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Between immigration laws and new passport regulations, some people can't get into the United States and others are having a hard time leaving. President Bush's immigration bill, the center of his remaining domestic policy agenda, came apart at the seams yesterday and will most likely not be revisited any time soon. The bipartisan bill seems to have been dismantled by an even stronger bipartisan effort, perhaps redefining the term "business as usual," even by Washington standards. Meanwhile, Homeland Security and the State Department are engaged in a turf war over implementing new measures for passports use by U.S. citizens, resulting in a backlog of unprocessed documents for people ready to travel. Those measures have been temporarily relaxed for those traveling by air to Canada, Bermuda, the Caribbean and Mexico who have already applied for their passports and have a receipt for the transaction. God help you if you have travel plans in the next few months and you delayed applying because you may be stuck. Or, as Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) so succinctly put it, "To say people must have a passport to travel and not give people a passport is right up there in the stupid column."

Interesting that these two issues sat side by side on the front page of my local newspaper this morning. Interesting, and not all that coincidental. We are at odds with ourselves these days over who should be allowed into our country and for what reasons. So it is not surprising that the desire to know where all of our own people are at any given moment would come back to haunt us in such a basic way. Some might call this passport nightmare a bit of political karma, or even poetic justice in the "what goes around, comes around" school of thought. We want to control who has access to the wealth and opportunities our country has to offer, but we are now potentially either held captive or not allowed back in if we leave because our government can't keep up with its own paperwork. One could also make a good case here for bitter irony.

The gospels contain a number of stories surrounding Jesus' interactions with his followers that speak of this same human need to present their own interests while shoving others aside in the process. One such case was while Jesus was traveling with his disciples. "As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging; and hearing a multitude going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, 'Jesus of Nazareth is

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