Last month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Arizona v. United States, a case that will examine key provisions of Arizona’s infamous and draconian immigration law, SB 1070. Sponsored by ALEC member and former Senate President Russell Pearce, and several others with ALEC ties, SB 1070 was developed in close consultation with ALEC and now stands as one of its model bills.

The Department of Justice argues that Arizona unconstitutionally usurped the federal government’s role in enforcing immigration law. PFAW and other opponents cite evidence of wrongful arrests, racial profiling, and discrimination, especially against Latinos and other minorities.

Now efforts are being made in to block court challenges to SB 1070 and similar laws in other states. On May 9, the US House passed Amendment 1063 by a 238-173 vote.

With the federal hate crimes legislation that's making its way through Congress right now (it just got through committee and will go to the full House sometime this week), conservative groups are raising a huge stink about how the legislation would create "thought crimes," and would unfairly persecute Christians who think that they have the right to assault LGBT people, and point to this policy as a whole new level of Orwellian government.

Attacking someone on the basis of anything like race, sexual orientation, gender, or age definately goes beyond thinking about something.

The Chicago Tribune, however, reported last week that a high school student in a Chicago suburb actually got into trouble for a "thought crime." He was arrested for disorderly conduct based on an essay he wrote for an English class, that his teacher found "disturbing."  The essay made no specific threats against any person or building or anything; it was simply expressing an idea.

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It's a funny day in Christianity when a former follower of Sun Myung Moon-turned fallen Catholic Archbishop takes a stand to knock out yet another brick in the wall of the  Church's ideology. Yet that's exactly what happened when Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo ordained two married men, Raymond Grosswirth and Dominic Ricco, as priests in West New York yesterday. According to Milingo, the Church's current shortage of priests could be remedied by allowing Catholic priests to enjoy the comfort of marriage, just as leaders in other Christian sects, as well as Islamic and Jewish orders, do. But his actions symbolize far more for the Church in America than simply a bending of the rules to solve a heirarchical problem. By openly defying the Vatican, who excommunicated him after a previous round of ordinations of married men, Milingo is doing a small part to pluralise Catholicism: to make it, along with other institutions that shape mankind, in some part representative of the plurality of its constituents, or, if you prefer, flock. In short, Milingo is moving towards democratizing Catholicism.

     Dennis Prager's op-ed piece for WorldNetDaily today  hit a new low in the frantic fight to protect American culture, the newest front of which is apparently the controversy over Keith Ellison, America's first Muslim in Congress, wanting to take his oath of office on the Qu'ran. The possibility that forcing a Muslim Congressman to swear on Christianity's holy book might render the oath offensive, or worse, meaningless, nonwithstanding, the very idea that one must take an oath on a religious book for public office is divisive and contrary to the American spirit of democracy.