Daily Archives: January 25, 2010

Wall Street Journal: “In federal court here, lawyers defending Proposition 8 called their first witness, political expert Kenneth Miller, who said gays are a well-funded and politically connected group . . . The defense is expected to rest its case by midweek.”

Catholic Culture: “The Archbishop-elect of Brussels—a conservative prelate who was chosen by Pope Benedict XVI to replace the liberal Cardinal Godfried Danneels– touched off the debate by affirming that homosexuality is a psychological disorder.”

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Christian Post: “The world does not see a distinction between the United States and Christians, said a former humanitarian worker who served in South Asia and Africa and worked with refugees when he returned to the United States.”

Times of India: “As high drama is being played out in Indian courts over surrogacy issues, the US consulate in Chennai, perhaps worried about the rash of litigations, has decided to tighten its visa processing norms, particularly for couples coming to the city for fertility treatment and assisted reproduction.”

Community Defense Counsel linking to the Blog of the Legal Times: “In U.S. v. Love, a three-judge panel on Jan. 22 upheld the Internet ban that was imposed as a condition on Allan Love’s release after he has served his sentence for transporting or shipping material involving child pornography.”

Christian Newswire: “NARAL Pro-Choice Washington and Planned Parenthood are pushing for new legislation that would place a “gag order” on faith-based charities providing free support to pregnant women . . . The bill ‘Concerning Limited Service Pregnancy Centers’ (HB 2837/SB 6452) will be heard in the Senate Health and Long Term Care Committee on Wednesday, January 27 at 8:00 A.M.”

Washington Legislative Bill Information

AP: “Lawyers for two same-sex couples challenging the constitutionality of California’s ban on same-sex marriage rested their case Monday after showing videotape of a simulcast in which supporters of the ban said gay marriage would lead to polygamy and bestiality.”

Breitbart (AP): “Jurors hearing the case of a man charged with killing prominent abortion provider Dr. George Tiller heard the word abortion for the first time Monday, when an usher testified about seeing protesters at the church the doctor had attended.”

“Child pornography victims could sue anyone convicted of producing, promoting or possessing their sexual images for at least $150,000 in damages under a proposal backed by the Missouri attorney general.”

ACLJ: “The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) – an international affiliate of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) – has submitted a critical case to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion urging Egypt to legalize conversion from Islam to Christianity in accordance with International Human Rights standards. The ECLJ submitted the case January 22nd on behalf of Mohammed Bishoy Hegazy v. The Arab Republic of Egypt. A copy of the filing is available here.”

Asia News: “At least 1,000 people set fire to the Pentecostal community places of worship. According to local Muslims, the two buildings did not have the legal permits as ‘churches.’ The Nahdlatul Ulama admits the violence of radical Islamists against Christians. In 2009 in Indonesia, 35 cases of violation of religious freedom, 28 against Christians.”

The Straits Times: “McDonald’s this month started selling cartoon character miniatures depicting the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac calendar, but the pig was replaced by love god Cupid as McDonald’s said it did not want to offend Muslims.”

Time: “The U.S. military’s just-released report into the Fort Hood shootings spends 86 pages detailing various slipups by Army officers but not once mentions Major Nidal Hasan by name or even discusses whether the killings may have had anything to do with the suspect’s view of his Muslim faith. And as Congress opens two days of hearings on Wednesday into the Pentagon probe of the Nov. 5 attack that left 13 dead, lawmakers want explanations for that omission.”

Anwar Ibrahim writing in the Wall Street Journal: “Few Muslims around the world would endorse the claim that we have a monopoly on the word ‘Allah.’ It is accepted that the word was already in the lexicon of pre-Islamic Arabs. Arabic’s sister Semitic languages also refer to God as ‘Allah’: namely, ‘Elaha’ in Aramaic, and ‘Elohim’ in Hebrew.”

WIBC: “House and Senate committees vote Tuesday on rival proposals for dealing with ‘sexting’: — teenagers’ use of cell phones to send explicit pictures of themselves or classmates.”

My Fox 8: “Don’t tell Andy, Opie and Aunt Bee, but Mayberry could get its first strip club if the owner of a night club petitions the city to rezone his property . . . But according to Jeff Coutu, the city’s director of planning, the district El Tequila is located in currently does not allow adult businesses.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “So Tuesday, the Judiciary Committee will discuss House Bill 2189, introduced by Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, which would classify sexting by minors — youths under 18 — as a second-degree misdemeanor instead of a felony, as it now can be classified.”

Vermont Times-Argus: “A Rutland Family court judge is giving a Virginia mother at the center of a same-sex custody battle 30 days to comply with his order before he imposes sanctions that could include a warrant for her arrest.”

Baylor College of Medicine: “Teens and young adults who opt for hormonal birth control are bypassing the pill and choosing longer term options like injections and implants, said a Baylor College of Medicine expert on teen sexual health.”

Arizona Republic: “With the definition of marriage being challenged nationwide, the Catholic Church in Phoenix has introduced significant changes in its program for couples who want a church wedding lengthening the preparation time from six to nine months.”

The Christian Institute: “The Government has lost in the House of Lords over its attempt in the Equality Bill to alter the law on who churches and other faith-based groups can employ. Peers voted 216 to 178 in favour of Lady O’Cathain’s amendment to keep the current law unchanged. The Government claimed its plans would simply ‘clarify’ the law. But churches said the plans would narrow important safeguards designed to help religious employers defend their ethos.”

Iowa Independent: “In an e-mail to supporters allegedly on behalf of Republican state Sen. Nancy Boettger of Harlan, Iowa Family Policy Center’s action arm announced that Senate Room 24 in the Iowa Capitol was reserved at 10 a.m. Monday, and at that same time for the remainder of the legislative session, for a showing of ‘The Truth Project.’ . . . The Iowa Independent had not yet received confirmation on whether the full series of reservations had been approved by the office. It also unclear if an Iowa Senator can use their privilege to reserve space for several weeks on behalf of a non-governmental, third-party organization such as the Iowa Family Policy Center, which indicated in its e-mail to supporters that they should call the organization’s office to make reservations for the 10 a.m. meeting.”

AFP: “‘A gay parade… cannot be called anything but a Satanic act,’ Yury Luzhkov told an education conference, quoted by Interfax news agency. ‘We haven’t permitted such a parade and we won’t permit it in the future.’”

LifeSiteNews: “The US National Cancer Institute (NIC) has again denied the link between abortion and breast cancer to a Globe and Mail reporter, despite one of their leading researchers being named as co-author on a study that admitted up to a 40 per cent increased risk of breast cancer associated with induced abortion . . . ”

“The growing strength of the pro-life position in Congress became apparent . . . when a group of 64 Democrats joined most Republicans in the House . . . The vote ‘shocked’ . . . Democratic leaders . . . ”

LifeSiteNews: “Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva has introduced a massive legislative reform package in the last year of his term that would secure abortion as a ‘human right,’ impose socialist and homosexualist ideology in the schools and media, and ban crucifixes from government facilities, among other measures.”

LifeNews: “A pro-life legal group filed a friend-of-the-court brief Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit asking the court to reject Planned Parenthood’s attempt to block a South Dakota law. The informed consent law is designed to help persuade women to consider positive alternatives to abortion . . . ‘A child’s life is worth more than Planned Parenthood’s bottom line,’ said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Steven H. Aden. He continued . . . ‘”

FrumForum: “Libel suits are not normally associated with national security, but a case the Texas Supreme Court ruled on January 15 carries just such implications. The suit against internet journalist Joe Kaufman is a prime example of how libel law can be manipulated to stifle dissemination of information about terrorism and radical Islam. . . . [T]he lawsuit fits a growing pattern of Islamists exploiting libel law to silence critics . . . ”

Raymond Dennehy, writing at Ignatius Press: “A survey of the justifications advanced by scientists, philosophers, and other members of the elite class, such as judges, to justify the legalization of induced abortion reveals that they have abandoned rational inquiry in favor of ideology. For although their arguments have the trappings of the objectivity of scientific method and other marks of rational inquiry, it is clear that they subvert reason and manipulate evidence to actualize an ideal that they perceive to be above all rational criticism. This enslavement to ideology is but a reenactment of what happened in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to the detriment of science and philosophy, not to mention the degradation of human life.”

LifeSiteNews: “A sea of youth dominated the massive crowd, one of the largest – if not the largest – in the history of the 37 years of the annual March for Life. Organizer Nellie Gray told the press that the numbers of marchers this year far exceeded last year, which was estimated at well over 300,000 . . . ”

LifeNews: “The status of the pro-abortion health care bill in Congress is uncertain as House and Senate Democrats spent the weekend planning their next step in the wake of a key election loss in Massachusetts that leaves them without a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate . . . ”

Wall Street Journal: “Approximately 85% of the state’s 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period. A Schwarzenegger adviser wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the past few days that, “This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs.” There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year, according to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility . . . ”

ABA Journal: ” . . . a number of judges prefer to look only at applications from individuals who come recommended by others they know or review mailed applications only . . . ”

ACLU: “Extremist rhetoric was in full force as they made their arguments against protecting LGBT students and staff in one of the largest school districts in South Dakota. But the story doesn’t end there. The ACLU of South Dakota and Equality South Dakota rallied our supporters, asking them to contact their school board members with accurate information instead of the tired old rhetoric of those who oppose the rights of LGBT citizens.”

AP: “The head of a French parliamentary panel says it will not recommend banning face-covering veils in the street.”

Politico: “‘Yesterday’s Roberts court decision, which exhibited a stunning disregard for settled law of decades’ standing, is terrifying to those of us who care deeply about the constitutional protections the court put in place for women’s access to abortion,’ said Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights. ‘We are deeply concerned. . . . Yesterday’s decision shows the court will reach out to take an opportunity to wholesale reverse a precedent the hard right has never liked.’”

Telegraph interview with the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls: “His other stipulation is community cohesion. Does he agree with Nick Clegg that faith schools should be forced to teach that homosexuality is normal and harmless? The answer is yes. ‘If their faith has a view in scripture, they can inform pupils of that. What they must not do is teach discrimination. They must be absolutely clear about the importance of civil partnerships [and that] bullying of homosexuals is wrong.’”

Via John Smeaton.

AP: “The federal trial concerning California’s same-sex marriage ban has resumed with lawyers showing videotape of a simulcast in which pastors supporting the ban say gay marriage would lead to polygamy and bestiality.”

Tennessean: “A study released last week by the nonprofit Brookings Institution says that while times are tough all over, Nashville has fared worse than the suburbs that surround it. The city of Nashville added about 32,110 people living below the poverty line between 2000 and 2008, a gain of 4.2 percentage points, reaching 17.5 percent of the city’s population.”

Arizona Republic: “The Arizona State Board for charter schools votes today on 19 applications for new charter schools, including one from Mesa Public Schools, the state’s largest district, which is looking for new ways to compete in the face of declining enrollment.”

ADF Media has posted transcripts and other legal documents from the Proposition 8 trial through Friday, January 22, 2010. Scroll down this page to the legal docs section on the lower right.

Politico: “Former GOP Rep. J.D. Hayworth told the Arizona Daily Star that he will be challenging Arizona Sen. John McCain in the Republican primary — one day after announcing he was quitting his conservative talk radio show.”

Wall Street Journal: “Gay Americans have been among the president’s most ardent supporters. Their enthusiasm, and that of their families and friends, could be crucial in this year’s elections. The president’s action—or inaction—on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will be noticed. An increasingly frustrated bloc of gay voters—angry over marriage setbacks in California, Maine, New Jersey and New York and emboldened by Ted Olson’s and David Boies’s high-profile effort to declare unconstitutional laws that prohibit gay marriage—are growing impatient for equality. As Mr. Olson said in federal district court in San Francisco recently, discriminatory laws serve only to ‘label gay and lesbian persons as different, inferior, unequal and disfavored.’”

Robert Louis Wilken reviews The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West by Tom Holland at First Things: “Although Gregory VII is not as well known as the reformers of the sixteenth century or the philosophes of the eighteenth century, a case can be made that Gregory’s studied rebuff of royal power in ecclesiastical affairs worked far greater changes in European political and religious life than did the upheavals of the Reformation or the Enlightenment . . . Holland’s central point is well taken. Something genuinely novel did come out of the medieval conflict between pope and king, and the initiative came from the Church’s leaders and thinkers, not Europe’s temporal rulers. Gregory VII was the bearer of a tradition that reached back to the gospels (‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’), to Ambrose and Augustine, and to Pope Gelasius, who said that the ‘two principles’ that give order to the world—political authority and spiritual authority—were distinct.”

ADF attorney Doug Napier appeared on the Michael Medved Show to discuss the battle for conscience in the medical field.

The MP3 runs approximately 15 minutes.

Debra J. Saunders writes at Townhall: “That’s another way of saying that the law isn’t as important as feelings in this trial. Feelings rule — and not just because the measure’s foes somehow believe that Californians haven’t been taught enough about gay people. Anti-8 attorneys have chosen to argue that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional in light of a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned a Colorado ban on gay-rights measures because it was motivated by animus toward homosexuals. If they can convince Walker that the Proposition 8 people are haters, he may overturn the will of the majority of California voters . . . ”

Laurence Tribe laments the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission at the SCOTUS Blog.

The Economist: “Today big government is back with a vengeance: not just as a brute fact, but as a vigorous ideology. Britain’s public spending is set to exceed 50% of GDP (see chart 1). America’s financial capital has shifted from New York to Washington, DC, and the government has been trying to extend its control over the health-care industry. Huge state-run companies such as Gazprom and PetroChina are on the march. Nicolas Sarkozy, having run for office as a French Margaret Thatcher, now argues that the main feature of the credit crisis is ‘the return of the state, the end of the ideology of public powerlessness.’”

Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), writing at Reason Magazine: “With so many examples of censorship and administrative bullying, a generation of students is getting four years of dangerously wrongheaded lessons about both their own rights and the importance of respecting the rights of others. Diligently applying the lessons they are taught, students are increasingly turning on each other, and trying to silence fellow students who offend them. With schools bulldozing free speech in brazen defiance of legal precedent, and with authoritarian restrictions surrounding students from kindergarten through graduate school, how can we expect them to learn anything else?”

Big Hollywood: “Children are pawns in the Leftist strategy of social deconstruction and dominance. As Prop 8 attorney Brian Raum revealed during his cross-examination of Ms. Zia, the Sapphic scribe had previously described marriage as a ‘patriarchal institution,’ stating in print that she and her partner had only married in 2004 to defy the ‘fundamentalist, warmongering regime in Washington’ . . . At one point, Boies asked Zarrillo why he and Mr. Katami hadn’t had kids. ‘Paul and I believe an important step for us to have children is to be married,’ Zarrillo replied. That’s certainly a noble sentiment. But Boies’s defiant use of the verb ‘to have’ with regard to gay couples and children begs a question we’re not allowed to ask: exactly how do gay couples ‘have’ children? Why not use the more appropriate verb ‘adopt,’ or ‘raise,’ or ‘have a surrogate child?’”

LifeNews: On Thursday, the board approved revisions to four policies that dealt with dress and grooming, student expression and harassment . . . ‘Pro-life students shouldn’t be censored for their views,’ ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman told LifeNews.com previously. ‘It’s clearly unconstitutional for school officials to prohibit a student’s message on the grounds that someone might not like it. The school routinely allows students to wear a wide variety of messages on their shirts without any concerns, but this student has been singled out even though his shirt caused no disruption and is clearly within the bounds of constitutionally guaranteed free speech,’ he said.”

LifeNews: “The new abortion facility at the Madison Surgery Center is taking awhile to set up, according to emails the Madison State Journal newspaper obtained . . . The e-mails were obtained through an open records request by the Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit, Christian legal organization that is representing several surgery center workers who don’t want to take part in abortions.”

ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks writing in The Christian Post: “The testimony Friday all came in the form of a single witness: Dr. Gregory M. Herek, an expert in psychology from the University of California at Davis. He was called as the plaintiffs’ final witness in a futile effort to demonstrate that the concept of ‘sexual orientation’ is immutable and no different from race or sex. The plaintiffs made quick work of Dr. Herek, asking him questions for less than two hours, and in no way establishing what they sought to establish. In fact, through Dr. Herek, they established quite the opposite-that the idea of ‘sexual orientation’ has no clear or universal understanding or definition, but rather involves varying and fluid concepts of identity, desire, and behavior. In other words, ‘sexual orientation’ is, in no way, like a person’s race or sex.”

WorldNetDaily: “A California college is asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to restore a policy at the center of a case in which a professor berated a Christian student with the suggestion, ‘Ask God what your grade is’ . . . ADF Litigation Staff Counsel David Hacker said at that time if the school cared about free speech rights of students, “they should not desire to pursue enforcement of such a bad policy.”

Baptist Press: Each day during the trial Baptist Press will post a blog entry from someone in the courtroom. Following is commentary on day eight of the trial from Austin R. Nimocks, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, who writes about the controversy about Tim but also about other portions of Thursday’s trial (ADF supports Prop 8) . . . ‘Before leaving the witness stand, Dr. Segura made an astounding statement. One of his opinions was that the “gay and lesbian community” possessed no “reliable allies” in the political world. This includes, in his opinion, President Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Rep. Barney Frank, and others whom he dismisses as not being true political allies of those who want to redefine marriage.’”

The AM Law Litigation Daily: “Litigation Daily: ‘. . . Who is doing the heavy lifting?’
Levine: ‘David Thompson, the managing partner of Cooper & Kirk, has carried the load on at least four cross exams of expert witnesses. Dealing with experts is all-consuming. You have to know every word they’ve written. For Thompson to do four in one week is pretty impressive. There are also lawyers for the Alliance Defense Fund representing the Prop 8 supporters. Cooper & Kirk lawyers have done all the experts and ADF has handled the more emotional, non-expert parts.’”

One News Now: “‘We found that four percent of teenagers 12 to 17 who had a cell phone said that they had sent these images of themselves to somebody else,’ she explains. ‘And then we also found that 15 percent of teenagers at the same age range said that they had received these images of somebody that they knew.’”

Religion Clause Blog: “In Italy, The Superior Council of Magistrates has removed Judge Luigi Tosti from the professional rolls of Italian magistrates . . . Tosti has refused to hear cases because there are crucifixes in Italian courtrooms . . . ”

Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund filed a friend-of-the-court brief Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit asking the court to reject Planned Parenthood’s attempt to block portions of South Dakota’s informed consent law.

ADF Senior Legal Counsel Steven H. Aden writing in the Washington Examiner: “In cases like these all over America, medical professionals are being harassed, intimidated, ostracized, and sued for having the gall to believe that innocent life is sacred and for choosing to “opt out” of destroying that life. So widespread is the persecution, and so increasingly open are elected officials like Attorney General Coakley and academics like Dr. Cantor in endorsing it, that even casual observers can only come to one of two conclusion . . . And if the price of that saturation coverage is the closing of every Catholic, Evangelical, and Protestant-sponsored hospital and the dismissal of every Christian doctor, nurse, pharmacist, and paramedic in the country, so be it.”

Religion Clause Blog: In France, a Parliamentary commission is scheduled to publish its recommendations tomorrow on whether the Muslim women should be banned from wearing the full-face veil in public places.”

Vancouver Sun: “Call it the mystery of the missing thermometers. Two months after ‘climategate’ cast doubt on some of the science behind global warming, new questions are being raised about the reliability of a key temperature database, used by the United Nations and climate change scientists as proof of recent planetary warming.”

Religion Clause Blog: “According to today’s Nigeria Guardian, Christian leader charge that Maj-Gen. Saleh Maina has sent out military patrols made up only of Muslims who have then killed Christians.”

NCPA: “Government employees have turned themselves into a coddled class that lives better than its private-sector counterpart, and with more impunity. In effect, the public’s servants have become our masters, says Steven Greenhut, a columnists with the Orange County Register . . . ”

NCPA: “Parents are demanding more public charter schools according an annual survey conducted by the Center for Education Reform. While demand grew by 21 percent over the last year, there aren’t enough charters to meet demand, often due to legislatively imposed caps. For every public charter school in the country, there are 239 students denied the opportunity to attend . . . ”

Heritage Foundation, The Foundry: “Since President Barack Obama was sworn into office, the U.S. economy has shed 3.4 million jobs and the unemployment rate has risen to 10%. But not all sectors of the economy have been suffering equally. In fact, the sector of the economy most supportive of President Obama has not only avoided contraction, but has actually managed to grow instead . . . ”

NY Times: “China delivered a bristling response on Monday to the United States’ demand that it investigate recent attacks on American computers from Chinese soil, saying that any suggestion that it conducted or condoned the hackers’ intrusions was “groundless and aims to denigrate China . . . ”

” . . . the U.S. population will swell . . . and the country’s demographic vitality will drive its economic resilience in the coming decades. This places the U.S. in a radically different position from that of its historic competitors . . . ”

Shannon K. Calt, A., B. & C. v. Ireland: ‘Europe’s Roe v. Wade‘? (January 22, 2010). Lewis & Clark Law Review, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1540344

“The European Court of Human Rights has never determined whether the Convention protects a right to life of the unborn or conversely any right to an abortion.The case at hand squarely presents an opportunity for the Court to take a position.”