Here:
The editors of the conservative National Review, in a March 23 editorial titled “Cardinal Errors,” challenged Mahony. “The cardinal points to a provision of the bill that makes it illegal to ‘assist’ an illegal immigrant to ‘remain in the United States.’ (The person providing such assistance would have to know, or recklessly disregard, the assistee’s legal status to have committed an offense, by the way, not that the cardinal shares that information with his readers.) That provision is directed at those who traffic in illegal immigrants.”
Conservatives frequently complain when judges abandon the plain language of a statute and substitute their own interpretation, or their view of the legislative history, for the actual words used by the legislators who wrote the law. But here they accuse Mahony (and by implication all church leaders, Catholic or otherwise, who have made the same point) of “bearing false witness” because the cardinal asserts that the House bill actually says what it says.