


• "Thank God for planting the seed in you to speak and get the true message out about what is happening and restoring many's faith in God."
  
• "Our prayer is that God will use this to bring revival to the church in America. Thank you Glenn for obeying the voice of God"


• "What this man has accomplished in such a short time is wiith Gods presence in his soul guiding him to bring us from the brink of an evil empire."


• "thank you for being obedient to the calling of the Spirit.......all the Lord needed was for someone to listen"
  
• "GLENN HAS SHOWED ME LIFE AGAIN."


• "I'm almost 60 years old and was waiting all my life to hear words of truth. Finally I found it - listening to you"

Hmmm... Sounds almost like the way liberals were gushing over Barak Obama back during the 2008 election, doesn't it? At the time, conservatives called Obama's fervent supporters lunatics.

Glenn Beck Is No Messiah

Of course, just as President Obama was not the savior of the United States then, neither is Glenn Beck today.

Now, don't get me wrong: as I've said in other posts, Beck has accurately pointed out many problems in the United States, and his being a Mormon doesn't mean he has bad politics. What is becoming apparently dangerous about Beck, however, is his religious rallying cries under the guise of Biblical Christianity. True followers of Christ need to be discerning about His Gospel and wary of people who manipulate it for their own purposes.

Or the lack of saving faith you claim to see in liberals may (surprise!) be your own.
_____

PS - Don't consider me expert enough to have this opinion about Glenn Beck? How about this guy?
_____

Two Parent Traps and a Schmuck

Do you have kids? I don't, so I've been told that my opinions about parenthood have extremely limited value.

Yeah, well... I'm gonna plow on with today's essay anyway!

First, just to prove I know I'm not a know-it-all, a brief story on a related topic: At dinner last week, some friends of mine who are expecting their first child were talking about the mind-boggling battery of immunizations given to newborns in hospitals these days. Another dinner companion commented that some parents she knows have taken the growing debate over infant shots so seriously that some friendships broke up over it.

Of all the opinions I hold, I can honestly say that I don't have an opinion one way or the other regarding infant vaccinations. So I told my dinner companions that they could freely share with me their convictions on the subject, and I couldn't contradict anything they said! Can you imagine what a freeing conversation that could have been? As it turned out, they hadn't done all the research on it yet themselves, so they hadn't reached any firm conclusions either!

Oh well, so much for trying to carry on a conversation in which I was a blank slate.

Parents Who Care Too Little

While childhood immunizations per say is a topic of relative ambivalence for me, I do recognize that certain shots are required of everybody before they can attend classes in public school systems. Here in north Texas, school starts today, and for weeks, our local media has been reminding parents that school children need to have all of their shots updated before first period this morning. Yet last Saturday, officials estimated that in the Dallas public school district alone, approximately 5,000 students had yet to get their required immunizations.

Dallas County's health commissioner made the rounds of TV stations weeks ago with his blunt message of zero-tolerance for kids without their required shots. Officials have been reminding parents since before the end of the last school year, they've been sending out mailers, advertising on ethnic radio stations, and even providing free shots for low-income families. Children of illegal immigrants don't have to prove legal residency to get their shots. There's absolutely no excuse for any parent to not have gotten their kids vaccinated by the start of school today.

Yet thousands of kids will probably be turned away today. Parents will howl, protesting the school districts' unfairness, and complaining that they didn't have enough time or money. A few will be on TV tonight, with a goofy grin, admitting they just procrastinated, or seemingly simply caught off-guard by the first day of school. Doesn't it just boggle the mind?

California's Version of "The Donald"

Speaking of boggling the mind, over in sunny California, multi-billionaire developer Donald Bren has been in court, fighting a $100 million child support suit by his two adult kids with a former lover. Bren, who made his estimated $12 billion fortune as a real estate mogul during California's boom years, staunchly insists he's already paid out enough to his unwanted progeny and their mother, Jennifer Gold.

Bren's 22-year-old daughter Christie and 18-year-old son David beg to differ. They're seeking $400,000 a month in additional child support retroactive to their individual births, which amounts to approximately $100 million between the two of them.

Not only does Bren admit fathering Christie and David, he's groused in court that at the time, Gold had assured him she was using contraception, so their births he did not welcome. Bren figures the $3 million in child support he's paid out over the years to provide for kids he didn't want in the first place seems more than generous.

On the one hand, Gold's two children appear to be simple "gold-diggers" trying to mine their biological father's vast wealth for their own purposes. With his self-professed lack of paternal affection for his own offspring, Bren readily admits to not having been their traditional father figure, but if they're trying to penalize him for his lack of affection: tough cookies. According to well-documented legal agreements he made with their mother, he's not financially liable for anything more either. Bren has a point: many kids are raised on a lot less than $3 million, so maybe Christie and David have gotten too financially comfortable to ween themselves from the gravy train.

Bren's own parents divorced when he was a teenager, and both eventually remarried. His birth father was a Hollywood producer, and his step-mother an actress, so you can draw your own conclusions about how conventional his upbringing may have been. Still, plenty of child victims of divorce grow up to parent wholesome families, so his childhood can't be Bren's only excuse for his intransigence.

So what's left? Will a $100 million settlement leave him destitute? Although he has vigorously disputed estimates of his fortune as being exaggerated, Bren's stunning charitable portfolio alone sits at more than $1 billion. If $100 million represents all he's got left in the world after all that charity, he hasn't said, but it's odd that California schoolchildren - one of his favorite beneficiaries - have been given so much more than Bren is willing to concede his own flesh and blood.

What's the point in fighting your kids over this comparatively paltry sum of money, if not simple greed or blatant disdain? If Bren is one of Warren Buffett's billionaire benefactors, who's signed Bill & Melinda Gates' list of super-wealthy folk not leaving their fortune to their heirs, his name's not on the list yet.

Of course, at its core, this is little more than a family dispute for which too much supposition from the bleachers can be deleterious. So, what validates this particular case as an intriguing vignette of modern American life? Bren's obvious disconnect between the physical act of paternity and its nurturing responsibilities. How stunning is it that a man as driven and self-made as Bren could so hopelessly insulate himself from affection for his own offspring?

Parents Who Smother

Bren's dismissive attitude flies in the face of yet another parental type which has surfaced this new school year. But we're not talking about schoolchildren - we're talking about parents taking their kids to college for the first time.

During the past couple of decades, these parents have been dubbed "helicopter parents" or "Velcro parents". They've developed a parental subculture in the United States bent on creating high-achieving progeny.

And experts have seen it coming for years: the push by parents for their children to be over-involved in activities. Too many sports, too many music lessons, too many dance recitals, too many teen church trips, too much of everything that in moderation can help produce a well-rounded post-modern American child.

Only this time, it's not fights among overzealous parents at their child's soccer practice, but parents who hover at college after their freshman child gets situated in their new dorm. Apparently, colleges all over the country, from Princeton to small liberal arts schools in the Midwest, are finding the affects of Velcro parenting becoming harder to break without built-in programs to ween parents off of their kids.

Now, the first day of kindergarten is one thing. But on the first day of college, parents shouldn't be attending classes with their freshman student. Yet that's what's been reported to have happened at several campuses, and many more parents linger on-campus or very closely nearby, unable - or unwilling - to let their teenager step onto the first rungs of adulthood.

While this phenomenon hasn't reached epidemic proportions, it's become problematic enough that many colleges have now instituted a parental break-away as part of the freshman orientation and move-in weekends. And while in kindergarten, kids probably prefer having their parents stick around, college students rarely want mom and dad in the picture as they seek to establish themselves away from home for the first time.

I'm not saying that homesickness isn't a problem. But when it's the parents who are the ones having the difficulty cutting the apron strings, then colleges have found it's up to them to stand by with the scissors. How odd is that?

Of course, not having kids, I can't say parent traps aren't easy to fall into.

But something tells me daddy Bren wasn't attending first day college classes with his kids. Doesn't sound like he and Jennifer talked much about infant inoculations, either... except maybe if he could be inoculated against progeny.

_____

France Getting Its Groove Back?

One of my favorite quotes comes from retired Desert Storm general Norman Schwarzkopf, who ruminated that “going to war without the French is like going duck hunting without an accordion.”

If it wasn't for their cuisine and Parisian architecture, France would have lost its raison d'être years ago as its infamous moral relativism rendered it geopolitically irrelevant.

Recently, however, the French have managed to discover where they had misplaced their backbone after supporting the insurgent New World colonists over two hundred years ago. You'll recall from your American History lessons that France was the only country to support our revolution. For the better part of a century, however, they foundered as the doormat of nihilism. Now, not only have they enacted legislation prohibiting the identity-robbing facial scarves and burkas of Muslim women in public, but they’ve begun evicting Gypsy squatters from their fetid camps. Yesterday, two flights carrying 700 ethnic “Roma”, as Romanian Gypsies are called in politically-correct Europe, left Paris and Lyon for Bucharest.

A Culture With Few Friends (I mean the Gypsies, not the French)

In the United States, Gypsies are sometimes referred to as “Travellers" or "Irish Travellers," since many of them emigrated from Ireland during the Great Potato Famine. But wherever they live, Gypsies have the unflattering reputation as being shoplifters, pickpockets, truants, child molesters, and masters at scams, particularly home improvement fraud.

Here near north Texas, a camp of Travellers used to live in the rural fringes of Fort Worth. Nobody knew they were here until five of their young boys were killed in a spectacular traffic accident. These Gypsies had been running a string of construction rip-offs and shoplifting sprees across the Southwest. Reporters tried to learn more about their community, but were confounded by the doubletalk or outright silence from Travellers who claimed nothing was wrong with their lifestyle.

Granted, in North America, it's hard to tell Gypsies from ordinary folk. Aside from their bad grammar and limited education - pardon my bluntness - they often pass for typical Texas rednecks with more money than sense. They drive ludicrously fancy pickup trucks and new luxury cars, wear far too much bling, and clothes that seem just a little too stylish.

They're a far cry from their ancestral brethren in France, who have lived for years in the squalor of approximately 300 unauthorized encampments infested with vermin and rife with communicable illnesses. They're reputed to endorse adolescent marriage, tolerate sexual abuse, and perpetrate various crimes and scams such as prostitution to maintain what appears to be a meager existence. Their "repatriation," as the French government calls it, has met with cries of xenophobia (apparently the Europeans don't like the word "racism") from liberals and the Romanian government, which apparently has no desire to welcome their fellow countrymen back home.

Drawing Lines In The Sand (On the French Riviera)

Although according to European Union laws the Roma may have originally entered France legally as tourists, they never qualified for nor obtained work visas which would have authorized their stay in France. Roma adults claim the work permits have been difficult to obtain, but fail to explain why that should excuse their stay in France.

Sound familiar?

While numerous and significant differences exist between the Roma in France and illegal Hispanics in the United States, the basic problem appears the same: what to do with people unauthorized to be in your country?

It remains to be seen whether France will repatriate all of the estimated 12,000 Roma living there without permission. Some government critics say it's all a simple political stunt to appease Frenchmen reeling from the Great Recession. Others say that it's a modern expression of the age-old European discrimination against Gypsies, the perpetual scapegoats for legions of maladies.

What seems particularly interesting, however, is that after years of blithely clucking its disapproval at American hegemony, the French government has chosen this time and this people group to fly - literally - in the face of liberal social policy. A decision taken on the heels of banning burkas in public. This, the country which refused to allow American jets to clip French airspace while flying sorties to the Middle East, prompting General Schwarzkopf's droll pronouncement.

Maybe history indeed is more cyclical than we give it credit for being.
_____

Say Goodbye, Dr. Laura

I didn't even know Dr. Laura was still on the air.

So I was surprised to hear that not only has her show been plodding along since I last heard it about 12 years ago, but that she had the audacity to use the n-word 11 times on a recent episode.

Schlessinger has always been a difficult nut to crack. I never could understand why she'd treat some callers differently than others. She could be patient and sympathetic to some, yet rude and dismissive to others, her bi-polarity seemingly unrelated to the attitudes of her callers or the problems they were sharing.

Although her general support of conservative family values resonated with me, I couldn't tell if the often wacky and sometimes outlandish comments she made on the air were some sort of psychological therapy tool or simple showbiz shtick.

Whatever she spiked her shows with, however, definitely crossed the line with her repetitive use of the n-word. To have used the infamously derogatory term once or twice to clarify the word with her caller might have been excusable. But 11 times is simply reprehensible. Period.

Schlessinger insists her repetition of the word constituted some sort of First Amendment exercise in parodying racial insensitivity. She's announced that she's quitting her radio show after the end of its current season because her sponsors have been hounded by enraged customers. She's portraying herself as a victim of uber-political-correctness in an age where anything controversial gets silenced by people who get offended too easily.

But what Schlessinger fails to realize is that while she has a radio show, she's not recognized as a public figure with authority to moderate a discussion on this issue. Rightly or wrongly, the use of the n-word is simply inappropriate for both whites and blacks.

While you may indeed have the right to say it, you have an obligation not to.

If we have to have another national dialog on the reasons why, then Schlessinger has proven why she should no longer be on the radio.

_____

Qualifying Birthright Citizenship

They're called "anchor babies:" children born in the United States to parents who are here illegally. Simply put, anchor babies help protect their parents from being deported.

Currently, about 8% of all births in the US are to illegal immigrants. In 2008, when the latest study took place, that amounted to approximately 340,000 anchor babies born to people illegally residing in this country. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 4 million legal children live in the United States with undocumented parents.

Amidst the fallout from Arizona's infamous SB-1070 which opponents - rightfully, in my view - believe promotes racial profiling, some advocates of controlling illegal immigration have picked up a dusty old ball which has been bouncing around the schoolyard of discarded ideas: changing the citizenship clause in our Constitution. Wouldn't one of the easiest ways of staunching the flow of illegal immigrants to America be to remove one of their key incentives for coming here in the first place?

Framing the Debate

Our United States Constitution’s 14th Amendment currently grants citizenship automatically to anyone born here. Opponents of illegal immigration believe - rightfully, in my view - that illegals are misappropriating a provision intended to benefit Americans, and we're currently handing law breakers a blank check on a silver platter. Republican senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, among others, have called for hearings to explore the issue, with a view towards limiting citizenship by amending the 14th Amendment.

Should a person be automatically granted US citizenship simply by being born here? That current privilege, called “birthright citizenship,” has generally been considered a fundamental characteristic of procreation in America, one of the last First World countries to maintain the principle of birthright citizenship. Conventional interpretation of the amendment holds that Americans can be assured that their children can share in all the rights of citizenship. However, the concept could be subject to unprecedented restrictions in the effort to push back the tide of illegal immigration.

Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has gone on record that limiting the 14th Amendment would penalize kids for mistakes their parents have made. Other opponents hypothesize that removing something as simple as birthright citizenship will create a bureaucratic nightmare, and could even lead to a national ID system as the government wrestles with ways to identify who can and can't receive birthright citizenship.

Frankly, considering the appalling lack of political will to fix our illegal immigration situation by simply enforcing the rules already on the books, changing an amendment risks being a futile exercise. You’ll recall from your high school government classes that reworking the US Constitution requires considerable effort, and rightfully so. The document which undergirds our entire legal system should not be trifled with. So the very idea of using an amendment to the Constitution to address our problems with illegal immigration should give everyone in this debate pause.

But not too long of a pause; otherwise, we’ll be demonstrating the same political inactivity which has contributed to the mess we’re in.

Can We Protect Our Laws From Abuse?

If you believe amending the Constitution represents an overreaction to the illegal immigration dilemma, your concern has some validity. Since we’re talking about the 14th Amendment in particular, we need to recognize the stunning privilege it grants people born here. Birthright citizenship holds immense power, and those who want to leave it alone can’t be simply dismissed as intransigent.

However, just as birthright citizenship cannot be taken lightly, don’t we need to protect it when it gets abused? Could crafters of the amendment, working in the heady days at the end of the Civil War, ever have imagined how many people would violate our nation’s borders to plant their seed here? Does birthright citizenship grant an unfair advantage to Hispanics, who can migrate here simply by traveling up the continent? Asians, Africans, and Europeans who might consider coming here illegally have to first figure out how to cross an ocean and pass through a port before they can set foot inside an American hospital. By denying birthright citizenship to the children of illegals, do we strengthen the integrity of our immigration laws and restore some equity to our immigration policies?

America has flourished from various stages of relatively controlled immigration; indeed, the unprecedented flow of Europeans to our shores after the Civil War profoundly re-shaped our still-developing country.

But haven’t times changed since then? While we still welcome all emigres who come to the United States legally, why do we also remain responsible for people who come here by breaking our laws? Jewish law calls for the Hebrew faithful to care for the gentiles and sojourners in their midst, but to what extent are people who breach our borders to be equated with the nomadic cultures and conquered societies of Biblical times?

And as for the national ID argument, isn't that just a red herring? We already have social security cards based on birth certificates, which should be enough to determine the citizenship status of any parent.

Change Isn't Easy

Not that the process for determining who gets birthright citizenship will be easy. It does appear as though some significant details will need to be ironed out before this idea could be practical. For example,

• Even if an amendment of this magnitude could be ratified, how would it be enforced? Would enforcement be on a state level, as it basically is now; or on the federal level?
• Would citizenship be required of both parents, or just the mother, or one of the two?
• If only one of the parents needed to be a citizen, and that parent was the father, how does he prove he's the father?
• Can we afford all of the DNA testing which would be required to prove patrilineal citizenship?

At first blush, even Mike Huckabee's concern about penalizing children for the sins of their parents sounds like a plausible reason to keep things as they are. However, do two wrongs make a right? If we're talking about equity here, how do people who obey our immigration laws benefit when law breakers get benefits they're not entitled to?

We Need to Talk About This

In one definitive action, changing the 14th Amendment could remove from the illegal immigration debate one of its key facilitators. Our country's immigration process could be made more equitable, and the messy conundrum of deporting the children of illegal immigrants could evaporate within a few years.

But real life is rarely that simple, is it? What might the chances be that our politicians could craft revisions to birthright citizenship that solve the myriad contingencies that reside in modern procreation? Is an 8% birthrate to illegals a percentage our country can live with, considering our other problems that need fixing? Would simply enforcing our current immigration laws end up being more effective in terms of time and cost?

These questions, however, should not shroud the 14th Amendment in imperviousness. Our Constitution is a remarkable document, but it is not perfect. Shouldn't we be able to revisit the parts of it that fail to keep up with our country's evolution in a rapidly-changing world?

Personally, I think the 14th Amendment should be clarified to specify that children born in the United States are only granted citizenship if their mother is a legal resident. But I have no illusions that getting there from where we are today will be a piece of cake.

_____

Does Amnesty for Illegals Discriminate?

I'm not an anti-Hispanic bigot, and I'm gonna prove it.

I'm going to start with conservative political commentator and former presidential contender Mike Huckabee, who raised more than a few eyebrows this week when he waffled on a simple question about illegal immigration.

At first, he said he did not support any amnesty program, but then he claimed kids who were brought here illegally by their parents should be allowed to stay here. During his interview on NPR, Huckabee argued that penalizing children because their parents broke the law is a bad thing. And in theory, he’s correct. If your father runs drugs, and you don’t, you shouldn’t be held responsible for your father’s crime. But on this issue, we're talking about a whole family of illegal aliens. They're not citizens of the United States.

Of course, you can't oppose amnesty and support it at the same time. How can Huckabee say he's against amnesty but still wants kids to stay (along with their parents, presumably)?

Typical Duplicitous Politician?

Aside from being a right-wing media celebrity, Huckabee is also a politician, and he's trying to make it sound as if he's a progressive on this issue while simultaneously dropping all of the anti-amnesty key words he hopes will pacify his conservative base. It's an old-school smokescreen, lest we forget the 2012 presidential election starts next year.

It has been suggested by some political scorekeepers that Huckabee may be attempting to distinguish himself from his fellow Republican media stars. Sarah Palin, his closest campaign rival, has lent her support to several races in local elections across the country to keep her name in the spotlight, while Huckabee has made a point of supporting the conservatives Palin doesn’t. Is he trying to paint himself as the softer, gentler, more family-oriented side of the Republican party? After all, the incessant drumbeat of pop drama emanating from the life of Palin’s eldest daughter can’t be helping Alaska’s most famous soccer mom with her virtuous image.

How odd that Huckabee, one of the favorites many business-oriented Republican stalwarts supported in 2008, is now posturing himself on the status-quo side of the illegal immigration debate. Wasn’t one of the reasons President George W. Bush waffled on illegal immigration because his deep-pocketed pro-business pals make a lot of money on the backs of undocumented workers?

But I digress...

Let's Be Fair

Granted, this is the United States of America, and Huckabee wants to talk fairness. So let's do it.

What does fairness have to do with deporting children for something they haven’t done? Very little, admittedly. But that’s not the issue, is it? The issue is parents - who are predominantly Hispanic - who intentionally cross our borders without permission. Just as the parents aren't citizens, neither are their kids.

An illegal alien of any age is still an illegal alien. Former president George W. Bush deported five-year-old Elian Gonzalez, remember? Don't kids from other countries get deported? How much damage is done to the integrity of our immigration laws if parents know they'll be allowed to stay if they bring their kids illegally to our country? What is fair about granting pseudo-amnesty to illegal Hispanic kids and their parents when we still drop-kick illegal Africans, Asians, and Europeans out of our country? Where do we draw the lines to be fair to everybody? Do we just keep them all?

Secure Our Borders?

Oddly enough, Huckabee says that the best way to control illegal immigration involves securing our borders. But he's not talking about the Canadian border, is he?

What keeps Canadians from coming here illegally, and what compels Hispanics to come here illegally?

Let's see: corrupt Latin American governments which suck inertia from their economies; unrealistic expectations given to Hispanics by human traffickers; violent drug cartels; citizens of other countries who willingly break laws to get into ours; greedy American contractors who treat illegal day laborers like glorified slaves; authority-hungry American bureaucrats and politicians who need constituents who are dependant on them... I'm not seeing any equity here, are you?

Removing the institutionalized incentives which unfairly skew the immigration debate towards Hispanics involves taking amnesty for even kids out of the equation. Recognizing this sad fact may hurt Huckabee's chances for election if he decides to run in 2012, but it's not the future of his political career I'm worried about. What happens when people from other countries around the world see how lax we are with illegal immigration?

Kids Caught in Their Parents' Misdeeds

As a former Southern Baptist minister, Huckabee may be in cahoots with other pastors nationwide who are quietly soliciting for a watered-down approach to illegal immigration. I can't fault him for feeling sorry for the kids who are virtually being used as hostages by their parents in these situations. Illegal alien parents know it's hard for most Americans - even me - to consider the cost of this debate on children.

Here in north Texas, our local news outlets frequently cover stories where children are crying, being pulled from classrooms and readied for a trip back across the border. Teachers and reporters bewail the harm being done to these kids as they’re torn from the only lives they’ve ever known and being deported like criminals.

True, irreparable harm probably is being done to these kids, but it’s not being done by the law enforcement agencies tasked with the miserable job of fighting illegal immigration. Doesn’t the fault like squarely on the parents who knowingly violated the law and risked their own childrens’ well-being by coming here illegally in the first place?

Many illegal Hispanics claim they're coming to America for the sake of their families. I have no problem with people who want to come here and benefit from our quality of life, which in large part depends on the rule of law.

I would simply ask Hispanics who want to come here to get in line. You're not any more special or desperate than anybody else wanting to enter the United States for the benefit of their own families.

See? Equal access. Isn't that being racially-tolerant?


Next Monday: Revising the 14th Amendment?

_____

Slater Marks New Era of Flight?

To the list of pop-culture flash-in-the-pans, add the name Steven Slater.

Slater, the now-former flight attendant for Jet Blue airlines who erupted into a criminally-negligent tirade on a Pittsburgh-to-New-York flight earlier this week, has found himself with a gaggle of new Internet friends and a host of charges in court.

A lot of other flight attendants have rallied to Slater's defense, increasingly irate over the treatment they receive from passengers increasingly frustrated by the airline industry's increasingly rigid business models. For most airline employees and passengers these days, air travel has become something to be endured rather than enjoyed.

Airline Travel Isn't What It Was

I'm not ancient, but I can barely remember when flying was fun. My parents and people just a little older than me can recall a time when passengers dressed up for air travel; when flying represented glamor and prestige; when flight attendants were called "stewardesses" because almost all of them were female and were paid to pamper their passengers, not play luggage police.

A good friend of mine has been an American Airlines flight attendant longer than Slater has, and virtually every time she talks about her job, she says "Boy, it ain't what it used to be."

She's had a passenger hand her a napkin only to find a dirty diaper inside. An FAA official who just happened to be on the flight and observe the passenger's impudence actually fined the passenger for exposing a flight attendant to potentially hazardous material, since my friend was in the process of serving drinks.

She's had more than a few passengers yell at her because the carry-on bags they packed were too big for the overhead bins. As if that's my friend's fault.

And apparently, a tussle over the overhead bins contributed to the Jet Blue's Slater reaching the end of his rope. A female passenger inadvertently hit Slater in the forehead with her carry-on at the start of the flight in Pittsburgh, and then cursed him as he was trying to get passengers on the just-landed plane to remain seated while they taxied to their gate. Apparently, the same passenger that had gashed Slater's forehead in Pittsburgh had gotten into another tussle with another passenger before deplaning in New York. So Slater wasn't the only person on that flight who was having a bad day.

Landing in New York City

If this flight was similar to the ones I've taken into any of New York City's three airports, the scenario in the plane's cabin after landing is something I've witnessed myself. As soon as the plane's tires touched down onto the runway, the clicking of seatbelts filled the cabin as passengers immediately unlatched them. Yes, all passengers are supposed to remain in their seats with their seatbelts securely fashioned until the "Fasten Seatbelt" sign has been turned off (you can hear the intercom announcement now, can't you?), but when any plane lands in New York City, all bets are off.

This is New York City, passengers are thinking. We're New Yorkers. We've got important places to go and important people to see. Rules apply to dweebs and suburbanites and people from Iowa. I've gotta get off this tin can of a plane and get on with my important life.

Now, I haven't flown into New York City since 9/11, so maybe the rules are better enforced these days. But when I used to fly, this is how it always was. It never failed.

After touchdown, as the plane reached the end of the runway and turned onto the taxiway, somebody would get up and start rummaging around in the overhead bins. Usually, that was still too early for most everyone else, and the false-starter would get a sharp admonishment from a still-seated flight attendant, or the false-starter's embarrassed wife.

But as the terminal came into sight, the cabin would begin to crackle with pent-up expectation, as passengers waited on the edges of their seats (back when we still had legroom in coach), impatiently savoring the first sensations of the plane coming to a stop.

By this time, a flight attendant would be on the intercom, knowing what was about to take place, and nevertheless reminding everybody that we were to wait until the "Fasten Seatbelts" sign had been turned off before getting our stuff from the overhead bins.

But we all knew that didn't make any difference.

As I said, the cue was the initial sensation of inertia - the precise moment in time where you knew the plane had stopped. And suddenly, the cabin would erupt into a mad scramble for the overhead bins.

New Yorkers live their lives by inches. They rush to elevators. They curse out loud when somebody wants to get off at the second floor. They fight over taxi cabs. They body-slam themselves through closing subway doors. If your car is still stationary after a red light turns green, you can expect half a dozen horns to blare at you. Every second gained, every gain notched in competition with somebody else, every rule bent to give you more of something, that is the energy upon which many New Yorkers thrive. Or, at least, claim to thrive.

Meanwhile, the plane may be making a couple of last-minute lurches as the pilots position it for a complete stop. Doesn't matter to the New Yorkers frantically reclaiming their luggage from the overhead bins. They bounce into each other like its a bumpy subway ride. Seasoned flight attendants know resistance is futile at this point, but they drone on anyway over the intercom about the "Fasten Seatbelt" sign.

By the time the cabin door has been opened to the jetway, everybody has been standing in the aisle with their luggage for quite some time.

Golden Era Becoming the Leaden Era?

I wasn't on Slater's flight this week, so I can't say for sure that this scenario I've witnessed many times before actually happened then. Slater himself professes to be a "bag nazi*," meaning he was a stickler for baggage rules. A lot of passengers - who already feel like they're being nickled-and-dimed by airlines - don't like flight attendants who are sticklers for rules. My flight attendant friend who works for American Airlines predicts the pressure they're under to get planes to and from gates, combined with the increasingly miserable flying experience for passengers, will only get worse as the suits in the airlines' corporate suites remain sequestered with their profit/loss reports.

And that's the real problem, isn't it? As a veteran flight attendant, Slater's a product - along with many of his passengers - of the golden era of flight. Most corporate wonks who prowl the paneled halls of airline headquarters never stand in that increasingly minuscule space between the flying public and the front lines of new corporate income policies: flight attendants, gate crews, and pilots.

The skies haven't been friendly for quite a while now. Slater's meltdown may mark the new leaden era of flight.

_____
* I refuse to capitalize this word

In Whom Do We Trust?

Should an evangelical church encourage its parishioners to attend a class on "constitutional government and the promotion of freedom”?

My church has, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Right-wing politics oozes out of the assumption that studying one of our country's core documents is something churchgoers need to do.

Constitution of the Church?

Not that I'm against all right-wing politics. Shucks, some of my best friends attend church and are right-wingers. My church, Park Cities Presbyterian, boasts a highly-visible location bordering one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in one of the most conservative areas of Texas. While you don’t have to be a Republican to be a member of Park Cities Prez, a lot of church members think the two are synonymous.

True, conservative politics constantly lap at the shores of evangelical Christianity, but they virtually pound the beachheads at Park Cities Prez. In fact, I’m almost surprised somebody at my church thinks anybody's left in the pews who even needs to attend a class on the US Constitution!

Nevertheless, my church has seen fit to advertise a “Making of America” seminar by the National Center for Constitutional Studies.

All things considered, a seminar on the Constitution of the United States doesn’t rate among the worst things churchgoers could attend. Indeed, no matter the country they live in, people of faith have an obligation to be as active in civic life as they possibly can be. This means Americans, with our rich legacy of freedoms and living standards, actually risk being disobedient when we shirk opportunities to vote, run for office, and educate ourselves on issues in a non-partisan way.

Should Church-Goers Be Non-Partisan About the Constitution?

But it’s that non-partisan thing that’s throwing me on this seminar. The group sponsoring it, the National Center for Constitutional Studies, claims to be unaffiliated with any political party. However, its website’s homepage features an endorsement by right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck, who is not known for his bipartisan opinions. Among the books they sell on their site is “America’s God and Country” which features quotes equating references to Christian themes as salvific proofs. You already know what I think about the incessant need some conservative pundits have for practically cannonizing our Founding Fathers.

If the NCCS can conduct an impartial, balanced, and historically accurate seminar on the Constitution, I certainly can’t oppose it. But I still don’t think an evangelical American church has any business promoting such a class. That is not the purpose of Christ's body, neither does it glorify His divine sovereignty. Of all the wonderful things the Constitution is, it is neither doctrinal nor infallible. God did not author it. Granted, Presbyterians place great stock in the Westminster Confession and other creeds - documents written without divine inspiration - but at least our Reformed creeds and confessions employ proof texts from the Bible to qualify their theology.

Knowing what I know about Glenn Beck, too, doesn’t convince me that he would endorse an organization that doesn’t put a conservative political spin on something as important as the Constitution. Glenn Beck says many things I actually agree with, but he also pontificates a lot on issues he perceives through the narrow lens of WASP traditionalism. Pluralism isn't necessarily good, but neither is conventional neo-conservative ideology. Many Republicans today find considerable solace in what they believe to be the original intentions of America's early leaders, but what is the extent to which we replace our trust in the sovereign God of the universe with an idealized version of our country's past?

Liberals Aren't Uneducated, but Other-Opinioned

Not that left-wingers have a better grasp on our Founding Fathers’ intentions for the Constitution than conservatives. I believe Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and the rest were flawed people with some good ideas and some really bad ones. But liberals want to be just as impertinent about core tenants of our history as conservatives are, only with different motives.

Indeed, this is the basic problem with our country’s growing debate over government and law. Even a well-meaning seminar on constitutional history can be subject to significant interpretation based on the instructor's political preferences. Conservatives such as the NCCS insinuate the reason our government faces a pending constitutional crisis is because their opponents don’t know our Constitution. But that’s not the problem, is it? Liberals aren't as ignorant of the Constitution as they are opposite of the interpretation conservatives espouse.

Having an electorate which is educated on what the Constitution says and doesn’t say could itself become a tug-of-war between conservatives and liberals, each of which thinks their interpretation is right and the other’s wrong. In this vein, I’m not sure how the NCCS can help, since by all appearances, they are at least right of center, if not veering far right. Objectivity has become a commodity in scarce supply these days, which while not negating the value in studying the Constitution, certainly redefines it.

A Global Perspective

Which brings us back to my original question. My church isn’t the only one promoting NCCS and studies of the Constitution. But should churches be doing that at all? How much is too much when it comes to churches getting involved in the political life of our country?

What about our global perspective as people of faith? After all, the Kingdom of God is far greater than the United States. While we have fundamental problems in our country, many of our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world would still love to trade places with us. Do communities of faith get too bogged-down in non-essentials when politics gets interwoven with doctrine?

If believers individually wish to attend events like a seminar on the Constitution, that's one thing. However, I don’t think churches should officially endorse them. The Gospel we’re supposed to be proclaiming is greater than our country and its Constitution. After all, Biblical freedom isn't so much about political freedom as it is freedom in Christ. Yes, a fine line does exist between teaching Christ’s expectations of His followers as national citizens and advocating particular political preferences. But isn't it a line we cross at our own risk?

The problems we have in the United States don't stem from a misunderstanding or misapplication of the Constitution; they stem from sin, don’t they? Presidents, judges, and legislatures who appear to be re-drawing the boundaries of our government’s three branches do so because of greed and lust for power. Friction between states and the Federal government take place because somebody wants what somebody else has. National borders aren’t protected because people bristle at laws. Take any negative headline from today’s newspaper and prove the root of the story doesn’t come from sin.

That doesn’t mean people of faith shouldn’t work for justice and peace, particularly here in America, where we have so many opportunities to do so. Learning more about our Constitution can be a good way of doing that, but applying what we know to be true from God’s Word is an even better way. Putting our faith into practice may involve learning about crucial documents related to our country's history, but more importantly, it means exercising the Fruits of the Spirit:

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Gentleness. Goodness. Meekness. Self-control.

How people interpret the Constitution helps explain our current national dialogue. How we demonstrate Christlikeness to people who interpret the Constitution differently than us would make a better seminar.

After all, God is our refuge, not George Washington.

_____

Bad Dad, China Spill, and Another Kagan

Make Room for Daddy's Vicarious Life

This week, 14-year-old Laura Dekker of the Netherlands has become the latest victim of parental abuse. Dekker's father, Richard, wants her to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone, as if that’s some sort of admirable achievement.

For a teenager to be able to survive a shipwreck is one thing, but doesn't a parent encouraging their teenager to unnecessarily attempt such a feat as crossing the globe in a boat solo represent an abrogation of parental responsibility? How is this less harmful than other forms of criminal behavior, like a leaving your kid in a hot car, or letting them drive without a license?

Dekker's mother did have some apprehension about the trip. Being divorced from her husband, she had taken out a guardianship order over her daughter which she allowed to be lifted only last week. Apparently, time is of the essence, because since Australian Jessica Watson, 16, just set the current record this past May, Dekker only has until 2012 to claim the title for herself.

As recently as this past June, Abby Sunderland was attempting the same feat as Dekker when her boat was damaged in a storm and she had to be rescued at sea. The French and Australians who saved her declined to press for repayment of the estimated $300,000 it cost to reunite her with her family. Sunderland's mother said they couldn't afford it anyway.

Hmm.

I am not an explorer, so maybe I can’t appreciate the thirst for danger and conquest that drives these uber-over-achieving parents. But I can’t escape my amazement that people who encourage such activity and risk for adolescents can be so foolhardy. Can’t they see they’re living vicariously through their pawn of a child?

What makes Dekker's trek even more absurd is that the Guinness Book of World Records has decided not to recognize such stunts anymore out of its own concerns for parental stupidity and child safety.

Greenpeace is Equal-Opportunity

In case right-wing conservatives have ever doubted that far-left-wing Greenpeace serves any useful purpose, recent news from China may help portray the environmentalist group in a different light.

While we’ve been dealing with our own oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, China has been trying to sweep a much smaller – yet potentially far more lethal – oil accident under the rug. Literally.

After an explosion and fire at a crude transfer station in the port city of Dalian, conflicting reports of the extent of the resulting oil slick into the Yellow Sea began to emerge, prompting Greenpeace experts to examine the incident. After their investigation, they produced a report last week which has been validated by independent experts and local citizens in Dalian – and has been refuted by the Chinese government, a sure sign of its accuracy.

In their report, Greenpeace alleges that as fires spread after the initial explosion at the transfer depot, a large oil tank was manually drained to reduce the risk of further catastrophe. You see, the fire could have reached another nearby tank holding a lethal mixture of the liquid chemical dimethylbenzene. Highly flammable and poisonous, dimethylbenzene is a component in some solvents which, if released into the atmosphere over Dalian’s six million inhabitants, could have killed thousands.

Although the Chinese managed to avert one disaster by saving the tank holding the dimethylbenzene, they let raw crude from the nearby tank they had drained flow down into the bay. Officially, the Chinese say only 11,000 barrels of oil were released, compared to the estimated five million barrels in the Gulf of Mexico. But the tank which had been drained could hold up to 365,000 barrels of crude. By comparison, Alaska's Exxon Valdez spill involved 270,000 barrels.

While the Chinese may be correct in assuming the tank they drained was almost empty anyway, Chinese fishermen up and down the coast near Dalian report having seen a massive oil slick up to two miles from shore. A lot of it is gone now along the shoreline, because as I said, the Chinese actually employed legions of locals to sop up the oil along the coast, using reed mats and rugs, along with socks stuffed with human hair (a method, surprisingly, BP claimed would be ineffective in the Gulf). Environmental experts have actually been stunned at the remarkable progress the Chinese have made in cleaning up their mess in such a short period of time.

Of course, the Chinese government being the Chinese government, a lot may never be known – 0r proven – regarding their recent oil spill. They may have been right all along, and the quick clean-up may be proof that only 11,000 barrels were released into the Yellow Sea, although even aerial surveillance of the area after the accident showed otherwise.

But can’t Greenpeace at least be credited for giving both capitalists and communists an equal run for their money?

Liberal Teachers Perpetuating Myths

And a familiar name in the news this week has been Elena Kagan's, having won her nomination to the Supreme Court yesterday along mostly partisan lines. But Kagan isn't the only newsworthy celebrity from her family, at least not in their hometown of New York City.

Her brother, Irving Kagan, is a teacher at Hunter College High School in Manhattan, a highly-ranked school for intellectually gifted pupils, and of which his sister, Elena, is an alumnus. Teachers there have been fighting with school administrators at Hunter College and the City University of New York, both of which control the high school (yes, don't get me started on NYC bureaucracies), regarding what they perceive as a student admissions process which is biased against blacks and Hispanics.

Specifically, the admissions process at HCHS consists of one exam which measures language and math proficiency, which the teachers believe prohibits a consideration of other criteria, such as artistic aptitude and social skills. They point to falling percentages of enrolled blacks and Hispanics as proof that the test only benefits kids from, well, families and environments where education and achievement are stressed.

Hmmm.... Isn't that supposed to be the target group of schools for academically-gifted students?

Anyway, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's brother, Irving, has been somewhat of a pot-stirring ringleader among the teachers, even going so far as to read aloud a letter of no-confidence written by a group of teachers to one of their administrators in her office. The whole thing has gotten tongues wagging in the rare air of prestigious academia.

Not that I personally have any problem with teachers expressing righteous indignation at real problems in their school. But unless I'm missing something, aren't Irving Kagan and his fellow instructors still living in the Dark Ages of Affirmative Action?

True, most of the student body at HCHS is Asian and Caucasian, but does that mean the entrance exam is biased against blacks and Hispanics? Have these teachers ever heard of the term "spurious relationships"? Just because two facts may look like they're correlated doesn't mean they are. If the whole point of the school's existence is to foster the educational potential of intellectually-gifted New York City high school students, then maybe having a dearth of blacks and Hispanics should be telling people that there's a disconnect not with the ADMISSIONS process but the way blacks and Hispanics, in general, are raising their children.

Re-defining the admissions process to evaluate qualifications which have less and less to do with intellect hardly sounds like a viable way to maintain school standards which, in turn, help their students become successful adults. Does coddling kids in high school create high-functioning college students and college graduates?

To their credit, administrators at Hunter College have held their ground on admissions standards. And few people are surprised to hear that the illustriously liberal Kagan family has more than one leftward-marching progeny.

But in this day and age - when so many studies and educated minorities now recognize that it's not the standards that are wrong, or even a person's skin color, but the way some people raise their kids - it seems almost laughable that a cloistered group of educators in one of the country's most elite high schools is doing the very thing they're always accusing their conservative antagonists of doing:

Playing the race card.
_____

Blogger in the Court

If you’re not a fan of Major League Baseball, or you don’t live in north Texas, the issue of who owns the Texas Rangers baseball team probably means little to you.

And actually, it wouldn’t mean much to me, either, except that ever since this past winter, Hall of Fame legend Nolan Ryan has been trying to buy his former team from debt-ridden Tom Hicks. Only Ryan and his partners, Pittsburgh attorney Chuck Greenberg and Fort Worth entrepreneur Bob Simpson, have been hounded and tripped by Hicks’ creditors, bankruptcy lawyers, and even last-minute bidder Mark Cuban, the dot-com billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball franchise.

It’s all made for a confusing, frustrating, and roller-coaster journey as north Texas baseball fans, the City of Arlington (where I live and the Rangers play), and the media have had to watch as one of the most revered and honored baseball players-turned-managers in the history of the game has endured the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune in an unprecedented court case.

Baseball As a Business

The last time a Major League Baseball franchise was sold at auction was the Baltimore Orioles in 1993. Back then, the financial stakes were considerably lower and the personalities involved far less prominent. This time, the Texas Rangers are way ahead in their division and making a serious run for a World Series berth. Nolan Ryan has been team president for three seasons and had reinvigorated not only the players but also the fans.

Once a flamboyant billionaire investor, Tom Hicks exuded an awkward mentality that never set the right tone. He feuded with partners, overpaid for superstar players, traded fan favorites, botched a proposed mega-development for retail space around the Ranger’s home ballpark, and sweet-talked sub-prime lenders into loaning him money that eventually cost him the team.

At first, this past winter, the Ryan/Greenberg group appeared to have reached a deal with Hicks to buy the Rangers and help Hicks get out from his debts, but when Hicks’ creditors did the math, they didn’t want to be held responsible for their risky loans. They didn’t care that their due diligence on Hicks had been as worthless as his credit. So they forced the Ryan/Greenberg deal into court, and eventually into bankruptcy court.

As if on cue, the irascible owner of the Dallas Stars - who bought the begrudging admiration of his fans by getting multiple fines from the NBA for disorderly conduct - decided to enter the fray. Like a shark smelling blood, Cuban circled the bankruptcy waters, at first telling the media that his curiosity had simply been piqued. Before too long, however, Cuban had aligned himself with a Houston bidder for the Rangers, challenging the Ryan/Greenberg offer and playing the spoiler role he so obviously loves.

Get Ready. Get Set...

Fast forward to yesterday, when all sides took their places in a bankruptcy courtroom in Fort Worth, county seat for where the Rangers play. The bankruptcy judge had set up an auction for the Texas Rangers to be sold off like some antique vase or foreclosed condo. With the air of an old west duel, the "Ryan Express" faced off against Cuban’s team, a.k.a "Radical Pitch," with predictably unpredictable north Texas sports fans roughly split between the two.

Now, I don’t know much about baseball, but I know enough to respect the importance of having a bona-fide legend like Nolan Ryan being part of “the organization,” in sportscaster parlance. Ryan had pretty much told the bankruptcy judge that he wasn’t interested in staying on as a team executive if Greenberg, considered a baseball purist, wasn’t somewhere in the ownership mix. Neither Cuban nor the other contenders who had voiced an interest in buying the Rangers, including Fox News, were considered traditional baseball ownership material. So even though I haven’t been to a ballgame in two years, I wanted Ryan’s team to win.

By way of full disclosure, one of my former employers, another legendary Rangers player, the catcher Jim Sundberg, has been a personal friend of Ryan’s for years. Both Ryan and Sundberg are also personal friends with former president George W. Bush, who was part of the ownership group that sold the Rangers to Hicks years ago. However, I have a lot more respect for Ryan than I do Bush! If I had the opportunity to meet either of those men, it’d definitely be Ryan.

Live Auction

By mid-morning, I figured the auction should have been flying along at a pretty rapid clip, so I surfed the Internet to see who was ahead. But the only people who were ahead appeared to be everybody’s lawyers, who are billed by the hour. Some bidding had taken place, but it seemed as though a lot more time was being spent evaluating than auctioning.

The local news site I check most often, CBS 11, had a live blogger in the Fort Worth courtroom, who was posting feeds and providing a blow-by-blow account of proceedings as they happened. So I clicked on the link, and quickly found myself sucked into the drama – albeit a very slow moving drama – playing out between Ryan and Cuban’s legal teams. And the judge, and the lenders, and the court-appointed restructuring officer, each having their say as well.

I didn’t stick like glue to the live blog feed being provided by Channel 11, but I checked it often throughout the afternoon, and then the early evening, and then later last night, and finally – after I decided I’d already invested too much time to quit now – until the final offer and counter-offer at about 12:45 this morning, which resulted in Ryan’s group winning ownership of the Texas Rangers.

For the princely sum of $593 million, including over $200 million in Hicks' miserable debt.

Live Courtroom Blogging: The New Trend?

Aside from the amazing price tag, the courtroom drama, and the personalities involved, one of the unique aspects of yesterday’s auction involved the live blog feed coming from the camera-less courtroom in downtown Fort Worth. Sure, a lot of reporters were there to watch the proceedings, and I believe there was at least one other news agency – possibly another local TV station – either Tweeting or blogging like Channel 11 was, so I can’t say they were the only ones who had that idea. And who knows how many lower-profile cases have already been documented by people in a courtroom texting the play-by-play live.

But to my knowledge – and judging by the rave reviews people posted on Channel 11’s blog throughout the day – this is the first major courtroom spectacle with live blogging attracting so much attention. And it made so much sense. Anybody with Internet connectivity could follow the action as the day wore on, and Channel 11’s feed archived the entire day’s postings, so you could scroll backwards and catch up on developments. As I’ve said, people could post their own comments and questions, many of which the Channel 11 blogger answered right there.

In fact, some of the comments people posted helped break up the long delays in courtroom action and almost made it a community event.

Humor In the Night

For example, at 8:02pm, long after many of us naïve auction-watchers thought the Rangers would have been sold, somebody using the name Nodukes posted this comment:

“I'm having trouble finding this auction on eBay...can someone please forward me the link?”

As the evening wore on, and five-minute recesses turned into half-hour stalls, with lawyers bickering, $2 million bid increments being inspected by opposing parties, and frequent complaints about fuzzy procedures, nobody could tell who was really ahead.

One minute before midnight, as legal teams argued in separate rooms, somebody using the name Jerry Jones (the egotistical owner of the Dallas Cowboys) posted this comment:

“Is it time for me to step in yet?”

A few minutes later, as Channel 11 reported lawyers were still conferencing, somebody using the name Wes Chapman posted this comment:

“Brett Favre just called... he wants his drama back”

After Cuban’s lawyers upped the cash portion of their bid to around $355 million, someone using the name Chris posted this reality check:

“Some of the things the losing bidder could buy instead: 6 Dallas Arts District deck parks, 5 Calatrava bridges, or 1 American Airlines Center plus 10,000,000 mosquito nets to fight disease in Africa”

Soon after that, things went wild in the courtroom, as Channel 11’s blogger struggled to keep up with the blizzard of activity. Cuban’s lawyers announced a staggering cash bid of $390 million, Ryan’s team countered with $385, and – to everyone’s surprise – won.

Channel 11 reported that the courtroom erupted in a standing ovation, with some reporters flying downstairs to prepare for live on-air reports. Meanwhile, our reliable blogger had filled us in on everything, including the high-fives and jubilant shouts in the courtroom and the palpable sense of relief that the day’s events were over. The judge left, Cuban’s folks left, and suddenly, Channel 11’s blogger posted this hilarious coda:

“12:49 CBS11 in Court: court clerk says quote of the night: "My 5 minutes is 5 minutes. Get your stuff out of the courtroom before we lock it!”

_____

Pro-Illegals Can't Muster Proof Points

From the capital of illusion, Tinseltown, comes journalist Gregory Rodriguez with a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece on July 26 questioning all the fuss over Arizona's recent SB 1070 regarding illegal immigration.

And while opponents of illegal immigration won't be surprised at the sarcastic tone Rodriguez employs to belittle us, his misrepresentation of facts perpetuates one of the more demoralizing aspects of this issue. It's not enough to simply ignore the defiance of law and order promoted by defenders of illegal immigration, but the spuriousness with which they claim to defend their argument perhaps aptly illustrates subversive biases they bring to the table.

Proof Points Cannot be Spurious

Merriam-Webster defines "spurious" as something "of falsified or erroneously attributed origin; forged; of a deceitful nature or quality." Many of the arguments posited by Rodriguez fall into this category because while the facts he presents may be legitimate, they do not provide legitimate support for his position. They are red herrings meant to create the perception that illegal immigration is not the important issue many of us claim it to be.

Spurious facts may indeed be factual, but they don't provide the "proof points" to fairly authenticate one's point of view. Proof points are data and facts which correlate to and support an issue.

Regular readers of my blog will know that actually, while I am opposed to illegal immigration, I am pro-immigration. I also oppose Arizona's SB 1070 because I agree with those who say it could promote racial profiling. However, as I've also said before, SB 1070 is itself a symptom of the much larger problem of our federal government's abdication of authority.

The facts Rodriguez throws at this debate don't stick to any of these issues. They may be true in and of themselves, but they don't prove his argument.

Dissecting Rodriguez's Article

GR: "With the immigration debate heating up — and a federal court case over Arizona's SB 1070 brewing — you'd think that the U.S. was besieged by growing numbers of illegal immigrants. But you'd be wrong."

Proof Point: The immigration debate isn't heating up - the debate over ILLEGAL immigration has reached a level where federal inaction is unsustainable. Drawing a correlation between the US being "besieged by growing numbers of illegal immigrants" and SB 1070 is Rodriguez's mistake, not Arizona's. SB 1070 is not a response to "growing numbers" of new illegal immigrants. Border states like Arizona have been dealing with the ramifications of illegal immigration for years.
_____

GR: "Despite the heightened rhetoric and the bloodcurdling vitriol surrounding the issue, illegal immigration has actually declined significantly over the last few years. While journalists like to characterize the anger over immigration as a response to facts on the ground — i.e. people are inundated and incensed — the numbers don't bear them out."

Proof Point: Few people deny the numbers of illegal Hispanic immigrants have declined in the past couple of years since the tanking of our economy and stricter enforcement; however, the issue remains dire because of the large numbers of illegals already here, and because illegals continue to cross the border. Lower numbers doesn't mean illegal immigration has stopped or that the illegals already here aren't demanding services from US taxpayers or skewing manual labor pay scales.
_____

GR: "And there's more. Despite the drumbeat about hordes of undocumented Mexicans who have come north to take our jobs, consider this: According to the Pew Hispanic Center, between 2005 and 2008, the number of Mexican migrants arriving in the U.S. actually declined by 40%."

Proof Point: Any decline of less than 100% doesn't prove that illegal immigration isn't a problem. 60% of past illegal immigration rates still yields a high number, doesn't it?
_____

GR: "Finally, the Census Bureau's American Community Survey last fall revealed a historic decline in the percentage of U.S. residents who are foreign-born — from 12.6% in 2007 to 12.5% in 2008. That represents only about 40,000 people numerically, but it is the first time since the 1970 census — 40 years ago — that the foreign-born percentage of the U.S. population has gone down."

Proof Point: This is another spurious correlation regarding illegal immigration; for example, "foreign-born" doesn't take into account the number of births to illegal immigrant mothers in the United States.
_____

GR: "So, in the face of all this data showing that legal and illegal immigration is down dramatically, what's all the fuss about?"

Proof Point: The "fuss" has to do with the fact that decades of rampant illegal Hispanic immigration cannot be mitigated by two years' worth of reduced data. Experts have claimed that illegal immigration is big business in Mexico, where human traffickers have adopted more violent and even less humane smuggling practices and have escalated the violence and danger US law enforcement officials and legal residents of border states face as they deal with the continued insurgence of illegal immigrants into sovereign United States land.
_____

GR: "The easy answer, of course, is that the economy is tough and historically people have looked for targets to blame for their feelings of impotence."

Proof Point: Americans have been protesting illegal immigration for years, even when our economy was booming. This is not a new issue. SB 1070 is the culmination of years of frustration, but it is not a reaction to a sudden phenomenon.
_____

GR: "Furthermore, the right wing, where much of the anti-immigrant frenzy comes from, no longer has an authoritative voice of reason pressing for decency on the issue. Four years ago, after President George W. Bush unsuccessfully launched his own effort at comprehensive immigration reform, he warned against "harsh, ugly rhetoric." Today, Bush is hardly heard from and the right has an "open borders" policy on over-the-top rhetoric."

Proof Point: While it is easy to blame right-wingers, there are plenty of conservatives who actually encourage illegal immigration and want it to continue because it means artificially low labor costs. To the consternation of many conservatives, Bush waffled on illegal immigration because of his deep-pocketed business friends who benefit from cheap labor by illegals.
_____

GR: "Struggling newspapers seeking to engage readers at any cost are also part of the problem. Whereas racist rants were once confined to marginal websites, today many papers — including this one — have opened their online comments section to, well, complete nut-jobs. Allowing vitriolic racial rhetoric to remain on a mainstream website is to give it a level of acceptability."

Proof Point: It's surprising to hear a supposedly liberal journalist champion the cause of many conservatives: that the media perpetuates stereotypes and contributes to inaccurate portrayals of news events. And to the degree that the Internet has opened the opinion floodgates to complete "nut-jobs," that's why people need to educate themselves so they can sift hyperbole from fact and fiction. I think most logical people agree on this point.
_____

GR: "There may be those who see hatred as a justifiable means to an end. Perhaps they hope that all this harsh rhetoric will keep even more illegal immigrants at home. But they'd be silly to think that such invective only makes life harder for immigrants. Unfortunately, it also actively degrades our culture, our public square and our democracy."

Proof Point: How are the human rights of illegal immigrants respected when their own governments actually encourage their citizens to break sovereign laws of a neighboring country? How much protection does the Mexican government offer illegal migrants moving through their own country? What about the rapes and other abuses perpetrated upon South American migrants by Mexican nationals - including Mexican public safety officials who are complicit by their ambivalence? For any Central and South American government to tell their poor people to break into a neighboring country and wire home hard-earned money at pennies on the American labor dollar should speak more forcefully about abominable human rights abuses than America simply trying to protect its borders. How many Hispanic activists would be championing the rights of illegal immigrants if the people group we were discussing came from Africa? Or China?