Daily Archives: November 3, 2009

“With more than 84 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday, the side seeking to repeal the law had 53 percent of the vote. Their campaign organizer, Frank Schubert, claimed victory and declared that Maine voters had helped preserve the institution of marriage.”

The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer are reporting the totals.

Still too close to call. Bangor Daily News Updates

Returns on the Casino measure are available at the Cleveland Plain Dealer here.

“With 5,138 of 6,305 precincts reporting, Christie led Corzine 49 percent to 44 percent.”

“Former Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell (R) is the governor-elect of the Commonwealth after winning a race focused on local issues, rather than national dynamics.”

State Bar of Wisconsin: ssues of standing and the best method to interpret the purpose of a constitutional amendment dominated oral arguments before the Wisconsin Supreme Court yesterday in a challenge to the 2006 “marriage amendment” prohibiting recognition of same sex-marriage. In the case McConkey v. Van Hollen, 2008AP1868 . . .

LA Times: “A little-noticed measure would put Christian Science healing sessions on the same footing as clinical medicine. Critics say it violates the separation of church and state.”

CNSNews: “A memorandum from the Alabama state superintendent of education to all city and county superintendents dated September 24, 2009, has sparked a controversy regarding the church school option employed by parents providing home instruction to their children. The memorandum from Dr. Joseph B. Morton reiterates Alabama’s long-held position that the only legal means of “homeschooling” is by a private tutor who is certified to teach in the public schools.”

CNSNews: “The House Republican Conference has compiled a list of all the new boards, bureaucracies, commissions, and programs created in the House health care bill.
The Republican conference describes H.R. 3962 as ‘Speaker Pelosi’s government takeover of health care.’ The list of 111 new bureaucracies is reprinted here . . . ”

USA Today: “Several gay rights organizations have announced they plan to protest a Focus on the Family ‘Love Won Out’ conference on homosexuality that will be held Saturday (Nov. 7), at this city’s Metropolitan Church of God.”

Lambda Legal: “CSWE and Lambda Legal jointly released the results of a study on sexual orientation and gender expression in social work programs aimed to determine the level of preparation for students to serve lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) individuals and LGBT youth in out-of-home care . . . To view the executive summary and full report, visit www.cswe.org/CSWE/research/resources ”

Zenit: “The U.S. bishops’ conference plans to review current efforts to defend marriage, including initiatives such as a new set of videos on parenthood, sexual complementarity and family.”

Americans United for Life Blog: “We knew the ACLU—and potentially the state of Illinois—was up to something sneaky. That suspicion has been confirmed.”

News-Journal: “County Councilman Joshua Wagner wants the Volusia County Council to consider passing a domestic partnership ordinance Thursday that would allow a legal relationship to be formed between two unmarried adults, regardless of gender. It would be a contractual relationship, but not a marriage, Wagner said.”

“Mayor Leroy Ellington said Monday. ‘I believe in Christmas.’ And yet, Village Solicitor Laura Abrams advised that Amelia could be sued if public money were spent to organize an event linked to the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, the mayor said.”

Breitbart (AP): “The Vatican has denounced a ruling by the European court of human rights that said the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religious and educational freedoms.”

Boston Globe (AP): “Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri has signed legislation closing a loophole that made indoor prostitution legal and allowed more than 30 suspected brothels to operate around the state.”

Santa Clara Law: “During this conference, scholars will evaluate recent Supreme Court decisions involving international law against the backdrop of eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth-century precedents and historical developments. The main questions to be addressed are: In what respects do the twenty-first century decisions represent a break from the past? In what respects are those decisions consistent with earlier practice and precedents? From a historical perspective, how can we account for both the continuity and the discontinuity?”

Catholic League: “For almost three decades, there has been a Christmas parade in Amelia, Ohio, a village outside Cincinnati. But this year there will be none. That’s because one person complained, village solicitor Laura Abrams. Her complaint: the word ‘Christmas.’ In response, the village changed the name to the ‘Holiday Parade,’ though it did not say what holiday was being celebrated. Understandably, this dishonest scheme created a furor, the result being—just to play it safe—there will be no parade.”

BBC News: “His solicitor, Shah Qureshi, said: ‘Essentially what the judgment says is that a belief in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperative is capable of being a philosophical belief and is therefore protected by the 2003 religion or belief regulations.’”

WSJ: “Moreover, if serious allegations of fraud emerge, you can also expect less-than-vigorous investigation by the Obama Justice Department — which showed just how seriously it takes such allegations when it walked away from an open-and-shut voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia earlier this year. Plenty of reasons exist for suspecting absentee fraud may play a significant role in tomorrow’s Garden State contests.”

The Wall Street Journal carries this video report. Rapidly rising costs are attributed in part to government subsidization — the third party payer system.

“Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has sent the White House two suggestions for the post of U.S. attorney in San Antonio. One of the candidates is a highly regarded career prosecutor and judge who also, it turns out, is openly gay . . . ”

ADF attorney Jordan Lorence is scheduled to speak at this NYC Pro-Life Lawyers and Law Students Mixer.

Breitbart (AP): “Instead, the Republican plan increases incentives for people to use health savings accounts, caps non-economic jury awards in medical malpractice cases at $250,000, provides various incentives to states with the aim of driving down premium costs and allows health insurance to be sold across state lines.”

Norse v. City of Santa Cruz, No. 07-15814 (9th Cir. Nov. 3, 2009)

Excerpts from the opening:

____________

Before: Mary M. Schroeder, Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain and A. Wallace Tashima, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Schroeder;
Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge Tashima

Plaintiff-Appellant Robert Norse was ejected from two meetings of the Santa Cruz City Council, one in 2002 and one in 2004. He filed this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against the City and its Mayor and Council members alleging violation of his First Amendment rights. In a 2004 unpublished, nonprecedential disposition, we unanimously upheld the validity of the Council rules that were being enforced at the time of the ejections. Norse v. City of Santa Cruz, No. 02-16446, 2004 WL 2757528 (9th Cir. Dec. 3, 2004) (“Norse I”), at *1.

The rules authorize removal of “any person who interrupts and refuses to keep quiet . . . or otherwise disrupts the proceedings of the Council.” We observed that the rules are materially similar to the regulations we upheld in White v. City of Norwalk, 900 F.2d 1421 (9th Cir. 1990). Id.

A majority of us, however, reversed and remanded the district court’s dismissal on the pleadings, holding that there was no way of assessing the reasonableness of the Mayor’s actions, particularly his action in ordering Norse’s 2002 ejection after Norse gave a Nazi salute to protest the Mayor’s administration of the Council’s rules. Id. at *2.

There is no doubt that ordering Norse’s ejection in 2004 was a reasonable application of the rules of the Council. The videotape shows that Norse was engaged in a parade about the Council chambers protesting the Council’s action, and his conduct was clearly disruptive . . .

San Francisco Chronicle: “One California woman is pushing for a measure that would put more Christ in Christmas at schools. According to Josh Richman of Inside Bay Area, the state gave Merry Susan Hyatt and her brother David Joseph Hyatt (Joseph and Merry, get it?) permission to start collecting signatures for their Freedom to Present Christmas Music in Public School Classrooms or Assemblies initiative. The draft of the initiative for mandatory Christmas music in schools states . . . ”

Brisbane Times: “Every adult in Britain would be legally required to make a choice on whether to donate their organs after death under a proposal by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP).”

Bioethics Defense Fund: “Over the last five days, Bioethics Defense Fund has been reading the massive 1,900 page Pelosi care bill, H.R. 3962. The following is a quick comparison of issues impacting the dignity of human life issues in Speaker Pelosi’s newly released bill, as compared to the original Obama-backed House bill that we’ve been tracking along with you all summer, H.R. 3200.”

William McGurn writes at the Wall Street Journal: “Most Americans, however, might be hard-pressed to guess another Harvard distinction: the highest number of Medal of Honor recipients outside the service academies. . . . In particular, this means the Reserve Officer Training Corps. ROTC was chucked off campus at the height of the Vietnam War and remains officially unrecognized today. The university says the 1993 law that prevents openly gay men and women from serving in the military conflicts with its own code.”

CNSNews: “And although they’re confident they’ll succeed, Democratic leaders have yet to nail down the votes they’ll need to pass their sweeping bill. They’re aiming for floor action to begin as early as Friday and finish before Veterans Day, Nov. 11.”

“Most of the senior brass hold deep reservations about President Obama’s pledge to end the ban on gays in the military . . . ”

Ed Feulner writes at Townhall: “‘We don’t need to remake America, or discover new and untested principles,’ writes scholar Matthew Spalding in his latest book. ‘The change we need is not the rejection of America’s principles but a great renewal of these permanent truths about humanity, politics, and liberty — the foundational principles and constitutional wisdom that are the true roots of our country’s greatness.’ In short, we need a roadmap back to where our country should be. That’s where Spalding’s ‘We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future‘ comes in.”

In a Ruth Institute podcast, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse discusses the New York Times article, “The High Price of Being a Gay Couple.”

LifeSiteNews: “We, the undersigned residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to stop all funding of International Planned Parenthood Federation,” reads a new petition being circulated by Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Brad Trost (Saskatoon-Humboldt).

FRC Action: “Tonight, Tuesday, November 3, 2009, at 8:30 pm ET, FRC Action, the legislative lobbying arm of Family Research Council, will host a special one hour Webcast “Government Takeover of Health Care: Counting the Cost.” FRC Action President Tony Perkins will be joined by Congressional leaders and policy experts to examine the impact of President Obama’s health care plan and its cost for future generations.”

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., “The Limited-Government Case for Marriage.” Indivisible: Social and Economic Foundations of American Liberty. Heritage Foundation. 37-42.

“Marriage is a pre-political, spontaneously arising, universal social institution. The essential purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. Human beings are born alive and immature, through the sexual relations of a man and a woman. Every human child needs adult assistance in order to survive. Marriage exists, in all times and places, to solve this social problem. If our offspring were born as adults, ready to live independently, or if we reproduced through some asexual process, we might not need marriage (though marriage might still be valuable for other reasons).”

OneNewsNow: “‘The reason is that it analyzes not only the Circuit precedent that’s in existence, but also the Supreme Court precedent,’ explains Cortman. ‘And the court reaches not only a proper decision, but one that analyzes what the Supreme Court has already held in this area. So it’s a proper application of what the Supreme Court has already held.’”

Jurist: “The ruling was the result of a lawsuit brought in 2006 by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) on behalf of Mary Kathryn Brown, a registered nurse who works in Pittsburgh and has sought to dissuade woman from undergoing abortions for more than 15 years.”

OneNewsNow: “‘We’ve had officers who have routinely bullied these citizens for just merely expressing their religious viewpoints on the sanctity of human life, and they’ve even been threatened with arrest, actually arrested and even prosecuted, although not successfully, merely for standing on public sidewalks while engaging in their pro-life free speech,’ [ADF Senior Legal Counsel Mike Johnson] reports.”

Politico: “In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.”

CNN: “Meet the ‘New Jews,’ as some call them: pockets of post-baby boomers — or more accurately Generation X and Millennial (Gen Y) Jews — who are making one of the world’s oldest known monotheistic faiths and its culture work for them and others in a time when, more than ever, affiliation is a choice.”

“Trends point to a 50 percent ballot-return rate, but the county is sticking with its higher forecast, said county elections-division spokeswoman Megan Coppersmith.”

This post may be updated throughout the day as information becomes available.

Portland Press Herald: “Many people already voted. Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap says more than 100,000 absentee ballots have been returned.”

AZ Daily Sun: “Witnesses told police that the two women approached Wallace and began to try to take and destroy the sign he was holding. Wallace had to physically restrain the women. Minor injuries were reported.”

OneNewsNow: “Alliance Defense Fund Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is taking a Ten Commandments case to the U.S. Supreme Court . . . ‘The District Court ruled that there was nothing constitutionally problematic about the monument [or] the Ten Commandments being on that monument because [they] have historical significance for our country,’ reports [Kevin] Theriot. ”

OneNewsNow: “‘In Maine . . . we have this wonderful educator who has received prestigious awards and been nominated for Maine educator of the year,’ Nimocks explains, ‘and yet because he believes that marriage is one man and one woman, he is now being threatened to have his license taken away…simply for holding that foundational and fundamental belief.’”

The State Press: “The [Alliance Defense Fund] disagreed with the court’s decision because a college campus is a public forum for students, as the Supreme Court has ruled for many years, Hacker said. ‘We believe that the court needs to address that issue of whether or not these forums are public forums because it has implications on how heavy-handed ASU can be in the future in regulating student speech,’ Hacker said.”

Catholic News Agency: “ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks criticized the complaint, saying: ‘No one should have their livelihood placed in jeopardy because they believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman. This threat to Don, his family, and his career makes clear that those in favor of redefining marriage also want to penalize and silence those who don’t agree with them. So, the definition of marriage is not the only thing at issue here. Free speech, freedom of conscience, and religious liberty are also in danger.’”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “David Cortman, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents Ms. Brown in her case, praised the appellate decision. ‘This one finally draws the line,’ Mr. Cortman said. ‘This [ordinance], we know, goes too far. It draws a boundary line as to how far cities can go to restrict speech, and that’s important.’”

Tribune-Review: “David Cortman, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, the Christian legal organization representing Brown, said the appeals court vindicated his group’s contention that Pittsburgh went too far by focusing on speech instead of illegal activities such as blocking pedestrians’ paths. ‘You can prohibit blocking without prohibiting First Amendment-protected speech,’ he said. ‘If they would have kept their restrictions to prohibiting illegal conduct, we would never have challenged it.’”

Morning Sentinel: “A licensing complaint against Nokomis High School guidance counselor Don Mendell about his appearance in a TV commercial opposing gay marriage has sparked a political fight as voters go to the polls . . . Austin R. Nimocks, senior legal counsel for the [Alliance Defense Fund], said a response to the complaint would not be filed this week.”

LifeNews: “[David] Cortman told LifeNews.com, ‘We agree with the court’s conclusion that the ordinance violated the free speech rights of pro-life advocates by zoning them out of areas where they have a First Amendment right to speak.’”

CitizenLink: “‘The court basically drew a well-needed line in the sand that government officials may not cross,’ [David Cortman] said. ‘The court agreed with us that it prohibited too much speech.’”

ABC: “An Arizona woman allegedly run over by her Muslim father for becoming “too Westernized” has died.”

Video is available on Breitbart.

Related LifeNews report: Planned Parenthood Director in Texas Resigns, Watched Ultrasound of Abortion

AZ Republic: “The sanctions law, which punishes companies for hiring illegal immigrants and requires all Arizona employers to use a federal electronic system to verify the work status of employees, has been upheld by two lower courts.”

The MP4 news clip runs just over 2 minutes. Austin discusses this case: Maine counselor’s career threatened for support of marriage.

“A Czech court struck down a complaint against the EU reform treaty on Tuesday, removing the proposed charter’s last legal hurdle and intensifying pressure on President Vaclav Klaus to sign it.”

“Europe’s court of human rights ruled Tuesday the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religious and education freedoms under the continent’s rights convention.”

David Schaengold writes at Public Discourse: “Principled reasons and practical considerations suggest that proposals to legalize casino gambling misunderstand what is good for cities and states, and ultimately for people as well.”

Fox News: “The mother of a chronically ill baby has defended her court battle with the child’s father to have his life support machine turned off.”

The Family Policy Council of West Virginia Engage Family Blog: “One proponent of polyamory or, as some have termed it ‘ethical nonmonogamy’ said ‘We have rights to love any way we want unless we are harming other people…we have a right to be and do and say whatever is our full expression, and this to me is a civil right.’ Such a sentiment could be the very Pandora’s Box that groups such as Focus on the Family, the Alliance Defense Fund, and we here at the Family Policy Council are afraid to open. Where does the redefinition end?”

Reuters: “A Saudi court of cassation upheld a ruling to behead and crucify a 22-year-old man convicted of raping five children and leaving one of them to die in the desert, newspapers reported on Tuesday.”

Religion Undefined: Competing Frameworks for Understanding “Religion” in the Establishment Clause
Lael Daniel Weinberger, 86 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 735 (2009)

“In the absence of an explicit definition, it is still inevitable that any discussion using the terms ‘religion’ and ‘religious’ will betray something about the user’s understanding of these words by the way they are used. This Article will not start with individual cases and attempt to distill definitions from them. Rather, it will turn to another arena for perspective: the intellectual history of American Christianity. Within the last century, two different frameworks for using the terms ‘religion’ and ‘religious’ have emerged in American Christianity. Understanding these two frameworks gives a fresh perspective on possible meanings for the word ‘religion’ generally, and also points towards some surprising conclusions as to how the modern era of Establishment Clause jurisprudence has been operating on an inconsistent understanding of religion.”