Obama Ipsum

The people I meet - in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks - they don't expect government to solve all their problems. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace.

Let me be clear. At every opportunity, they've told evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design. And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. It will be hard to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage, rectitude and resolve.

Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. Because for two hundred and thirty two years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women - students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors - found the courage to keep it alive.

Last time we took up immigration reform, it failed. "And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."

And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed.

Thank you, God Bless you, and God Bless the United States of America.