Unions defending illegal immigrants? Never thought we'd see that.

Under current law, the legal incentives of business and labor point in opposite directions: firms face fines and other sanctions for hiring undocumented workers, while the quickest path to union membership growth is by turning a blind eye to illegal immigration. Sanctioning unions that allow illegal immigrants to join their ranks would harmonize incentives, and give both Big Business and Big Labor the same interest in obeying the law.

“Perhaps we need to rethink all of our immigration laws,” Prof. Vedder told Pajamas Media, noting that he favors more libertarian immigration policy. “But the laws being what they are,” he said, “perhaps we should rethink this mismatch in incentives. If we apply these laws to employers, we should apply them to unions as well.”

Apparently someone is working to get Michael Yon kicked out of Iraq, or at least to silence his dispatches. Instapundit doesn't get it, and neither does David St. Lawrence.

A pretty shrewd piece from AU describing a Pyrrhic victory for the Religious Right.

As usual, the end is the good part. Read the whole thing.

Keeping up with Caedmon's:

March 17, 2007 / 3:58 pm

Be warned. I just played trombone. Through my guitar rig. And then my dad came by the studio. And played trumpet. Through my guitar rig. With a wah pedal. We are awesome.

- Andy

March 17, 2007 / 8:57 pm

Andy’s dad played some killer trumpet, Danielle played some killer scratch vocal, as well as bgvs, and Garett and I tracked drums based on an idea that Danielle heard and it kills. I love that working with this band challenges me to think outside of my own perimeters, whether self-imposed or not. By the way, I mean “kills” and “killer” in a good complimentive way, not at all in a literal way. Did I mention that Ella Osenga is now 2 years old? Well, she is and we took a break from the HOD to celebrate with Guitar Hero II and bratwerst prepared by none other than Mr. O. Tune in tomorrow for more fun filled commentary and perspective…

cool,
todd

VOM, India:

• RAJASTHAN - On March 7, 2007, Pastor Reginald Howell of Good Shepherd Community Church was brutally beaten by a Hindu extremist group in Hanumangarh, Rajasthan. According to The Voice of the Martyrs sources, Pastor Howell went to Hanumangarh to pray for the sick and visit Christians in the area. The pastor was beaten with an iron rod and suffered severe injuries on his back. The police refused to register his complaint and as a result, doctors denied him treatment. Rajasthan State has a so-called "Freedom of Religion Bill," that is used as a tool to harass Christians. VOM sources report cases of anti-Christian attacks in the area keep increasing, and the State Administration turns a blind eye to the persecution.
• ANDRA PRADESH - On March 11, 2007, Pastor Anand visited a village to attend services. He was attacked by more than 10 men from a Hindu radical group. Local police who arrived at the location of the attack did not protect him, resulting in further beatings. Pastor Anand was beaten on his face and legs with wooden logs until the early hours of the next morning.

The deep, sorrowful side of Francis Schaeffer. (HT: Ivory Doghouse)

Like most stereotypes, this one of politically engaged conservative Christians contains a painful element of truth. Too often we confuse our agendas with God's agenda and demonize our opponents in a desperate attempt to score political points. What's ironic is that many of today's culture warriors look to Schaeffer as the man who fired the first shot.

Schaeffer never meant for Christians to take a combative stance in society without first experiencing empathy for the human predicament that brought us to this place.

It's happening:

Using the name of Jesus in the public square is patently offensive.

From an Alaskan free-speech school case. More here and here.

Still more on Iran's "defection infection." (HT: PJM)

Who is Ali Reza Asgari and why is he important? No one is quite sure yet, but when the Iranian general and former deputy defense minister disappeared in Istanbul earlier this year, suddenly everyone had a good spy story to follow. Did Asgari defect? Was he kidnapped by a foreign intelligence agency? And how does his fate affect the United States in its ongoing confrontation with Iran, if it does at all?

Earlier posts here and here.

Wikipedia has their collection of 2006 Pictures of the Year up. There's some good stuff in there. (HT: PJM)

Proof that scientists don't have enough to do. (HT: Instapundit)

Here's a great essay on writing and the superiority and future of the novel as a medium.

I'm often asked if there is something I think writers ought to do, and recently in an interview I heard myself say: "Several things. Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world."

Yes, the dreaded assignment: read the whole thing.

Fresh in from MercatorNet: an excellent, excellent article about the relationship between pension plans and fertility rates.

From the point of view of fertility, a compulsory pension scheme externalises the value of children (or, to be more precise, a portion of their productivity). Children can no longer support their parents in old age, because a chunk of their salary is forcefully taken away from them and distributed to the entire population of retirees. That chunk is growing systematically, because governmental pension schemes are heading towards insolvency due to, among other things, low fertility rates.

Now, such socialised generosity sounds nice. Unfortunately, it wreaks havoc on social structures and private incentives. Individual parents no longer retain the economic benefit of having children, but they must still bear the bulk of the costs in terms of time and money spent. Everyone receives the same pension rights regardless of how many children they had, if any. Many are tempted to take a free-ride on the children of others.

In other words, the welfare state becomes a "forced family" that replaces the traditional family as a provider of social insurance. It is not only an alternative to the traditional family, but an option one is not allowed to refuse. Undoubtedly it provides some benefits, but it lacks the sense of common goals and reciprocity which is essential to real families.

If you skipped the quoted section above, I'm going to slap your hand and send you back to read it. You really should read the whole thing: it's that good.

More environmentalist humor: preaching in parkas.

Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where they get off', you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.

-C. S. Lewis

AU and the continuing battle for America's past.

I've been reading some thoughts recently from Steve Scott (follow-up post) and Gene Redlin regarding Christian liberty and the weaker brother.

I think the tone may be a bit abrasive, but the perspective is worth pondering.

WORLD has been posting a few thoughts about Stanley Hauerwas, a pacifist theologian with a controversial take on the validity of Christian nationalism. I have one book of his on the shelf, which is waiting for my concentrated Church/State study, something I hope to get to later this year.

HAUERWAS: That I have some sympathy with those who would refuse to allow another person to be unjustly injured or killed is simply a statement that any person should make. But that sympathy does not mean I think we should kill in order to prevent another from being killed. I've always insisted that Christian nonviolence is a harsh and dreadful love requiring that at times we may have to watch the innocent suffer for our convictions. But that is true of any serious moral position including the just war position. Of course Christians should have tried to prevent the massacres in Rwanda and Darfur. The question is how?

Read the whole thing.

More Iranian defections. (PJM)

(Keeping the original story on top.)

Less killing is always good news.

More on the surge, from Pajamas Media and WorldViews.

UPDATE: More here.

My, my: since when are death threats good science? Whether or not the planet is heating up, tempers surely are. More here.

Another article on the fascinating Ali Reza Askari story. (HT: PJM)

Here's an incisive piece from the Wall Street Journal about comparative depression rates in different countries. The statistics are surprising, and the prescription is refreshingly wholesome. Read the whole thing. (HT: PJM)

LVMI is podcasting.

The Modern Economic System

There is one bit of advice given to us by the ancient heathen Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest: and lending money at interest - what we call investment - is the basis of our whole system. Now it may not absolutely follow that we are wrong. Some people say that when Moses and Aristotle and the Christians agreed on forbidding interest (or 'usury' as they called it), they could not foresee the joint stock company, and were only thinking of the private moneylender, and that, therefore, we need not bother about what they said. That is a question I cannot decide on. I am not an economist and I simply do not know whether the investment system is responsible for the state we are in or not. That is where we want the Christian economist. But I should not have been honest if I had not told you that three great civilizations had agreed (or so it seems at first sight) in condemning the very thing on which we have based our whole life.

- C. S. Lewis