Daily Archives: December 28, 2009

Tim Worstall writes at Examiner.com: “So if marriage is not necessary to have and to raise children and marriage isn’t necessary to have sex then marriage isn’t necessary at all then, is it? This doesn’t mean that marriage isn’t desirable, or enjoyable, or even good for society and children. It just means that Earl Woods was right: marriage is unnecessary in a society like ours.”

Multichannel.com: “Religious broadcasters have asked the Federal Communications Commission not to reallocate any broadcast spectrum for wireless, saying it will disproportionately impact Christian TV broadcasters . . . NRB also maintained that if spectrum reclamation were to significantly impact religious broadcasters, it could well violate the Religoius Freedom Restoration Act . . . ”

USA Today: “Parents of public school students accuse the city of favoring Saint Raphael Academy — a prominent Catholic school and alma mater of city and state power brokers — by granting its football team exclusive use of a public field. They say it’s unconstitutional to give a religious school priority access to a field meant for public use.”

LifeNews: “The president of the Catholic Health Association is saying in a new interview today that her organization agrees with the bishops on banning abortion funding in the health care bill. However, the organization released a statement recently that made it appear otherwise . . . ”

Related Denver Post: Catholic hospitals and bishops split on Senate health-bill abortion compromise

Last week, a coalition of plaintiffs asked a federal court to grant a preliminary injunction to keep San Diego from enforcing campaign finance laws that violate the First Amendment.

Compass Direct: “Jerusalem resident Yossi Yomtov said police have been slow to investigate hate crimes against him by youths wearing kippahs, cloth skullcaps typically worn by observant Jews. In two of the attacks a youth plied him with pepper spray and stun gun shocks, he said.”

Karl Felsen writes at the Albany Times Union: “Brian Raum’s lawyerly Dec. 16 commentary, ‘Preserving marriage requires restricting it,’ is a good primer on why we find it so difficult as a society to sort out issues such as abortion and gay marriage. We are a nation of laws, and the most basic governmental reform our Founding Fathers created in defining what is unique about America is the separation of church and state. Yet we are also a religious people with many creeds and cultures flowing into our United States. So while Raum speaks of ‘Senate votes,’ ‘federal courts,’ ‘the New York judiciary,’ and other legal oriented phrases, he also slips in, either directly or by quoting judicial decisions, references to ‘culture and creed,’ ‘accepted truth,’ and ‘this belief. . . ‘”

Miami Herald: “Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon will join U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, state Sen. Nan Rich and state Rep. Mary Brandenburg to help the ACLU of Florida launch its new campaign to end Florida’s gay adoption ban.”

NorthJersey.com: “Len Deo, founder and president of the New Jersey Family Policy Council, suggested that the bill would fail despite shepherding by two of the state’s most prominent Democrats.”

Wall Street Journal: “Iranian opposition Web sites reported Monday the arrest of several prominent reformists, including aides to opposition leaders and a former foreign minister, a day after clashes killed at least eight, the deadliest day of protests since the summer.”

ADF attorney Roger Kiska appeared on CBN to discuss this: Swedish government seizes child from home-schooling family.

The MP4 runs just over 4 minutes.

“‘Any member who stands between the people and our right to vote is risking their political future,’ said Chuck Hurley, the family policy center’s president.”

Chicago Tribune: “Minneapolis assistant police Chief Sharon Lubinski has become the first openly gay U.S. marshal. The U.S. Senate last week confirmed the Green Bay, Wis. native . . . ”

Denver Post: “Just days before the bill passed, the Catholic Health Association, which represents more than 600 Catholic hospitals across the country, said in a statement that it was “encouraged” and ‘increasingly confident’ that such a compromise ‘can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion.’ An umbrella group for nuns followed its lead.The same day, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops slammed the compromise as ‘morally unacceptable.’”

Peoria Journal: “All but one of the seven Republican candidates call themselves ‘pro-life,’ while the Democrats, Gov. Pat Quinn and Comptroller Dan Hynes, support abortion rights. Only Hynes and Green Party candidate Rich Whitney support legalizing gay marriage.”

Daily Mail: “Nearly 1,500 of the 19,000 girls under 18 who had a termination last year had previously undergone one earlier abortion for an unwanted pregnancy – and in at least one case a teenage girl had her eighth abortion.”

Telegraph: “Tens of thousands of Spanish Catholics marched in Madrid against the socialist government’s policies on abortion and gay marriage.”

NY Times: “There are currently at least 445 openly gay and lesbian people holding elected office in the United States, up from 257 eight years ago, according to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political group that supports gay candidates.”

Law.com (National Law Journal): “Are Michigan’s public defenders improperly pushing the poor into copping pleas? The Michigan Supreme Court will consider that question this spring when it hears a case challenging how publicly appointed lawyers represent poor criminal defendants.”

NY Times: “A group of judges, political officials and lawyers, led by the retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, has begun a campaign to persuade states to choose judges on the basis of merit, rather than their ability to win an election.”

The Hill: “The Senate approved sweeping healthcare reform legislation by the narrowest of partisan margins early Christmas Eve morning, placing President Barack Obama closer than ever to signing a longtime Democratic priority into law.”

LifeNews: “The government of the Australian state of Queensland has resisted a petition campaign to request that the old law banning abortions there be removed from the books.”

Annuit Coeptis: “You always read about it in the paper, you see it on the news, in fact some deny that it actually happens, but this year the ACLU came to town and did try to steal Christmas . . . Minority Commissioner Stephen A. Urban said he didn’t support the removal and learned about it from a news article. He said he spoke with other organizations that are willing to help the county in its defense, including the Alliance Defense Fund and the Pa Family Institute.”

LA Times: “A year after the Supreme Court upheld a Mexico City law allowing abortion in the first trimester, 17 states have amended their constitutions to protect the unborn.”

The Globe and Mail: “Religious leader who police say has 25 wives comes out swinging in online missive about legal case.”

NewsMax: “Imagine the ACLU’s chagrin, however, when the single memorial soon was replaced by four new ones at various locations — and each larger than the original. The Project Moses group that provided those new monuments — as well as hundreds more like them on display throughout the nation . . . ”

SDNews.com: . . . Joe Infranco, a senior attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, believes the outcome for the Mount Soledad Cross case will be affected by the Supreme Court’s decision in 2005 to permit a statue of the Ten Commandments to remain on public property in Texas due to its historical significance. ‘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.’ . . . ”

ADF Media Information Page

Cleveland Plain Dealer: “City Council members passed legislation to create the registry last December. Their 13-7 vote followed heated debate and intense pressure from the community’s religious leaders . . . Then, in August, the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based opponent of same-sex rights, filed a taxpayers lawsuit to shut down the registry. The suit was dismissed in November.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In Commonwealth v. Marcavage, (MA App., Dec. 23, 2009), a Massachusetts Appeals Court upheld the conviction of a street evangelist who was arrested on Halloween night, 2007, in the city of Salem and charged with disorderly conduct under M.G.L., Ch. 272, S.53.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois v. White, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119476 (ND IL, Dec. 23, 2009) . . . ACLU . . . also claimed that the exemptions in the law for media lobbyists and lobbyists for churches and religious organizations amount to speaker-based discrimination as well as a violation of the Establishment Clause.”

Religion Clause Blog: “The complaint (full text) in Rogers v. Mulholland, (D RI, filed 10/14/2009), alleges that giving exclusive after-school use of two particular public athletic fields for practice by Catholic Saint Raphael’s Academy, instead of allowing public schools to also use them, violates the Establishment Clause as well as the due process and equal protection clauses of both the U.S. and Rhode Island constitutions.”

“Extending federal benefits to same-sex couples will cost taxpayers $898 million over the next nine years, according to an analysis of ‘domestic partnership’ legislation released by the Congressional Budget Office.”

SCOTUS Blog: On October 5, the Court took what seemed to be a fairly unusual step in No. 08-1596, Rhine v. Deaton, when it asked the Solicitor General of Texas to file a brief expressing the views of the State of Texas in a challenge to a Texas statute that provides court-appointed counsel to parents facing the termination of their parental rights in proceedings initiated by the state, but not in proceedings initiated by private parties.”

Docket Entries

One News Now: “What the Obama administration is trying to do is to allow these organizations…that promote prostitution [to] receive federal money,” he reports.

Helen M. Alvare writes at the Culture of Life Foundation: “One of the outcomes of the current tempest over Kevin Jennings should be his ouster. But surely another should be a demand that the government get out and stay out of the business of instructing our children about human sexuality in ways that degrade them specifically as children, and also as human beings.”

On Top Magazine: “The Christian-based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has joined Stand for Marriage DC in challenging a District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics ruling that blocked opponents from pursing a ballot initiative . . . ‘The people of DC have a right to vote on the definition of marriage,’ ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks said in a statement. ‘The DC Charter guarantees the people the right to vote, and the council cannot amend the charter for any reason, much less to deny citizens the right to vote.’”

AP: “An American missionary believed to be detained when he stepped into North Korea on Christmas didn’t inform his parents of his plans but they had a hunch he would visit the communist nation.”

Examiner.com: “Word of the decision by District Judge Alan M. Malott comes from the Alliance Defense Fund, which promised an immediate appeal of the decision against the Christian photographer and her husband.”

One News Now: “The Pittsburgh City Council previously established a huge buffer zone that prevented pro-lifers from communicating well with women entering abortion facilities. Alliance Defense Fund provided pro-lifers with legal representation in the lawsuit.”

Wall Street Journal: “After hemorrhaging members for decades, labor unions have hit upon a new way to shore up their annual dues revenue.”

Jim Manzi, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes in National Affairs: “The new normal, however, is different from the old normal. To begin with, certain strands of the old bourgeois consensus have frayed, and others have simply disappeared, at least for some parts of the ­population. The wealthier and better-educated segments of our ­society, for ­example, have re-established the primacy of stable families and revived their ­intolerance of crime and public disorder. But they have combined this return to tradition with very non-traditional attitudes about sex, ­masculinity, and overt piety.”

Christian Post: “As part of the effort, conservative group Stand for Marriage D.C. has launched an ad campaign through the city’s transportation system – a move that is being opposed by Full Equality Now DC, which has demanded the ads be removed on the grounds that they disrespect LGBT residents . . . The people of D.C. have a right to vote on the definition of marriage,” commented Austin R. Nimocks, senior legal counsel at Alliance Defense Fund, which has filed a lawsuit on behalf of eight D.C. citizens. ‘The D.C. Charter guarantees the people the right to vote, and the council cannot amend the charter for any reason, much less to deny citizens the right to vote,’ he added in a statement.”

www.stand4marriagedc.com

Wall Street Journal: “In Caperton v. Massey, the Supremes set out a new standard requiring judges to recuse themselves if there is a “probability of bias” in a case. That was a marked departure from historical standards, which required a judge to step off primarily when he had a direct financial interest. Under a new rule, created by the Michigan Supreme Court to govern the state’s judicial recusal standards, a judge’s impartiality may be challenged by the parties in the case, and if he declines to recuse himself, he may still be voted off the case by his fellow judges.”

LifeNews: “Dawn Johnsen, a law professor at Indiana University who is a former legal counsel for the pro-abortion group NARAL, is Obama’s selection to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.”

Law.com (National Law Journal): “Neither the Obama administration nor Congress has gone along with a proposal from the American Bar Association to help some recent law school graduates defer their student loans. But that doesn’t mean the ABA has stopped pushing.”