Daily Archives: December 10, 2009

Pine Bluff Commercial: “The Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union says it’s suing the state for rejecting a group’s proposed ‘winter solstice’ display at the Capitol.”

Corning Observer: “The Corning City Council meeting will no longer begin with an invocation . . . According to Mayor Gary Strack, the decision was based on information the city received from the League of California Cities concerning exposure to litigation.”

“The closure of what may be China’s first mega-church is the most visible sign that the communist government is determined to rein in the rapid spread of Christianity, with a crackdown in recent months that church leaders call the harshest in years.”

Boston Globe: “The University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees this morning approved a plan to open the state’s first public law school.”

Boston Globe (AP): “A federal judge on Thursday ruled the Defense Department in contempt of court for failing to videotape the testimony of a Guantanamo Bay detainee so that the public and the news media could see it.”

Sun Tribune: “The City Council recently dropped the long standing tradition of reciting the Christian Lord’s Prayer at the start of every council business session. Requests from a national organization to remove the prayer from the meeting agendas citing the illegality of the recital of such a prayer led to immediate removal from future meetings. The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation faxed a letter to the city . . . ”

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “Shakia Rayford, a sophomore at Milwaukee High School of the Arts, was one of many teenagers who whooped and hugged friends early Wednesday when a Milwaukee School Board committee voted 5-0 in favor of allowing for the limited distribution of male condoms in some city high schools.”

AFP: “India’s Supreme Court suggested legalising prostitution as a solution to the rampant sex trade that has flourished despite a raft of laws, a report said Thursday.”

FOX News (AP): “Italy has given a final go-ahead to the abortion drug RU-486, capping years of debate and defying opposition from the Vatican.”

The Age: “The ACT Greens have succumbed to a ‘veiled threat’ from the federal government and will pass amendments to laws legalising same-sex weddings.”

Belfast Telegraph: “‘The right to life of the unborn is based on profound moral values deeply embedded in the fabric of Irish society,’ he told the court, including Irish High Court Judge Mary Finlay Geoghegan . . . Mr Gallagher said that Ireland’s protection of the right to life of the unborn had been endorsed in three referenda and was explicitly recognised in a protocol attached to the Maastricht Treaty. Ireland had also secured a relevant legal guarantee as part of the re-run of the Lisbon Treaty.”

UN Foundation: “While in Congress, Rep. Lowey, who serves as the chair of the State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, has worked to increase the level of funding for international reproductive health programs to an all-time high of $648.5 million in the Fiscal Year 2010 House Appropriations bill. She has also fought consistently against the global gag rule and successfully restored U.S. funding to UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.”

Memphis Daily News: “The Catholic Diocese of Memphis says the proposed new location for Planned Parenthood on Madison Avenue is too close to its high school.”

Liberty Counsel: “Yesterday, Liberty Counsel appeared in court to defend Lisa Miller. The ACLU and Lambda Legal Defense Fund are seeking to transfer custody of Lisa’s biological daughter, Isabella, to Janet Jenkins, a lesbian living in Vermont . . . The prior litigation focused only on whether Virginia had to register the Vermont order. This case presents for the first time whether Virginia must enforce the terms of the civil union order, which Virginia law declares to be ‘void in all respects.’”

Dutch News: “Orthodox Christian and Muslim schools should be required to teach their pupils about sex and homosexuality, D66 MP Bors van der Ham says in an interview with website nu.nl.”

All Headline News: “The largest synod in the Lutheran Church has done an about face with its policies pertaining to homosexuals, upsetting members of Maumee St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church who are now threatening to separate themselves from the Evangelical Lutheran church in America. Previously, the ELCA allowed gays to be ministers but said they had to refrain from having sex. But now, ministers no longer have to abstain from sex as long as they are in a lifelong, committed relationship.”

Daniel Heninger writes at the Wall Street Journal: “Every serious person should welcome the president’s proposals to lift the dormant economy and reduce unemployment. Not because every serious person would agree with them but because they are a clear test of how a left-wing government would run the American economy. If this works, hats off to them and we become France. If not, Americans may finally dump left-wing economics into the ash heap of history, starting next November and then in the next presidential election, which can’t come soon enough.”

Pennsylvania Family Institute: “The House Education Committee heard testimony on two bills, crafted with the help of Planned Parenthood, seeking to eliminate abstinence-only education in public schools. HB 1163 would require schools to teach so-called ‘comprehensive’ sex education and mandate state funding for this curriculum, and HB 1162 requiring parental notification (not a bad thing) by schools, but only when abstinence is being taught, when there is no such requirement for condom demonstrations!”

Catholic News Agency: “‘The signers didn’t create the declaration’s urgency or its timing. Others did that for them,’ [Chaput] told CNA. He said the effort was provoked by those who want to ‘force’ religion out of the public square, to ‘redefine’ marriage and human sexuality, or to ‘sacrifice’ women and unborn children on the ‘altar of a fraudulent “right”‘to abortion.”

LifeSiteNews: “The Catholic Bishops of England and Wales have warned that they could be prosecuted under Britain’s proposed Equality Bill for refusing to allow married men, women, practicing homosexuals, and ‘transsexuals’ into the priesthood, reports the Catholic News Service (CNS).”

LifeSiteNews: “Homosexual advocates in New Jersey snatched a same-sex ‘marriage’ bill from the jaws of defeat on Wednesday, cancelling Thursday’s scheduled vote in the state Senate after realizing that they lacked the votes for the measure’s successful passage.”

“As part of the Faulkner University community, the School of Law shares Faulkner University’s mission to glorify God by embracing academic excellence and emphasizing a strong commitment to integrity within a caring Christian environment . . . ”

LifeNews: “Here we come to the nub of the matter. The “personal responsibility education” referred to in the Baucus amendment is actually sex education. The Senate health care plan is going to teach kids about sex. Graphically, and early. With heaps of tax dollars.”

LifeNews: “Individuals and organizations on the pro-abortion side have contributed about $3.4 million to current senators since 1989, according to the Center. By contrast, individuals and PACs classified as pro-life have contributed just $559,000 to current senators during the same period.”

Center for Responsive Politics: Federal Lobbying Boom Continues, Third Quarter Reports Indicate

The Herald News: “The proposed University of Massachusetts law school in Dartmouth passed the most significant hurdle yet on Thursday with approval from the UMass Board of Trustees.”

Anchorage Daily News: “Gov. Sean Parnell has made his first appointment to the Alaska Supreme Court, an Anchorage Superior Court judge considered a conservative in the field of candidates from which Parnell could pick . . . Parnell’s choice has the approval of the Alaska Family Council, a Christian group that lobbied hard against then-Gov. Sarah Palin’s choice of a former Planned Parenthood board member to the Alaska Supreme Court earlier this year.”

Mirror: “Every school must record all sexist, racist and homophobic bullying, the Government will announce today.”

AP: “Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday there are growing signs of religious freedom in Cuba and that there is an opportunity for reconciliation between the communist nation and the United States.”

“China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy. Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet. For those who balk at the notion that governments shou

“. . . the population issue has remained a blind spot when countries discuss ways to mitigate climate change and slow down global warming, according to Zhao Baige, vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC) .”

ADF attorney Mike Johnson appeared on the Frank Pastore Show to discuss this: U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear lawsuit against UC-Hastings.

The MP3 runs just under 19 minutes.

Religion Clause Blog: The charges brought under Section 5 of the Public Order Act (1986) charged that Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang had made threatening, abusive or insulting remarks about Islam to hotel guest Ericka Tazi

United Nations: “The concept of non-discrimination lies at the heart of human rights. For this reason, it has been designated the official theme of this Human Rights Day, which occurs every year on the anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. And for this and many other reasons it should be an unofficial theme every day, every year, for everyone.”

Religion Clause Blog: “Yesterday the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in Jewish War Veterans v. City of San Diego. (Recording of full arguments.) The case is part of the 20-year long series of lawsuits challenging the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial in San Diego, California, and the large Cross that is part of the memorial.”

Religion Clause Blog: “On Tuesday, South Carolina Congressman Henry E. Brown, Jr. introduced H. Res. 951 which urges protection of the symbols and traditions of Christmas.”

AP: “The bill, slated to become law Jan. 1., will give same-sex couples a series of rights enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts . . . ”

“The Irish Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a gay man who donated his sperm to a lesbian couple should be permitted to see his 3-year-old son regularly – in part because Ireland’s constitution doesn’t recognize the lesbians as a valid family unit.”

US News and World Report indicates that 11 states still don’t have any charter schools, but as the map reveals there is definitely an explosion of charter schools across the country. Does your state support school choice?

Findlaw (AP): “The Spanish government will amend its proposed abortion bill to oblige girls aged 16 and 17 to inform one of their parents if they want to end their pregnancy.”

Sherry F. Colb writes at Findlaw: “In particular, I will focus, in this column, on that community’s preference for condemning and restricting those who support the practice of abortion – by performing the procedure or by financing it – rather than condemning and punishing the women who seek to terminate their pregnancies.”

Greg Baylor of the Alliance Defense Fund, Professor Vikram Amar of the UC Davis School of Law, and Ethan P. Schulman of Crowell and Moring appeared on KQED Public Radio in San Francisco to discuss this: U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear lawsuit against UC-Hastings.

The MP3 runs approximately 51 minutes.

OneNewsNow: “‘Two of [the women] had claimed that they had illnesses that required them to receive an abortion because the pregnancy was a threat to their health,’ Kiska explains. ‘The third [woman] had said that she did not have the financial resources to obtain an abortion abroad — but none of the three women provided even a single document of evidence supporting any of their claims. They never saw one doctor, for example, to substantiate their claims.’”

San Diego Union-Tribune: “Joe Infranco, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, which has sided with the government and wants to keep the cross, said after the hearing it was ‘very hard to tell’ if the judges were leaning in any direction. But he seemed encouraged by the court’s focus. ‘The congressional intent is key here,’ he said.”

Associated Press: “The five member school board voted 4-1 to replace the controversial curriculum with more generic lessons that promote tolerance.”

WorldNetDaily: “Joe Infranco is a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal group that filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the American Legion Department of California. He told WND that after 45 minutes of arguments in 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, it was difficult to tell which way the three-judge panel was leaning. ‘There was not a lot of heated debate. There were not pointed questions,’ he said. ‘My view of it is that the panel was attempting to reconcile its old views with Supreme Court precedent, which is now very favorable toward the cross.’”

Digital Journal: “However supporting the ban on abortion [in] Ireland are members of the anti-abortion movement in the U.S. and they have been permitted to present their arguments in favor of the ban to the European Court. It appears to be the Alliance Defense Fund that is organizing the effort in the U.S. to support the law as it currently stands in Ireland.”

Associated Press: “The Advocate reports the board’s attorney in the federal case, Mike Johnson of the Alliance Defense Fund, requested the changes Tuesday.”

Citizen Link: “The research was co-sponsored by the Institute for American Values and the National Marriage Project (NMP) at the University of Virginia (UVA) . . . Read the study.”

Mario Diaz writes at Townhall: “No matter what your political party, no matter your religion or if you have none at all, we should all be concerned about loosing our most cherished liberties. It is those liberties that lie at the foundation of everything we believe as a nation. That is what is at stake with the nomination of Chai Feldblum to the EEOC. And every senator should approach it with that type of urgency. But it is up to us to make sure senators know we are watching and that we will remember how much they value our religious freedoms.”

Dorinda C. Bordlee of the Bioethics Defense Fund has this report on the healthcare legislation at National Review.

The Hill: “Liberal and centrist senators at the center of the healthcare debate bought themselves more time Wednesday, saying they would decide how to vote after they saw the bill’s final price tag.”

The Hill: “A political scuffle has broken out about which lawmakers will be allowed to go to Copenhagen, Demark, on a congressional delegation led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) . . . “It’s really a question of whether they are excluding someone who has a different opinion than ‘Isn’t this wonderful?,’” Issa said, noting that there is still a possibility that he would be allowed on the trip. Around 20 House members are expected to be on the codel.”