Daily Archives: December 22, 2009

Reuters: “Teenagers do just as well as adults when it comes to understanding the information on emergency-contraception labels, a new study suggests. The findings, say researchers, argue for making emergency contraception available to minors over-the-counter, as it already is for adults.”
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Adolescent Comprehension of Emergency Contraception in New York City
Cremer, Miriam; Holland, Erica; Adams, Brandi; Klausner, Dalia; Nichols, Sarah; Scott Ram, Renata; Alonzo, Todd A.
Obstetrics & Gynecology. 113(4):840-844, April 2009.
doi: 10.1097/AOG.0b013e31819cdbe3
Adolescents understand the main comprehension points of emergency contraception as well as their adult counterparts.

“Marriage in Britain is in danger of becoming an exclusive middle-class institution unless action is taken to bolster it . . . ”

NY Times: “They will hold the final vote on major health care legislation at 8 a.m. on Thursday — Christmas Eve — followed by a vote on raising the nation’s debt limit.”

Associated Press: “Cuba’s Roman Catholic cardinal will read a Christmas message on state television for the second straight year, another small sign the once officially atheist communist government is warming to religion.”

Echo Press: “Only about 1 percent of Minnesotans think that abortion is the single most important problem facing the state year after year, according to a statewide St. Cloud State University Survey released Friday.”

Senator Sam Brownback writing in Politico: “Despite the promises of the Obama administration and the Democratic leadership that the health care bill would maintain the status quo on the issue of abortion, the legislative language revealed by Majority Leader Harry Reid late last week radically changes that status quo and sets the tragic precedent of providing federal funding for abortion.”

MinnPost: “Military health-care facilities around the world would be required to stock emergency contraception under legislation introduced by Sens. Al Franken and Olympia Snowe Thursday.”

Independent: “The sweeping reforms would, if passed into law, allow young people below the legal age of consent of 17 to make their own medical and family planning decisions without the consent of their parents or guardians.”

PRNewswire: “Today, Americans United for Life (AUL) filed an amicus brief in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, detailing the links between abortion and the increased risk of depression and suicide. The brief seeks to overturn a lower court’s decision that abortion providers in South Dakota are not required to inform women of these risks . . . AUL’s brief in Planned Parenthood v. Rounds is available at http://blog.aul.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/PP-v-Rounds-AUL-amicus-brief.pdf.

ACLU: “The pregnant servicewoman is really the canary in the mine here: Inevitably her pregnancy will be revealed and she will be punished. However, the man who impregnated her will only be punished if she turns him in. Already, according to news reports, one woman who has been punished and sent home under the policy has refused to reveal who her partner was. It is reasonable to think that many more servicewomen will refuse to turn in their fellow soldiers, thereby making this an equal opportunity policy in name only.”

ABC: “How dare any government say we’re going to impose any kind of punishment on women for getting pregnant,” NOW President Terry O’Neill said. “This is not the 1800s.”

UCANNews.com: “An attack on a Christmas fair in Madhya Pradesh has spread panic among Christians in the state, says an organizer of the event. Thugs chanting Hindu slogans torched representations of biblical scenes at the fair in the town of Gwalior on Dec. 20 . . . ”

Blog of the Legal Times: “However, at a hearing today the judge said he would consider allowing defense lawyers to file an immediate appeal of his decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit . . . In a motion to dismiss the case, Stagliano’s lawyers argued that the standards set by federal obscenity laws — such as the use of “contemporary community standards” to determine what was obscene — were too vague to govern Internet speech.”

This post may be updated.

Ghana News Agency: “The Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG) will from next year establish abortion centres in selected districts of the country to provide comprehensive services and care for women.”

Interfax: “The introduced amendments will establish additional restrictions on advertising medical services of artificial termination of pregnancy, the presidential press service reported.”

Christian Newswire: “‘Parents have the right and authority to make decisions regarding their children’s education without government interference,’ said ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska. ‘This is about a socialist government trying to create a cookie-cutter child in its own image. Without help, the parents in these cases are really powerless since the system is so one sided.’”

LifeNews: “‘Pro-life students shouldn’t be punished for expressing their beliefs,’ [David Cortman] said. ‘Brianna was simply exercising her constitutionally protected right to free speech but was censored by school officials fearful of urban legends regarding the so-called “separation of church and state.” In reality, silencing pro-life students simply because they want to exercise their First Amendment rights in a non-disruptive manner is unconstitutional,’ he added.”

CitizenLink: “David Cortman, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), said the administration went too far. ‘There may be a lot of speech that’s offensive to some and in fact, religious speech may be offensive to people who don’t believe,’ Cortman said, ‘yet it’s still protected under the Constitution.’”

GoUpState.com: “The plaintiffs argue that a religious education course offered to Spartanburg High students is unconstitutional, not because of the course itself, but because of credit offered.”

HSLDA: “Roger Kiska, an Alliance Defense Fund attorney based in Europe, noted that this kind of behavior was shocking but sadly not without precedent. Kiska has been following the case and has sent several letters expressing concern over the incident. ‘What you have here is a socialist country trying to create a cookie cutter kid,’ Kiska said. ‘This family is a little different from the average Swedish family. There are so few homeschoolers in the country that this, along with their issues, has caused the social services agency to take the child in order to coerce changes from the family. Unfortunately. in Europe this kind of thing happens too often where social workers take a child and then just keep him. The parents in these cases are really powerless since the system is so one-sided.’”

The Bulletin: “In Pew Internet’s 2004 survey of teens, 18 percent of 12-year-olds owned a cell phone. In 2009, 58 percent of 12 year-olds own a cell phone. We also have found that cell phone ownership increases dramatically with age: 83 percent of teens age 17 now own a cell phone, up from 64 percent in 2004.”

FoxNews: “According to reports, the parents of Christian convert Rifqa Bary plan to ask a judge to hold her in contempt of court for refusing to attend counseling sessions.”

Related: Runaway Teen Christian Convert Is Getting Her Christmas Cards
“Try as they might, Rifqa Bary’s parents can’t keep her from reading her first Christmas cards.”

AP: “Texas health authorities will destroy as many as four million blood samples taken from babies without parental consent and stored indefinitely for scientific research.”

Breitbart (AP): “Judge ruled Tuesday that Kansas law doesn’t allow a so-called ‘necessity defense’ in the trial of a man charged with killing one of the nation’s few late-term abortion providers.”

Washington Post: “The literature, until recently circulated by a church-affiliated pregnancy center in Annandale, has become political fodder in the closely watched contest for Virginia’s 37th Senate District between Stephen M. ‘Steve’ Hunt, a Republican and former Fairfax County School Board member, and Del. Dave W. Marsden, a first-term Democrat . . . NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia says the fliers and brochures distributed by the center and collected by NARAL volunteers in May show that much of the center’s medical information is ‘dangerously incorrect,’ Polak said.”

A Christian home schooling family could permanently lose custody of their only child simply because they home-school. Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund and the Home School Legal Defense Association are joining forces as legal advisors to the couple in order to persuade the Swedish government to return the seven-year-old child to his parents.

Ashland Daily Tidings: “The Jackson County district attorney’s office says four southern Oregon teens won’t face felony charges in a ‘sexting’ case. Prosecutors have determined that the sexually explicit photos of minors the teens are accused of sending by text message don’t constitute child sex abuse.”

Brisbane Times: “Last week the Whitsunday Regional Council adopted an amendment to the region’s planning scheme that bans adult operators from trading within 200 metres of children’s facilities, churches and other venues at the discretion of the council.”

CNSNews citing a Zogby Poll: “More than 80 percent of Americans agree that Congress drafts lengthy, complex bills to hide spending on special interests and to prevent constituents from understanding what’s in them before a vote is taken, according to a new survey.”

“‘One legislature may not bind the legislative authority of its successors.’ . . . if Congress can entrench legislation, then it will resolve all questions today that might come up in the future, depriving future generations of their right to self-government.”

Associated Press: “. . . part of a three-phase plan to target what it called pornography accessible through cell phones. The regulations require telecom companies and Internet service providers to carry out ‘complete and thorough’ checks to determine if Web sites are officially registered. Any Web sites that have not registered with the ministry should be taken off the Internet, the order says.”

Newsweek: “Although his very presence in the White House is the stuff of culture wars, Obama himself is reluctant to wade into one. Moreover, if socially divisive policies have the potential to compromise his legislative agenda, Obama has proven that he simply won’t pursue them.”

AP: “A zoning measure needed to move forward the state’s largest slot machine proposal near a popular shopping mall after months of delays was approved on Monday night.”

Reuters: “Trial is set to start January 11 in San Francisco. Boies and co-lead Ted Olson argue that marriage is a U.S. constitutional right too fundamental to limit and that gays and lesbians are a discriminated group that deserve special court protection.”

The Australian: “In a week when most Australians at least acknowledge Bible stories, the government sent backbencher Kate Lundy out to accuse the Opposition Leader of wanting to impose Bible studies on students. ‘Mr Abbott wants to take the choice away from parents and force every kid in every school to study the Bible,’ the ACT Senator insisted today.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In Sonoma County, California, Acting County Administrator Chris Thomas has ordered stars, angels and other religious symbols removed from all Christmas trees in county buildings after a complaint was filed by an activist who has a long history of opposing government use of religious symbols . . . ”

The Tennessean: “The city, the release said, agreed to end payment for the animals — something the city had already done — create an application and permitting process to participate in city events, and hang a sign expressing non-endorsement of the religious scene at the ‘Christmas on the Cumberland’ event.”

Forum 18: “Less than two weeks before Azerbaijan’s 1 January 2010 deadline for religious communities to re-register to continue to legally exist, Forum 18 News Service has found that more than four fifths of religious communities have apparently been unable to get re-registration so far. They are liable to liquidation through the courts, unless they are able to re-register before 2010.”

“If there really is a vast right-wing conspiracy,” the conservative Catholic journal Crisis concluded a few years ago, “its leaders probably meet in George’s kitchen.”

NY Times: “A new study has found that former clerks have started to take jobs that reflect the ideologies of the justices for whom they worked. “It’s cause for concern mainly because it’s a further piece of evidence of the polarization of the court,” said William E. Nelson, a law professor at New York University and one of the authors of the study.”

SCOTUS Blog: “On the opinion page of the L.A. Times, two lawyers for the group Hastings Outlaw, one of the respondents in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, which the Court granted earlier this month, respond to an editorial last week in the same newspaper that described the Christian group as having a “strong case.”  The authors emphasize that the Hastings College of Law policy at issue in the case – which denies school funding to student groups that discriminate on the basis of religion when admitting members – applies to all groups that discriminate among their members, not just religious groups.  In an ongoing debate with David French of the National Review Online (see his latest post here, Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy defends the law school.”

A listing and links to all the posts in the French v. Volokh discussion can be found here.

AP: “A Pakistani court has ordered the noses and ears of two men cut off after they did the same thing to a young woman whose family spurned one of the men’s marriage proposal, a prosecutor said Tuesday.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In Helal v. Holder, (6th Cir., Dec. 17, 2009), the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the Board of Immigration Appeals that a Palestinian Christian couple who are citizens of Jordan are not entitled to withholding of removal from the United States for fear of religious persecution in Jordan.”

European Voice: “The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that provisions in the constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina reserving certain offices of state for members of Bosnia’s three ‘constituent peoples’ are discriminatory and unlawful . . . Bosnia’s constitution . . . established a three-member presidency with one representative for each of Bosnia’s ‘constituent peoples’ – Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Serbs and Croats. The upper house of parliament is also made up of representatives of the three communities. Members of other communities and those who do not claim any particular ethnic affiliation are excluded from holding such positions of power.”

BBC News: “A member of the Egyptian parliament has filed a lawsuit over an article questioning why polygamy is allowed for men in Islam but not for women.”

Washington Times: “Mississippi is the America’s most religious state, according to a Pew Forum study on the levels of devotion in America, which asked respondents whether religion is important in their lives. Eighty-two percent of Mississipians said yes.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In World Wide Street Preachers Fellowship v. Town of Columbia, (5th Cir., Dec. 21, 2009), the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Town of Columbia, Louisiana is not liable under 42 USC Sec. 1983 for the violation of First Amendment rights of a group of preachers by a town police officer who in February 2005 threatened the group with arrest if they did not disperse.”

“Last Friday the United Nations General Assembly voted to delete language from a proposed resolution referencing a document claiming that two new anti-discrimination categories exist: one based on ‘sexual orientation’ and the other on ‘gender identity.’”

ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence appeared on KFYI 550, The J.D. Hayworth Show to discuss the University Project.

The MP3 runs just over 16 minutes.

Related ADF Media Information: $9.2 million grant enables ADF to ramp up defense of free speech at universities

AZ Republic article referenced in the broadcast:  Christian group wages campus fight

AP: “A group that wants to build a casino in western Maine says it will deliver more than 100,000 signatures to election officials Tuesday to force a statewide referendum next fall.”

Phyllis Schlafly writes at Townhall: “Where did family court judges get the power to decide what church and what school the children of divorced parents must attend? Family court judges have amassed this extraordinary power by co-opting and changing the definition of a time-honored concept: ‘the best interest of the child.’”

Liberty Counsel: “Liberty Counsel is pleased to announce that Christmas has returned to the Minoa School District. The District decided to incorporate both Christian and Jewish songs into the “Holiday” musical and permit teachers to welcome Santa into the classroom.”

Dennis Prager writes at Townhall: “As the passage of the bill that will start the process of nationalizing health care in America becomes almost inevitable, so, too, the process of undoing America’s standing as The Last Best Hope of Earth will have begun.”

AP: “The letter was signed by Reps. Frank Wolf of Virginia, Chris Smith of New Jersey, Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, Trent Franks of Arizona and Anh ‘Joseph’ Cao of Louisiana.”

The Weekly Standard: “The new Reid language that Senator Nelson now finds acceptable would allow federal subsidies to flow to plans that cover elective abortions in the insurance exchanges . . . Taxpayer funding would support the same insurance policies that pay for abortions. Senator Nelson is touting the fact that states can enact laws which prohibit elective abortions in the exchanges (the so-called “opt out”), but that was already permissible under the previous Reid language. And in any event a state can’t protect its taxpayers from financing abortions beyond its borders. Senator Nelson’s ‘compromise’ leaves Nebraska’s voters entirely vulnerable to paying for California’s and New York’s abortions.”

Boston Herald: “Lawyers for both sides delivered closing arguments yesterday in Kosilek’s lawsuit, which claims that the refusal of prison officials to provide the surgery amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and violates his constitutional rights.”

Ed Morrissey writing at Hot Air: “. . . a portion of an interview between HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and BlogHer interviewer Morra Aarons-Mele yesterday, in which Sebelius praises the abortion-funding language in the Reid bill, as it maintains a flow of funds for abortion coverage that everyone — and she means everyone — supplies.”

“The court is effectively saying that a religion’s way of defining its own membership, practised over 3,500 years, is illegal . . . I would argue that the judgment goes wider still. It is part of a current idea of equality and of human rights which, in the name of freedom, is beginning to look like tyranny.”

The Hill: “Freshman Rep. Parker Griffith (D-Ala.) on Tuesday will announce he is switching parties to become a Republican.”

Mark Stricherz writing at Public Discourse: “An article by sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox raises the question of how divorce hurts and helps women.”

The Guardian: “Church treating pupils as ‘captive audience’, say critics after 25% rise in number of school chaplains in five years.”

fficials at Randelman High School have responded positively to a letter sent by attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund on behalf of a student whose pro-life message had been censored. The student, Brianna Cardwell, was participating in the Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity sponsored by Stand True Ministries.

Nuno M. Garoupa and Tom Ginsburg, Reputation, Information and the Organization of the Judiciary (December 15, 2009). Journal of Comparative Law, Forthcoming; U of Chicago Law & Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 503. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1523954

“The reputation of the judiciary, individually or as a whole, determines its status in any given society and its ability to compete effectively for resources. We analyze reputation and make three claims. First, reputation matters. Virtually every theory of judicial power is dependent, ultimately, on perceptions of judges, who famously lack the purse or the sword. Our second claim is that reputation can be divided into individual and collective components. Individual reputation provides information about individual performance whereas collective reputation provides information about the quality of the judiciary in general. We use the economics of team production to analyze the relationship between individual and collective reputation. Third, different legal systems configure institutions in different ways in order to address the problem of information and reputation. This is what we refer to as the industrial organization of the judiciary. The classical understandings of the common law and civil law judiciaries can be seen as sets of linked institutions that are mutually supportive in addressing the problem of information and reputation.”

Omar Ha-Redeye, The Role of Islamic Shari’ah in Protecting Women’s Rights (September 1, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1526868

“This paper will review whether the CDHRI and shari’ah can address areas of concern and meet standards in the UDHR within the legal framework. The enormous flexibility afforded to Shari’ah does allow the gap between common practices as human rights ideals to be closed, and in some instances Shari’ah continues to provide more rights to women than in the Christian tradition or UDHR.”

Courtney G. Joslin, The Evolution of the American Family (December 21, 2009). SUMMER-Human Rights, Vol. 36, p. 2, Summer 2009; UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 200. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1526839

“This short piece examines the changing meaning of marriage and the family in the U.S. Among other developments, the piece chronicles: the changing role and legal status of women in marriage; race restrictions in marriage; the legal recognition of same-sex relationships; and the increasing numbers of nonmarital families. The article is the lead piece in the Summer 2009 issue of the ABA Human Rights magazine devoted to the New American Family.”

Deirdre M. Curtin, Chapter 1 – Geology of the European Union (October 2009). Deirdre Curtin, EXECUTIVE POWER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION – LAW, PARACTICES, AND THE LIVING CONSTITUTION, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009 . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1525407

“This paper is the introduction to a book that aims to bring the EU’s executive powers out of the shadows by mapping the evolution and current form of the EU’s various executive actors, their powers, and the mechanisms for holding them accountable. The term executive power embraces the political executive, the administrative executive and what is termed the ‘satellite’ executive.”