Opinion

Congress has approved a $307 billion farm bill that rewards rich farmers who do not need the help while doing virtually nothing to help the world’s hungry, who need all the help they can get. President Bush should keep his promise to veto it and demand better legislation. The bill is an inglorious piece of work tailored to the needs of big agriculture and championed by not only the usual bipartisan farm state legislators but also the Democratic leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Every five years we get a new farm bill, and each time we are reminded that even reformers like Ms. Pelosi cannot resist the blandishments and power of the farmers.

Even before Pope Benedict landed in the United States last month, he addressed immigration as an issue that will determine the future of the Catholic church in America and will test the moral authority of U.S. bishops in shaping the debate over national policy. Benedict’s remarks reflected consistent papal teaching and a balanced approach from the U.S bishops: National borders must be respected, but the economic and political realities that drive immigration must also be acknowledged with an orderly, fair, humane system that addresses the inevitable flow of desperate people seeking to enter the United States to work, either temporarily or on a path to permanent legal status. Human dignity and family integrity must be paramount in any policy.

On Easter Sunday, this former constitutional lawyer to Ronald Reagan, endorsed Barack Obama for president. While that turn of mind baffled my political pals, it infuriated some of my fellow Catholics. I very much regret the discomfort it has brought to these life-long friends. The Catholic faith is for me, as it is for millions, the embodiment of “life to the full,” to borrow the title of the wonderful book authored by the late American Catholic legal scholar Edward J. Murphy. Having been drawn to Senator Obama’s remarkable “love thy neighbor” style of campaigning, his express aim to transcend partisan divide, and specifically, his appreciation for faith ("secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square"), I did not expect to be clobbered by co-religionists.

Shortly after Senator Obama's speech on race this March, a friend likened the racial issue to an old coffee pot that keeps percolating. Every few years something happens to bring the vexed problem bubbling to the surface. Unplugging the percolator requires courageous conversation and frank acknowledgment of the underlying sources of distrust. In hundreds of local efforts across the US, diverse groups of citizens are bridging the traditional boundaries of race, class, and culture. Thousands have engaged in dialogue, symbolic acts of reconciliation, and collaborative problem solving. Organizations such as Everyday Democracy and Hope in the Cities (a project of Initiatives of Change) are facilitating this.

Immigrant restrictionism is stiffing hundreds of thousands of American citizens and legal residents out of their tax-rebate checks. Hard-liners were so intent on keeping the cash out of the hands of undocumented workers that they restricted the rebate to people with Social Security numbers. An Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, issued by the Internal Revenue Service to people who pay taxes but do not qualify for Social Security numbers, will not do. If a married couple files jointly, and one spouse is not eligible for the rebate, neither gets the money. This hurts all manner of people who are working and paying taxes: American soldiers stationed abroad who happen to have married foreigners; high-tech immigrants in Silicon Valley and other places whose spouses are not authorized to work or have not yet had their paperwork processed. These are people who are perfectly legal, economically vital and politically inconvenient.

The U.S. House last week passed a mortgage rescue package that could save half a million American families from losing their homes to foreclosure and do so at little risk to taxpayers. The plan, though larded up with tax breaks that the Senate should trim, generally is a sensible approach to the subprime mortgage mess. President George W. Bush is threatening a veto but hinting at compromise. With a little tinkering, the Senate could get this rescue on the road.

The repercussions of the workplace raid in Postville Monday, the largest single-site raid in the nation, are wrenching on so many levels. Federal immigration agents and other law officers who descended on Agriprocessors Inc., the kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, were doing their jobs. They executed search warrants related to criminal activity as well as a civil search warrant for people believed to be in the country illegally. But that does not diminish the painful fallout from escalating raids resulting at least in part from the failure of Congress and the president to repair the nation's broken immigration system. Such raids, though record in size, ultimately do little to resolve how this nation should sensibly regulate immigration levels or how it should address the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States, many with children who are U.S. citizens. Voters should make it clear in the 2008 elections that they expect their elected representatives to pass practical, humane reforms.

"Iraqi mothers want the same thing for their children American mothers want for theirs," President Bush has said. "A place for their child to grow up and get a good education and be able to realize dreams." The president is correct. The two institutions Iraqis prize most are family and education. But the US military occupation and the insurgency have produced a total disruption of both. Can Iraqis return to social normalcy so long as US troops – and their enemies – are engaged there?

For the United States, the prospect of permanent war now beckons. Well into the first decade of this generational struggle, Americans remained oddly confused about its purpose. Is the aim to ensure access to cheap and abundant oil? Spread democracy? Avert nuclear proliferation? Perpetuate the American empire? Preserve the American way of life? From the outset, the enterprise that [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates now calls the "Long War" has been about all of these things and more. In the meantime, what has the Long War achieved? The answer to that question is indisputable: not much. Counting on military might to change the way they live isn't working. If anything, the effort has backfired.

An important aspect of the presidential race so far has been the generational divide, with Barack Obama doing very well with younger voters and Hillary Clinton drawing strong support from those who are older. A similar split can be expected in a general election race between Senator Obama and John McCain. However the election ultimately turns out, the Obama campaign has tapped into a constituency that holds powerful implications for the future of American politics. The youngest of these voters, those ranging in age from roughly the late teens to the early 30s, are part of the so-called millennial generation.