Daily Archives: December 23, 2009

“The decision to end debate sets up the final vote on passage of the bill on Christmas Eve — allowing the funding of abortions as millions of Christians prepare for Christmas . . .”

Newsweek: “When the Stupak amendment passed, there was common outrage among pro-choice organizations and their counterparts in Congress. But this time, it’s different: while leaders of pro-choice groups call the Nelson language ‘outrageous’ and ‘absurd,’ a number of their strongest supporters in Congress are taking a nuanced stance: we don’t love it, we don’t even like it, but if this is what it takes to move forward with health-care reform, we will live with it.”

Minnesota Public Radio: “A federal judge has approved a settlement in a discrimination lawsuit involving Mesaba Airlines. U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank ruled Tuesday that $130,000 can be distributed to five people the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said were victims of discrimination. The lawsuit, which was filed in September 2008, claimed that Mesaba violated the Civil Rights Act when the company terminated customer service agent Laura Vallejos because she refused to work on the Jewish Sabbath.”

The New Times: “After months of speculation, the Political Affairs Committee in the Lower Chamber of Parliament has requested fellow law makers to consider scrapping the article on homosexuality from the penal code in conformity with the International Charter on Civil rights, The New Times can exclusively reveal.”

Wikipedia: Rwanda

Cincinnati Enquirer: “Liberty Township trustees are poised to adopt a resolution that would regulate behavior of employees in sexually oriented businesses – should any ever locate in the township.”

Hood River News: “A nativity scene set up at the southern end of the Bridge of the Gods has been challenged by the Freedom from Religion Foundation.”

Oregonian: “Owners of Cindy’s Bookstore, torn down in 2008 after repeated inspections, originally filed sued last month seeking $1 million from the city, Commissioner Randy Leonard, PGE, the city fire commissioner and others.”

WCFCourier.com: “Traditional marriage advocates who demand a vote to amend Iowa’s Constitution plan to leave their calling cards early and often during the 2010 legislative session.”

Reuters: “Ethics and Integrity Minister Nsaba Buturo told Reuters that the revised law would now probably limit the maximum penalty for offenders to life in prison rather than execution.”

Associated Press: “Judge David Yaffe on Tuesday rejected a petition from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation that contended county health officials hadn’t done enough to prevent sexually transmitted diseases in the porn industry.”

NJ.com: “Gov. Jon Corzine signed an Executive Order Tuesday establishing a committee that would evaluate the needs of non-public school children and determine how the state can help improve their education. The 23-member ‘Non-Public Education Funding Commission’ . . . ”

Charlotte Observer: “One week after Mecklenburg leaders approved medical and leave benefits for the same sex partners of county employees, city leaders confirmed they will discuss a similar measure as soon as next month. Mayor Anthony Foxx said council will examine the city’s non-discrimination policy, which does not currently include sexual orientation.”

Matthew Schneider, visiting professor at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, writing in The Detroit News: “On Nov. 25, the high court, in a 4-3 vote led by the court’s liberal wing, changed its rules on when justices should be banned from deciding cases . . . The new rule still allows justices to decide for themselves when to step off a case. But if a justice decides not to step down, the entire Supreme Court can second-guess the justice’s decision and kick him or her off the case. The old rule took effect when the justice was in fact biased, but the new rule forces a justice off when he merely appears biased in the eyes of a majority of four other justices.”

Agence France-Presse: “The original law, which had been due to come into force in March 2010, barred the ‘public dissemination’ of information favourable to homosexuality, claiming it could harm the mental health and physical, intellectual and moral development of minors . . . The changes approved on Tuesday give the law a less-specific remit, banning information ‘encouraging the sexual abuse of minors, sexual relations between minors and other sexual relations.’”

Nina Shea writing at National Review Online: “The lengthy exodus of ancient Christian congregations from the greater Middle East’s last redoubts of religious pluralism is accelerating. Terrorism, conflict, and the rise of intolerant Islamism are to blame, Vatican officials explain. There is a real fear that the light of Christian communities that was enkindled personally by the apostles of Jesus Christ could be extinguished in this vast region that includes the Holy Land.”

Fox6Now.com (link includes video): “A Milwaukee man is told by the city he has 14 days to remove a sign from his yard, but the man says he’s been unfairly targeted. He says it’s not the sign itself that’s the problem. He says some neighbors just don’t like what the sign says and called the city to complain.”

The Hill: “All that remains is a single vote to pass the measure, which requires only a simple majority and is scheduled for 7 a.m. Thursday.”

Breitbart (AP): “The deal comes on the heels of General Motors Co.’s sale of its Hummer SUV division to a Chinese construction machinery maker based in Sichuan Province.”

The ADF Alliance Alert Categorical Email Digest will not be delivered on Thursday, December 24th and Friday, December 25th.

Some posts may appear on the website during these days.

Normal publication will resume on Monday, December 28th.

Merry Christmas!

Assyrian International News Agency: “Two separate bombs struck this morning in Mosul, the Chaldean church of St. George and Syriac Orthodox Church of St. Thomas. The death toll so far is of three dead – a Chaldean Christian and two Muslims – and several wounded. Louis Sako, archbishop of Kirkuk, speaks to AsiaNews of a ‘disturbing message’ ahead of Christmas, keeping tensions high as well as fear of further violence in northern Iraq.”

Deutsche Welle: “France’s ruling party, the conservative Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), says it plans to present a bill to parliament in January, which would ban full Islamic veils in all public places. The bill is to be presented in the first two weeks of next month, just before the conclusions of a French parliamentary inquiry on the burqa and niqab are published.”

FIRE Press Release: “In response to sustained pressure from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities has backed away from its plans to enforce a political litmus test for future teachers.”

WBBM780.com: “Republican State Comptroller candidate William J. Kelly says he will remove the atheist display that has been erected in the Capitol rotunda next to the Christian Nativity Scene and Christmas tree.”

The Hill: “The final vote on the Senate’s healthcare bill will now take place at 7 a.m. on Christmas Eve — an hour earlier than lawmakers originally scheduled.”

“Look for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to try to circumvent the traditional conference committee process by which the different versions of health care reform passed . . . ”

Joanna L. Grossman writes at Findlaw: “Unwed fathers in most states do not have the same rights as unwed mothers vis-à-vis their children. Their parental rights turn not just on biology, but also on whether they have carried out the obligations of fatherhood and, in some situations, whether they have complied with technical legal requirements necessary to establish their status. The Nebraska case, In re Corbin J., reveals the limitations of this approach to determining legal fatherhood.”

Pat Buckley: “The Irish Law Reform Commission is proposing that Ireland should copy Britain and allow teenagers, including those under the age of consent, legally to receive contraception. The commission’s consultation report on the matter proposes the legal situation in Britain as a model for Ireland. The report also relies upon false claims by the pro-abortion World Health Organisation and the pro-abortion Irish Family Planning Association that access to contraception is good for teenagers’s sexual health.”

AFP: “In a town in Virginia where a key Civil War battle was fought in 1861, the battleground this year has moved to the courthouse and the prize being fought over is Christmas . . . In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a manger scene and menorah were removed from the grounds of the Luzerne County courthouse last week after civil liberties groups threatened to sue over what they saw as government endorsement of religion.”

Ashland City Times: “June Griffin, a private citizen from Rhea County in East Tennessee, says she has filed an intervention against the ACLU in its recent lawsuit against the Cheatham County School Board over religious activities. In a news release, the Dayton resident said she is asking that the ACLU pay its own legal bills in the lawsuit, which was filed in November.”

Catholic Culture: “Bishop James Moriarty of Kildare and Leighlin offered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI on December 23—less than a week after Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick had stepped down.”

Mary Sanchez writes at the Atlanta Journal Constitution: “Is it fair to blame Warren for what fanatics do to homosexuals in Uganda, legally or otherwise, simply because he promotes the same Scripture-based view of homosexuality as evil? No, but it’s worth asking whether there isn’t something in that view that leads to treating gays and lesbians as somewhat lesser beings than heterosexuals . . . Here in America, one may find Warren’s view of human nature and sexuality merely idiotic and annoying. In less secular — or should I say less enlightened? — climes, those views are downright dangerous.”

“The European Union on December 8 adopted a resolution that for the first time explicitly calls for Jerusalem to become the future capital of both a Palestinian state and Israel. Backing away only slightly from a more controversial Swedish proposal . . . ”

CBN News, David Brody: “More than three dozen pro-life Christian pastors, leaders and theologians released the following statement Friday morning, December 18, 2009, to applaud Sen. Robert Casey’ proposed alternative language on abortion to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”

Terence P. Jeffrey writes at CNSNews: “The Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the final Senate health care bill indicates it would slap a mandatory annual fee of about $15,000 on middle-class families that earn an annual income greater than 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four) and are not provided with health insurance by their employer.”

Legislation that includes Senate rule changes require a 2/3 majority of Senators for passage. Yet Democrat leadership maintains that only 60 votes will be needed to pass the bill, not 66.

The Christian Institute: “A coalition of five disability groups has pleaded with Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), to reconsider his interim guidelines on assisted suicide. The coalition, led by Baroness Campbell, said that ‘to see suicide as a right solution is to abandon hope. Severely ill and terminally ill people do not deserve society to give up on them.’”

Volokh Conspiracy: “In the latest installment of Chief Judge Kozinski vs. DOJ(OLC)/OPM, discussed in my post below, Chief Judge Kozinski issued yet another order today, in apparent response to OPM’s statement on Friday refusing, based on DOJ/OLC’s advice, not to abide by his earlier orders.”

Related:

“Gay Marriage Gets Boost From 9th Circuit”

“Federal Judges Go to Bar For Their Married Gay Employees”

U.S. agency ordered by 9th Circuit to provide same-sex benefits

The Christian Institute: “Churches should be ‘lining up’ lawyers to defend themselves against secular legal challenges under the Equality Bill, a Government equalities minister has admitted. Michael Foster MP, a minister in Harriet Harman’s Equalities Office, was asked whether the Bill would lead to legal action between churches and atheists . . . ‘The secularists should have the right to challenge the church and if the church’s argument is good enough – which I believe it is – then the church should win through.’”

The Christian Institute: “More than 12 million people are planning to go to church this Christmas, a rise of 2 million from last year, research from the Bible Society suggests. The survey of 1,005 people also found 31 per cent said they would watch or listen to a Christmas service on TV or radio, compared to 26 per cent last year.”

Lowell Sun: “In a letter to Superintendent of Schools Donald Yeoman and Byam School Principal Jane Gilmore, the Liberty Council states that it will file a lawsuit against the school district if changes aren’t made to Byam’s annual fundraiser. The council, a nonprofit litigation group dedicated to advancing religious freedom and conservative values, said the basis of the lawsuit would be ‘viewpoint discrimination’ under the First Amendment . . . Last month, the Alliance Defense Fund, a socially conservative legal consortium also interested in the Byam case, sent their own letter to the school district asking that it change the gift-room policy. However, the group told The Sun that it had no plans to file a lawsuit.”

Washington Post: “The top prosecutors in seven states are probing the constitutionality of a political deal that cut a funding break for Nebraska in order to pass a federal health care reform bill, South Carolina’s attorney general said Tuesday.”

Jonathan Adlers writes at the Volokh Conspiracy: “. . . insofar as the Reid bill alters Senate rules in order to entrench some of the bill’s reforms, there may not have been enough votes for cloture on the bill.”

Related: Entrenchment Provisions in the Health Care Bill are Probably Unconstitutional

S.E. Cupp writes at the NY Daily News: “I don’t need “inclusion” alongside a Nativity scene or a menorah, and it’s an insult to demand it. My lack of faith doesn’t belong in the same category as your faith.”

Firehouse.com: “The nativity scene was removed just days before Christmas after the department received a complaint from the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation saying the display supports Christianity.”

San Diego News: “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit heard the case on Dec. 9, but no decision is imminent since the three judges are waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the Mojave cross case Salazar vs. Buno’ . . . ‘My impression is that the panel was attempting to reconcile its old views with the Supreme Court precedent, which is now very favorable to the cross,’ Infranco said. ‘This is a panel that, based on its history, would not be friendly to our perspective. Any panel, regardless of each judge’s philosophy, is still bound by Supreme Court decisions.’”

CBN News: “‘Parents have the right and authority to make decisions regarding their children’s education without government interference,’ ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska said.”

Southwest Times Record: “A planned Ten Commandments monument has found a home, at least until it can be placed at the LeFlore County Courthouse in Poteau, the planners announced by e-mail Monday . . . In October the Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit alliance of Christian attorneys based in Arizona, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a June 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that found the Haskell County Courthouse monument unconstitutional. The appeals court in Denver found the Haskell monument has ‘the impermissible principal or primary effect of endorsing religion.’”

David French, Director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom, writing at National Review Online: “Especially for the men on the line, there is no weekly or even monthly rhythm of life like we have in the States. You just do what you do, day in and day out, until you go home. Then one day you go to the dining facility (if you’re fortunate enough to be working from a base), and there’s a cake and some Christmas decorations. A few days later, there’s another set of decorations. Your friends tell you “Merry Christmas,” then “Happy New Year,” and you just keep working. In my case, that meant preparations for a New Year’s offensive. For others, that meant another patrol. For still others, it meant another broken tank to fix, more rounds to load into the howitzer, or more time hunched over a radio.”

WorldNetDaily: “‘What you have here is a socialist country trying to create a cookie cutter kid,’ said Roger Kiska, an Alliance Defense Fund attorney based in Europe. ‘This kind of thing happens too often where social workers take a child and then just keep him.’”

Christian Post: Attorneys with Ariz.-based Alliance Defense Fund announced last week their plan to appeal the ruling, insisting that Christians in the marketplace should not be subject to “predatory legal attacks for simply abiding by their beliefs.” “The Constitution prohibits the state from forcing unwilling artists to promote a message they disagree with and thereby violate their conscience,” commented ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence. “Should the government force a videographer who is an animal rights activist to create a video promoting hunting and taxidermy?”

HSLDA: “The remarkable scores of homeschooled students would need to come down 33 percentile points to equal the scores of students already being monitored by public school teachers.”

AP: “Democrats are close enough to taste victory in their quest to remake the nation’s health care system, but differences between the House and Senate on abortion could still blow it all up.”

The AP carries this extraordinarily sloppy report that begins: “The head of the Russian Orthodox Church said Wednesday that although the church views homosexuality as a sin, gays should not face discrimination.”

Omaha.com: “The phone lines were jammed and busy signals greeted callers to Sen. Ben Nelson’s offices today in Washington and throughout Nebraska . . . The Democrat was also at the center of attention at a rally in downtown Omaha on Sunday that drew about 1,800 people. And much of the attention was unfavorable . . . ”

FRC Action: “Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins released the following statement: ‘Isn’t it a little ironic that as we celebrate Christmas and the birth of a baby in a manger that the health care bill hinges on unborn babies? The Senate is preparing to vote on a pro-abortion, pro-rationing, pro-tax, pro-death law fit for King Herod himself.’”

Houston Chronicle: “Poverty has forced at least 225,000 children in Haiti’s cities into slavery as unpaid household servants, far more than previously thought, a report said Tuesday.”

Some Difficulties in Assuring Equality and Avoiding Endorsement
Jesse H. Choper, 54 Vill. L. Rev. 613 (2009)

“Professor Nussbaum’s position is that the real meaning of our constitutional traditions with respect to religion and government is securing religious liberty. I fully agree. She believes that two principles should be pursued in order to achieve this. One is assuring equality, and the other is avoiding government endorsement (‘announcement of a religious orthodoxy’). Though I accept both of these broad goals, I would suggest several strong qualifications, especially regarding the role of the Supreme Court.”

Feminist Fundamentalism on the Frontier Between Government and Family Responsibility for Children
Mary Anne Case, 2009 Utah L. Rev. 381

“Therefore, at a time when so many different religious fundamentalisms are demanding legal recognition-particularly when it comes to control over children, whether within the family, in the schools, or in the broader society-I want to vindicate something I have come to call feminist fundamentalism, by which I mean an uncompromising commitment to the equality of the sexes as intense and at least as worthy of respect as, for example, a religiously or culturally based commitment to female subordination or fixed sex roles.”

Foreword: Our Paradoxical Religion Clauses
Mark A. Graber, 69 Md. L. Rev. 8 (2009)

“Under any reasonable interpretation of the First Amendment, government may not take sides in religious controversies or enshrine religious dogma as law. The Establishment Clause does exactly that. That provision takes one side in the religious controversy over the role of religion in a constitutional community. Some religions insist that God commands a sharp separation between church and state. Others insist that the state should promote the one true religion. The First Amendment plainly establishes the first dogma as the fundamental law of the land. Thus, the First Amendment paradoxically establishes a religious tenet in its effort to avoid establishment of religion.”

The Rules Against Scandal and What They Mean for the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses
Marci A. Hamilton, 69 Md. L. Rev. 115 (2009)

“There are two reasons. First, there has been a recent uptick in interest regarding theories of so-called ‘religious autonomy’ for religious institutions. Purely as a matter of operation, legal autonomy would reach the same results as the scandal rule, though the courts would be in the business of keeping the institutions’ secrets. It is additional insurance for religious entities seeking control of criminal and tortious actions from within. Second, the appearance of legislative free exercise statutes enacting the constitutional standard of strict scrutiny, such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (‘RFRA’) and the state RFRAs, provide more arguments for religious entities to avoid legal liability and even discovery involving their internal bad actions. If the former were to come into effect or the latter were applied enthusiastically, there is the very real potential that constitutional doctrine might work hand in glove with hiding and perpetuating abuse of the vulnerable. Moreover, constitutional scholarship would continue to operate out of ignorance rather than fact.”

Standing, Spending, and Separation: How the No-Establishment Rule Does (And Does Not) Protect Conscience
Richard W. Garnett, 54 Vill. L. Rev. 655 (2009)

“The Establishment Clause, many believe, safeguards conscience; the fact that it does is, many believe, a justification both for the Clause and for its energetic judicial enforcement; and the Supreme Court’s construction of the Clause has been guided, at least in part, by its conclusions about what the well-being of conscience requires. We are not entirely sure what the liberty of conscience is, means, or requires, but, nevertheless, it is, as Professor Steven Smith has observed, ‘central to the modern discourse of religious freedom’ and, indeed, ‘to the modern self-understanding generally.’”

Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Laboratory to the State of Hawaii
Lindsay N. McAneeley, 29 U. Haw. L. Rev. 269 (2009)

“This comment considers the current state of the law with respect to PAS and alternative routes to its legalization in the State of Hawai’i. Part II of this comment provides an overview of the current legal standard regarding PAS, reviewing the seminal federal cases, Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, and the federal government’s unsuccessful challenges to this Act. Part III summarizes the reported data from Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, demonstrating the success of the program and the effectiveness of its procedural safeguards. Part IV of this comment discusses why the State of Hawai’i should be the next state to legalize PAS. This part explores the various factors that make Hawai’i a particularly compatible forum for PAS and also reviews the recent efforts that have been made by the Hawai’i legislature to legalize its practice. Part V attempts to explain why these legislative efforts have thus far been unsuccessful, identifying the primary bases of opposition to PAS in Hawai’i. This part also explains why these concerns should not continue to thwart efforts to legalize PAS in Hawai’i. This comment concludes by exploring alternative routes that the citizens of Hawai’i may pursue in their efforts to legalize PAS, including a state constitutional challenge based on Hawai’i's explicit right to privacy, and a public referendum.”

To Die or Not to Die: The History and Future of Assisted Suicide Laws in the U.S.
Shelly A. Cassity, 11 J. L. & Fam. Stud. 467 (2009)

“There are legitimate societal interests in discouraging the assistance of suicide. However, denying a person the option to receive safe and proper aid in dying serves, in effect, to encourage starvation or other distasteful ways to die. This note explores some of the legal history surrounding assisted suicide and comments on the future of assisted suicide laws in the United States. Section II introduces and explains the various classifications of life-ending decisions. Section III reviews the historical background of assisted suicide laws in the United States. Section IV discusses the current state of such laws. Finally, section V deals with the possible future of assisted suicide laws in the United States.”

Gowri Ramachandran, Against the Right to Bodily Integrity: Of Cyborgs and Human Rights (July 15, 2009). Denver University Law Review, Vol. 87, No. 1, p. 1, 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1434712

“There should be no legal ‘right to bodily integrity,’ marked off by the borders of the organic, integrated human body, whether that right is saleable or not. For instance, once we determine what our bodies have to do with fundamental rights, if anything, we might not be led to protect any freedom to resist vaccination on this basis. (Although certainly other rights, such as religion-based rights, might protect this freedom.) On the other hand, we might be led to protect freedoms of dress and makeup, even though these activities do not involve the manipulation of one’s organic, physically continuous human body. Similarly, the relationship of the body to fundamental rights might compel us to regulate contracts entered into between patients and sellers of prostheses, despite the fact that prostheses are not human. On the other hand, we might not find a rights-based justification for either prohibiting or permitting blood sales.”

Personnel Is Policy: Schools, Student Groups, and the Right to Discriminate
George B. Davis, 66 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1793 (2009)

“The Seventh Circuit analyzed the expressive association and free speech claims independently, using a different framework for each claim. By contrast, the Ninth Circuit’s opinion collapsed the claims together and analyzed the case based on the type of forum the school had created. Can these two differing opinions be reconciled in some way? Does the right of expressive association–and the corollary right of nonassociation–receive less protection on the public campus? Is there a way to safeguard this right while respecting the confines of the limited public forum of the public school and university? This Note attempts to answer these questions.”

“There’s 10 or 12 of us, and they only passed the bill by 3 votes, so they’re going to be short 8 to 9, maybe 6 to 8 votes. So they [Democrats] do not have the votes to pass it in the House.”