Daily Archives: May 13, 2010

NY Times: “To find the answer, a growing body of research is focusing on the science of commitment. Scientists are studying everything from the biological factors that seem to influence marital stability to a person’s psychological response after flirting with a stranger. Their findings suggest that while some people may be naturally more resistant to temptation, men and women can also train themselves to protect their relationships and raise their feelings of commitment . . . ”

CNSNews: “A bill introduced this month in Congress would put the federal and state governments in the business of tracking how fat, or skinny, American children are . . . The Healthy Choices Act–introduced by Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) . . . ” | H.R. 5209

Associated Press: “Gov. Tim Pawlenty named a sitting Supreme Court Justice to lead the state’s high court and a fresh-faced newcomer to fill her spot on Thursday, deepening his imprint on Minnesota’s judiciary. Associate Justice Lorie Gildea will become chief justice on June 30. Taking her place will be David Stras, a law professor who described U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as ‘my mentor in the law.’” | According to Orin Kerr, Stras blogs at SCOTUSblog and Empirical Legal Studies.

Tallahassee Democrat: “In a 5-2 vote, the Leon County Commission approved the controversial changes to the county’s current human-rights ordinance. The changes are designed to deter discrimination and include more protection for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community.”

MyFoxDC: “The courts in D.C. processed only 3,096 applications for marriage licenses all last year. Since the first legal same-sex weddings in the District back on March 9, 2,094 couples have applied to get married in the nation’s capitol.”

“Victims of child pornography in kansas will be able to sue for up to $150,000 in damages under a new state law. Governor Mark Parkinson signed the legislation today . . . ”

ABC: “Libya and Thailand are among 14 countries elected as new members of the UN Human Rights Council in a vote that rights advocates have criticised as stripping the meaning from the body. Angola, Mauritania, Uganda, Maldives, Malaysia, Qatar, Moldova, Poland, Ecuador, Guatemala, Spain and Switzerland have also been elected by the General Assembly for three-year terms on the 47-nation council, which is based in Geneva.”

Natural and Un-Natural Law
Jakob Cornides, J.D., Legal Studies Series, Number Two (2010)

“The monograph that follows . . . sets forth that clash between the ideals of 1948 and the counter-principles asserted by the generation of 1968. He exposes the shoddy thinking of those who seek to establish a right to abortion — the ultimate exercise of raw, bloody power over the helpless and powerless. He brings to light the incipient totalitarianism and anti-democratic elitism of those roughly thirty United Nations and activist human rights ‘experts’ who crafted a manifesto entitled the ‘Yogyakarta Principles.’ The document purports to propound ‘binding’ human rights norms that are to govern social legislation in the area of ‘sexual orientation and gender identity,’ despite such norms never having been consented to by sovereign states.”

WAFB: “A bill to expedite the right to die passed out of a Senate committee Tuesday. The bill provides notification to convicted death penalty defendants of their right to waive their appeals.” | SB 774

The News Journal: “Shannon Johnson is 26 and wants to die. This puts him on the same side as Delaware prosecutors, the jury that voted unanimously in favor of it and the Superior Court judge who ordered it for the 2006 slaying of Cameron Hamlin. At that trial, Johnson also was convicted of shooting his ex-girlfriend — the mother of his son and the only witness to the homicide. Before the jury voted, Johnson took the stand to tell them, ‘I could care less about your sympathy or mercy, so you all could save that for someone else. I fear no one but Allah.’”

Telegraph: “People will simply choose to end their own lives in the future, when anti-ageing drugs that could extend lifespans by many years become commonplace, according to an expert on longevity. But birth rates might also have to be centrally controlled to cope with rising numbers of old people, Dr David Gems of the Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College London said.”

Toronto Star: “Heartened and emboldened by Canada’s new anti-abortion stand on foreign aid, thousands of pro-life campaigners flooded in unprecedented numbers to Parliament Hill on Thursday, daring to hope that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government will take further steps against abortion at home as well as abroad . . . ”

CTV.ca: “Thousands of activists rallied on Parliament Hill on Thursday calling for an end to abortion, with Tory MPs urging them to reopen the bitter debate on the issue . . . ”

AP: “Sen. Mark Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco, says SB1317 is a public safety measure because children who do poorly in school or drop out are more likely to commit crimes.”

AP: “Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan won praise from skeptical senators in both parties Thursday, building momentum toward what for now appears a smooth road to confirmation this summer.”

Associated Press: “A former deputy Kansas attorney general is facing questions about his actions during investigations of abortion providers. Eric Rucker was scheduled for a hearing Thursday before a three-member panel of the state’s attorney discipline board.”

The Oakland Tribune: “The Peralta Community College district is considering guidelines to limit where and how groups can speak on campus, prompting outrage from employees and students who say the proposed rules would restrict free speech . . . Peralta is only the latest district to consider the so-called free-speech zones, which have riled academics around the country . . . An estimated 70 percent of U.S. public colleges and universities restrict speech in some way, said Will Creeley, director of legal and public advocacy for the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which has fought against free-speech zones around the country.”

CBC: “The organization Campaign Life Coalition B.C., which opposes abortions, is demanding the hearing so it can challenge provincial legislation that prevents hospitals from releasing information such as how many abortions they perform each year.”

Interfax: “Investigative bodies of Russia’s Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor’s Office for the Chelyabinsk Region initiated a criminal case on illegal activities of the Jehovah’s Witnesses local branch.”

Interfax: “Non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Kyrgyzstan have criticized the exclusion of the definition of a secular state from the new constitution being drafted by the interim authorities.”

Yemen News Agency: “The Council of Europe, one of the principal watchdogs for human rights on this continent, said Tuesday that its parliamentary Commission on Culture, Science and Education had adopted a text in Istanbul on Monday opposing a proposed ban in France on the wearing of the niqab or the burqa, according to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA).”

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “Independent Senator Nick Xenophon has proposed a test which asks groups to demonstrate whether their activities are of public benefit or cause harm before being granted tax exempt status. The inquiry was sparked by allegations of serious abuses within the Church of Scientology.”

CCFON: “Wellington Town Council has rejected a controversial motion calling to scrap the traditional saying of prayers at the start of its meetings . . . UKIP councillor Dennis Allen, who was at the meeting where the decision has been made, said: ‘We’re in a Christian area, most of us are Christians. I think there was minimal chance of anybody changing their mind.’”

The Gospel Herald: “Nigeria swore in its new president, a Christian, this week after months of leadership confusion while its elected president was receiving medical treatment. Goodluck Jonathan, who has been Nigeria’s acting president since February, officially became president of Nigeria on Thursday. His Muslim predecessor, Umaru Yar’Adua, died on Wednesday despite extensive treatment, including a medical stay in Saudi Arabia.”

The Gospel Herald: “Christian Federation of Malaysia Chairman Ng Moon Hing stressed that the Malay word for God is as much a part of the languages of indigenous Christians as it is a part of the language Muslims use. ‘Native Malaysians have been using ‘Allah’ for centuries and now you are saying they cannot any longer,’ he said to The Christian Post on the sidelines of a recent meeting of Anglican archbishops in Singapore.”

The Christian Institute: “A 14-year-old Roman Catholic school girl has been branded a truant by teachers for refusing to dress like a Muslim and visit a mosque. Amy Owen, who attends Ellesmere Port Catholic High School in Cheshire, was told that she would have to cover her head and wear trousers or leggings for the visit to the Al-Ramah mosque.”

Washington Post: “A Denver lawyer is suing the Securities and Exchange Commission for the names of agency workers disciplined in the past five years for viewing pornography on government computers. Kevin D. Evans filed suit in federal court in Denver on Friday, accusing the agency of violating federal law by not disclosing the names of 33 current and former employees and contractors who viewed pornographic images while on the job. Evans said he is offended by their actions and is tired of government waste and abuse.”

Wicked Local (Tri-Town Transcript): “Middleton Town Meeting voters approved an adult entertainment zone overlay Tuesday night, which was proposed to limit the areas in town where adult entertainment businesses can establish.”

The Christian Institute: “British Indian women are going abroad to abort their baby girls because of pressure on them to have boys, a journalist has warned. Kishwar Desai pointed to statistics from the University of Oxford which estimate almost 100 baby girls are ‘disappearing’ from British Indian families every year.”

Mercury News: “The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Public Counsel Law Center had filed a lawsuit in February, claiming that layoffs at the schools in low-income and minority areas would violate the state constitutional right of students.”

Yahoo Finance (AP): “Nine people were indicted Wednesday on federal charges of accessing President Barack Obama’s student loan records while they were employed for a Department of Education contractor in Iowa.”

LA Times: “This was no ‘tea party’ rally. These were Democrats. But their feelings had a lot in common with their disgruntled counterparts on the right — anti-spending, anti-bailout and, most of all, anti-incumbent. The fact that such feelings are boiling up at both ends of the political spectrum speaks volumes about the angry, topsy-turvy political climate . . . ”

Interfax: “Gays in St. Petersburg intend to conduct an action entitled rainbow flash mob to mark the international day against homophobia on May 17, the organization Vykhod, which campaigns for the rights of gays and lesbians, told Interfax on Thursday.”

Iowa Examiner: “The State of Iowa has no right to prevent a child, born in wedlock, from having the benefit of both parents being named on her birth certificate. That’s the crux of a lawsuit filed in Polk County District Court by a Des Moines couple on behalf of their infant daughter . . . ”

Breitbart (AP): “The Obama administration faces a delicate balancing act in human rights talks with China that began Thursday: It looks to pressure China to improve treatment of its citizens while not angering a country that is crucial to U.S. international interests . . . ”

NJ.com: “Students, parents, teachers and activists arrived at the Statehouse in Trenton today to rally state lawmakers to pass a voucher bill creating “opportunity scholarships” to let children leave failing public schools . . . ”

“Goodwin Liu, a professor of law at the University of California Berkeley, won confirmation on a 12-7 party-line vote in the committee after weeks of delay on the vote by Senate Republicans . . . ”

Christian Science Monitor: “As with the 2006 World Cup in Germany, a rampant sex trade is of concern to human rights groups ahead of the World Cup 2010 in South Africa, which kicks off next month. Prostitutes, many from impoverished Zimbabwe, are arriving to cash in on an estimated 500,000 visiting fans . . . ”

The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School: “1. A majority of Americans say that their position on gay and lesbian adoption is centered on the welfare of the children. However, few say they would change their minds if shown convincing contrary evidence . . . 2. Based on other research into culturally disputed issue of fact, we believe that a great many people—possibly even a majority of the population, and enough to have a large impact on the resolution of the gay and lesbian parenting issue—genuinely care about the child-welfare effects of gay and lesbian parenting and have a desire to be able to identify and credit the best available data in an open-minded way, even if it means changing their minds on the issue.”

Washington Post: “Proponents of a bill known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would provide job protections for gay and transgender workers, are actively taking a whip count to see whether the measure has enough support for floor action. The legislation is unnerving moderate and conservative Democrats who face brutal reelection battles . . . ”

‘One, the rights of the same-sex couple which are absolute. And there’s also the right to religious freedom . . . There is nothing in the Charter [of Rights] that indicates one of those should take priority over the other . . .

Google News (AP): “Benedict made the comments Thursday to Catholic educators, social workers and others after celebrating Mass before an estimated 400,000 people in Fatima, one of the most important shrines in Christianity. He was interrupted by applause several times.”

LifeNews: Will Solicitor Elena Kagan objectively apply the Constitution or promote a pro-abortion agenda? It seems unlikely. Here’s why. Kagan has contributed financially to the National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF), an organization whose goal, in its own words, is ‘to increase women’s access to…reproductive health services and block attempts to limit reproductive rights…and to give every woman access to…abortion services….’[1] Kagan ‘listed membership in’ NPWF in a questionnaire she submitted in connection with her judicial nomination in 1999.[2]”

Eugene Volokh writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “As I understand it, the great majority of women who are not purely heterosexual are actually to some degree bisexual. For instance, Laumann et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality 311 (1994), reports that 3.7% of all women report having had both male and female partners since age 18 and only 0.4% report having had only female partners since age 18. Even looking at just the last five years, 1.4% of women report both male and female partners, and only 0.8% report only female partners.”

If nominee Elena Kagan is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the nine-member body will be made up entirely of judges educated at either Harvard Law School or Yale Law School . . . . Ronald Reagan . . . was the last President who did not attend Harvard or Yale . . .

NY Times: “Elena Kagan was a star pupil in her Hebrew school on the Upper West Side. So it was not too surprising after she turned 12 that she wanted to mark her coming of age with a bat mitzvah. The only problem was that the rabbi at her Orthodox synagogue, Shlomo Riskin, had never performed one . . .”

Religion Clause Blog: “In KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development, Inc. v. Geithner, (ND OH, May 10, 2010), an Ohio federal district court issued an opinion on the appropriate remedy in a Muslim charity’s challenge to the procedures used by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in designating the charity a Global Terrorist Group . . . the court refused to invalidate the order blocking KindHearts’ assets, and instead decided to hold a post-seizure probable cause review . . . ”

He told a reporter that the person responsible for the theft wrote up the following explanation and statement regarding the removal of the cross. He asked that the Desert Dispatch to print the statement in its entirety . . .

ADF Attorney Jeff Shafer writing at speakupmovement.org/university: “Our educational institutions have made systemic the exclusion of outlooks that deviate from their shared rigid definition of acceptable rationality. As one prominent example, the Rawlsian ideal of ‘public reason’—as ubiquitous in its dominance as encompassing in its prohibitions—forbids Christian and other religious presuppositions from participation in public discourse. That this involves de-privileging a framework of understanding that historically informed Western Civilization seems, for that reason, a considerable affront. But it is just there that its explanation is found. An intellectual rival has gained ascendancy, and is not inclined to give any latitude to its vanquished—and loathed—predecessor.”

California Catholic Daily: “‘This is a cowardly and criminal act that dishonors heroes who have given their lives for our country,’ said ADF senior counsel [Joseph Infranco] in a prepared statement. ‘Those who deny our heritage and religious liberty will not succeed through vandalism under cover of darkness. What the ACLU could not accomplish in court, intolerant cowards are now trying to do through crime.’”

AP: “Republican Gov. Linda Lingle signed into law Wednesday a bill allowing state government agencies not to respond to follow-up requests for information if they determine that the subsequent request is duplicative or substantially similar to a previous request.”

ADF Attorney Austin R. Nimocks writing in the Washington Times: “To vote or not to vote? That definitely is the question posed to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals when it comes to the legal definition of marriage within the District. But it’s mind-boggling that anyone even had to ask this question when the right of the people to vote is so obviously beyond question.”

Anchorage Daily News: “Alaska Supreme Court Justice Morgan Christen is stepping down from hearing a lawsuit against a ballot initiative that would make doctors tell a teenage girl’s parents before she could get an abortion . . . . The Alaska Family Council had sent out e-mail alerts Tuesday and Wednesday, urging its members to contact the state judicial conduct commission and complain that Christen had a conflict of interest and shouldn’t be participating in the case . . . ”

Maggie Gallagher writes at Townhall: “Absent a political backlash, elites who gave us Roe v. Wade could now be moving on to a greater institutionalization of abortion, making aborting teen pregnancies public policy, for example, or forcing pro-life doctors and nurses into other professions.”

Newsmax: “House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the new CBO analysis ‘provides ample cause for alarm,’ according to a report on ABC News. ‘This comes just weeks after the Obama administration itself released an analysis confirming that the new law actually increases Americans’ healthcare costs,’ Boehner said. ‘The American people wanted one thing above all from healthcare reform: lower costs, which Washington Democrats promised, but they did not deliver. These revelations widen the serious credibility gap President Obama is facing.”

Newsmax: “The voters who said they were most interested in the November elections favor Republican control of Congress by a 20-point margin, with 56 percent backing the GOP and 36 percent backing Democrats.”

Cal Thomas writes at Jewish World Review: “What is the law? Is it a game played by insiders who went to Harvard (or Yale) law schools and the intellectual equivalent of theological debates over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Or is it something else, and if something else, what? The classical view of law is that it is meant to restrain lawbreakers. But in order to define a lawbreaker, one must have a standard for law so that people know it when they break it. The modern (“progressive” as Kagan has been called) view of law is that it is to serve the political ends of those in power . . . ”

“Young female refugees from North Korea are increasingly becoming a commodity in China, where they are sold to farmers for up to 1,500 dollars a head, according to a Seoul campaigner. The human trafficking is far from new but has become more prevalent as prices soar amid a shortage of Chinese women in the countryside . . . ”

Times Online: “The measure, unveiled as BP began a new attempt to contain the ruptured well that has leaked millions of gallons of crude oil into America’s southern coastal waters, would put an extra $500 million (£340 million) over ten years into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which covers damage caused by such disasters.”

Bloomberg: “Elena Kagan said as a U.S. Supreme Court law clerk in 1987 that she was “not sympathetic” toward a man who contended that his constitutional rights were violated when he was convicted for carrying an unlicensed pistol . . . ”

Conn Carroll writes at the Heritage Foundation Morning Bell: “The Treasury Department announced yesterday that the federal deficit for April soared to $82.69 billion, more than twice the $40 billion deficit that Wall Street economists had predicted. An April deficit is rare for the federal government (there has been a surplus in 43 out of the past 56 years) . . . ”

Elena Kagan wrote in the Daily Princetonian: “Even after the returns came in, I found it hard to conceive of the victories of these anonymous but Moral Majority-backed opponents of Senators Church, McGovern, Bayh and Culver, these avengers of “innocent life” and the B-1 Bomber, these beneficiaries of a general turn to the right and a profound disorganization on the left . . . ”

SPUC Director John Smeaton, writing at LifeSiteNews: “After 13 years of anti-life laws and policies being enacted by the Labour government, we face a renewal of such laws and policies under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. David Cameron has made clear that faith schools should not be free to teach that abortion is wrong. Andrew Lansley, who is expected to be named health secretary, has made clear his support for easier access to abortion. Nick Clegg has confirmed his support for an anti-life approach to sex education.” | Smeaton’s blog

Catholic News Agency: “Costa Rica’s Electoral Supreme Court has ordered Bishop Jose Francisco Ulloa to pay damages for encouraging the faithful to cast their votes in manner consistent with Catholic teachings. The bishop made his comments during a Mass on September 6, 2009, amidst the presidential campaign season and the debate over abortion and homosexual rights . . . ”

Scott Cummings and Douglas NeJaime, Lawyering for Marriage Equality (May 11, 2010). UCLA School of Law Research Paper No. 10-09; Loyola-LA Legal Studies Paper No. 2010-12. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1604641

“Critiques of litigation seeking to establish the right of same-sex couples to marry argue that it has produced a backlash undercutting the movement for marriage equality. In this account, movement lawyers emerge as agents of backlash: naively turning to the courts ahead of public opinion, ignoring more productive political alternatives, and ultimately hurting the very cause they purport to advance by securing a court victory that mobilizes opponents to repeal it. This Article challenges the backlash thesis through a close analysis of the California case, which contradicts the portrait of movement lawyers as unsophisticated rights crusaders and casts doubt on the causal claim that court decisions upholding same-sex couples’ right to marry have harmed the movement.”