Houston, USA - The Times continues its front-page hammering of Pope Benedict as sharing the blame for the scandalous child sex abuse cases brought against priests. On Monday the Times led with a story on the alleged scandal of the United States giving tax breaks for donations to strengthen Jewish settlements in the West Bank that Obama doesn’t approve of.
So when the paper suddenly starts showing deference to religion in politics, it’s a giveaway that a plea in aid of an unlabeled liberal cause will soon follow.
The Times continues to push for amnesty for illegal immigration by providing gross overexposure to pro-illegal immigrant protests and marches that function as press releases for the pro-amnesty position. On Monday, reporter Randal Archibold, who recently pushed unsubstantiated figures to suggest the argument of crime rising in Arizona due to illegals was a myth, brought in “an unusual display of ecumenical solidarity.” “Many Churches, One Plea -- Houston’s Clergy United to Urge Support for Immigration Reform.”
Archibold lets a minister ramble in Marxist fashion:
The Rev. John W. Bowie knows it is hard to sell the people in his neighborhood on the idea that they should support changing immigration laws to give illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. His church lies in one of the oldest black settlements in the city, where unemployment is high and many people see immigrants as competitors for jobs.
Yet there he was in the pulpit at True Light Missionary Baptist Church on the Fourth of July, with a full choir behind him, urging his flock to support an overhaul of immigration laws that “lets the undocumented come out of the shadows.”
“All 13 colonies were made up of illegal aliens because they had not gotten permission from the residents here, who were the Indians,” he said. “Then a few years later, they brought us here and made us illegal, too. These immigrants, we immigrants, have built the greatest nation in the world, coming from everywhere, all over, because, you see, nobody owns this world except God.”
All over Houston, in an unusual display of ecumenical solidarity on an explosive issue, scores of pastors, priests, rabbis and ministers used their sermons on Independence Day to promote the cause of fixing a broken immigration system.
The coordinated effort was part of a broad-based campaign begun in January by an interfaith group, the Metropolitan Organization, to lobby Congress to pass an immigration overhaul package this year. The group has collected 12,000 signatures to be sent to lawmakers and has organized workshops to persuade churchgoers to support their effort.
Archibold didn’t find any liberals on the pro-amnesty side, but managed to identify opponents of immigration “reform” as “conservative” and “right-wing.”
Many clergy members say they face an uphill battle with their congregations, some of which tend to be conservative on social issues and regard immigrants without visas as lawbreakers. Their effort has also drawn fire from right-wing talk radio hosts.