Busted, Indeed

The goal of BustedHalo.com, which claims to be "powered by the Paulists" (an order of Roman Catholic priests), is to reach out and engage youthful spiritual seekers. Seems hunky-dory, no? Unfortunately, the web site/organization/mission also contains a component called "Busted Borders," which offers the sob-story view of illegal immigration.

Go here, and see for yourself.

Now observe by whom and why this video project is funded: "With the help of a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, BustedHalo.com began covering the issue of immigration in a unique way. Instead of contributing to the glut (What glut?) of coverage about immigration, BustedHalo is featuring stories by immigrants themselves about the issue. We distributed Flip video cameras to undocumented individuals and agencies across the country and asked them to start video blogging for a period of at least three months.

Busted Borders is an attempt to use the web’s unfiltered nature to move the immigration debate away from abstractions and statistics. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, we hope to give a personal glimpse into the humanity of these strangers in our midst. For reasons of safety, some of the participants have opted to keep their last names and locations secret."

How sweet of them to eagerly accomodate lawbreakers. How noble of them to care not a whit for the law-abiding neighbors in their midst who have been negatively impacted by undocumented terrorists, drug dealers, child molesters, etc. etc. How humane of them to not give the other side of the story.

But there's more. Two contributors (Dawn Eden and William Doino, Jr.) to BustedHalo smarmily took to task those colorful muckrakers - James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles - for the tactics the duo employed in exposing ACORN.

They even offer unsolicited advice to O'Keefe, encouraging him to return to school: "But if he (O'Keefe) is sincere about wanting to 'change hearts and minds,' he is far more likely to do so on a wide and lasting scale by finishing his graduate degree and living virtuously in the real world, than by trying to extend his 15 minutes of recognition as an Internet insurrectionist."

You think Eden and Doino would recommend that ... let's see .. the illegal folk (being immortalized in video clips on the web site they're affiliated with) do the right thing and quietly return to their countries of origin, instead of trying to achieve 15 minutes of fame by being 'Internet insurrectionists'?

Just wondering.