Daily Archives: February 1, 2010

Business Week (AP): “Five Democrats broke with their party Monday to endorse measures that would ban government health care mandates like the one being debated in Congress . . . ”

Yahoo News (AP): “The Air Force Academy has set aside an outdoor worship area for Pagans, Wiccans, Druids and other Earth-centered believers, school officials said Monday.”

One News Now: “An Idaho pastor has condemned child trafficking as a ‘wicked and evil practice.’ He is defending members of his congregation detained in Haiti after they tried to bus 33 children into the Dominican Republic.”

LA Times (AP):  ”Muslim advocates are demanding an apology from a California city councilwoman for posting anti-Muslim comments on her Facebook social networking page . . . ”

“What started as a trial against Geert Wilders for alleged Islamophobia has nearly turned into its opposite: a historical case about the message of the Quran . . . ”

FRCBlog.com: “Family Research Council (FRC) released the following statement in response to the release of a new study demonstrating the effectiveness of abstinence education. The study was compiled and released by Drs. John and Loretta Jemmott from the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Geoffrey Fong from the University of Waterloo and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research in Waterloo, Ontario.”

MSNBC: “People were blushing and burning up with anger in Southington over the opening of an adult boutique, but as of Monday, the shop is open for business. Despite protests from residents, V.I.P. — Very Intimate Pleasures — opened its doors on Queen Street in Southington on Monday morning . . . The chain is trying to open another store in Berlin but they are gearing up for a fight. Last week, a federal appeals court upheld a key part of Berlin’s sexually orientated business ordinance . . . ”

KCPW: “A bill aimed at giving women who seek an abortion the choice to see an ultrasound of their unborn child first cleared the House Health and Human Services Committee on Friday . . . Another anti-abortion proposal sponsored by Wimmer passed on the floor of the Utah House of Representatives Friday by a 59-to-12 vote. It makes it a criminal homicide for a woman to have an illegal abortion. That bill now heads to the Senate for consideration.”

AlbertMohler.com: “Struthers is a psychologist with a background in neuroscience and a teaching concentration in the biological bases of human behavior. In Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain, Struthers presents key insights from neuroscience that go a long way toward explaining why pornography is such a temptation for the male mind.”

Gerald Warner writing in The Telegraph: “The mentality is that the state – not parents – is the natural controller and shaper of children’s lives and beliefs. When a schoolgirl can be given an abortion without her parents’ knowledge, we know that, while public utilities may have been privatised, children have been nationalised. The Romeikes who fled from Germany objected to their children being forced to follow a curriculum that they believed was anti-Christian. The same would apply in British state schools, where pornographic sex education is increasingly being made compulsory.”

Wall Street Journal: “Two monuments in Paris are so prominent that they’re hard to miss. One is the Eiffel Tower, of course, the all-iron tour de force of engineering, standing by the Seine amid the city’s spacious and supremely elegant West End. Then to the north, atop Montmartre, there is the Sacré-Cœur: a tall, immaculately white Catholic basilica that looks like a digitized pre-Raphaelite set from ‘Lord of the Rings.’ What most visitors—and in fact most Parisians— don’t realize is that both monuments were designed and their construction begun at about the same time, in the 1870s and 1880s. Even more surprising: The tower and the church were intended as antagonistic national symbols during times of cultural, religious and political conflict that roiled France for decades.”

The Guardian: “Pope Benedict XVI has condemned British equality legislation for running contrary to ‘natural law’ as he confirmed his first visit to the UK later this year . . . he criticised UK legislation for creating ‘limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs’. It is thought his comments relate to laws that came in last year preventing adoption agencies from discriminating against gay couples and also Harriet Harman’s equality bill, currently going through parliament.”

Salt Lake Tribune: “On Friday, three Democratic lawmakers announced they are dropping bills — until 2011 — that would provide anti-discrimination protections, probate rights and adoption rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Utahns . . . ”

Breitbart (AP): “Iran’s judiciary chief said Monday he will not give in to political pressure to speed up the execution of opposition activists.”

AP: “The Republican had been refusing to sign off on the nominations because he wanted assurances the White House wouldn’t get rid of U.S. Attorney Jim Letten in the Eastern District, based in New Orleans.”

Catholic News Agency: “A legal expert from the Institute for Legal Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Jorge Adame Goddard, said last week that Mexico City’s recent decision to allow same-sex ‘marriage’ and homosexual adoption are both ‘unconstitutional.’”

Politico carries the text of the resolution adopted on January 28, 2010 regarding candidate fidelity to party principles. It provides in part: “RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee urges that no support, financial or otherwise, be given to candidates who clearly do not support the core principles and positions of the Republican Party as expressed in the Platform of the Republican Party adopted in the 2008 National Convention.”

TPM: RNC Passes Compromise On ‘Purity’ Resolutions

ADF attorney Kevin Theriot appeared on Grassroots America “We the People” with George Stephenson to discuss the Pulpit Initiative.

The MP3 runs approximately 22 minutes.

ADF attorney Jordan Lorence appeared on WABC Radio’s Religion on the Line to discuss the Bronx Household of Faith case involving Sunday church rentals of NYC public school facilities. Jordan has been litigating this case since 1995.

The MP3 runs just under 10 minutes.

The broadcast references this article by Jordan that recently appeared in the NY Daily News: Give churches space in vacant city schools: They’re asking for equal access, nothing more

Related ADF Media information page

LifeSiteNews: “Tony Abbott, the leader of Australia’s federal opposition, has been blasted in the mainstream press after he called on young women to ‘stick to the rules’ about refraining from sex before marriage . . .”

LifeSiteNews: “Ex-Lesbian Lisa Miller has been given 30 days to transfer custody of her daughter to her former lesbian partner, or possibly face criminal penalties.”

LifeSitenews: “California’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine came into being five years ago, fueled by a conviction that the Bush administration’s restriction on embryo-destructive research in the National Institutes of Health was stifling the progress of science . . . ”

Forum 18: “Turkmenistan continues to raid Protestants meeting for worship in different parts of the country, Forum 18 News Service has learnt . . . ‘We were told it is illegal to meet without state registration. But we told them we have already applied for registration and are waiting for a response.’”

Forum 18: “Ivan Mikhailov, a Messianic Jew, has today (1 February) had a three-month jail term imposed on him by a court in Belarus for refusing compulsory military service.”

Sean Doherty writes at Law.com: “Online legal research is not an easy activity. An entire industry has grown up around interpreting research needs and finding information for lawyers and their clients . . . Last year, Google Scholar and Public.Resource.Org made legal information more available and easier to search. This year at LegalTech New York, LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters aim to change the way users interface legal research tasks. And these changes, at once, appear to make legal research easier and more effective . . . ”

LA Times: “When a citizen signs a petition to place an initiative on the ballot, is he or she acting as a voter or as a legislator? How the Supreme Court answers that question will determine whether states can make the names of signers public. It’s a close call, but the court should decide in favor of disclosure.”

Religion Clause Blog: “Claiming misrepresentations and fraudulent inducement, Rifqa’s parents now want to withdraw their consent to the deal, claiming that Franklin County (OH) Children’s Services is improperly allowing Rifqa to have contact with Blake and Beverly Lorenz, the people in Florida who helped Rifqa run away.”

Laurence M. Vance writing at LewRockwell.com: “According to most pro-lifers, the solution to the abortion problem is not persuasion, education, or counseling; it is more centralization of power in the federal government – the same government that, in a vast power grab that did violence to the Constitution, asserted federal supremacy over the states’ abortion laws in the Roe v. Wade decision . . . Dr. Paul’s first step in eradicating the plague of abortion from America is a simple one: remove the jurisdiction of the federal courts and the Supreme Court, as the Constitution allows in Article III . . . After jurisdiction over abortion is returned to the states, pro-lifers can then begin a state-by-state campaign to criminalize abortion.”

Joanna L. Grossman writes at Findlaw: “But despite its radical drop in popularity over the course of this century, common-law marriage should not be forgotten. It is a device that still functions as an alternative way to form a marriage – or to claim with hindsight that one was formed in the past. And given the legal significance of marital status, as the determinant of a wide variety of rights and obligations, we forget about common-law marriage at our peril.”

Religion Clause Blog: “According to today’s New Delhi Pioneer, a two-judge panel of the Supreme Court of India last week held that civil service rules of the state of Rajasthan barring any state employee from taking a second wife without permission of the state takes precedence over the Muslim Personal Law that allows Muslim men to have a second wife.”

Lisa Miller writing in Newsweek: “Count the moderate faithful, then, among those palpably disappointed in the president. Part of this is inevitable, the bruising differential between courtship and marriage. But part of it is a legitimate frustration that the thing Obama once did so well—articulate American values as a matter of conscience and community—he seems today not to be able to do at all.”

“The primary challenge to traditional notions of parenthood comes from gay conception, not gay marriage.”

Dan Philpott, Notre Dame associate professor of political science and peace studies, writing in the Notre Dame Magazine: “I predict that the pro-life movement, like these other causes, will one day be viewed by a broad consensus of people as a bright segment of what Dr. Martin Luther King called the long moral arc of the universe that bends towards justice.”

Tunku Varadarajan interviews Nigerian Nobel laureate and political activist Wole Soyinka: “‘England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there.’”

Mike Adams writing at Townhall: “I’m glad I live in the United States of America, where such a trial would be prohibited by the First Amendment. I’m also glad I don’t teach at Temple University in Philadelphia, where students now have to pay an unconstitutional after-the-fact security fee levied by the university . . . Two years ago, Temple’s speech code was struck down by the Third Circuit. That lawsuit was handled by my friends at the Alliance Defense Fund. If the university does not begin to respect the First Amendment, additional humiliation and litigation are certain to follow.”

Christian Examiner: “Andy Pugno, general counsel for ProtectMarriage, the sponsors of Proposition 8, called Segura’s testimony an ‘ugly turn as religion itself was put on trial.’ . . . The clashing of legal swords in San Francisco still has another couple of rounds to go,’ wrote Austin R. Nimocks, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund in a blog. ‘I anticipate the closing arguments to be scheduled for sometime in March or April, after which time Judge Walker will take time to author and render his decision.’”

Winston-Salem Journal Editorial: “It’s time for commissioners to abandon this losing battle and concentrate on more pressing issues, such as jobs and education . . . The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization that is representing the county, has said it will pay for the county’s defense, but not for the ACLU’s legal fees if the county loses the suit. It was filed by county residents Janet Joyner and Constance Lynn Blackmon, who are represented by the ACLU.”

LifeNews: “The New York Times is no bastion of pro-life thought and has taken a consistently aggressive pro-abortion stance over the years. In what may come as a shock to pro-life advocates, the liberal newspaper issued an editorial today taking abortion advocates to task for blasting an ad featuring Tim Tebow.”

The Fayetteville Observer: “The ACLU represents plaintiffs Janet Joyner and Constance Blackmon in the case, which began in 2007. Forsyth County, which includes Winston-Salem, was represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative group that focuses on religious freedom. ‘When they originally filed the lawsuit, 16 out of 26 prayers, somebody said, “Jesus”‘ said Mike Johnson, the fund’s senior legal counsel.”

OneNewsNow: “The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is being asked to rule on South Dakota’s informed consent law . . . ‘We think those [women have a legal relationship with their unborn baby and that there is a risk of depression and suicide associated with abortion] are self-evident truths, but the trial court did not think so,’ explains Steven Aden, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). ‘We are hopeful that the Eighth Circuit will again reverse the trial court and say that South Dakota has a right and arguably even an obligation to require abortionists to tell the whole truth to women who are considering abortion.’”

Sacramento Bee: “Austin Nimocks, a Proposition 8 attorney from the Alliance Defense Fund, which specializes in defense of religious rights, said Blankenhorn made the case that same-sex marriage could cause ‘further debasement’ of marriage as an institution. Gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed, Nimocks said, because ‘it intentionally deprives children of a father and a mother.’”

LifeSiteNews: “The Alliance Defense Fund and Pro-Life Wisconsin say that documents they obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request illustrate the efforts of UW officials and abortionists over several years to add second-trimester abortions at MSC . . . ADF has demanded that UW officials released detailed explanations that outline precisely how public money will not be involved in the abortion scheme. The group is also concerned that the conscience rights of medical professionals objecting to abortion would be jeopardized by having MSC performing abortions.”

CitizenLink: “U.S. Rep. Jared Polis has introduced legislation that would give gay activists yet another tool for promoting homosexuality and gay marriage in the classroom . . . “‘What we’re seeing,’ [Tim Tracey said, ‘is the Left promoting the homosexual agenda using vague, deceptive language in ‘nondiscrimination policies’ to impose their ideology on our culture.’”

James Freeman writes at the Wall Street Journal: “Investors now view a default by the U.S. Treasury as more likely than a default by the Coca-Cola Company.”

Telegraph: “Veronica Connolly, a practising Catholic, claims she is entitled to withhold her payment because the BBC has in the past ‘censored’ a graphic election broadcast from the Pro-Life Alliance, the anti-abortion group. Mrs Connolly, 53, a grandmother from Birmingham, is being prosecuted for the non-payment of her £139.50 television licence for 2008-9. The anti-abortion campaigner has instructed Paul Diamond, the leading religious rights barrister, to act for her.”

Christian Post: “The Tennessee State Board of Education approved guidelines Thursday on how to teach the Bible in public high schools . . . ”

ADF allied attorney Steve Taylor filed a lawsuit Friday against the city of Richmond on behalf of five Christian men threatened with arrest for sharing their faith on public property and at public events.

NY Times: “Soon after the defense team in Perry v. Schwarzenegger rested its case at noon on Wednesday, lawyers on both sides held back-to-back news conferences on the first floor of the federal courthouse in San Francisco. After two-and-a-half weeks of often contentious testimony and questioning, both sides declared they had presented strong cases on whether Proposition 8, the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage is constitutional.”

Christian Legal Centre: “Olive Jones, a Christian supply teacher from Weston-super-Mare, has been offered the opportunity to return to her old job after North Somerset Council recognised that it can be appropriate for a tutor to share their faith with a pupil or a family, depending on the situation.”

AP: “Northern Ireland’s rival leaders said Monday they are close to clinching a new power-sharing agreement that would save their Catholic-Protestant coalition following a week of round-the-clock talks . . .”

Andrew M.M. Koppelman, No Respect: Brian Leiter on Religion (January 5, 2010). Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 10-07. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1544484

“In two recent papers, Brian Leiter argues that there is no good reason for law to single out religion for special treatment, and that religion is not an apt candidate for respect in the “thick” sense of being an object of favorable appraisal. Both arguments depend on a radically impoverished conception of what religion is and what it does. In this paper, I explain what Leiter leaves out, and offer an hypothesis about why. I also engage with some related reflections by Simon Blackburn and Timothy Macklem, both of whom influence, in different ways, Leiter’s analysis.”

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Death of the Inconvenient Other
Jonathan Penn, 11 Marq. Elder’s Advisor 165 (2009)

“While Switzerland has enlarged suicide tourism by legalizing physician-assisted suicide, the United States has not readily accepted physician-assisted suicide at the federal level. This article looks at end-of-life issues, focusing on physician-assisted suicide, and whether the federal government’s numerous responsibilities created by the Older Americans Act and other similar acts, the government’s financial limitations, and a growing elderly population will lead to a deterioration of society’s view of elders and a legitimization and acceptance of assisted suicide.”

Reproductive Rights in the Legal Academy: A New Role for Transnational Law
Martha F. Davis and Bethany Withers, 59 J. Legal Educ. 35 (2009)

“In sum, expanding reproductive rights pedagogy to address transnational perspectives will aid in exposing a wide range of students to transnational material, will contribute directly to the transnational project to expand students’ preparedness to analyze such materials, and will better reflect the debates on sexual and reproductive health currently taking place outside of law school classrooms–in the courts, among policymakers, and in scholarly writing. Below, we explore in greater detail the current status of reproductive rights teaching, the current casebook treatment of reproductive rights, and the specific ways in which transnational perspectives might be introduced to this material in a range of courses.”

Informed Consent Laws and the Constitution: Balancing State Interests with a Physician’s First Amendment Rights and a Woman’s Due Process Rights
Sarah Runels, 26 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 185 (2009)

“Part I of this Note outlines the existence and use of the heightened informed consent requirements. In addition, this section discusses the failure of courts and advocates on both sides of the issue to fully address the extent to which these requirements implicate physicians’ and women’s rights. Part II summarizes existing case law on informed consent provisions and advocates for a more comprehensive framework challenging the constitutionality of informed consent provisions. This framework includes a legal analysis that takes both the woman’s due process rights and the physician’s First Amendment rights into consideration. Part III analyzes the recent Eighth Circuit decision in Planned Parenthood v. Rounds. Finally, Part IV of this Note will apply the framework developed in Part II to the Eighth Circuit decision in Rounds.”

Robert K. Vischer, Conscience and the Common Good (2010). Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, 2010; U of St. Thomas Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-02. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1544084

“Our longstanding commitment to the liberty of conscience has become strained by our increasingly muddled understanding of what conscience is and why we value it. Too often we equate conscience with individual autonomy, and so we reflexively favor the individual in any contest against group authority, losing sight of the fact that a vibrant liberty of conscience requires a vibrant marketplace of morally distinct groups. Defending individual autonomy is not the same as defending the liberty of conscience because, while conscience is inescapably personal, it is also inescapably relational. Conscience is formed, articulated, and lived out through relationships, and its viability depends on the law’s willingness to protect the associations and venues through which individual consciences can flourish: these are the myriad institutions that make up the space between the person and the state. This essay is taken from my new book, Conscience and the Common Good: Reclaiming the Space Between Person and State (Cambridge Univ. Press 2010). The book seeks to reframe the debate about conscience by bringing its relational dimension into focus.”

Andrew M.M. Koppelman, The New American Civil Religion: Lesson for Italy (January 29, 2010). George Washington International Law Review, Forthcoming; Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 10-05. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1544465

“American civil religion has been changing, responding to increasing religious plurality by becoming more abstract. The problem of increasing plurality is not only an American one. It is also presented in Italy, where civic identity has been centered around a Catholicism that is no longer universal. Perhaps Italy has, in this respect, an American future.”

Robert K. Vischer, Whom Should a Catholic Law School Honor?: If Confusion is the Concern, Context Matters (2010). Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, 2010; U of St. Thomas Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-05. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1544095

“If a Catholic can vote for a pro-choice candidate when proportionate reasons justify that decision, can a Catholic law school honor a pro-choice public figure if there are proportionate reasons to do so? In other words, should the law school’s inquiry focus simply on whether the honoree defies Church teaching on any matter of grave moral importance, or should the law school also consider the message communicated by the honor in light of the broader context in which it would be extended? This short essay suggests that a contextual approach is more consistent with the U.S. Bishops’ instruction on this matter and avoids some of the collateral harm arising from a bright-line prohibition on honoring anyone who defies even a single aspect of Church teaching.”

Thomas M. Mengler, Why Should a Catholic Law School Be Catholic? (2010). Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Vol. 6, 2010; U of St. Thomas Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-03. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1544093

“This article takes a more fundamental approach, by asking a different question: Why should a Catholic law school be Catholic? Two reasons, which are truly distinctive to Catholic higher education, emerge: first, the integration of faith perspectives, especially Catholic intellectual and social thought, in faculty scholarship and throughout the law school curriculum; and, second, a pervasive commitment to the moral and spiritual formation of the young adults who make up the law school student population. The Catholic law school, grounded in a rich intellectual, ethical, and spiritual formation, seeks to prepare its students for purposeful lives as lawyers and to assist them in their life journeys from what Pope Benedict XVI calls the ‘I’ to ‘We.’”