Daily Archives: September 3, 2009

Family Foundation of Virginia: “The polling was done after McDonnell’s thesis controversy and, in what may be the most important number in the poll, 49 percent say the ‘issue’ is not important.”

Governor’s Race Erupts Over McDonnell’s Past Views

Citizen Link: “Feminists for Life of America (FFL) has a new series of videos on its Web site called Exposing Coercion: Pregnant Women Stand Up. ”

Washington Post: “A report in the journal Contraception last year found that 66 percent of physicians performing second-trimester abortions are more than 50 years old.”

WorldNetDaily: “A 10-year-old homeschool girl described as ‘well liked, social and interactive with her peers, academically promising and intellectually at or superior to grade level’ has been told by a New Hampshire court official to attend a government school because she was too ‘vigorous’ in defense of her Christian faith . . . ‘Parents have a fundamental right to make educational choices for their children. In this case specifically, the court is illegitimately altering a method of education that the court itself admits is working,’ said ADF-allied attorney John Anthony Simmons of Hampton.”

Christian Examiner: “The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has asked a New Hampshire court to reconsider its decision to order a 10-year-old homeschooled girl into public school . . . ‘The New Hampshire Supreme Court itself has specifically declared, “Home education is an enduring American tradition and right,”‘ said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Mike Johnson. ‘There is clearly and without question no legitimate legal basis for the court’s decision, and we trust it will reconsider its conclusions.’”

LifeNews: “Students in all 50 states and from nations across the world are eagerly awaiting the next Pro-Life Day of Student Solidarity. Sponsored by the pro-life youth organization Stand True, the ironic day gives students a chance to tape their mouths shut to speak up for unborn children who can’t speak for themselves . . . Over the past few years many schools have tried to stop students from participating and quash their First Amendment rights. Every year, attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund defend these students and file lawsuits to protect their rights.”

New Zealand Herald: “The acting head judge of the Family Court has called for gay and lesbian couples to be given rights to adopt children, just as a private member’s bill on the issue goes into the ballot for Parliament’s order paper today.”

“A lawsuit in California that was filed last month by angry parents who object to a gay-friendly curriculum they say is being foisted on kindergartners could well become a test case for schools around the country.”

North Carolina Family Policy Council: “The North Carolina State Board of Education was briefed yesterday about the Department of Public Instruction’s (DPI) preparations for implementation of the state’s new sex education law. Governor Beverly Perdue signed the ‘Healthy Youth Act’ (HYA) into law in June 2009, and the new curriculum requirements for all public school students in grades 7–9 will go into effect beginning with the 2010-11 school year. The HYA amends the state’s nearly 15 year–old Abstinence-Until-Marriage law to include more information on contraception, and removes the previous requirement for a public hearing before school districts could implement a contraceptive-based approach.”

Wall Street Journal: “Students are borrowing dramatically more to pay for college, accelerating a trend that has wide-ranging implications for a generation of young people.”

Findlaw: “While much of yesterday’s news regarding the Pfizer fines concentrated on ‘off-label’ marketing, the other area of large concern in the Pfizer case was its payment of doctors to promote and prescribe a whole host of drugs. As discussed in a recent New York Times article, pharmaceutical companies often pay doctors to speak about their drugs, or sponsor continuing medical education events which incorporate promotion of specific drugs.”

Baltimore Sun: “A byproduct of home schooling, unschooling incorporates every facet of a child’s life into the education process, allowing a child to follow his passions and learn at his own pace, year-round. And it assumes that an outing at the park – or even hours spent playing a video game – can be just as valuable a teaching resource as Hooked on Phonics.”

Professor Kurt Lash writing at PrawfsBlawg: “In terms of the Fourteenth Amendment. An originalist investigation of the Privileges or Immunities Clause would look for patterns of usage regarding the words and phrases of the Clause, beginning with how those words and phrases were understood in the years leading up to the Civil War. This would inform the likely understanding of those words by the members of the Thirty-Ninth Congress who proposed the text, and the members of the public who ratified the text. My next post will begin this investigation.”

LifeNews: “One of the two Democrats in the U.S. Senate to claim a pro-life position on abortion is drawing fire from pro-life advocates today for a comment he made in a recent town hall. Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey told constituents that the Senate version of the government-run health care bill doesn’t fund abortions.”

John O. McGinnis writes at the Wall Street Journal: “The Supreme Court’s newest member, Sonya Sotomayor, has been getting all the press ­recently, and for good reason. But she will probably not shift the court decisively in one direction or another. The ‘decider’ role remains with Anthony Kennedy: He sits dead center in a court still polarized between four conservative justices and four liberal ones.”

The Constitution Society is sponsoring this simulcast: “On Wednesday, September 16, ACS will host a web-based simulcast from UC Berkeley School of Law on the Constitution and methods of interpretation that apply the text and broad principles to the changing needs and conditions of our society. Panelists will discuss how best to apply our founding document and the future of constitutional law. At the center of this discussion will be three recent publications on constitutional interpretation: Keeping Faith with the Constitution, It is a Constitution We Are Expounding, and The Constitution in 2020. These books have been highlighted in news stories in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and on National Public Radio.” Several well known law professors are panelists.

Harry R. Jackson, Jr. writes at Townhall in part to answer this question: “. . . what are the consequences of repealing DOMA?”

C-FAM: “This week leading conservative legal experts condemned a United Nations (UN) human rights committee’s recent inclusion of ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ as a protected category under a cornerstone human rights treaty.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In the Canadian province of Quebec, a trial court judge has rejected a challenge by Christian parents to the mandatory new course in grades 1 through 11 in Quebec schools that teaches about a broad range of world religions.”

CNSNews: “The Archdiocese of Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley has defended his decision to preside over the funeral Mass for Sen. Edward Kennedy, whose support for abortion rights clashed with Catholic teachings.”

Cardinal Sean’s Blog: On Senator Kennedy’s Funeral (see also the comments)

Religion Clause Blog: “In United States v. Valazquez, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 77946 (WD OK, Aug. 31, 2009), a defendant facing federal drug charges argued that the federal controlled substances laws are unconstitutional because of the exemption they grant to the Native American Church for the use of peyote.”

OneNewsNow: “A pro-family group is suing an Illinois hotel for discrimination. Americans for Truth About Homosexuality had scheduled an annual event two years ago at Holiday Inn in Naperville, Illinois. But when the hotel learned that demonstrators could be present, it cancelled the event.”

“The attorney general’s office in Montana has approved the ballot language some pro-life advocates are supporting that would define unborn children as persons under the state constitution.”

WPTZ: “former South Burlington high school student accused in a highly publicized teen ‘sexting’ case was sentenced to 90 days in jail and five years probation in Chittenden County District Court Thursday.”

ZENIT: “The separation of Church and state should not mean the repression of religious ideas and public manifestations, says the archbishop of São Paolo. Cardinal Odilo Scherer affirmed this in an articles in the archdiocesan newspaper in which he responds to an initiative proposed July 31 to remove religious symbols from public buildings in the city.”

C-FAM: “This week in Berlin, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the German government are hosting a meeting that brings together 400 ‘reproductive rights’ activists from across the globe to discuss strategies to push ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ – including abortion – at the local, national and international level.”

Seeing Red AZ: “Alliance Defense Fund attorneys have filed a lawsuit in federal court against the city of Phoenix on behalf of three churches, alleging that a noise ordinance prohibiting the ringing of their bells is unconstitutional.”

Joseph Bottum, writing at First Things: “A divorced couple’s irreconcilable differences make what seems a very bad occasion for legal decisions with serious First Amendment implications . . . The Alliance Defense Fund has more information on the case, but consider just the court’s disposition, on its own terms: Without any expert testimony as to whether the status quo was causing ‘actual harm’ to the child—the standard, applicable criterion for deciding in favor of change in such cases—Judge Sadler decided that the daughter’s best interests were served by removing her from an academically sound home-schooling regimen with the mother and placing her in the public-school setting preferred by the father.”

OneNewsNow: “Nampa Classical Academy is set to open its doors for the first time in a few days; however, the school’s curriculum has been rejected by the Idaho Public Charter School Commission . . . ‘Well, it’s interesting. Originally the focus was on prohibiting the use of the Bible, but then the defendants opened that up to exclude what they considered to be all religious documents and texts from the public school curriculum and from the classroom itself, which not only includes the teachers, but it also includes the students,’ [David] Cortman explains.”

OneNewsNow: “Texas A&M University in Lubbock, Texas, has worked out an anti-discrimination policy that discriminated against a Christian campus group . . . ‘This decision by Texas A&M respects the constitutional rights of the group and makes it clear that Texas A&M has sent a message that they’re not going to discriminate against this group . . .’ Martins points out.”

WorldNetDaily: “‘The Bible shouldn’t be singled out for censorship in public schools, especially since the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that it is entirely constitutional for it to be studied objectively as an educational resource,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman. ‘The commission is basing its determination to revoke the charter on its mistaken interpretation of the state constitution’s establishment clause. The authors of the Idaho Constitution clearly understood that history cannot be adequately taught without reference to significant religious texts. The commission’s interpretation is quite obviously not what constitution’s authors intended.’”

CitizenLink: “The Alliance Defense Fund has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Nampa Classical Academy, in defense of their use of the Bible as part of its curriculum.”

LifeNews: “The Montana Supreme Court held a hearing today on a case that could make the state the third to allow assisted suicide . . . So far, the court has received 19 amicus briefs, including one from attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund, a pro-life group who filed their brief in April . . . ‘Doctors are licensed to heal, not to kill. It should seem obvious, but the law should never allow private individuals to poison one another,’ ADF senior legal counsel Steven H. Aden told LifeNews.com.”

The August 2009 Marriage Law Digest, edited by Bill Duncan of the Marriage Law Foundation, is now available online at http://www.marriagedebate.com.

This month’s topics include:

BOSEMAN V. JARELL, No. COA08-957, North Carolina Court of Appeals, August 18, 2009 (second parent adoption).

Recent Law Review Articles (topics: religion and marriage, interjurisdictional recognition, marriage and procreation, California Supreme Court and marriage)

Citizen Link: “This is going to be a minefield of lawsuits by people who are suddenly feeling that they are discriminated against.”

Deal Hudson writes at InsideCatholic.com: “With two cardinals praising the pro-abort Kennedy and Bishop Martino of Scranton stepping down, millions of Catholics must be shaking their heads, just as I am this morning.”

Athens Banner Herald: “S. Rep. Paul Broun is again raising the specter of Democrats turning the United States into a totalitarian state . . . He told a meeting of the Morgan County Republicans on Wednesday night that Obama already has or will have the three things he needs to make himself a dictator: a national police force, gun control and control over the press.”

TIME: “Martino’s abrupt resignation, along with the fact that he was not reassigned to another position within the church, has some church insiders suggesting that the highly unusual move was far from voluntary — and quite possibly the work of a Vatican that has been decidedly less openly critical of the Obama Administration.”

Constitutionalism and Secularism: The Need for Public Reason
András Sajó, 30 Cardozo L. Rev. 2401 (2009)

“The question remains open: Is secularism inherent in constitutionalism? In order to answer the question I look first to some proxies of secularism that are used to address the role of the state in a secularizing political community. This is followed by a discussion of the broader patrolling role of secularist concepts and how these core concepts can resist the challenge of strong religions and religions with a potential for reconquering the public sphere for their purposes. The last part of the paper discusses different non-secular foundations claimed in legislation that secularist jurisprudence has to refute in order to safeguard constitutionalism.”

The Power of Symbols and Symbols as Power: Secularism and Religion as Guarantors of Cultural Convergence
Susanna Mancini, 30 Cardozo L. Rev. 2629 (2009)

“In the following pages, I will analyze cases decided and laws adopted in various jurisdictions with sharply different models for managing the relationship between the state and religion: Italy, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. I will also consider the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which is invested with the task of striking a balance between unity and diversity in 47 nations with deeply divergent constitutional traditions. Despite the differences among all of these systems, all cases rely more or less explicitly on a dichotomous construction of the relationship between Christianity and Islam, according to which the former–to be sure in a secularized form–is projected as a central component of Western civilization, while the latter is cast as a threatening ‘other.’”