Daily Archives: January 6, 2010

BigGovernment.com: “After much investigating and several discussions with the IRS, it appears the Democrats have played a ‘cash-flow trick’ on working Americans and are taking more out of American’s paychecks across the board–all the while touting the Making Work Pay tax credit.”

Politico: “California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger savaged congressional plans for health reform in his 2010 State of the State address on Wednesday, calling the legislation ‘health care to nowhere’ that’s infected with ‘bribes, deals and loopholes.’”

KETKNBC.com: “Planned Parenthood is renovating a former bank, turning it into a 78,000 square foot facility that will include a surgical wing equipped to provide late-term abortions.”

CityTownInfo.com: “Law.com reports that blogs questioning the value of law school are becoming more widespread on the Internet, including ‘Exposing the Law School Scam,’ ‘Third Tier Reality,’ and ‘Esq. Never.’ The blogs focus on law schools’ high tuition and what is increasingly perceived as many people’s unrealistic expectations about lawyers’ salaries and lifestyles.”

Wisconsin State Journal is reporting that The UW-Madison Law School could represent a couple convicted of reckless homicide for failing to obtain medical care for their 11-year-old daughter. The couple “thought their prayers would heal daughter Kara.”

KCCI.com: “Officials with the group One Iowa said the broad coalition of more than 71 groups has a combined membership of 150,000 Iowans and includes labor, civil rights and faith groups.”

ACLU: “The law requires every candidate for office to sign an oath to abide by the results of a party’s primary and if the candidate loses the party’s primary, bars the candidate from petitioning or campaigning as a write-in candidate for the general election ballot for any office for which the party has a nominee.”

Huffington Post: “Currently, there are five Democratic Senators voting no. That means at least three Republicans are needed to pass. Right now, there is only one — which is still one more than the New York State Senate had. . . . Bill Baroni . . . one of the brightest Republican stars on the state horizon . . . Each of these five Republicans is a potential ‘yes’ vote. They are: Christopher ‘Kip’ Bateman of Somerset County, Sean Kean and Jennifer Beck of Monmouth County, Andrew Ciesla of Ocean County and Tom Kean Jr. of Union County.”

Roger Kiska, European legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, said . . . the Cassation Court ruling is a signal that Italy may be prepared to break with the ECHR if the government loses the appeal . . .

LA Times: “A county board’s vote Tuesday affirming that Davis could offer ‘shady men’ to her clientele followed months of rancorous debate among the state’s legal brothel community . . . “It seems the biggest hoopla is a great fear in some people’s minds that some kind of homosexual activity might go on,” she said.”

Sun Herald: “The City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a six-month moratorium on permits for adult-oriented businesses and tattoo parlors. Councilman R. Lee Flowers said the moratorium was probably proposed because businessman Barry Artz applied for a permit to open an adult bookstore near a Gulfport School District building where General Equivalency Diploma examinations are held, meaning teenagers could be exposed to the business.”

The Gazette: “As state legislators prepare for the 2010 General Assembly, a local delegate has once again renewed his commitment to overturn an administrative order requiring Virginia State Police chaplains to deliver non-denominational prayers at official events. Delegate Bill Carrico (R-Grayson), a retired state trooper, has introduced House Bill No. 9 for the upcoming General Assembly, which is set to begin Jan. 13 — an identical bill to the one seen in the Senate’s court committee that died by one vote last year.”

David Pryce-Jones writing at his “David Calling” blog, National Review Online: “[I]n the past two years, according to the Sunday Telegraph, the Muslim Centre [of the East London Mosque] has received at least 60,000 pounds from a government initiative known as Preventing Violent Extremism. The intention is to fund moderates to oppose extremists, but the very opposite has happened. Violent extremism has been subsidized.”

New Yorker: “By now, most serious studies on education reform have concluded that the critical variable when it comes to kids succeeding in school isn’t money spent on buildings or books but, rather, the quality of their teachers. A study of the Los Angeles public schools published in 2006 by the Brookings Institution concluded that ‘having a top-quartile teacher rather than a bottom-quartile teacher four years in a row would be enough to close the black-white test score gap.’ But, in New York and elsewhere, holding teachers accountable for how well they teach has proved to be a frontier that cannot be crossed.”

Bruce Bawer writing at City Journal: His thesis: Europe is chugging along just fine; Islam poses no real challenge to the continent’s freedom and prosperity; after all, the “experts” say so. Never mind the draining of European welfare systems by Muslim families, the explosion in rapes and gay-bashings and Jew-baitings, the proliferation of honor killings and forced marriages and no-go zones; never mind the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh by fanatics who objected to those men’s positions on Islam; never mind the threats directed at critics of Islam, such as Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Robert Redeker, which have obliged them to live in hiding or with round-the-clock bodyguards.

Concord Monitor: “New Hampshire’s residents deserve the right to vote on same-sex marriage, state Rep. David Bates, a Windham Republican, said yesterday. Before about 75 people, many wearing stickers opposing same-sex marriage, Bates launched a campaign to urge state legislators to let the people vote on a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.”

Washington Times: “Attorneys for Proposition 8 backers said television coverage would expose their witnesses to further harassment and intimidation. Backers of Proposition 8 were targeted for harassment in the months after the initiative’s passage in November 2008. Some donors received threatening e-mails, letters and phone calls, while churches and businesses were singled out for boycotts and protests.”

The Star: “Travellers under 18 will be exempt from Canada’s peek-a-boo body scanners amid international fears that the resulting images would amount to child pornography.”

San Diego Gay and Lesbian News: “Attorneys for two couples who wish to be married but cannot because of Prop. 8 will argue today at a hearing in favor of allowing cameras in the courtroom during the federal trial on the unconstitutionality of the initiative. The trial is set to begin January 11 . . . While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown were named defendants in their official capacities, Prop. 8 is being defended in court by the prominent conservative organization, Alliance Defense Fund. Gov. Schwarzenegger earlier filed a brief that did not dispute the unconstitutionality of Prop. 8, and called for swift action by the courts.”

Associated Baptist Press: “A school district in Tennessee has agreed to stop handing out Gideon Bibles to students during the school day under threat of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union . . . In May the Alliance Defense Fund sued an elementary school in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., for editing religious language out of posters drawn by students to promote a ‘See You at the Pole’ prayer event.”

Washburn County Register: “The Spooner Plan Commission is continuing work on finding an outlet for adult entertainment facilities, after a meeting Tuesday, Dec. 29, in city hall.”

New Europe interviews European Commissioner Viviane Reding, designated to be Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship: “[T]he mixed marriages: a German has married a Greek and they are living together in Belgium. Then they have a divorce. What happens with the children? Where are the children going? What law applies to this divorce to the good of the children afterwards? All this has to be clarified at the European level so that these matrimonial questions will not be headache anymore but that people will get concrete solutions and the children are treated for the better of children.”

CCFON: “Around 400,000 people joined a Facebook group this week to oppose a planned march of a Muslim extremist group through a British town famous for honouring the war dead, including those killed in Afghanistan.”

Der Spiegel: “Muslims and Christians are both growing more radical in Nigeria, home of the would-be underwear bomber. Almost nowhere else in the world does the rivalry between religions lead to bloody conflict quite so often. In Bauchi, there are rumors that militant Muslims are preparing to attack Christians in Jos, 100 kilometers (62 miles) away. Is it true? Or just an attempt to spark fear?”

Irish Times: “Up to 683 women developed complications during pregnancy in 2008 which may have required a lawful abortion, according to Government estimates. However, authorities do not have any precise figures to show how many lawful terminations of pregnancies took place in Ireland. The details are contained in State documents lodged with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last month as part of its defence to a challenge to Ireland’s abortion laws.”

Khaled Diab writes at The Guardian: “A Saudi journalist is demanding that women be given the right to four husbands. Maybe she has a point.”

LA Times: “Nadine Bedair’s controversial article, recently published in the Egyptian independent daily Al Masry Al Youm, that raised the question of why only men are allowed to practice polygamy in Islam but not women. As expected, the daring article, entitled ‘My Four Husbands and I,’ has stirred the pot among various groups . . . ”

NY Times: “‘Men are by nature polygamous,’ said Dr. Rohaya, Mr. Ikram’s third wife, flanked by the other three women and Mr. Ikram for an interview on a recent morning.”

Findlaw: “Dr. Michael Kamrava, the Beverly Hills fertility doctor who helped his patient Nadya Suleman (a/k/a ‘the Octomom’) birth octuplets after delivering her six other children via in vitro fertilization, was sued by California’s Medical Board for multiple counts of gross negligence.”

Washington Times: “In at least seven states — Connecticut, Nevada, Ohio, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Colorado — the Democratic candidate for Senate trails the Republican in the most recent polls. In those states, Mr. Obama’s popularity has dropped below the percentage of votes he drew in 2008, and opposition to the health-care-reform bill is deep and wide.”

“With the governing Socialists and other left-wing parties enjoying a strong majority, the new law is likely to sail through . . .”

AZ Capitol Times: “Gov. Jan Brewer issued an executive order Jan. 5 that aims to continue Arizona’s participation in a multi-state agreement to reduce greenhouse gas and carbon emissions.”

Western Climate Initiative: “The centerpiece of the WCI strategy is a regional cap-and-trade program. The WCI released the design of its program on September 23, 2008. When fully implemented in 2015, this comprehensive program will cover nearly 90 percent of the GHG emissions in WCI states and provinces . . . ”

Mail Tribune: “An Ashland City Council majority voted Tuesday night to adopt a citywide ban on nudity despite an American Civil Liberties Union threat to sue over the ban.”

LifeSiteNews: “. . . Karl Marx’s co-author, Friedrich Engels, saw three major obstacles to the socialist vision: ‘private property, religion and this present form of marriage.’ Also central to socialist thought is a secular and materialist vision of the world that espouses relativism, sees everything politically, and locates genuine community in the state and not in families, churches or voluntary organizations . . . ”

“Mike Donnelly, staff attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association, has described the measure as ‘the most anti-home school legislation ever conceived’ in New Hampshire.”

Sherri F. Colb writes at Findlaw: ” . . . To draw this conclusion, however, would be to miss important distinctions between how Judaism and Christianity (Catholicism, in particular) conceptualize abortion, and how the U.S. and Israel each treat the practice of terminating pregnancies. When Does Life Begin? At Conception, Versus At Birth . . . I place ‘life’ in quotations because here, the term refers to a value judgment, rather than an empirically verifiable observation about living and nonliving organisms.”

AP: “Charges of discrimination based on national origin rose by about 5 percent to 11,134 claims, while religious discrimination claims rose less than 1 percent, to 3,386 claims.”

” . . . in what sense would a seven year old girl benefit from regular parental contact with an unrelated female now bitterly estranged from her mother? . . . ”

NashuaTelegraph.com: “House lawmakers have voted over the objections of a socially conservative governor to allow gay and unmarried couples the right to plan funerals for their partners.” The legislation is headed to the Senate for a vote on the veto override.

AP: “A report prepared for Delaware’s Sports and Video Library Commission says the state needs two more casinos to generate the tax revenue it could lose as neighboring states expand their gambling operations.”

The Hill: “Republicans and allied groups say they will spend millions to oppose healthcare reform and other Democratic initiatives in the courts, which they see as a last line of defense against President Barack Obama’s agenda.”

ACLU: “While we appreciate that President Obama stated that he is still determined to close Guantánamo, the decision to halt all transfers of detainees to Yemen will prolong a shameful chapter in American history without making Americans any safer. Continuing to detain individuals who have been cleared for release simply because they come from a certain country is unwise, unjust and does absolutely nothing to improve our security.”

Washington Times: “Supporters of traditional marriage are outraged over a California judge’s efforts to bring television cameras into court next week to cover a trial challenging Proposition 8, California’s initiative against gay marriage.”

ACLU: “Beginning in 2010, the Obama administration, through the Office of Personnel Management, has started to list gender identity among the classes protected by federal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policies. By including gender identity as a protected class, the federal government is stating its commitment to protecting transgender employees and has taken a significant step toward ending employment discrimination of LGBT people in the federal workforce.”

SCOTUS Blog: “The Court in the McDonald case will consider two main arguments for applying the individual right to possess guns to state and local laws: first, that gun rights should be protected at those levels by the 14th Amendment’s “Privileges or Immunities” clause; and, second, the protection should come under the Amendment’s Due Process clause. Both of those arguments are at issue in the question presented by the petition. The NRA said it wants to put stress on the due process argument.”

Baptist Press: “The 2010 SBC Church Compensation Survey, a joint effort of Baptist state conventions, LifeWay Christian Resources and GuideStone Financial Resources, is now online. All Southern Baptist church employees are encouraged to participate in the survey of pay and benefits of ministers and other staff, which can be accessed through April 30 at www.LifeWay.com/compensationsurvey . . . ”

New York Times: “The Ikhwan Polygamy Club is managed by Global Ikhwan, a company whose businesses include bread and noodle factories, a chicken-processing plant, pharmacies, cafes and supermarkets. Mr. Ikram is a director of the company. While polygamy is legal in predominantly Muslim Malaysia, the club has come under fire from the government and religious leaders, who suspect it may be an attempt to revive Al-Arqam, a defunct Islamic movement headed by Mrs. Hatijah’s husband, Mr. Ashaari Mohamad, who is the founder and owner of Global Ikhwan. Al-Arqam was banned in 1994 for ‘deviant’ religious teachings.”

MetroWeekly: “Conservative legal organizations such as Liberty Counsel and the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) have also been involved in a number of single-state lesbian custody cases, each time backing the biological mother or sole legal adoptive mother against the mother who has no formal legal rights to the child. They had two successes in Utah, last year in a lower court and in 2007 in the Utah Supreme Court, but lost last year in a California appeals court and the Montana Supreme Court. In each case, as in Miller-Jenkins, the biological mother said she was no longer a lesbian or was now in an opposite-sex relationship.”

Jackson Free Press: “If the Supreme Court takes cues from foreign law, it cannot do so selectively, Scalia argued. He pointed to the Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which found state laws banning sodomy to be unconstitutional and in which he dissented. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in that case cited a 1981 decision of the European Court of Human Rights to argue that Western civilization did not uniformly condemn homosexuality. Among non-European countries, laws prohibiting homosexuality are more common, Scalia pointed out, meaning that the Court had arbitrarily selected European precedent to justify its decision.”

Baptist Press: “A court in Uzbekistan has overturned massive fines levied against three Baptist Union leaders in late October but upheld their criminal convictions, which Uzbek Baptists claim were based on fabricated evidence . . . The charges of evading taxes and involving children in religious activity without their or their parents’ consent were based on assemblies held at the union’s Joy Baptist Children’s Camp, which was directed by Pitirimov.”

Religion Clause Blog: “Janata Party leader Dr. Subramanian Swamy’s . . . complaint argues that government participation in compliance with Shariah amounts to the State Government favoring a particular religion in violation of Articles 14 and 25 of the Indian Constitution.”

If the bill clears the Senate, Roberts said he will post it in the full Assembly “immediately” Monday without a committee hearing, a day before leadership changes in both houses . . .

Culture and Media Institute: “With its Youth Media Awards, the ALA works to get pro-gay propaganda on library shelves.”

Paul Cassell writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “Yesterday U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz of the District of Minnesota issued an interesting order regarding a restitution application in a child pornography case. In his order, found here, Judge Schiltz chastises the government for failing to pursue restitution for child pornography cases in his district, even though Congress has made restitution mandatory in such cases.”

LA Times: “Parents would be given more power to transfer children out of poorly performing campuses and petition for changes, including removal of the principal. Teachers unions oppose the provisions.”

Jake Tapper at ABC News: “C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb . . . Lamb reminded the leaders that ‘President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation’s editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation’s health care system.’”

LifeNews: “Congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama have made it official: they will bypass a public, formal conference committee and negotiate behind closed doors on a final version of the pro-abortion health care bill.”

Law.com (Daily Business Review): “Fort Lauderdale labor and employment attorney Loring Spolter said Tuesday that he will ask for an emergency stay of an unusual order by U.S. District Judge William Zloch imposing $110,000 in penalties and banning him from practicing in the Southern District of Florida for 3 1/2 years. The ban is part of a long-running battle over Spolter’s claims that Zloch is biased against women and minorities in employment cases because of his conservative views and Catholic faith . . . ”

Citizen Link: “The Family Policy Council of West Virginia (FPCWV ) is releasing a four-part series of short online videos on the importance of one man, one woman marriage.”

Citizen Link: “Lawmakers in Pennsylvania threatened job cuts and staff furloughs if plans for expanded gambling don’t pass the Legislature.”

AP: “Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning is taking his fight against new video games that offer cash pay-outs to the state Legislature, a move that distributors of a popular new barroom game called a continuation of his ‘witch hunt.’”

AP: “North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan stunned fellow Democrats when he decided not to seek re-election this fall and swung open a race that Republicans are convinced will help the GOP dent the Democrats’ fragile majority in the Senate.”

“A Montgomery County couple has been arrested on child endangerment charges for failing to register their children with the school district as they were home-schooled, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said Monday.”

Washington Post: “Christopher Dodd was expected to announce his retirement Wednesday after five terms in the U.S. Senate and Connecticut’s popular attorney general said he will be entering the race to replace him.”

Should Texas’s Former Ban on Obscene Device Promotion Pass Constitutional Muster Under a Murky Lawrence?
Laura M. Clark, 41 St. Mary’s L.J. 177 (2009)

“In Part II, this Comment will summarize the cases and statutes involved in the sex-toy promotion circuit split. Part III will discuss other courts’ holdings on similar issues. Part IV will analyze relevant U.S. Supreme Court holdings and Texas cases, apply Lawrence to the Texas and Alabama statutes, and examine whether the Texas statute might be changed to pass constitutional muster. While the murkiness of Lawrence has spawned a great deal of scholarship on whether it is a fundamental rights analysis or a rational basis analysis, this Comment will focus on the private-versus-commercial right aspect of the debate. This Comment will conclude with a discussion of what a possible U.S. Supreme Court clarification of Lawrence might hold.”

A Coach and Prayer: Anatomy of Borden v. School District of the Township of East Brunswick
Joseph O. Oluwole, 249 Ed. Law Rep. 561 (2009)

“A high school coach, Marcus Borden, wanted to kneel and bow with his students during prayer. The school district, however, implemented a policy designed to prevent the coach from these silent acts during his students’ prayers. According to Borden, these silent acts were intended to foster team unity, not endorse school-sponsored prayer . . . This Article presents the anatomy and analysis of the various claims in the case. The first section sets forth the facts of the case. The second section presents the reasoning and analysis of the Third Circuit decision. The final section highlights the implications of the case for school districts and policymakers.”

The gay religion
Ryan Daniels, 19 S. Cal. Interdisc. L.J. 129 (2009)

“The aim of this paper is to describe why the gay ideology should be termed a gay religion. This paper attempts to show that being ‘gay’ is the result of religious belief much in the way that being ‘catholic’ is the result of religious belief. Thus, when laws are enacted or policies are instituted that specifically affect the experience of gays, the analysis of those laws and policies should account for the religious beliefs of gays.”

Ames C. Grawert, The Fundamental Meaning of ‘Medical Uncertainty’: Judicial Deference to Selective Science in Gonzales V. Carhart (July 17, 2009). 12 N.Y.U. J. Legis. & Pub. Pol’y 379, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1435480

“Examining Gonzales v. Carhart, this Note takes the position that the Supreme Court’s latest abortion decision sets a lower bar than is prudent for the scrutiny of scientific and medical congressional ‘findings’ that purport to justify limiting rights otherwise entitled to constitutional protection. In doing so, the Court invites collateral attacks on the same rights through the use and congressional adoption of slipshod, deliberately uniformed science (‘sham science’).”

Michael J. Perry, The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy (December 21, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1525920

“Can any worldview that is not religious support—embed—the twofold claim to which liberal democracy is, as such—as liberal democracy—committed, namely, that each and every human being has equal inherent dignity and is inviolable?

I can now see, in retrospect, that each of the principal questions that have engaged me over the course of my career concerns one or another aspect of the political morality of liberal democracy; in particular, each question concerns either (a) the grounding, (b) the content, (c) the implications for one or another political-moral controversy, or (d) the judicial enforcement of the political morality of liberal democracy.”