Daily Archives: April 13, 2010

Dallas Morning News: “Longtime family law judge Debra Lehrmann, who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Colleyville, faced ex-legislator Rick Green — an evangelical speaker and tea party favorite from Dripping Springs — in a race for the Republican nomination to the Texas Supreme Court, the only statewide office on Tuesday’s ballot . . . Green finished first and Lehrmann second last month among six Republicans competing for the party nomination for Place 3 on the Texas Supreme Court. The seat will be open because Justice Harriet O’Neill is not running again.”

CQ Politics: “The Democratic primary in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) appears destined to highlight the same internal party fissures that dogged the lawmaker during his battle over abortion funding in the health care bill.”

Bloomberg: “The house in which Pope Benedict XVI was born in the southern Bavarian village of Marktl am Inn was vandalized overnight with an ‘obscene’ phrase spray- painted above the main door, police said.”

“Yesterday a 9th Circuit panel dismissed the appeal of the latest discovery order in the Perry case. California Equality, the ACLU, and other No on 8 groups brought the appeal because they claimed that the order would compel them to disclose private campaign communications protected under the First Amendment . . . ”

Courier-Journal: “Parents have an ‘absolute right’ to inspect all educational records relating to their children, including e-mails exchanged between teachers and administrators, the Kentucky attorney general’s office concluded in an opinion released Monday.”

The opinion was not found online, but should be available here soon.

“Republican Gov. Dave Heineman signed both bills, one barring abortions at and after 20 weeks of pregnancy and the other requiring women to be screened before having abortions for mental health and other problems. Both sides of the abortion debate say the laws are firsts of their kind in the U.S. . . . ”

Boston Herald (AP): “Gov. Deval Patrick has signed a bill outlawing the sending of sexually graphic instant messages to minors. The new law closes a loophole in Massachusetts law that led the state’s highest court earlier this year to overturn the conviction of a man accused of sending explicit instant messages to a 13-year-old girl.”

Robert Rector writing at National Review Online: “The disappearance of marriage in low-income communities is the predominant cause of child poverty in the U.S. today. If poor single mothers were married to the fathers of their children, two-thirds of them would not be poor. The absence of a husband and father from the home also is a strong contributing factor to failure in school, crime, drug abuse, emotional disturbance, and a host of other social problems . . . The steady growth of childbearing by single women and the general collapse of marriage, especially among the poor, lie at the heart of the mushrooming welfare state. ”

LifeSiteNews: “The human rights complaint filed against Bishop Nicola De Angelis of Peterborough, Ontario over his decision to disallow an open homosexual from acting as an altar server in the diocese will now go to mediation, with a hearing scheduled in Toronto for May 11th.”

HonoluluAdvertiser.com: “The city and state have launched investigations into whether two religious organizations running O’ahu retreat centers are paying appropriate taxes on those operations. Both tax-exempt organizations, the Roman Catholic Church of Hawaii and the Sisters of Sacred Hearts, use the centers for internal purposes, including housing for religious personnel and staff offices . . . ”

“To be specific, homosexuals are indeed overrepresented—for whatever reason—as child molesters . . . To the extent that practicing homosexuals find it more difficult to enter the priesthood (and this has been true for some time), the sexual abuse scandal will check itself. As a matter of fact, it already has . . . ”

ADF attorney Steven H. Aden appeared on the Georgene Rice Show to discuss this: ADF providing support to lawsuit defending law that prohibits federal funding of embryo destruction | The MP3 runs approx. 11 minutes.

ADF president Alan E. Sears appeared on KFUO with Roland Lettner to discuss the Alliance Defense Fund’s battle for religious freedom. | The mp3 runs just over 22 minutes.

CNSNews: “In a guide for young people published by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the organization says it opposes laws that make it a crime for people not to tell sexual partners they have HIV. The IPPF’s ‘Healthy, Happy and Hot’ guide also tells young people who have the virus that they have a right to ‘fun, happy and sexually fulfilling lives.’”

Elliott Institute: “A new Nebraska law will allow women to sue doctors for psychological injuries related to unwanted, coerced or unsafe abortions, according to the Stop Forced Abortions Alliance.”

ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence appeared on AFR Focal Point with Bryan Fischer to discuss this: Complaints dismissed against Maine counselor who supported marriage | The mp3 runs about 13 minutes.

Mark Chaves, Professor of Sociology, Religion, and Divinity at Duke University and Director of the National Congregations Study, writes at the Duke Divinity Call & Response Blog: “First, notwithstanding extensive media coverage of political mobilization within conservative churches, conservative white Protestant churches do not stand out in their level of political activity. Catholic and black Protestant churches, overall, are more politically active than either liberal or conservative white Protestants . . . Second, although political activity of some sort is common in American churches, religious traditions have different political styles. Distributing voter guides is the most common way that white conservative Protestant churches do politics.”

Virgilio: “The Constitutional Court had postponed consideration of the action [until] this week [and] will meet tomorrow afternoon in closed session. [There are] a large number of appeals, including one on gay marriage, and [the court] is not expected to decide the order in which to examine them. They also meet in closed session Wednesday. During the hearing on March 23 lawyers argued that the inability to marry [someone of the same sex] is clear discrimination, inconsistent with the possibility of marriage given to those who, instead, undergo a sex-change surgery.” [Modified Google Translation]

Wisconsin Radio Network: “The Wisconsin Justice Department is refusing to release its copy of a threat assessment regarding groups participating in an abortion protest that occurred last year in Middleton. The report was compiled by US Homeland Security and shared with state DOJ and local law enforcement. Peggy Hamill with Pro-Life Wisconsin, one of the groups detailed, says they continue work for the release of the report.”

ADF Attorney Jeremy Tedesco appeared on the Janet Mefferd Show to discuss university “speech codes” in the Third Circuit. | The mp3 runs just over 12 and a half minute. | ADF News Release: ADF to five universities: ‘Speech codes’ give officials too much latitude to define ‘offensive’ conduct

ADF Attorney David French appeared on Focal Point with Bryan Fischer to discuss Adams v. The Trustees of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. University of North Carolina-Wilmington Mike Adams was denied promotion to full professor “because of his religious beliefs and political viewpoints, as espoused through nationally syndicated opinion columns that he has written.” | The mp3 runs about 12 and a half minutes. | ADF News Release: ADF appeals decision that ruled professor’s opinion columns unprotected by First Amendment

“. . . asked about the possible abolition of clerical celibacy following the revelations of pedophilia among some priests. The cardinal answered by explaining that research shows these two issues to be unrelated, however studies prove that there is a connection between pedophilia and homosexuality . . . ”

“ITALIAN gay rights supporters lashed out at the Vatican today over remarks by its foreign minister shifting blame for Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandal from celibacy to homosexuality.”

HRC Backstory Blog: “The Senate Resolution [S. Res. 409], introduced by Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, expresses the United States government’s “unequivocal” opposition to the proposed Ugandan bill . . . A similar resolution is pending in the House of Representatives (H. Res. 1064).”

The Windsor Star: “A new campaign will encourage adoptive and foster parenting in Windsor’s gay and lesbian community. Organized in partnership between Windsor Pride and the local Children’s Aid Society, the project seeks to promote awareness that families come in diverse forms.”

Daily Nation: “A group of ODM-Kenya members have threatened to oppose the proposed constitution unless contentious issues are changed ahead of the referendum . . . Mr Maithya said there was need to consider the views of people at the grassroots before endorsing the draft . . . ‘The issue of land, Kadhis court and abortion need to be looked at before the draft is brought back to people for referendum,’ said Ms Amina Abdalla, a women’s representatives.”

Greenbay Press Gazette: “The Wisconsin Department of Justice is refusing to release its copy of an intelligence report about abortion protesters that was improperly gathered.”

FoxNews: “A school superintendent in New Jersey says a ‘misunderstanding’ led an elementary school teacher to mandate that all students — including young boys — dress as women in a now-canceled fashion show to honor Women’s History Month.”

“Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput on Monday asked for prayers for the priest he removed from the ministry Thursday and healing for the man who reported that he had been sexually abused by the Rev. Melvin Thompson more than 35 years ago in an undisclosed Colorado parish . . . ”

“Jurors on Tuesday found the Boy Scouts of America negligent and awarded $1.4 million to a former Portland man who was abused by an assistant Scoutmaster in the early 1980s, following a three-week trial in which secret Scout ‘perversion files’ were used as evidence.”

Daily Dunkin Democrat: “Like Jefferson and Madison, I strongly believe in separation of church and state. And if a principal were to mandate school-directed prayer in classrooms, then that would be a violation of that separation. However, if at commencement, a valedictorian speaks of what God and Christ have meant to her life, that is her First Amendment right to free speech! The Roberts Supreme Court does not appear to agree . . . ”

“Voters would be asked in November to amend the Florida Constitution by lifting a ban on the use of tax dollars ‘directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.” The proposal would repeal a 19th century provision known as the Blaine Amendment . . . ”

CNA: “A new undercover video from pro-life investigators shows medically inaccurate abortion counseling at a Milwaukee Planned Parenthood clinic. A staffer tells a woman six to eight weeks pregnant that her baby has ‘no arms, no legs, no heart no head, no brain.’”

NPR: “In a setback for the insurers, Superior Court Judge Stephen Neel told the health plans to exhaust their administrative appeals before asking the court to decide if they can raise their premiums by eight to 32 percent for individuals and workers at small firms. The companies had asked the state court to invalidate the Massachusetts insurance commissioner’s rejections of 235 proposed rate increases . . . ”

The video ad and a brief report are available at AZCentral.com.

AP: “Mike Huckabee, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, says the effort to allow gays and lesbians to marry is comparable to legalizing incest, polygamy and drug use. Huckabee also told college journalists last week that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt. ‘Children are not puppies,’ he said.”

LGBT POV quoting Barney Frank: “I’m hoping to get a vote on it in committee [House Committee on Education and Labor, chaired by California Democrat George Miller]. I’m doing a lot of work on it quietly, to get the issues involving transgender access to rooms where people have their clothes off. That’s a fact that you have to deal with, particularly for people who have not had an operation . . . So what the committee needs to do now is make sure we have the votes. There’s only one way to do it – it doesn’t mean marching, it doesn’t mean waving signs. It means calling up their representatives – the members of the House who represent them – and say, please vote for this bill and please oppose watering down the transgender provision . . . ”

“Nebraska lawmakers on Tuesday passed a groundbreaking bill banning abortions at 20 weeks based on assertions that fetuses feel pain then. Gov. Dave Heineman planned to sign it into law in the afternoon . . . ”

Sullivan already “went there” in his March 25 post, “Sin or Crime“: . . . “Sex for them is an abstraction, a sin, not an interaction with an equal. And their sexuality has been frozen at the first real moment of internal terror: their early teens. So they tend to be attracted still to those who are in their own stage of development: teenage boys.”

National Post: “‘Bans on hate speech in human rights law are often justified in part because they can be overturned by fully fledged courts of law, where the rules are more strict. But that oversight is becoming problematic as judges grapple with Canada’s legal test for hatred, famously defined by the Supreme Court as “unusually strong and deep-felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification.”You can sooner grasp steam in your hands, or nail Jello to a wall, than know with certainty what this bar for hatred is,’ said John Carpay of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, who argued as an intervenor in two recent hate speech cases. ‘Our argument is that provinces do not have the right, the constitutional authority, to restrict speech,’ he said.”

LA Times: “The new law doesn’t prevent rate hikes such as Anthem Blue Cross’ double-digit increase last year. ‘It is a very big loophole,’ says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is pushing regulatory legislation.”

The Hill: “. . . Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) took to the Senate floor Tuesday to warn Obama that if he uses the campaign-finance ruling as a litmus test in selecting a nominee for the high court, he would face serious Republican opposition . . . ”

TIME: “‘A Wood nomination would return the abortion wars to the Supreme Court,’ announced Americans United for Life on Friday, hours after Stevens announced his retirement.”

Evangelical Examiner: “Today, it was announced by the Alliance Defense Fund that a state licensing board in Maine has dismissed two complaints filed against public school counselor Don Mendell as of last Friday . . . ‘The government should not punish people because they believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and because they say so during a political campaign,’ said ADF Senior Counsel [Jordan Lorence]. ‘The licensing board was right to dismiss these complaints. The First Amendment protects the rights of citizens to speak out on important public policy matters being voted on by the people.’” | ADF News Release

Catholic News Agency: “Donald Mendell, a licensed counselor at Nokomis Regional High School in Portland, Maine, was the subject of a complaint accusing him of violating the state’s code of ethics for social workers because of his expressed position on marriage. ‘The government should not punish people because they believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and because they say so during a political campaign,’ said Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) Senior Counsel [Jordan Lorence], who helped defend Mendell.” | ADF News Release

LifeSiteNews: “Britain’s leading pro-life political lobby has warned voters not to heed Conservative leader David Cameron’s promises on abortion.”

LifeNews: “A federal appeals court has revived the effort of a New Jersey pro-life group hoping to make it so motorists in the Garden State can purchase Choose Life license plates . . . ‘The government should not be singling out a pro-adoption group for censorship. Censoring the “Choose Life” logo on New Jersey license plates is a textbook case of viewpoint discrimination, which blatantly defies the First Amendment,’ [ADF Attorney Jeff Shafer] said.” | ADF News Release

Freedom from Religion Foundation: “The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent letters April 12 to six mayors from Orange County, Calif., objecting to the Orange Coast Mayors’ Prayer Breakfast, headlined by Focus on the Family CEO Jim Daly.”

LifeNews: “A federal appeals court held a hearing today in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the controversial guidelines the National Institutes of Health used to implement President Barack Obama’s decision to force taxpayers to finance embryonic stem cell research . . . ‘No one should be allowed to decide that an innocent life is worthless,’ said [ADF Attorney Steven Aden]. ‘Innocent life should not be treated like a commodity. Although private-sector funding of embryonic stem cell research has been practically unlimited, it has failed to produce results.’” | ADF News Release: ADF providing support to lawsuit defending law that prohibits federal funding of embryo destruction

LifeSiteNews: “A strong bipartisan majority in the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to exercise its right to opt the state out of the abortion mandate in the new national health care reform law. The measure approved by the House forbids insurance companies receiving public subsidies in the state-run health exchange from offering or requiring abortion coverage.”

LifeSiteNews: “Nebraska lawmakers in the Unicameral gave final approval to legislation that requires abortionists to give extensive prescreening for potential physical and mental health problems to women seeking an abortion, or face civil lawsuits from women harmed by their failure to obey the law.”

ArkansasNews.com: “NORTH LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has asked the city to stop opening City Council meetings with prayer.”

Robert Pear writes at the NY Times: “In a new report, the Congressional Research Service says the law may have significant unintended consequences for the ‘personal health insurance coverage’ of senators, representatives and their staff members . . . The confusion raises the inevitable question: If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?”

Wall Street Journal via Google News: “The latest name to emerge was federal Judge Sidney R. Thomas of Montana, 56, who sits on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and would bring geographic diversity to a tribunal dominated by East Coasters. If nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate, he would be the only justice who did not attend an Ivy League university.”

Religion Clause Blog: “Evangelical leaders, including Rick Warren, have sent a statement (full text) to the President, Vice President, Secretaries of State and Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all members of Congress.”

Phyllis Schlafly writes at Townhall: “The percentage of Americans who will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009 has risen to 47 percent. That isn’t the worst of it. The bottom 40 percent not only pay no income tax, but the government sends them cash or benefits financed by the taxes dutifully paid by those who do pay income tax . . . The Alinsky strategy is to use community organizing and mass demonstrations by those he labeled the ‘Have Nots,’ and the Cloward-Piven strategy is to overload the bureaucracy with enormous demands for entitlements, thereby causing a financial crisis . . . ”

The California Family Council reports on a dangerous bill pending in the California legislature. “AB 2380 (Lowenthal, D-Long Beach) would allow “hearsay” statements to be included in the definition of “reasonable suspicion” in child abuse cases.”

Becket Fund: The Federalist Society’s Religious Liberties Practice Group, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and The Cato Institute Present: Christian Legal Society v. Martinez on Wed. April 14, 2010, 12:00 noon – 2 pm. at the National Press Club in Washington D.C.

AP: “Muslim militants disguised as policemen and soldiers detonated bombs and opened fire Tuesday in a series of coordinated attacks in a southern Philippine city, triggering clashes that killed at least 12 people . . . ”

Ed Feulner, President of Heritage Foundation, writes at Townhall: “As the American Bar Association reported a few years ago, there are now so many laws (at least 4,000 by one expert estimation) ‘that there is no conveniently accessible, complete list of federal crimes.’ Throw in federal regulations (there are 300,000 of them, according to a Columbia law professor), state laws and local ordinances, and you, too, could be a felon and not even know it . . . In recent years, though, the law has grown in a different direction. ‘Criminal law has become a vehicle for social change instead of for the maintenance of social order,’ explains Edwin Meese III. A former attorney general, Meese penned the introduction to a new book from The Heritage Foundation, ‘One Nation Under Arrest.’. . . ”

Anthony Picarello, General Counsel to the USCCB, and Michael Moses, Associate General Counsel to the USCCB, have prepared this legal memo that begins: “The purpose of this legal memorandum is to identify the problems of the recently-passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. No. 111-148 (“PPACA” or “the Act”), in relation to abortion funding and conscience protection, and then to assess whether (and if so,how) the corresponding Executive Order of March 24, 2010, corrects those problems. Although we wish it were otherwise, we must conclude that PPACA poses serious problems in these two areas, and that the Executive Order does not correct those problems.”

LifeSiteNews: “But according to Charol Shakeshaft, the researcher of a little-remembered 2004 study prepared for the U.S. Department of Education, ‘the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.’ . . . While [George] Weigel observes that the findings of Shakeshaft’s study do nothing to mitigate the harm caused by priestly abuse, or excuse the ‘clericalism’ and ‘fideism’ that led bishops to ignore the problem, they do point to a gross imbalance in the level of scrutiny given to it, throwing suspicion on the motives of the news outlets that are pouring their resources into digging up decades-old dirt on the Church . . . ”

Citizen Link (4/12): “Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorneys were in court today for oral arguments in a suit (Sherley v. Sebelius) alleging the Obama administration’s embryonic research policy violates federal law . . . ”

Citizen Link: “One of the nation’s largest gay-activist groups, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is promoting its annual Day of Silence on Friday . . . One alternative would be to allow kids to participate in the Day of Truth on Thursday. The Day of Truth is sponsored by Exodus International and promotes a respectful dialogue among students on the issue of homosexuality. This year’s theme is ‘Get the Conversation Started.’ . . . While students should engage in respectful discourse about gay issues, Buchanan cautions that some may encounter resistance at school. For that, Exodus has enlisted the Alliance Defense Fund to protect the legal rights of all students . . . ”

Learn more: Day of Truth

AP: “There are ways to police illegal material on the Internet without resorting to a mandatory filter such as the one proposed by Australia’s government, a U.S. diplomat says . . . ”

Michael J. New writes at Public Discourse: “According to Koppelman, the hostility in red states to both contraception and comprehensive sex education leads to a greater incidence of abortion. Conversely, even though blue states are more tolerant of premarital sex, their support for comprehensive sex education and contraception actually lowers abortion rates. Koppelman spends much of the rest of the essay criticizing the religious right for their opposition to both sex education and government funding of contraception. Unfortunately, Koppelman’s claims are based on rhetorical sleights of hand and a faulty analysis of data. What is unique about this essay is that all three of Koppelman’s arguments are incorrect. First, there is little evidence that more federal funding for contraceptives will reduce abortion rates. Second, there is some evidence that abstinence-only sex education is effective at reducing sexual activity among minors. Finally, red states actually have lower abortion rates, in part because they have placed more legal restrictions on abortion . . . ”

Wall Street Journal: “The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors. Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges . . . In 1997, Congress imposed a cap on funding for medical residencies, which hospitals say has increasingly hurt their ability to expand the number of positions . . . ”