The US Conference of Catholic Bishops says, “no“:

Speaking for the U.S. bishops, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles told the House Judiciary Committee on Jan. 26 that the country should not return to a model of immigration enforcement based on workplace raids. Instead, he urged lawmakers to seek immigration reform that is both humane and just…

…Archbishop Gomez rejected any notion that the government should place its highest priority on rounding up those who have broken U.S. immigration laws. The workplace raids, he said, often had the effect of breaking up families, especially by separating children from their parents for significant periods of time.

While acknowledging the nation’s duty to secure its borders and enforce civil law, Archbishop Gomez indicated that the family –as an institution which is prior to any state– must be given priority, as a matter of natural law…

It is a very Catholic thing that borders are not considered inviolable – the Church does not hold that the nation-State is the highest expression of human achievement. This is a very important truth which has been very much lost on the modern world. It is the human being which is the main concern, and it is the human family which is the building block of the social organization. The State exists to protect the individual and the family, and that is pretty much it – anything which tends to unjustly harm the individual and/or the family is not a proper action of government.

As such, to harm an individual or a family because of a State need is something only to be done for the gravest of reasons – and stopping a Mexican from working at McDonald’s right this moment doesn’t rise to that level. Of course, a State must secure its borders – insecure borders present a clear and present danger to the individuals and families which live within the border. Given this, a balance must be struck – the need to be humane and understanding must be balanced against the need for national security.

Ultimately, it is to the border that we must address ourselves – arresting illegals in country and even heavily punishing people who employ them is to merely attack the symptoms, not the disease. The problem is that we don’t control our border. Once we do control our borders, then we won’t have an ever larger number of illegal immigrants being employed by an ever larger number of American companies. That done, we can address ourselves to figuring out the most just and merciful way of dealing with those who were allowed in because of our failure – as a people – to ensure basic justice as embodied in a secure border.

As long time readers know, I’m in favor of an amnesty to deal with those illegals who have come in to this country some years ago and who have not, subsequent to the illegal border crossing, committed any serious crimes (murder, rape, assault, robbery, financial/welfare fraud). Those who have committed crimes – once their prison term is up – must be deported, as have all those who have only been here a relatively short time. Those we amnesty must go to the back of the naturalization line and pay a fine equal to twice the cost of obtaining legal residence and citizenship in the United States. None of this must happen until after the border is secure – and that border must be made secure regardless of how much it costs. If it takes a 50 foot high, electrified wall along the entire border from the Gulf of Mexico to San Diego, then that is what we’ll have to do. Whatever it takes.

For all those who will be angry over this opinion of mine – liberals because I’m not in favor of open borders and immediate Democrat voter registration of the illegals; my fellow conservatives because I don’t want to deport all the illegals, I direct your attention to today’s Mass reading:

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.” – Matthew 5:1-2

It isn’t always easy figuring out the right thing to do – but I think I’m on the right track, here.

Interesting bit of news:

Dozens of protesters have been arrested in Saudi Arabia’s second biggest city after they protested against the weaknesses of infrastructure of Jeddah.

The protests were triggered on Friday after floods swept through the city, killing at least four people, and raising fears of a repeat of the deadly 2009 deluge, in which more than 120 people lost their lives…

Another pebble to get the avalanche rolling? Time will tell…

HAT TIP: Mish’s

From the Daily Caller:

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton warns Egypt’s ancient Coptic Christian minority could become increasingly endangered should the protests against Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak drive him from power…

…Bolton points out Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which promotes the Islamist ideology employed more violently by Hamas and other terror groups, stands to gain despite being a late comer to the revolt.

“One thing I want to say about all of these young people and all of these university students is what they’re learning in the universities is very similar to what the Muslim Brotherhood preaches,” Bolton said. “So we have to worry about the radicalism among the students is very, very high.”…

The really bad news is that no matter how it comes out, Egypt’s Christians will come out losers – they are already severely repressed by Mubarak’s regime and a successor regime, especially if the Islamo-fascists of the Moslem Brotherhood gain influence, will likely be even worse.

Ultimately, unless Moslems learn how to be tolerant, the only hope for the Christians of the Middle east is self government. The Copts of Egypt are, after all, the descendants of the original inhabitants of Egypt and so it would be a matter of simple justice to break off part of Egypt and make it a Christian nation. Only thus can Christians be certain of such basic rights as life, property and the freedom to worship.

UPDATE: The Moslem Brotherhood makes a play for influence in Egypt and a spreading Islamist revolt.

UPDATE II: Seems the Egyptian police has ceased to patrol the Gaza/Egypt border and the bad guys are now moving in to Egypt – from NRO’s The Corner:

Stratfor, the news analysis service, is now reporting the following, which it states is from its source in Hamas but which it has not confirmed. It is consistent with other reports that the Egyptian police have melted away:

The Egyptian police are no longer patrolling the Rafah border crossing into Gaza. Hamas armed men are entering into Egypt and are closely collaborating with the MB [Muslim Brotherhood]. The MB has fully engaged itself in the demonstrations, and they are unsatisfied with the dismissal of the Cabinet. They are insisting on a new Cabinet that does not include members of the ruling National Democratic Party.

The question now: what will Egypt’s army do? Clamp down on the protesters and sent Hamas packing? Or allow Hamas to take armed control of the revolution? Bad news for the whole world if anyone remotely connected to Hamas/MB gets in to power in Egypt…means almost certain war with Israel and Lord only knows what else.

UPDATE III: NRO also has a report about how Egypt’s Copts are fairing:

Upper Egypt, the southern part of the country where many rural Christian Copts live, has been tensely quiet, I’m hearing from knowledgeable sources. This is an area of farmers and peasants, who have limited internet access and relatively low literacy. The area has also had a long-term and strong security presence due to sectarian tensions and to its serving as a traditional base for Islamic extremists (Gamaa’at Islamiyah, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Sadat’s assassins, the Luxor tourists attackers). For now, most people in the south are bracing for the worst, stocking food supplies, and huddling around their televisions and radios following developments to the north.

The people pushing it just can’t help but lie – from the PJ Tattler:

…meteorologists are judged on results: if you get the predictions wrong too often, or by too much, you’re not doing your job. So when the Meteorological Office in the UK predicted “another warm winter” for this year, and got instead the coldest snowiest winter in perhaps as much as a thousand years, it was a bit of a scandal, and difficult to explain.

A Met Office source leaked an explanation to Roger Harrabin at the Telegraph: there was a secret report to the government that had predicted the cold winter, so it wasn’t the Met Office’s fault if Government hadn’t done enough…

A secret weather forecast? The PM got together Britain’s top forecasters for a double secret probation conference?

No, not that. More than likely, the meteorologists just did their thing and their thing didn’t match what the global warming zealots wanted…”coldest winter in 1,000 years” is very hard to square with “we’re warming every year”. Coming hard on all the stories of outright fraud underlying the global warming assumptions, my guess is that someone in government spiked the real weather prediction and was just hoping the meteorologists got it wrong and the winter would turn out, if not very warm, at least not very cold.

Anyone who is still holding that anthropogenic global warming is “settled science” is just blowing smoke – the world may, indeed, be warming up as part of a long term trend, but it is abundantly clear by now that if it is doing this, we don’t know why. And, so, any efforts to curb human CO2 emissions in the name of AGW are folly. Still go ahead and curb them because pollution is bad, but don’t try to sell an end-of-the-world story as part of your effort.

They just can’t stand it when someone in any way, shape or form dissents from liberal orthodoxy:

Washington University in St. Louis, one of the most highly-regarded colleges in the nation, is raising eyebrows with its sudden cancellation of a speech on abstinence education Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol Palin was slated to deliver…

What spiked it was a campaign by Planned Parenthood and other abortion activists who figured that the last place anyone should be having an open discussion is a college campus. Abstinence – you know, being sexual responsible and thus able to take an adult’s place in the world – is opposed by our liberals because it might create independent people who rule their own lives. Additionally, we have a Palin involved and you know how that gets any liberal out there foaming at the mouth. Here’s the real kicker about this:

…The protests were led in part by “Private Practice” star Kate Walsh, a member of the Planned Parenthood board of directors who has been in trouble with pro-life advocates for urging donations and support for the abortion business.

“Welcome to the Idiocracy…please join students at Wash.U. to boycott Bristol Palin’s speech on abstinence. What does she know about college or abstaining?” Walsh tweeted…

Oh, I don’t know, Kate – maybe being a single mother would give her some insights on the perils of NOT ABSTAINING. Additionally, maybe it would be good for the kids to hear a variety of view points so that they can sift the evidence and come to their own conclusions? You know, that whole “independent thought” thingy?

I guess not.

Excellent description of our actual situation from Jerry Bowyer over at Forbes:

…Increasingly our nation is divided, not between Rs and Ds, but between TIs and TBs: tribute imposers and tribute bearers. The imposers are gigantic banks, agri-businesses, higher education Colossae, government employees, NGO and QUANGO employees and the myriad others whose living is made chiefly by extracting wealth from other people. The bearers are the rest of us: the people who extract wealth from the earth, not from others.

What is the difference between crony capitalism and socialism? Not much. Both systems are based on a lack of appreciation of individual liberty. Both systems depend on elaborate centralized bureaucracies. In both systems, large proportions of people work for the government. Does it really make that much difference whether the government money is reported as W-2 income as opposed to 1099 income? Don’t the favored people become rich under socialism?…

A vast apparatus has been erected upon the body of America and it has entirely wrecked the nation – not only in terms of extracting wealth from us and hampering our wealth creation, but also throwing us in to a moral sewer where our kids get to contend with drugs, pornography and crime so that the Ruling Class can feel bohemian while they hide behind security gates and private police forces. This Ruling Class – the Tribute Imposers as noted above – simply have to go.

Cutting the government budgets – local, State and federal – is vital in and of itself: we face complete economic collapse because of our level of debt. But it is also important in another way – it allows us to de-fund our Ruling Class. From bureaucrats manning government agencies to taxpayer-subsidized “private” corporations, the people who make a mess of our nation live directly or indirectly upon us via the tax code. Cutting off their funding destroys their power (unemployed bureaucrats and banksters don’t have much authority) while also eliminating the need for a host of taxes and regulations, all built up for the sole purpose of enriching and protecting our Tribute Imposers.

This will be the oddest of revolutions – not only because it will be non-violent, but because it will really work out to nothing more, in the end, than changing a few laws and eliminating a host of regulations. Once done, America will be able to breath easy again and we’ll be able to get on with what America’s job has always been – building a better life for our selves and our children, and standing as a beacon of liberty in the world. Get rid of this great, useless rock of government and quasi-government corporations, and it will be like living in a new nation, again.

And so, let’s do it…

Geesh:

Rush Limbaugh’s imitation of the Chinese language during a recent speech made by Chinese President Hu Jintao has stirred a backlash among Asian-American lawmakers in California and nationally.

California state Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, is leading a fight in demanding an apology from the radio talk show host for what he and others view as racist and derogatory remarks against the Chinese people.

In recent days, the state lawmaker has rallied civil rights groups in a boycott of companies like Pro Flowers, Sleep Train and Domino’s Pizza that advertise on Limbaugh’s national talk radio show…

Oh, for crying out loud – he wasn’t insulting Americans of Chinese or other east Asian decent: he was mocking the dictator of China…something all Americans should applaud, most especially those who have cultural ties to China and its long-suffering people. Mr. Yee, rather than attacking a fellow American who is on the side of the Chinese people against their anti-human regime, why don’t you spend some time working for the good of others? Maybe its time to lay aside playing the race card from the bottom of the deck?

It is just so disgusting to see liberals go on like this – absolutely no sense; sense of proportion or sense of humor. No wonder Rush keeps half his brain tied behind his back – if he used the whole thing, liberals would spontaneously combust.

From PBS:

In an exclusive interview with the NewsHour, Vice President Joe Biden told Jim Lehrer Thursday afternoon that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the target of anti-government demonstrations in Cairo, is someone he knows “fairly well” and does not consider to be a dictator. But the “time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move in the direction of being more responsive to some of the needs of the people out there.”…

Look, Joe; either back him, or throw him under the bus – don’t say the man who has been in charge for 30 years isn’t a dictator and then opine that he should stop dictating policy. For crying out loud, please try not to be entirely stupid in these matters.

We hitched our wagon to Mubarak’s regime 30 years ago and it is gotten us nothing in return. To me, its time for a bit of “underbus” with this man and his rotten government – but what we’re getting is incoherence which will make us despised all over the place – by people yearning to be free, as well as the dictators shooting them down in the streets. Whatever betides in Egypt, American policy looks to be the loser.

UPDATE: Pajamas Media has a running update on the events of the day. The most recent entry (6:33 EST) is:

As the protests continue, several people are claiming that the army may be providing riot police and other security forces with live ammunition to use against protesters. This cannot be denied or confirmed yet. Many people inside Egypt on social networking sites — using proxies to connect on the single remaining ISP that hasn’t been blocked by the government — are showing anger and discontent at President Mubarak’s speech and his refusal to cede power.

Jeremy Scahill of The Nation claimed on Twitter that President Barack Obama was on the phone with Mubarak for half an hour. No other source has confirmed this yet.

If that last bit is true, I hope it was a “you can’t get asylum here, and we’ve also frozen all Egyptian assets in the US”. One thing is clear, the people of Egypt don’t like Mubarak and we must cut ourselves loose from him immediately. If we are to have any say in the final settlement, we can’t be tied to Mubarak’s corrupt, cruel and incompetent regime.

UPDATE II: CNN is reporting that Mubarak has dissolved his cabinet (probably trying to dodge and weave to keep himself in power).

UPDATE III: World in crisis, American diplomacy in shambles – what do you do? You try to spin the events to get your man Obama off the hook…

Axelrod: President Obama Has “On Several Occasions Directly Confronted” Mubarak on Human Rights for the Past 2 Years “To Get Ahead of This”

Well, Axe, old buddy, what this before or after Obama’s Cairo speech where he spread a bunch of revisionist historical nonsense to try and make Moslems love us more? We’re really in trouble here, folks – we’ve got complete idiots running the show.

UPDATE IV: Obama’s statement. Not much to say for it – but it is clear that we aren’t ditching Mubarak as of this time.

UPDATE V: Rumor is that Mubarak’s televised statement a bit earlier today was pre-recorded. A bad sign for his regime…

From Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post:

…The statements indicate several points: 1) the New Black Panther Party case brought by career Justice Department employees was meritorious on the law and the facts; 2) there is voluminous evidence of the Obama administration’s political interference in the prosecution of the New Black Panther Party case; 3) there is ample evidence that the Obama administration directed Justice Department employees not to bring cases against minority defendants who violated voting rights laws or to enforce a provision requiring that states and localities clean up their voting rolls to prevent fraud; 4) the Justice Department stonewalled efforts to investigate the case; and 5) vice chairman Abigail Thernstrom has, for reasons not entirely clear, ignored the evidence and tried to undermine the commission’s work…

Here is a link to the US Commission on Civil Right’s investigation of the NBPP case. As noted above, it is clear that the Obama Administration has decided not to enforce voting rights laws when violated by minorities – in other words, if you have a certain skin color, you are free to violate whatever laws you wish…race-based law enforcement, otherwise known as racism. Just as once upon a time a white man could get away with violating a black man’s rights, now a non-white person can do the same.

You cannot get justice by applications of injustice. No matter how much racism was directed against minorities in the past it does not justify applications of racism now or in the future. A wrong deed is a wrong deed – it stands alone and must be condemned and not repeated. Obama’s Administration seems determined to carry out the liberal ideal that two wrongs do make a right.

The House must investigate this and bring all the principals in to testify under oath – we must expose to the American people that our Executive branch has decided that some laws shall not be enforced because the latest liberal fads are more important than justice. We dare not allow liberals to impose a new racism upon the United States – “and justice for all” isn’t just a set of words, it is a requirement for America.

The genesis of the discontent which we now see surging all around the Moslem world – and likely to spread to other areas – is the fact that the price of food is rising very fast. Taking off from the point of food, it is taking on a decidedly political tint.

It hasn’t bit us here in the United States because we still pay such a tiny percentage of our income for food. But for people who spend half their income on the basic necessities, any price hike hurts. And prices have been spiking very high. Mish goes over a very large number of reports about the riots in Egypt and observes the following:

Most of the increases in food prices are due to droughts in South America, floods in Australia, and poor growing conditions in many places.

However, Bernanke’s “Quantitative Easing” policies combined with rampant credit growth in China and India have led to increased speculation in commodities. That speculation has forced up food prices.

If you are tweeting, please tweet this “Bernanke has blood on his hands”.

Please note that speculation in commodities is not a cause of anything. Rather commodity speculation is a result of piss poor monetary policies not only the Fed, but central bankers worldwide.

It is time to call things as they are. It isn’t deliberate in the sense that Bernanke and central bankers like him didn’t plan for people to have their food prices shoot up, but it is criminal none the less. It should have dawned on them that if you rapidly print up buckets of fake money, then things of real value – including food – will rise in monetary price. They wanted inflation on the insane theory that rising prices means prosperity – what they’ve got is a world on the verge of a breakdown as the poor are losing what little they have…and it doesn’t help matters that the bankers are raking it in.

As I’ve said before, we won’t go hungry here in the United States – even in our stunted form, American agriculture is still the wonder of the world. If we really turned on the power, we’d have food coming out of our ears – but, for now, its just that we’ve got enough, and the prices rises will be an inconvenience for us rather than a matter of life and death (though rising prices, in general, might tip us back in to full blown recession). But many people around the world are getting hurt and it is high time we stopped this – stopped the use of fiat money; stopped using debt; stopped being utter fools. It is time we got back to work – back to honestly earning a day’s pay by doing something useful.

Or, we can continue on – and watch as the world goes up in flames.

UPDATE: the violence continues to spread and increase in intensity.