Daily Archives: June 26, 2009

Politico: “The House of Representatives passed a sweeping climate-change bill Friday – a major victory for President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that left Republicans fuming about a “national energy tax” they said would exacerbate the nation’s economic woes. The vote was extremely close – 219-212, with eight Republicans voting yes and 44 Democrats voting no. And the debate leading up to it was intense . . . ”

Leonard Link: “A three-judge panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, ruled on June 23 that a lesbian co-parent’s attempt to establish legal ties with the child born to her former partner could not be entertained on the merits under Missouri’s archaic family law, and that she also could not seek financial support from her former partner for the child whom she bore during their relationship.”

Leonard Link: “A unanimous three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals of Indiana ruled on June 23 in Matter of Visitation of C.LH., 2009 Westlaw 1765688, that a trial judge, Hendricks Superior Court Judge Karen M. Love, abused her discretion in ordering that the homophobic grandparents of a lesbian mother be given ten hours a month of visitation with their young grandson.”

FirstAmendmentCenter.org: “Justice David Souter played a pivotal and somewhat unusual role in the development of a most important doctrine in First Amendment law — something called secondary effects. In his three acts in this area, which involves adult entertainment, he expanded the doctrine, partially retracted his earlier position and called for the creation of a new category in the Court’s larger free-speech methodology.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “Oh, baseball. America’s pastime. Cracker Jack. Cold beer. Hot dogs. And body glitter? That’s the upshot of a decision issued Friday by a King County Superior Court judge, who cleared the way for a proposed Déjà Vu strip club — adult cabaret in the court’s parlance — near Safeco Field.”

Focus on the Family Action: “A new report from the government watchdog group Common Cause has found that gambling interests donated more than $4.3 million to candidates for public office in Pennsylvania over the last seven years.”

CNET.com: “‘Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content,’ Apple’s statement reads. ‘The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.’”

Minnesota Independent: ” In a letter to Holder, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State argue that MNTC has used taxpayer money to promote a specific Christian viewpoint in its programming.” The letter.

NY Times: “Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, sharply criticized Judge Sonia Sotomayor on Thursday, accusing her of relying too heavily on international law in her opinions, which he said raised doubts in his mind about how she would interpret the Constitution as a member of the Supreme Court.”

Legal Blog Watch: “. . . Shanghai human rights lawyer Ma Tianlin believes the suspension of licenses is retaliation by the Beijing Justice Bureau over the fact that many Beijing lawyers have demanded direct election of members to the Beijing Bar Association.”

Citizen Link: “Pressure from the public can have a huge impact on a business, according to Pat Trueman, special counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. That’s why families must continue to let Apple know how they feel about porn being available on the iPhone.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/26/response-home-education-children

LifeSiteNews: “African AIDS patients say they are being forcibly sterilized in hospitals funded by the United States’ international AIDS program PEPFAR, LifeSiteNews has learned.”

Tom McFeely writes at the Catholic Register and quotes Legionary Father Thomas Williams: “Some say that a hypocrite doesn’t practice what he preaches, but this isn’t hypocrisy. None of us perfectly practices what he preaches. We all fall short. The solution of lowering our moral bar to match our imperfect behavior doesn’t make us less hypocritical; it just makes us more mediocre. Keeping the bar high and maintaining our moral ideals helps us to strive for moral greatness rather than settling for moral poverty.”

LifeNews: “In a new interview, a respected pro-life physician says the data used by abortion advocates and United Nations agencies concerning abortion and maternal deaths is wrong. The misuse of the figures is important because they are used to persuade some national governments to legalize or expand abortions.”

AP: “The lesbian center, Lambda Legal and the ACLU now say they support the legal arguments of former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and David Boies.”

Lambda Legal: “The United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia today denied the Georgia General Assembly’s motion to dismiss Lambda Legal’s federal lawsuit on behalf of Vandy Beth Glenn, a transgender woman who was fired from her job as Legislative Editor after she told them she planned to transition from male to female.”

Andrew Martinez reports in The Daily Texan: “OUTLaw, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender law student alliance, has begun the process of establishing a legal journal to focus solely on issues affecting the gay community. The Texas Journal of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identification and the Law would be the first of its kind at UT and the second student-edited LGBT legal journal in the country.”

“The school’s rule thus was found to violate the Race Relations Act 1976.”

Religion Clause Blog: “First Assembly of God Christian Center of Pittsburg, California v. Bridgeway, (CA Ct. App., June 24, 2009) involves, in the court’s words, “a secular dispute dressed as a schism.” At issue is the validity of the election of a board of directors and of Tim Combs as senior pastor of the church, here challenged through a summary proceeding under the non-profit provisions of California Corporations Code Sec. 9418 . . . ”

Religion Clause Blog: “Second it concluded that the question of the propriety of the School Board’s invocation policy is governed by the legislative prayer principles of Marsh v. Chambers, rather than the school-classroom prayer restrictions imposed by Lemon v. Kurtzman (despite the fact that students occasionally attend Board meetings).”

John Doe # 2 v. Tangipahoa Parish School Board, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53189 (ED LA, June 24, 2009)

ADF is involved in this litigation.

Elizabeth De Alwis reports in the Paradise Post: “A Planned Parenthood protestor was nearly struck by a motor vehicle Wednesday morning in Chico when a 40-year-old man allegedly tried to mow him over with an SUV.”

Associated Press: “A federal judge will hear oral arguments next month in Sioux Falls over a lawsuit challenging a law that requires doctors to tell women seeking abortions that the procedure ends a human life.”

Piero A. Tozzi, J.D. reports at LifeSiteNews: “In its entry on Poland , Amnesty raps the country for its ‘Denial of access to abortion for eligible women,’ citing criticism that Poland received from the Human Rights Council (HRC) in May 2008. It further faulted the government for failing to implement a 2007 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Tysic v. Poland, concerning a purported ‘duty to establish effective mechanisms for ensuring women have access to abortion where it is legal.’”

Reuters: “Ireland recognized the legal rights of same-sex couples for the first time Friday in a civil partnership bill that gave people in long-term relationships many of the statutory rights of married couples. But it stopped short of recognizing civil marriage.”

The Vermont Times-Argus reports: “In April, staff of the Forest, Parks and Recreation Department talked about ways to boost use of state parks, including how to increase reservations for gay marriages and accommodate couples who might now want to change plans as a result of the new law that goes into effect in September.”

Tony Mauro writes at the National Law Journal: “The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has produced a report on the opinions of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, drawing conclusions that lend support to her advocates’ assertions that she is far from an extreme liberal.”

AP: “Operation Rescue of Wichita, Kan., on Thursday released audio recordings and e-mails containing threats, including one that says it’s ‘time to start killing Bible-thumping morons.’”

“This lawsuit claims that section 7.5 of Article I violates the equal protection clause of the State Constitution.”

Deutsche Welle reports:”Klaus Jetz, head of the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany (LSVD), told Deutsche Welle that the political focus of this year’s Christopher Street Day parades, which will begin this weekend in Berlin, will be on amending Article 3 of the German constitution.”

BBC News: “Bill Pritchard, former town councillor in Barmouth, Gwynedd, wrote to an assembly government minister, referring to two men in a local development. He described homosexuality as ‘a demon which can be driven out.’”

PinkNews reports: “The President of Lithuania has vetoed a new law that would have banned materials that “agitate” for gay relationships from schools”

Forbes (AP): “‘We’ve already heard rumblings of people that are filing and considering filing and announcing that they are going to run against particular candidates that voted for and against the gambling measure,’ said David Edmunds, a spokesman for the Kentucky Family Foundation, which opposed the measure.”

Gary Palmer, president of the Alabama Policy Institute, writes in the Montgomery Advertiser: “Given that an estimated 157.4 million Americans have private employer-provided insurance, over 108 million people could lose their coverage and be forced into a government plan which cuts fees to doctors and reduces spending on health care technology.”

Associated Press: “The Connecticut unit of the American Civil Liberties Union is backing the Diocese of Bridgeport in its lawsuit against a state agency that says the church must register as a lobbyist.”

Kimberly A. Strassel writes in the Wall Street Journal: “Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as ‘deniers.’ The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.”

AP: “I hope you don’t doubt the president’s commitment,” Biden said during a 20-minute address at the gathering. Assuring donors and other guests that Obama would keep the nation focused on “the unfinished business of true equality for all our people,” the vice president said, “I don’t blame you for your impatience.”

OneNewsNow: “‘This is a meeting room in a library that is basically open to about anything you can imagine, from meetings of political parties — the Democrats had meetings there — to tryouts for ‘American Idol’ to you name it, and that the only thing that was singled out were certain types of religious meetings,’ he notes. Last week, following a years-long court battle, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that after July 5, the library can no longer prohibit such meetings.”

Southern Voice: “The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund says an order was issued last week that will allow the Apple of His Eye organization to share its religious views and pass out leaflets at the Pride event in St. Louis.”

AP: “A hospital in central China dumped six aborted human fetuses and the bodies of two people at a construction site, state media said Friday.”

Catholic News Agency: “Jordan Lorence, Senior Counsel for the pro-life Alliance Defense Fund, said the initial ruling of the three-judge panel ‘conflicted significantly’ with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. ‘No one should be allowed to decide that an innocent life is worthless. Virginia has legitimately chosen to protect innocent life from a terrible procedure, and the court was right to uphold Virginia’s law,’ he added.”

Dallas Morning News (AP): “ACLU attorney Fleming Terrell says the organization has received complaints about teachers participating in religious extracurricular clubs and displaying crosses, and about Gideon Bibles being distributed in Navasota schools.”

David P. Goldman writing at First Things: “Humankind fights mortality in two ways. The first is to raise children who will remember us, and the second is to seek eternal life through divine grace. The estate of marriage involves both.”

Christian Concern for Our Nation: “A former BBC Radio 2 presenter claimed that the corporation is biased against churches and has embarked on a wider secularist campaign to get rid of Christianity . . . He added: ‘They’re keen on Islam, they’re keen on programmes that attack the Christian church.”

Newsday: Ninety-two percent of those polled say that it’s morally wrong for married people to have an affair. Even more wrong than cloning a human, for instance. Only 88 percent of people say that’s wrong . . . Committing suicide? 80 percent. Polygamy? 91 percent . . . ”

Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law: “This article will discuss the flaws underlying the majority view concerning access to marriage, the inherent discrimination against same-sex couples, and the various spousal rights concerning end of life and estate planning decisions. In particular, this article will examine spousal rights available to same-sex couples married by the Coquille Indian Tribe and registered as domestic partners under the Oregon Family Fairness Act.”

West’s Eductation Law Reporter: “Parents have also challenged in court the authority of school districts to administer surveys containing sex-related questions, alleging that in administering the surveys, school districts usurp parents’ fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of their children. Part I of this commentary reviews three such legal challenges and examines the resulting court decisions. Part II analyzes the decisions in light of the affirmation of parental rights by the U.S. Supreme Court and related appellate courts, and examines statistical evidence illustrating the nature and extent of students’ sexual behaviors. Finally, the commentary recounts Congressional and state legislative attempts to translate the courts’ jurisprudence into workable canons, and offers suggestions and recommendations for school districts planning to survey students.”

George Washington Law Review: “Ever since the Supreme Court declared that students and teachers do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,’ the Court has been struggling to determine what level of First Amendment protection it should provide to student speech. Part I of this Note will describe this struggle by providing a brief history of student speech law, including relevant Supreme Court decisions.”

Elder Law Journal: “This Note argues that physician-assisted suicide should be permitted under the same rationales used to justify an individual’s right to refuse life-sustaining treatment and that the right to physician-assisted suicide in the case of terminally ill patients is a constitutionally protected right. Because the end result of refusing life-sustaining treatment and physician-assisted suicide is the same–the death of the terminally ill patient–there is no substantive basis for distinguishing between the two.”