News: Quick Links 2 | Sojourners

News: Quick Links 2

The Side Effects Of Fast-Tracking Deportations
Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security released its deportation statistics for fiscal year 2011, disclosing 396,906 removals of unauthorized immigrants-the most ever. Today, a University of California-Berkeley study claims that Secure Communities, the much-maligned fingerprint-sharing program that links local jails to the DHS database and funnels even more people into deportation proceedings, has helped create a system "in which individuals are pushed through rapidly, without appropriate checks or opportunities to challenge their detention and/or deportation."
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Ten Percent Of All Major Mainstream Media News Was About Occupy Wall Street Last Week
The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism surveys mainstream media coverage of various topics. Yesterday, it released an analysis of 52 different major media outlets and found that coverage of Occupy Wall Street dominated news coverage last week. Pew notes that "last week, the Occupy Wall Street storyline increased to 10 percent of the overall newshole compared with 7 percent the previous week and 2 percent the week before that."
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Mexican Clown Convention Holds 'Laugh For Peace'
About 300 professional clowns in Mexico say they hope their 15-minute non-stop laugh-a-thon will make a contribution to world peace.
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What Has Obama Done For Poor People?
Anger and disillusionment over the widening wealth gap may have reached a national tipping point, as evidenced by the Occupy Wall Street movement. Yet leading politicians rarely mention poor folks.
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Class Warfare In The Senate Race
Early polling puts Warren in a strong position against Brown. One poll also shows that Massachusetts voters aren't turned off by Warren's Harvard connection. Some 21 percent of voters surveyed in a recent Western New England University poll said it makes them "more likely'' to vote for Warren; 63 percent said it makes no difference.
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Restorative Justice And The Economy Of Grace
Grace is not fair. Fairness means treating people as they deserve. Grace means treating people better than they deserve. Grace, after all, means unmerited kindness. Because of this, theologians have traditionally spoken of a conflict between justice and grace. In this way of thinking, justice is about there being consequences for wrong action (usually in the form of punishment), and grace, in contrast, is about leniency -- overlooking problems rather than actually dealing with them.
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Pastors Hope For A Louder, Unrestricted Voice In 2012 Election
When Pastor Jim Garlow took to the pulpit September 28, he was thinking two things. He first thought that the sermon he was about to give, a sermon in which he was going to endorse a handful of 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls, might earn him a letter from the IRS, possibly even a visit from an agent. By endorsing candidates, Garlow was about to violate the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt churches from engaging in political activity.
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Jesus At Occupy Wall Street: 'I Feel Like I've Been Here Before'
"What would Jesus think of Occupy Wall Street?" I asked myself earlier this week, as I wandered the makeshift, blue-tarp village in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan. Born with little means into a first-century world, the historical Jesus might feel right at home with the very aspects of the occupation that so many 21st century observers consider gross: the tents, the damp sleeping bags, the communal kitchen. Jesus would have sympathy, I think, with the campers' efforts to keep a small space sanitary in the absence of modern plumbing.
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