Daily Archives: July 29, 2009

ABA Journal: “The ABA should either get out of the federal law school accreditation process altogether or seek a waiver from a Department of Education rule requiring the association to steer clear of the work of its accrediting body, an ABA task force on accreditation was told Wednesday.”

Nathan Black reports in The Christian Post: “‘This latest action from the IRS continues to leave churches in limbo when it comes to speaking freely from their pulpits,’ Stanley added in a statement Tuesday. ‘It illustrates everything that is wrong with the current enforcement of the Johnson Amendment. After an 11-month audit, it is disingenuous for the IRS to simply close the file and walk away as if nothing happened.’”

ABC 30 HD: “Sugar Daddy’s and a strip club in Lindsay are the two places the county says will be affected. The new rules would require the county to look at a dancer’s criminal background before they’re allowed to go to work.”

Clarion Ledger: “An undercover operation at a pair of Jackson strip clubs has led to the arrests of four people, including three dancers accused of offering sexual favors for money.”

ADF attorney Matt Bowman appeared on 100.7 FM with Janet Mefferd to discuss a case involving a pro-life nurse who resisted hospital efforts to force her to participate in an abortion.

The MP3 audio runs just under 15 minutes.

ADF Media information page: NY nurse threatened, forced to assist in late-term abortion

ADF attorney Tim Tracey discusses the marriage battle in Washington D.C. on the Jody Hice Show. The MP3 audio runs just under 18 minutes.

Austin American-Statesman: “U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican who is running for governor next year, said today she will oppose the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Balkinization Blog: “So the ‘irony’ is that the equality argument for abortion gives married women more rights with respect to abortions than married men have.”

Voice of the Martyrs: “On June 29, Pastor Dou Shaowen who is currently serving a one-year sentence for “engaging in illegal activities” was secretly transferred to Shifo Re-education through Labor Center in Zhengzhou.”

Bob Stith writes at the Baptist Press: “Over and over we’ve heard ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I just had to talk to someone.’ I’ve often wished that all Southern Baptists could hear the despair in these voices, for it is easy to overlook the fact that when homosexuality hits home, the struggler is not the only one who is impacted.”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: “[John M.] McHugh, who currently represents New York’s 23rd District in the House of Representatives, has been nominated by President Barack Obama to be the Secretary of the Army. His confirmation hearing is tomorrow. Americans United says McHugh has a troubling record when it comes to separation of church and state.”

Washington Post: “A Washington state Quaker filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday, alleging that the U.S. government is discriminating against him because it will not recognize his status as a conscientious objector on military draft forms.”

Fox News: “The compromise would cut the cost of the $1 trillion-plus package by $100 billion, according to one member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition. The deal also would ensure that the proposed government-run insurance program would not be forced on anyone.”

LifeNews reports: “A group of pastors issued endorsements for McCain in late September as a part of an effort to overturn a decades-long rule prohibiting endorsements from the pulpit. Aided by the pro-life law firm Alliance Defense Fund, they say the rules violate their free speech rights. More than 33 pastors across the United States were involved in the endorsement effort, including Booth.”

Christian Post: “With the institution of marriage weakening in American society, Christians are left with three options . . . IRD [Institute for Religion and Democracy] released a new paper touting the social value of traditional marriage and taking stock of the debate about its future in U.S. society . . . ”

IRD Asks, “Is Marriage Worth Defending?”

El Dorado Times: “The city of El Dorado filled in some gaps in their city codes with an amendment to the ordinance regulating adult businesses in the city. The issue arose because of all of the talk about The Retreat.”

Jarrett Skorup reports in the Midland County Public Policy Examiner: “According to a lawsuit filed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance of Christian attorneys, a New York woman named Catherina DeCarlo was forced to perform a late-term abortion against her will.”

Paul Walsh reports in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “The fund’s senior legal counsel, Erik Stanley, said Tuesday that the IRS’s latest action ‘continues to leave churches in limbo when it comes to speaking freely from their pulpits. … After an 11-month audit, it is disingenuous for the IRS to simply close the file and walk away as if nothing happened.’”

The FRC Blog reports on the findings by the FRC Mapping America Project.

AFP reports: “An Italian drug board is set to approve sales of the abortion-inducing drug RU486 in the predominantly Roman Catholic country, a news report said Wednesday.”

Brooke Adams reports in the Salt Lake Tribune: “Nine months after she halted its sale, 3rd District Judge Denise Lindberg will again consider a proposal to sell a farm that has become a battlefield for a controversial polygamous sect, a court-appointed fiduciary and attorneys general in two states.”

“A confirmation vote for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will be one of the last things the Senate does next week before it adjourns for its August recess, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said today.”

CBN News: “CBN News spoke with senior ADF counselor Steve Aden, who believes the hospital mishandled this case. Click play to hear more about what the hospital should have done and how this experience has affected Cenzon-DeCarlo.”

Balkan Insight reports: “Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha announced in a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that the government would push for a law that recognises homosexual marriages.”

SSRN: “In this essay, I argue that the rationales offered by the Singapore Government for restricting racial and religious hate speech are not only constitutionally unsound, but also not without serious moral and social costs.”

CNSNews: “During his speech at a recent National Press Club luncheon, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) said he is introducing a constitutional amendment that would establish health care as ‘a right’ for all Americans . . . ”

Newschannel5.com: “Hermitage Church of Christ host a pre-school and daycare. Church members are angry that Venus Erotica has opened nearby on Lebanon Road.”

Carlos A. Ball writes at the Huffington Post: “There are some who may think that it is not possible to seek to both expand the institution of marriage — by allowing same-sex couples to marry — while at the same time seeking to reduce its importance. But I think that this is perhaps an instance in which we can have our cake and eat it too. We should, by all means, strive to make the institution of marriage more inclusive. But our goal, over the long run, should be to lessen the prioritization of marital status in the distribution of rights and benefits.”

Boston Globe (AP): Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana says he will vote against confirming Sonia Sotomayor to be a Supreme Court justice.

WGAL.com: “Pastor Gerry Stoltzfoos of Gettysburg was invited to open a House session with prayer but his use of the word ‘Jesus’ was considered offensive by House leadership . . . said Stoltzfoos, of Freedom Valley Worship Center. ‘Jesus is offensive in our culture? Come on. Have we really become that group of people?’” The report includes the text of the prayer that Stoltzfoos ultimately gave in the State Senate.

AP: “Republican Sen. Richard Burr says he will vote against the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.”

Deseret News: “Only four people showed up: three officials from Tooele School District and a nurse from the Tooele County Health Department . . . The latest version of the sex-ed bill, sponsored by Rep. Lynn Hemingway, D-Salt Lake, allows parents to choose between two health classes . . . ”

Terence P. Jeffrey writes at CNSNews: “It turns out, however, that an even simpler question once stumped the very person Obama now pays to give him advice about science: When does a human become a ‘human being’? John P. Holdren is director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In 1973, he co-authored a book—’Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions’—with Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich. ”

CNSNews: “While many pro-life Democrats in the House of Representatives say they will not vote for a health care reform bill unless it explicitly prohibits federal funding for abortion through insurance plans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has declined to state whether the final legislation should address the issue.”

ABC-12 Wisconsin reports: “Stephen Balkam of the Family Online Safety Institute said phones have parental controls for free. ‘All the mobile carriers now have parental controls all for free,’ said Balkam, ‘and a number of them like AT&T and Verizon have additional controls that you pay about $5 a month for.’”

“‘The State cannot allow the release of the names on the Referendum 71 petition when the purpose is to harass and intimidate people who are merely exercising their right to speak,’ Bopp stated in the release.

Bopp, Jr. of Indiana-based Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom is lead counsel in the case, according to a press release. Attorney Stephen Pidgeon of Everett, who is associated with the Alliance Defense Fund, is expected to handle today’s proceeding.”

KSL.com: “Can teens be taught comprehensive sex education in Utah schools? It’s a controversial subject. Planned Parenthood’s Action Council says it’s trying to diffuse some of that controversy by simply talking with parents, teachers and community groups across Utah.”

Blog of the Legal Times: “Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), speaking at the start of a committee meeting, expressed frustration that the Senate has not confirmed any nominees to the federal judiciary this year. In all, he said, there are 17 nominations that the Judiciary Committee has sent to the full Senate and that are still awaiting confirmation.”

USA Today: “Want to predict which state might move next to legalize same-sex marriage? You might count Catholics. The higher their percentage of the population, the more likely the state is to… support gay rights.”

“. . . the Federal Election Commission filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Citizens United v. FEC calling for the overruling of two Supreme Court decisions that have chilled public speech by imposing complex and burdensome layers of regulations.”

ABC-12 Wisconsin reports: “The Florida congresswoman introduced a bill this month called the Aware Act. It would allocate federal grants to nonprofits to teach kids how to stay safe online.”

. . . parishioners and diocese bishop named in an Ontario Human Rights Tribunal complaint over an accusation of discrimination due to sexual orientation filed a response . . .

The Hill: “In exchange for putting off a floor vote until after Labor Day, the Energy and Commerce Committee may be allowed to continue its markup of the healthcare bill this week even if an agreement has not been reached between Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and seven Energy and Commerce Committee Blue Dogs over the content of the bill.”

Religion Clause Blog: “The Corporation for National & Community Service, a federal agency, yesterday announced that it has issued a new report titled Volunteering in America 2009 . . . ”

WorldNetDaily: “Support in Congress for a requirement that presidential candidates provide proof – more than just a sworn statement – that they are eligible to occupy the Oval Office continues to grow, and now has moved into double digits.”

“Once again, he [Lou Dobbs] renewed his calls for Obama to produce his long-form birth certificate that would settle doubts about where he was born and offered that the president’s actions could actually be ‘illegal.’”

Stephanie Bloyd reports at Club Industry’s Fitness Business Pro: “Helen Durkin, IHRSA’s executive vice president of public policy, also testified in opposition to the bill, which the organization says would infringe on the privacy rights of health club members. Durkin asked the judiciary committee to consider exempting health club locker rooms in the bill’s language.”

Sarah Lemagie reports in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA) says the ACLU, which sued the academy in January, defamed the school and hurt its ability to hire qualified teachers, according to counterclaims filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.”

Christian Concern for Our Nation (CCFON): “‘Federal law requires that employers who receive funding from tax dollars must not compel employees to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, but this nurse’s objections fell on deaf ears.’

‘Mrs Cenzon-DeCarlo believes lots of nurses and doctors throughout the US are being pressured to assist abortion, and I want them to know they are not alone, and they should speak up for their rights of conscience.’”

The Chronicle of Philanthropy: “Lawyers for the Alliance Defense Fund said they were disappointed the IRS has dropped the examination. ‘ADF would likely have waived any complaint about procedural concerns involved in the investigation stage of the audit in order to reach the merits of the case and clarify the law,’ said Erik Stanley, the fund’s senior legal counsel, in a statement.”

FRC Action: “Tonight, during a live webcast joined by more than 49,000 viewers, Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins unveiled a new TV ad which will initially run in five key states including Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, and Nebraska. The hard hitting ad lays out two key threats should President Obama’s plan become reality – rationing and taxpayer funded abortions. Patients, particularly the elderly, will face denial of vital treatments while at the same time be forced to pay for abortions.”

Liberty Counsel: “The Navy has announced new Community Guidelines, removing its restrictions on religious speech on its Navy for Moms website. This change is in response to a letter Liberty Counsel sent to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, demanding an end to religious discrimination and reinstatement of users’ free speech rights on the website . . . ”

Jay P. Greene writes at EducationNews.org: “School choice can help special-ed students and keep the Catholic-school option alive in the inner city.”

Warren Throckmorton & Dr. Paul Kengor write at the Grove City College Center for Vision & Values: “Ginsburg’s comments to The New York Times Magazine open a floodgate of disturbing questions regarding a sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Perhaps even more amazing than her comments was the lack of clarification or follow up from the Times. ”

Vivian Berger writes at the National Law Journal: “Sexting is a social, not a criminal, problem, to whose solution law enforcement has nothing positive to contribute.”

Pacific Justice Institute: “The school board of Modesto City Schools District is considering a controversial new policy that would allow students to leave campus for ‘confidential medical services’ – including abortions – without their parents ever knowing about it.”

“Opponents have now threatened to obtain copies of the petition, which contain the name and address of each petition signer, in an effort to make them available on the internet. The clear goal of this effort is to intimidate and harass . . . Attorney Stephen Pidgeon (Bellevue, WA), an Alliance Defense Fund Allied Attorney, is serving as local counsel in the case.” (Source: Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom)

WorldNetDaily: “The case against an American arrested for talking in public about Jesus in Norway has been appealed to the European Court of Human Rights by an attorney who says the resulting decision will have a major impact on the rights of freedom and expression.”

Thaddeus M. Baklinski writing at Catholic Online (LifeSiteNews): “Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorneys filed a lawsuit last week against Mount Sinai Hospital on behalf of Cathy Cenzon-DeCarlo, who is asking the court to order the hospital to pay unspecified damages, restore her shifts and respect her objections to abortion. The suit also seeks to force Mount Sinai to give up the federal funding it receives, the Post report states, because it failed to uphold a federal rule protecting employees who have moral objections to controversial procedures.”

Kathleen Gilbert writing at Catholic Online (LifeSiteNews): “‘Pro-life nurses shouldn’t be forced to assist in abortions against their beliefs,’ said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. ‘Requiring a devout, Catholic nurse to participate in a late-term abortion in order to remain employed is illegal, unethical, and violates her rights of conscience.’”

LifeNews: “A nurse in New York City who Mount Sinai Hospital forced to participate in an abortion is speaking out about her ordeal. As LifeNews.com first reported, Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit last week for Cathy Cenzon-DeCarlo who says she told the hospital about her objections.”

Christian News Northwest reports: “Referendum 71 is a citizen initiative that would allow voters to decide on state Senate Bill 5688, which, according to Christian legal rights agency Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), makes marriages and same-sex ‘registered domestic partnerships’ effectively the same except in name.”

Seattle Post Intelligencer: “Referendum 71 needs 120,577 valid voter signatures to qualify for the fall ballot. Supporters say they turned in about 138,000 signatures. Election officials suggest submitting about 150,000 signatures to offset any invalid signatures. Dave Ammons, spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, said usually about 18 percent of signatures checked turn out to be invalid.”

Temple Law Review: “This Comment discusses the great disparity in tax treatment between James’s estate and Jonathan’s estate–heterosexual married couples’ estates and same-sex married couples’ estates. Many provisions of the wealth transfer tax system treat same-sex married couples very differently than opposite-sex married couples.”

Hamline Law Review: “If a constitutional challenge to a prosecution for incest of an adult who adopted a lover were successful, it would likely validate at least some, and possibly all, of Justice Scalia’s anxious Lawrence dissent, and the whole house of sexual-crime cards could well fall with it: not only for this strand of incest laws, but also for laws addressing ‘core’ incest, adultery, bestiality, masturbation, fornication, bigamy, and possibly ending with the brass ring of same-sex marriage.”

Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy: “Critics of President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative often claimed that it was not a serious public policy effort, but rather a political ploy aimed at pleasing the Republican white evangelical ‘base’ and poaching African-American and Hispanic pastors and voters from the Democratic Party. However, even casual observers should have known better. If the initiative was just about politics, why did some thirty-six states, led by both Democrats and Republicans, create their own initiatives, maintaining them even when state leadership changed from one party to the other? Why did the Pew Charitable Trusts invest in an eight-year project, the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, to track the initiative’s goals, outcomes, and legal reforms? If the initiative was mere low politics, why did it spark so many books, journal and law review articles, and dissertations?”

Saint John’s Journal of Legal Commentary: “With the massive amount of litigation the RCC is facing, if courts include parish property as part of the bankruptcy estate, the financial stability of parishes around the country could be seriously jeopardized.”

Missouri Environmental Law and Policy Review: “This essay will examine the roots of [Scalia's] philosophy, the emerging ecumenical environmentalism that challenges it, and the consideration that judicial conservatives may be in thrall to a new ‘world religion’–the market–at the expense of a divinely-inspired earth. It will reveal that, as Aldous Huxley observed, ‘The best that can be said for ritualistic legalism is that it improves conduct. It does little, however, to alter character and nothing of itself to modify consciousness.’”

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy: “Put all of those things together–the exceptional ability and relative youth of the two most recent appointments, the already conservative character of the Court, the Republican Party’s commitment to making conservative appointments, and the Democrats’ relative lack of ability to use the Court to advance an agenda–and the idea that there might be a revival of something like the Warren Court in the next generation is, in a word, chimerical. That is pretty obvious. What is less obvious–and a little paradoxical–is that we are also dealing with something that can fairly be characterized as the end of judicial conservatism.”

University of St. Thomas Journal of Law & Public Policy: “In First Amendment jargon, a private university is an ‘expressive association’ possessing the constitutional right to express its views as an institution, to control its membership decisions (e.g., faculty, students) so as to control its message, and to exclude voices and messages with which it disagrees or speakers of whom it disapproves. To some extent the University of St. Thomas might be thought to endorse speakers or groups it fails to censor, precisely because it has the legal right to do so.”

SSRN: “This paper identifies and evaluates three different forms of federalism in family law, each of which presents distinct pragmatic and constitutional questions. Congress has used its spending power to reconfigure state child support and child welfare laws on a cooperative federalism basis, and its Commerce Clause and Full Faith and Credit powers to legislate in areas that pose horizontal federalism problems. Congress has also preempted state family law with legislation in areas including civil rights, tax, pension, bankruptcy immigration, and international law. In all of these settings, Congress has been primarily responsible for defining the balance of national and state power, with the federal courts resisting national family legislation only when it seems likely to shift significant responsibility from the state courts to the federal courts.”

SSRN: “This Article elaborates some aspects of everyday naming practices involving social identity and kinship, in order to assist us in understanding the injury that comes from mandating two distinct names for the core family relationship.”

University of St. Thomas Journal of Law & Public Policy: “This article begins by looking at the basic underlying principles of the Commerce Clause, which are essential to understanding how and why the Roberts Court might find FACE unconstitutional. Next it looks at the Act, both as it is written and as it has been interpreted by the lower federal courts. This section also covers the various constitutional challenges that have been mounted against FACE, with particular emphasis on the debate surrounding the question of whether the Act was validly enacted under Congress’s Commerce Clause power. Finally, this article considers whether the addition of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito to the Supreme Court will result in the invalidation of FACE.”

SSRN: “The essay will be in part a reminder that there are far more generations than three who have sought to transcend the boundaries of the law through feminist theory: feminists, male and female, have been making their case for centuries. It will also be in part an elegy for potential alliances lost: though many of the women who in prior centuries sought to bring their sex beyond the boundaries of the law were self-described conservatives on other matters, in my lifetime feminism and conservatism have come to be seen as antithetical, something I dealt with on a daily basis as a faculty member in two of the nation’s most conservative law schools, Virginia and Chicago. Also in my lifetime, the Church that brought me to sameness feminism at first repudiated sex equality and then turned to an embrace of difference, as official guardian of doctrinal purity Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, in official pronouncements explicitly rejecting the sort of sex and gender theory to which I am committed, came close to suggesting that even souls have a sex.”

Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy: “Public bioethics figured prominently during the tenure of President George W. Bush. This Article explores the Bush legacy in this domain. It begins by articulating and examining the grounding norms of President Bush’s approach to public bioethics. Next, it analyzes how these norms were applied to concrete areas of concern. Building on this analysis, the next section reflects on what the President’s actions illustrate about the capacity of the Executive Branch to shape public bioethics. The Article concludes with a brief discussion of the possible metrics by which the Bush Administration’s efforts might be judged, and then offers several assessments according to the various standards identified.”