Daily Archives: October 5, 2009

The Independent: “In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading.”

Citizen Link: “Illinois Sen. Heather Steans, D-Springfield, introduced the Equal Marriage Act last week. The bill would legalize marriage between two adults of the same sex.”

Telegraph: “According to informants quoted in The Catholic Herald, the Queen has ‘grown increasingly sympathetic’ to the Catholic Church over the years while being ‘appalled’, along with the Prince of Wales, at developments in the Church of England.”

Contra Costa Times (Mercury News): “Gay-marriage opponents have asked a federal judge to shift Attorney General Jerry Brown to the plaintiffs’ side of a lawsuit challenging Proposition 8, arguing that his refusal to defend the law makes him an adversary in the legal fight.”

Boston Globe (AP): “The body of a Christian health worker turned up in a field two days after he was kidnapped — prompting several more Christian families to pack up and leave their ancient homeland in northern Iraq.”

Timesnews.net: “Legal interpretation on religious activities in public schools — everything from classroom prayer to “See You at the Pole” gatherings — is included in a briefing paper sent by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to 137 public school superintendents in Tennessee. The paper is called: ‘Know Your Rights: Religion in Public Schools — A Guide for Administrators and Teachers.’”

ACLU-TN press release: ACLU-TN Responds to Religious Activity in Tennessee Public Schools: Releases Guide for Administrators and Teachers

CNN: “The implications of the case could extend beyond the Mojave Cross. Individual gravestones are not at issue, but war memorials have long featured religious imagery. ‘There are 5 million veterans that we represent … would be quite shocked and horrified to know that those memorials and the symbols chosen by vets 75 years or 100 years ago would suddenly have to be torn down by a bulldozer,’ said Hiram Sasser, attorney for the Liberty Legal Institute.”

Dakota Voice: “Eighty-three churches from 30 states and the District of Columbia participated in the Alliance Defense Fund’s second annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday on Sept. 27.”

Baptist Press: “In fact, an estimated 100,000 American children under 18 years of age are victimized through prostitution every year and children rented for sex acts . . . Those are among the troubling findings by Shared Hope International (SHI), which conducted investigations in 10 United States cities with a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.”

BioNews: “A US fertility clinic faces legal action following the results of an independent audit which showed that some embryos stored there had been mislabelled and others were destroyed or unaccounted for. Ochsner Hospital, New Orleans, has admitted mishandling frozen embryos and that some embryos were wrongly destroyed, although deliberate mishandling has been denied.”

Associated Press: “President Barack Obama plans to address the nation’s largest gay rights group this weekend in an effort to mollify an uneasy Democratic constituency frustrated with the White House’s slow pace.”

“The Quebec family whose petition was denied by a Drummondville judge in August to exempt their children from Quebec’s mandatory program in religious and ethical relativism . . . has filed a motion for leave to appeal that decision.”

USA Today: “Retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor says she regrets that some of her decisions ‘are being dismantled’ by the current Supreme Court.”

AP: “The secretary of the Kansas Department of Corrections says it has established procedures to report and document illegal sex in its prisons, but that’s a problem prisons nationwide continue to struggle with.”

ADF attorney Doug Napier appeared on the Power Hour with Joyce Riley to discuss this: NH court orders home-schooled child into government-run school.

The MP3 runs just over 32 minutes.

LifeNews: “While much of the focus on his attendance at the HRC dinner will be placed on its advocacy of the homosexual agenda, HRC has a long history of advocating abortion.”

Google News (AP): “Child porn has grown so pervasive on the Internet, they say, that police agencies all over the country, using the latest file-tracking technology, could easily spend every day finding and arresting offenders.”

CNSNews: “Seeking to break a longstanding impasse between Western and Islamic nations over freedom of expression, the United States has piloted a finely-balanced resolution through the U.N.’s Human Rights Council which the two sides are choosing to interpret differently.”

Nate Silver: “Throw Maine’s numbers into the model, and we come up with an estimated level of support for the ban of 43.5 percent, with 56.5 percent opposed. In other words, the model’s prediction is that the ban will fail. The standard error of the forecast (not the margin of error, which is larger) is 5.2 points. This implies that the marriage ban only has about an 11 percent chance of passing.”

Balkan Insight: “Czech President Vaclav Klaus says that he will not sign the Lisbon treaty, while it is under legal review, and that the treaty will have no impact on EU enlargement.”

Breitbart (PR Newswire): “Dr. Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life, who met with the White House last month on the issue of abortion in health care, said of the dramatic shift, ‘The political implications of the shift illustrated by this poll are significant: including abortion in health care reform is a move out of touch with the American people. Congress needs to remove the abortion mandate out of the current health care proposals.’”

Alex Knepper writing at New Majority: “I am attempting not to discover why gays hold to a liberal worldview in general, but rather to examine why so many gays have prioritized their identity over other issues, subverting any politically conservative opinions to that. I do believe that I have stumbled upon an answer. In his mostly-forgotten tome The Political Illusion, French political philosopher Jacques Ellul described the state’s effect on the deterioration of a nation’s culture: the more that the government moves into the cultural and economic realm, the more that it becomes the ultimate arbiter of the nation’s values. Thus, citizens increasingly feel that they cannot be validated except in light of the state.”

LifeNews: ” Chicago is the latest city to target pro-life advocates with a proposal that would limit their free speech rights and prevent them from helping women going to area abortion centers. The Chicago City Council proposed an 8-foot bubble zone around abortion centers last Thursday . . . Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based pro-life law group, promised a lawsuit if the city went through with the ordinance.”

Eighty-three churches from 30 states and the District of Columbia participated in the Alliance Defense Fund’s second annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday on Sept. 27.

The National Law Journal: “Six Supreme Court justices, two Cabinet members and Vice President Joe Biden were on hand along with dozens of other judges and public officials Sunday at the traditional Roman Catholic Red Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C., the unofficial start to the Supreme Court’s fall season. The cardinal giving the sermon at the Mass called on lawyers to give ‘radical support to the unborn.’”

John W. Truslow III writes at Roll Call: “By repealing the 17th, the nation would restore a meaningful part of the framers’ original design for federalism. The responsibility for the quick and just selection of Senators becomes that of a democratic body in each state, providing a meaningful check against hot-headed, confrontational government. It worked well for more than 120 years. What is the harm in reconsidering the framers’ original plan?”

Wicked Local: “Superior Court judge has denied the archbishop of Boston’s request to end a lengthy legal battle between the church and the town over taxes owed on St. Frances X. Cabrini, a parish closed in 2004. For the property to remain tax-exempt, the archbishop must provide proof that the archdiocese plans to put the property to a religious use, Judge Paul Troy said in a ruling Tuesday.”

Wall Street Journal Law Blog: “. . . I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.”

“Liberty Legal has a knack for getting in the middle of newsworthy fights . . .”

Yale Law Clinic: The Yale Law School Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic and the Yale Law Journal Online hosted the half-day conference, ‘Important Questions of Federal Law’: Assessing the Supreme Court’s Case Selection Process, on September 18, 2009, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The conference was a great success. Thanks to all participants and attendees for their thoughtful presentations and questions.”

Hat tip: How Appealing

“The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal to review a Florida law that requires public school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance each day unless they have their parents’ written permission excusing them.”

Yahoo News: “By openly declaring their views on the Afghan war, US military leaders have placed President Barack Obama in a bind as he faces a fraught decision over the troubled US-led mission.”

Dallas Morning News: “Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said he wants Gordon Klingenschmitt, a former U.S. Navy chaplain, to “stop asking Jesus to plunder my fields … seize my assets, kill me and my family then wipe away our descendants for 10 generations.’ . . . Weinstein said he also hopes to cripple the Chaplaincy financially and to have the organization stripped of its status with the Department of Defense.”

Hat tip: Religion Clause Blog

Religion Clause Blog: “ANI reports today that Saudi Arabia’s religious police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, is setting up a new human rights unit to deal with human rights ‘in accord with just Islamic principles and international rights treaties.’”

Buzz Flash: “The Alliance Defense Fund, a high-powered Religious Right legal operation, titled its recent story about Feldblum’s appointment, ‘Obama’s EEOC pick, Chai Feldblum: Sexual liberty wins in conflict with religious liberty,’ and Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink blog wrote a piece titled “Enter Chai Feldblum; Exit Religious Liberty.”

AP: “The president of Somalia on Sunday denounced the recruiting of young men from Minnesota’s huge Somali community for terrorist activity in his war-ravaged homeland, and said he plans to work with the U.S. government to bring those still alive back home.”

LifeNews: “The Supreme Court today declined to hear an appeal in a case involving Choose Life license plates in Illinois. The decision means that the Illinois officials who declined to issue the license plates in Illinois have won a legal victory against the pro-life advocates who wanted the plates to raise funds for adoptions . . . Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund had also filed a brief in the case. ‘Pro-life and pro-adoption organizations shouldn’t be censored just because not everyone agrees with their viewpoint,’ ADF senior legal counsel Steven Aden told LifeNews.com.”

OneNewsNow: “Free speech reigns supreme on the campus of Spokane Falls Community College in Washington . . . While the lawsuit was filed in March, the college only recently settled the case after agreeing to a court order to change its policy regarding free speech. Hacker says the original policy — termed the ‘Stop the Hate’ policy — was so broad that an event of any kind could be halted if one person felt offended.”

Star-Telegram: “A national conservative Christian group is calling on several area colleges and universities to drop or change their free speech and expression rules because they could discourage students from voicing opinions about religious beliefs and other issues . . . At times, students with those and other conservative Christian viewpoints may want to publicly express their beliefs. But some school policies are so open to interpretation that students could face punishment if they do, said David French, senior counsel for the Defense Fund.”

Times Herald-Record: “The president of a local anti-abortion group is challenging the constitutionality of a village law banning picketing in front of homes in residential areas . . . ‘Nobody in this country should need a permit to walk on a sidewalk with a sign,’ she said by phone, before referring all questions about the lawsuit to the Alliance Defense Fund, a national Christian group that provides litigation assistance in anti-abortion cases.”

“If a federal appeals court has its way, the box and the memorial soon will be gone forever. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court will review the ruling at the request of the Department of Justice . . . ”

newsday.com: “Lindenhurst Union Free School District has settled a lawsuit filed by a student who alleged that officials had violated his civil rights by refusing to let him form a Bible club . . . David Cortman, attorney for the student, said the pupil repeatedly asked the school to grant the Bible club official status between October 2008 and February, when he filed the lawsuit. ‘He was told that would violate the separation of church and state,’ Cortman said.”

Louisville City Hall Examiner: “Obama administration officials have decided that the traditional Christmas tree . . . will not have any ‘religious’ ornaments on it this year . . . Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) have sent a letter to federal and state officials, including Arizona Governor Janice Brewer, demanding that they abandon the discrimination against religious viewpoints . . . Federal officials are now confirming that the policy . . . has been rescinded.”

New University: “The ‘Pulpit’ protest was organized by the Phoenix-based, socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund, which stated that the clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from its pulpits . . . [I]f the IRS refuses to act, the pastors and the organization will learn and believe that the National IRS Tax Code can be safely ignored, and thus, in a blink of an eye, the idea of separation of church and state will no longer be maintained.”

NewsMax: “President Obama has cut off communication with Republican leaders, going more than four months without hosting the bipartisan congressional leadership at the White House to discuss his health care proposal, the No. 2 Republican in the House said Wednesday. Minority Whip Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican, told The Washington Times . . . ”

LA Times: “Nowhere has the [debate over invocations] played out more dramatically than in Lodi, where, after a tumultuous five-hour meeting this week, the City Council voted not only to continue invocations but also to allow phrases such as ‘in Jesus’ name . . . Members crafted their new policy with help from attorneys for the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based network of Christian lawyers. ‘There’s no reason to censor or silence a cherished tradition,’ said Mike Johnson, the group’s senior legal counsel. ‘Over the last five or six years, atheist groups have swiped at it with radical demand letters to relatively defenseless, small, hometown governments.’”

WSJ: “How else to explain the coordinated release on Wednesday of the EPA’s new rules that make carbon a dangerous pollutant and John Kerry’s cap-and-trade bill? Ms. Jackson is issuing a political ultimatum to business, as well as to Midwestern and rural Democrats: Support the Kerry-Obama climate tax agenda—or we’ll punish your utilities and consumers without your vote.”

“Lorence will argue that the federal district court’s November 2007 permanent injunction allowing churches to rent public school buildings on the same terms and conditions as all other groups should stand.”

S.E. Cupp writes at Townhall: “New York health-care workers are protesting the emergency regulation adopted this summer by the State Health Department making seasonal and swine flu shots mandatory. As well they should. So should good conservatives, libertarians – and yes – the pro-choice left.”

CitizenLink: “In an about-face, the U.S. Forest Service has decided it will not prohibit Christian messages on ornaments for the Capitol Christmas Tree, following a letter from the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). ‘The case law here is just so clear that it’s almost amazing that this supposed mistake slipped through the cracks,’ said Jonathan Scruggs, litigation staff counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).”

WORLDmag.com: “A controversy has been brewing around the decorations selected for this year’s U.S. Capitol Christmas tree . . . The Alliance Defense Fund took up the case on behalf of the child’s mother, demanding that state and federal officials ‘abandon the prohibition of religious viewpoints’ on the ornaments by Sunday, October 4.”

SCOTUS Blog reports their were no new grants of cert. today and denied review in several significant cases including these:

* A plea for the Court to further clarify when public school officials, fearing disruption of school life, may impose a ban on displays of the Confederate flag or other symbols that they fear will arouse students (Barr v. Lafon, 08-1325).

* In another public school case, a test of the constitutionality of requiring a public school student to get a parent’s permission before the student may refuse, as a matter of principle, to salute the American flag during school ceremonies (Frazier v. Smith, 08-1351).

* A First Amendment test of the firing of a public employee merely because he or she announced a candidacy for elected office, where laws allow such a candidacy. The case of Greenwell v. Parsley, 08-1328, involved a deputy sheriff fired after announcing.he would run for his boss’s job

AP: “The Supreme Court won’t get involved in a dispute between breakaway Episcopalians and their former national church over who owns a California church and its property.”

St. James Parish v. Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, 08-1579

U.S. News & World Report: “An estimated 13 million infants worldwide are born premature each year and more than one million of them die within the first month of life, according to a report released Sunday.”

The Guardian: “The crisis is so deep that Professor Kevin Starr, who has written an acclaimed history of the state, recently declared: ‘California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America.’”

Adrienne D Davis, The Game of Love: Polygamy, Default Rules, and Bargaining for Equality (September 30, 2009). Washington U. School of Law Working Paper No. 09-09-01. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1480906

“This Essay shifts attention from the constitutionality and decriminalization debates to a new set of questions: whether and how polygamy might be effectively recognized and regulated, consistent with contemporary social norms. It argues that the gay marriage analogy, invoked on both the ‘left’ and the ‘right,’ is a red herring, a distraction from the real challenge polygamy raises for law – how plural marriage transforms the conventional marital dyad and whether law is up to regulating marital multiplicity.”

Susanna Mancini, The Power of Symbols and Symbols as Power: Secularism and Religion as Guarantors of Cultural Convergence (June 1, 2009). Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 2629-2668, 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1481800

“Conflicts over religious symbols arise as a consequence of the de facto pluralistic character of European societies. However, a comparative analysis of the reactions of courts and legislators confronted with such conflicts shows a tendency to counter or minimize pluralism, rather than to seek a reasonable accomodation for the different religious components of the polity.”

Jenni Millbank, De Facto Relationships, Same-Sex and Surrogate Parents: Exploring the Scope and Effects of the 2008 Federal Relationship Reforms (October 1, 2009). Australian Journal of Family Law, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1481022

“In October 2008 a suite of major reforms concerning family relationships passed federal parliament. Broadly speaking these reforms include same-sex couples within the category of ‘de facto relationship’ in all federal laws (previously limited to unmarried heterosexual couples), extend the definition of ‘parent’ and ‘child’ in much federal law to include lesbian parents who have a child through assisted reproductive means and, in more limited circumstances, to include parents who have children born through surrogacy arrangements.”

Dana Brakman Reiser, Charity Law’s Essentials (September 28, 2009). Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 167. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1479572

“My new vision of charity law centers around two essential requirements. First, charity law must continue to demand that charities maintain an other-regarding orientation, pursuing benefits for someone other than their own leaders and managers. Second, existing charity law must be revised and supplemented to mandate that charities utilize group governance. Additionally, this dual focus should be intensified by removing the limits on commercial and political activity that currently clutter charity law.”

“Based on results so far, the Yes side has 66.8 per cent of the vote reflecting a 20 per cent swing . . . ”