In
this Issue:
Love
(and Deport) thy neighbor?: Conservatives Discuss Immigration
Angels in America Tickets on Sale: Tickets expected to sell
fast
Senators Slam President over Defying Statutes: Democrats
cry for rule of law, Bush
Commentary by Cindy Sheehan: Mission Accomplished Day
Love (and Deport) thy Neighbor?
Conservatives Discuss Immigration
by Todd J. Gillman
Originally Published by the Dallas Morning News
 For people of faith, the immigration debate requires a trip
through a maze of seemingly contradictory teachings.
Does a focus on family values demand a tight border to protect
Americans from outsiders, or an open-door policy to ensure
opportunity to the poor of other nations? It is more important
to welcome the stranger or to respect the rule of law?
At a forum Thursday hosted by the conservative Christian
group Family Research Council, conservative and liberal religious
leaders lobbed Bible verses, unable to agree on what Jesus
would do about the nation's nearly 12 million illegal immigrants.
Immigrant
advocates warned that a crackdown would harm families and
violate Scripture. And a lawmaker leading the charge for
tougher enforcement decried the impulse to direct "compassion" at
foreigners while ignoring the plight of low-income Americans.
The
three-hour conversation, intense and inconclusive, reflected
the gray contours of the moral and political debate over
immigration – from
the pulpit, along Main Street and in Congress.
"We have a right to expect the government
to fulfill its divinely ordained mandate to punish those
who break the laws and reward those who do not. Romans 13," said
Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's
Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. "We also
have a divine mandate to act redemptively and compassionately
toward those who are in need."
The trick, he said, is to balance those twin mandates.
In
terms of policy, he sees neither moral imperative nor political
will to round up and deport illegal immigrants. But until
the government reverses its "disgraceful failure" to
guard the border, he added, there won't be much interest
in a guest worker program, either.
Public
opinion polls show that conservatives – political
and religious – generally favor a crackdown, including
tighter border controls, criminal penalties for employers
who hire illegal workers, perhaps even sanctions against
the immigrants themselves.
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Angels
in America
Sunday, May 21 | 6:30 pm
Bath House Cultural Center
 Hope
for Peace & Justice presents a benefit performance
of Tony Kushner’s Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning
epic Angels in America-Part One: Millennium Approaches
on Sunday, May 21 at 6:30 p.m. The cast features Hope for
Peace & Justice staff member David Plunkett as Joseph
Porter Pitt. By purchasing your tickets to this performance,
you help us raise money for important campaigns, programs
and workshops. Your $50 ticket includes an invitation to
a post-show dessert reception.
Click
here to buy tickets.
In the
first Dallas production of this “gay fantasia on
national themes” in more than a decade, Risk Theatre
Initiative (RTI) offers an intimate, non-traditional presentation.
Widely considered to be the most ambitious American play
of our time, Angels in America transports it’s audience
from earth to heaven, from New York City to Salt Lake City
to Antarctica, from the frightening confines of an agoraphobic’s
mind to the crushing guilt of leaving a loved one you can
no longer love properly, to the bright white light of hope
regained in the face of ultimate loss. In what is becoming
a tradition for the young company, RTI defies expectation
and perceived limitations with Kushner's intensely human,
politically charged and theatrically magical exploration
of change and loss on personal, national and metaphysical
levels.
The performance
will be at the Bath House Cultural Center, 521 E. Lawther
Drive, Dallas, TX 75218, on White Rock Lake.
Click
here to buy tickets today!
Senators Slam President over Defying
Statutes
Say he cannot claim powers above the law
by Charlie Savage
Originally published by the Boston Globe
 Three leading Democratic senators blasted President Bush
yesterday for having claimed he has the authority to defy
more than 750 statutes enacted since he took office, saying
that the president's legal theories are wrong and that he
must obey the law.
''We're
a government of laws, not men," Senate
minority leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said in
a statement. ''It is not for George W. Bush to disregard
the Constitution and decide that he is above the law."
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on
the Judiciary Committee, accused Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney of attempting to concentrate ever more government
power in their own hands.
''The
Bush-Cheney administration has cultivated an insidious
brand of unilateralism that regularly crosses into an arrogance
of power," Leahy said in a statement.
''The scope of the administration's assertions of power
is stunning, and it is chilling."
Senator
Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, also said
that the Bush administration, abetted by ''a compliant
Republican Congress," was undermining the
checks and balances that ''guard against abuses of power
by any single branch of government."
The opposition lawmakers were reacting to a report in Sunday's
Boston Globe detailing the scope of Bush's assertions that
he can ignore laws that conflict with his interpretation
of the Constitution.
Bush is the first president since Thomas
Jefferson to stay so long in office without vetoing a bill
-- an act that gives the public notice that he has rejected
a provision and gives Congress a chance to override his judgment.
Instead, Bush has signed into law every bill that reached
his desk, often in public ceremonies in which he praises
the legislation and its sponsors.
Then,
after the ceremony, Bush has quietly appended ''signing
statements" to more than one out
of every 10 bills he has signed, laying out his legal interpretation
for government officials to follow when implementing the
new laws. The statements, which until recently attracted
little attention in Congress or in the media, are filed
without fanfare in the federal record.
In many cases, Bush has said he can ignore acts of Congress
that seek to regulate the military and spy agencies, asserting
the Constitution grants him that power as commander in
chief. For example, he has claimed the power to waive
a torture ban, provisions for oversight in the Patriot
Act, limits on domestic wiretapping, and numerous regulations
for the military.
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Mission Accomplished Day
by Cindy Sheehan
Originally Published by CommonDreams.org
 May
1st, 2006 will be the 3rd Anniversary of the end of "major
combat" in Iraq. It was a glorious day when George Bush
flew onto the deck of the Abraham Lincoln and was hailed
by the rapturous throngs of toadie "news" persons
such as Chris Matthews ("And that's the president looking
very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star," Hardball,
May 1, 2003) and Bob Schieffer ("As far as I'm concerned,
that was one of the great pictures of all time. And if you're
a political consultant, you can just see campaign commercial
written all over the pictures of George Bush." Meet
the Press, May 4, 2003). What a fast and clean war! G. Gordon
Liddy was enthralled with the president's package ("all
those women who say size doesn't count -- they're all liars." Hardball,
May 7, 2003) and a new era free from terrorism was ushered
in.
This is the faith based fable of what happened almost exactly
three years ago. The reality based scenario goes something
like this:
- Over 2400 American soldiers (including my son who was
killed almost a year after Mission Accomplished Day) have
come home in cardboard boxes in cargo areas of planes in
the secrecy of the night.
- Thousands of our young people wounded, many grievously
also bused into Walter Reed and other hospitals in the
dark of the night.
- Tons of rubble upon rubble in Iraq with inconsistent
electrical power still and not much clean water or chance
of future power and clean water.
- Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians are
dead, being punished for the sins of a leader who was propped
up, armed and supported by many US Regimes.
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