Politics in the pulpit? Fine. Just give up your tax break.

This weekend, hundreds of pastors, including some of the nation’s evangelical leaders, will climb into their pulpits to preach about American politics, flouting a decades-old law that prohibits tax-exempt churches and other charities from campaigning on election issues.

The sermons, on what is called Pulpit Freedom Sunday, essentially represent a form of biblical bait, an effort by some churches to goad the Internal Revenue Service into court battles over the divide between religion and politics.

The Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit legal defense group whose founders include James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, sponsors the annual event, which started with 33 pastors in 2008. This year, Glenn Beck has been promoting it, calling for 1,000 religious leaders to sign on and generating additional interest at the beginning of a presidential election cycle.

“There should be no government intrusion in the pulpit,” said the Rev. James Garlow, senior pastor at Skyline Church in La Mesa, Calif., who led preachers in the battle to pass California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. “The freedom of speech and the freedom of religion promised under the First Amendment means pastors have full authority to say what they want to say.”

via nytimes.com

Here's the thing: If preachers want to endorse candidates from the pulpit, I have no problem with that. All I ask is that they give up their tax break.

That's what the debate—to the extent there is one—is about. Churches, as a general rule, don't pay taxes. We can discuss the merits of that, but one of the rules that go along with that special status is that they can't advocate for particular candidates. (They can—and do—advocate for particular causes.) And that's not a restriction on churches alone. Nonprofit organizations of all stripes—including very political stripes, like the Center for American Progress—give up the right to advocate for candidates in exchange for the official designation as a "nonprofit" and all the advantages that brings.

Nobody's keeping James Garlow from speaking his mind, in other words. But the tax-exempt status means, essentially, that the rest of us are already subsidizing his religious efforts. There's no reason we should have to subsidize his political efforts, as well.

Richard Miniter misleads the readers of The Daily Beast

Since Awlaki had not been convicted in a proper court or hasn’t been killed while shooting at American soldiers, they contend, his killing is unconstitutional. A side argument, beloved by the ACLU, is that the method of deciding who goes on the CIA target list is secret and therefore an illegal violation of due process.

These are clever arguments, but wrong. Federal courts have rejected the ACLU’s view when it brought a case seeking to bar the listing of U.S. citizens on the CIA’s terrorist hit list. Awlaki’s own father made a similar argument in another court and it too was rejected.

via thedailybeast.com

It's important to note that federal courts rejected those lawsuits over technical issues—standing—and not on the merits of the cases themselves. If Richard Miniter didn't know that, he should've. And if he did know that, he did a profound disservice to The Daily Beast's readers by suggesting otherwise.

Where is the 'battleground' anyway?

Mario Loyola knows:

For purposes of combat actions such as the targeted killing of Awlaki, the battleground in our war against al-Qaeda is not “everywhere.” It is in those few countries that either willingly or unwillingly provide significant safe havens for al-Qaeda. Yemen is in the first rank of that group of countries, along with Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia. 

All I can say is: Germany, we're coming for you. London, you might see some Predator drones in your skies. Toronto, get ready for some Hellfire missiles.

Victor Davis Hanson on al-Awlaki

Those on the left who made the argument — often quite vehemently and with plenty of personal invective (“war criminal”) — that water-boarding three known and quite proudly confessed foreign-national terrorists represented a “war crime” must now come forward and turn that vitriol on the Obama administration, which just executed an American citizen abroad on suspicions of terrorist activity. (Most nonpartisans might consider water-boarding three self-described terrorists less a “crime” than executing over 2,000 suspected terrorists — and any and all who, as collateral damage, happen to be in the general vicinity when the sentence is carried out.)

If we see anything less than commensurate protest against the present administration, then the entire hysteria of 2002–8 in retrospect becomes rank partisanship and hardly principled anguish. But as we have seen with the continuance of Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventive detention, and the Bush policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, these once-acrimonious issues are simply not issues any more. I guess critics “moved on” around January 2009.

via nationalreview.com

Conor Friedersdorf on the assassination of al-Awlaki

President Obama has perhaps forever changed the relationship between the United States government and its citizens, setting a precedent as damaging as anything a modern president has done, and the appropriate reaction, whatever one's partisan or ideological orientation, is shock and anger at his hubris and imprudence. Depending on the GOP nominee in 2012, I may well decide that I can't vote for him or her in good conscience. But today, as Obama celebrates the extra-legal assassination of an American, and sets the precedent that the president can kill citizens without due process if he or she pronounces them a terrorist, I know that I cannot in good conscience cast a vote to re-elect him. If you're even a little bit of a civil libertarian, and this didn't cost Obama your vote, I'd ask you to ponder this question: What transgression would?

via theatlantic.com

Kevin Williamson on conservatives and the al-Awlaki assassination

The Awlaki case has led many conservatives into dangerous error, as has the War on Terror more generally. That conservatives are for the most part either offering mute consent or cheering as the Obama administration draws up a list of U.S. citizens to be assassinated suggests not only that have we gone awry in our thinking about national security, limitations on state power, and the role of the president in our republic, but also that we still do not understand all of the implications of our country’s confrontation with Islamic radicalism. The trauma of 9/11 has deposited far too much emotional residue upon our thinking, and the Awlaki case provides occasion for a necessary scouring. 

Contra present conservative dogma, the Constitution has relatively little to say about the role of the president in matters of what we now call national security, which is not synonymous with combat operations. What the Constitution says is this: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” That is all. Upon this sandy foundation, conservative security and legal thinkers have constructed a fortress of a presidency that is nearly unlimited or actually unlimited in its power to define and pursue national-security objectives. But a commander-in-chief is not a freelance warlord, and his titular powers do not extend over everything that touches upon national security. The FBI’s counterterrorism work, for example, is critical to national security, but its management does not fall under the duties of a commander-in-chief; it is police work, like many of the needful things undertaken in the War on Terror. The law-enforcement approach to counterterrorism is much maligned in conservative circles where martial rhetoric is preferred, but the work of the DOJ, FBI, NYPD, etc., is critical. It is not, however, warfare.

A commander-in-chief does not have unilateral authority to invade foreign countries or to name belligerents, and it is clear that the Founders did not intend to give the president that kind of unchecked war-making power, much less to compound it with unchecked domestic police and surveillance powers, which is why the power to declare war resides with Congress rather than with the president. Our Constitution, as in all things, relies upon checks and balances when it comes to the conduct of war. It is significant that the final powers — to declare war, to ratify a peace treaty, to punish treason — do not rest with the president, but with Congress. 

via nationalreview.com

Even if you're a liberal not disposed to reading National Review, I think this is a pretty important piece to read and revisit.

SPJ and 'illegal immigrants'

I'm uncomfortable with this:

The Society of Professional Journalists, hearing an emotional plea from Rebecca Aguilar, a member of SPJ and of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, voted Tuesday to recommend that newsrooms discontinue using the terms "illegal alien" and "illegal immigrant." The resolution from the 7,800-member organization says only courts can decide when a person has committed an illegal act. 

Aguilar argued that using those words insulted Latinos and all those who are or had once been in the United States illegally. She used the example of her mother, who became a "proud American" in 1980. Her mother felt insulted "every time she heard that word," Aguilar said of the phrase "illegal alien."

The appropriate term? "Undocumented people." Ugh.

The problem here, as I've written before, is that the 11 million "undocumented" people in the United States are here ... illegally. Have they legally been ajudicated as such? No, the vast majority of them. And it's why my practice, when referring to a specific person or small set of persons, would be to attribute descriptions. "John Doe, whom authorities say entered the United States illegally..." or "John Doe, who says he crossed the border, etc. etc." Let your sources do the work of framing.

But I'm fine using the term "illegal immigrants" or "illegal immigration" to describe the issues surrounding the 11 million people who are in the United States in violation of the laws of this country. That's what the controversy is about. Using the term "undocumented" doesn't convey that—it reduces the issue to one of paperwork. (And as long as we're being pedantic, it may not be strictly true: Surely many if not most of these folks have, say, birth certificates or driver's licenses or whatnot in their home countries.)

I think "undocumented immigrant" obscures more than "illegal immigrant" reveals, if only slightly. I'm sorry that that hurts some people's feelings. If it were up to me, our immigration policy wouldn't criminalize most people who want to come to the United States. But the law is the law, and the journalist's job is to convey information as clearly as she can. The SPJ folks suggest they're striking a blow for clarity and accuracy by putting the kibosh on this term. I don't think they're right.