Daily Archives: June 7, 2010

Bernama: “A non-Muslim woman lawyer who obtained leave in her preliminary legal bid to be a syarie lawyer, has filed a judicial review application to challenge a decision that only Muslim lawyers are allowed to practise at the Syariah Court in Federal Territory.”

ADF President and CEO Alan E. Sears writing at the Christian Post:  ”Which brings us back to that curious thing about those who would cut down crosses, cover them in boxes, and sue to have them removed from even the remotest of public places. They don’t really take exception to religious expression, so much as real offense at what a cross represents. And that’s especially interesting, because what the cross traditionally represents – a godly Life, a sacrificial Death, selfless love, redeeming faith – are noble things.  Why is it so absolutely vital to so many that the symbol of these ideals be removed from our public life? Why is it so crucial that people who don’t believe are never reminded of the One they don’t believe in? Just how fragile is their atheism that it demands not just elimination of any trace of belief, but the dismantling of our most essential freedoms of faith and self-expression?”

The Moscow Times: “Russia will celebrate a new holiday next month under a decision backed by the Kremlin and Russian Orthodox Church that is stirring up decidedly unholy feelings among non-Orthodox Russians. Christianization of Rus Day on July 28 won’t be counted as a day off work, but it will be recognized on calendars as the country’s ninth so-called ‘memorial holiday,’ which also includes Cosmonauts Day on April 12 and Constitution Day on Dec. 12.”

Russia Muftis Council in the Moscow Times: “Islamic finance seems to be starting to be implemented in Russia, although by very careful steps. The potential size of the market has received various estimates, from a modest 10 percent of the practicing Muslims to the whole ethnic Muslim population of more than 30 million, or even more. However, it is understood by experts that the demand of the population would definitely not be the leading factor in the development of this sphere: It is more about business preferences with regard to ethical aspects.”

Guelph Mercury: “Guelph mayor Karen Farbridge and all 12 city councillors were polled over the weekend in an effort to forecast the outcome of tonight’s vote on an application for a zoning bylaw amendment for 410 Clair Road East, the proposed site of a Sikh temple that would not exceed 1,972 square metres of gross floor area. The building is proposed to be 11.2 metres in height, with an initial dome of 6.3 metres. The proposed building’s capacity is just over 700.”

Brisbane Times: “The Catholic Church has joined the chorus of religious voices opposing the trial of ethics classes in schools. It has organised a petition arguing that the classes should not be held ‘in competition’ with scripture because it means religious children miss out on ethics.”

The Daily News: “Tennessee’s Supreme Court is reviewing proposed changes to the rules that govern the state’s lawyers . . . Chattanooga lawyer Scott Newton Brown argued in favor of a new rule allowing a lawyer to avoid representing someone if the attorney’s religious views clash with the client’s.”

Hartford Courant: “The Enfield Board of Education has scheduled a second vote on whether to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that blocked the town from holding its two high schools graduations this year at a Bloomfield megachurch.”

Church of England Newspaper (via Conger): “President Barack Obama’s call for the US military to end its ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces will decimate the ranks of the chaplain corps, 42 retired senior Army, Navy and Air Force chaplains declared last week in an open letter to the president.”

NY Daily News: “One third of children age 10 and younger have access to online porn, and more than 8 in 10 teens regularly view hardcore pictures on their home computers, according to a British survey reported in the Daily Mail . . . ‘There is compelling evidence that pornography has negative effects on individuals and communities,” sociologist Michael Flood, who spoke with hundreds of young people for the survey, told Psychologies magazine. ‘Porn shows sex in unrealistic ways and fails to address intimacy, love, connection or romance. It doesn’t mean every young person is gong out to rape somebody but it increases that likelihood.’”

Wall Street Journal: “The dustup concerns a nominee named Jack McConnell (pictured), a plaintiffs’ lawyer at Motley Rice up in Rhode Island. Earlier this spring, President Obama nominated McConnell to a seat on the federal bench for the District of Rhode Island. It didn’t take long for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to throw up a red flag on McConnell, citing two main points: that he will make between $2.5 million and $3.1 million every year though 2024 in deferred pay for his legal work, which partly derives from his participation in the $264-billion settlement reached between states and tobacco firms in 1998 . . . ”

Visalia Times-Delta: “The Exeter Union High School District approved a moment of silence instead of a prayer during Friday’s 2010 graduation, but that didn’t stop many in the audience from praying out loud.”

The Salt Lake Tribune: “Southern Utah University’s recent ad campaign frames its Cedar City campus as a place that supports Mormon cultural values, raising questions about whether a public school should play on faith to recruit students.”

Chicago Tribune: “Barrington High School senior Daniel Santoro can’t wait to strut across the stage of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois to accept his diploma. But the fact that he’ll be marching where pastors normally preach on Sundays irks some advocates for the separation of church and state. They say public school graduations don’t belong in a house of worship.”

LifeNews: “Bryan Kemper, the head of Stand True, a pro-life group reaching out to youth and young adults, informed LifeNews.com of the incident and commented on it. He said it would not have ever made the news had the girl used an abortion drug and aborted the baby at home instead of engaging in a self-induced abortion . . . ”

Cape Argus: “A domestic worker was arrested for dumping her newborn baby in a rubbish bin in Umhlanga on Monday morning, Durban Metro police said.”

Daily Mail: “Every Google web search could be stored for up to two years under a controversial new EU plan that has the backing of more than 300 Euro-MEPs.
‘Written Declaration 29′ is intended to be used as an early warning system to stop paedophiles by logging what they look for using search engines.
But civil liberty groups have hit out at the proposal which they say is a ‘completely unjustifiable’ intrusion into citizens’ privacy.”

“Crist has 15 days — until June 22 — to take action on the bill . . . ”

The News: “Russia may have bucked a post-Soviet population decline, President Dmitry Medvedev saidon Wednesday after announcing a 1.5 percent rise in the number of births during the first quarter . . . ‘I hope that we have managed to break those extremely unfavourable demographic trends which have existed in ourcountry over the past two decades,’ Medvedev told a Kremlin meeting to reward the parents of extremely large families.”

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, writing at the NYT’s Opinionator blog: “Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally.” | Via Wesley J. Smith.

Human Rights Campaign: “Kaiser Permanente – one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health providers – updated its Patients’ Bill of Rights to fully protect LGBT patients and their families from discrimination. These changes, which took effect in Kaiser Permanente’s network of 36 hospitals today, make Kaiser Permanente the first large health network to have a fully inclusive non-discrimination policy for LGBT people. They are also the first health network to achieve Top Performer status in the HRC Foundation’s Healthcare Equality Index (HEI).”

CNN: “A nearly 25-year study concluded that children raised in lesbian households were psychologically well-adjusted and had fewer behavioral problems than their peers. The study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, followed 78 lesbian couples who conceived through sperm donations and assessed their children’s well-being through a series of questionnaires and interviews.” | US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents

BBC: “Teresa Pires and Helena Paixao, both divorced mothers in their 30s who have been together since 2003, married at a Lisbon registry office.”

Blick v. Office of the Div. of Criminal Justice, No. CV-09-5033392 (Conn. Super. Ct, June 1, 2010)

Excerpts:

This is an action for declaratory and injunctive relief by two connecticut physicians who ask this court to allow them to engage in physician-assisted suicide. Specifically, the physicians ask this court to order the defendant State’s Attorneys not to prosecute them, or any other physician, for manslaughter under Connecticut General Statutes §53a-56 if they provide “aid in dying” by prescribing letahl medication to competent, terminally ill patients to enable those patients to kill themselves.

Connecticut General Statutes §53a-56(a) provides that “[a] person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when . . . (2) he intentionally causes or aids another person, other than by force duress or deception to commit suicide.”

The defendants have moved to dismiss the action . . . The case is hereby dismissed because it is barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity and, as state above, it presents a nonjusticiable claim, one which must be decided by the Connecticut legislature, and not by the court . . . .

Blog of the Legal Times: “The U.S. Senate is set to vote late Monday on the confirmation of three nominees for federal district court — the chamber’s first order of business after a week-long recess.”

LifeNews: “The Obama administration is unveiling a new $125 million publicity campaign over the next five years to promote the pro-abortion health care law . . . ”

What would the world have been like without Andrea Bocelli, Italian pop, opera, and classical singer?

LifeSiteNews: “Sister Carol Keehan, President of the US Catholic Health Association, has been pressured off the prestigious Holy Family Hospital Foundation board over her support for the federal health care bill. Sr. Keehan, in opposition to the United States bishops, was a key supporter of the abortion-expanding bill – so much so that she was given one of the 21 ceremonial pens President Obama used to sign the measure into law.”

Life News: “Last week, a legal memo Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan authored during her time as a law clerk for pro-abortion Justice Thurgood Marshall received new attention.”

Chillicothe Gazette: “The Chillicothe Marketplace Merchants have asked Mayor Joe Sulzer and City Council to form legislation to prevent clubs with adult entertainment — such as nude or semi-nude dancing, massage parlors, escort agencies — from locating in the city. Although restrictions can be put in place, such locales cannot be banned outright.”

The Toronto Star: “As the organ backed a spirited choir, a gay man carried the Eucharist down the aisle of a troubled church to the altar — an altar at which he can no longer serve. It was a sign of reconciliation between a celibate but openly gay man, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peterborough, which he had earlier taken to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal over allegations that his rights were trampled by a bishop and 12 parishioners whose actions, he said, led to his removal from his voluntary role as an altar server at St. Michael’s Parish of Cobourg.”

Washington Examiner: “No Maryland state employees enrolled their same-sex spouses for health benefits during the state’s first enrollment period for gay couples, according to Gov. Martin O’Malley’s office.” | Related: MD: State employees in same-sex “marriages” get same rights as heterosexuals

Winnipeg Free Press: “The Canadian Human Rights Commission is examining whether Ottawa discriminates against families of single soldiers killed overseas by excluding them from a quarter-million dollar death benefit.”

“An Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney filed an amended complaint Monday in a lawsuit against Jet Propulsion Laboratory on behalf of an employee demoted, silenced, harassed, and threatened with termination for discussing his beliefs with willing co-workers about intelligent design as a scientific theory of life’s origins.”

UPI: “Middle-of-the-road Republicans on Capitol Hill already have been whispering sweet nothings about Kagan, the first woman U.S. solicitor general, into reporters’ ears for days. For now, most of her critics seem to be playing soft ball . . . ”

Fox News on ACLJ (includes video): “With the clock ticking, the Enfield School Board voted Thursday night not to appeal a preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge Janet Hall, who ruled Monday that it was unconstitutional for the district’s two high schools to hold their commencement ceremonies at a church . . . ‘I was shocked. I was stunned,’ said Vincent McCarthy, the attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice, which is handling the case. ‘I thought the decision was pro forma. We had a good chance.’ . . . School Board Chairman Greg Stokes was also surprised. Up until the start of Thursday night’s meeting, he’d gotten assurances from five board members that they would vote for the appeal . . . ”

Telegraph: “Divorced clergy are to be allowed to become Church of England bishops for the first time in a move which has been condemned by traditionalists . . . The Church is set to issue a statement announcing the new policy next month after legal advice made clear that there is no obstacle to a divorcee, or a priest married to a divorcee, being consecrated.”

Ed Whelan writes at National Review: In sum, Kagan, in an exercise of cheap moral posturing, elevated her ideological commitment on gay rights above what Congress, acting on the advice of military leaders, had determined best served the interests of national security. She directed her verbal fire entirely at the military, not at the politicians who in fact bore ultimate responsibility for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In the midst of war, she violated federal law by treating military recruiters worse than she treated the elite law firms that were donating their legal services to anti-American terrorists and suspected terrorists. As Peter Beinart, the liberal former editor of The New Republic, has put it, barring military recruiters from the jobs office amounted to “a statement of national estrangement,” of Kagan’s “alienating [her]self from the country.”

Reuters: “A United Nations committee that decides which nongovernmental organizations can be accredited to the world body moved on Thursday to keep out the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.”

Religion Clause Blog: “Zawya reports today that a member of the public has filed a complaint with the Prosecution and Investigation Commission in Asir province claiming that TV channels and print media affiliated with the Ministry of Culture are advocating the mixing of genders and the unveiling of women, as well as mocking religious symbols . . . ”

New York Times: “It is common, this freshman urge for self-invention. The football player tries his hand at poetry; the classical violinist fiddles in a bluegrass band. But Ms. Tushnet — whose parents, Mark Tushnet and Elizabeth Alexander, are a well-known liberal Harvard law professor and a former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, respectively — did not imagine that she would become a Roman Catholic, nor that 10 years after graduation, her voice, on her blog and in numerous articles, would be one of the most surprising raised against same-sex marriage.” | Eve Tushnet’s blog

Thomas Fleming writing at Chronicles: “The obvious solution is to fall back on the ancient view. Children are the gift and property of God, but the stewardship belongs to the parents and not to social workers. The implication would be that instead of trying to beef up abortion laws in general, Christians should focus on some specific targets. If one parent has the right to terminate a pregnancy, why should not the other parents have at least a veto power. Court rulings and laws that legalize abortions for minor daughters or at least facilitate them are unpopular and could be overturned. Re-empowering parents, then, is a more important objective than any attempt to strengthen the state’s control over life and over families.” | This article is the second part of Fleming’s discussion: Conservative Credo IV: Abortion

The Faculty Lounge: “I believe we may be seeing a new Supreme Court nominee feeder – Justice Thomas – and a new Supreme Court feeder system . . . the state Supreme Courts. Lacking the ability to appoint judges to the U.S. Courts of Appeal during an Obama Presidency, but in an effort to culture (and observe) future Republican Supreme Court nominees, it seems that the Republicans may be tapping a new route to the High Court.”

Hudson New York: “As there are no actually verifiable statistics, the truth may be better — or worse. ‘The fact is,’ said one seasoned political consultant, ‘that with the adoption of the acquis communitaire as a necessary requirement for the Eastern bloc nations to become members of the EU, means [sic] that up to 90% of all new laws come from Brussels. With a Western European nation such as the United Kingdom, the percentage is more likely to be 60-65%, but this still means that the European Parliament does really have a voice and serious clout.’”

ADF Attorney Joe Martins writing at Speak Up Movememnt / University: “I recently blogged about how Trinity University had to decide whether the words, ‘in the Year of Our Lord,’ would remain on the school’s diplomas. I considered this a critical decision for the University: Either bow to the demands of the Trinity Diversity Connection, or hold true to the University’s Presbyterian heritage and identity. As my colleague, David Hacker, pointed out, the University chose the latter. But Trinity’s public statement announcing the decision shows that the battle is not over.”

OneNewsNow: “‘The Alaska Supreme Court ruled against Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union by holding that the . . . people have the right to vote on whether the initiative…which simply would give a parent a right to notice before their minor daughter can be given an abortion…should become law or not,’ [ADF-Allied Attorney Kevin Clarkson] explains.”

The Journal Gazette: “A Christian defense league from Arizona could end up defending Allen County against a lawsuit seeking to overturn the new patient safety ordinance. The Allen County commissioners, who were not named in the suit, plan to discuss next week whether the Alliance Defense Fund, rather than county-contracted attorneys, should defend the Fort Wayne-Allen County Department of Health, Commissioner Nelson Peters said.”

CNBC (AP): “A Christian legal group has offered to defend Allen County’s health department against a lawsuit seeking to stop a local ordinance that regulates doctors who perform abortions and other procedures. The county commissioners will discuss this week whether to allow Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based group of Christian lawyers, to represent the Fort Wayne-Allen County Department of Health, Commissioner Nelson Peters said.”

WTAQ: “The Alliance Defense Fund, representing Pro Life Wisconsin, told the attorney general in April that the UW has paid almost $60,000 in the last 3 years to pay for residents’ abortion training by Planned Parenthood. The defense fund asked J.B. Van Hollen for a legal opinion.”

But we are gravely concerned about a more subtle message Kagan’s nomination is sending to the people of the United States: a return to feudalism in American law . . . America was founded as a rejection of feudalism . . .

AP: “The Supreme Court has turned away a challenge by school districts and teacher unions to the federal No Child Left Behind law.”

The School Law Blog provides more information.

Houston Chronicle: “For the past hundred years, with rare and short exceptions and after controlling for inflation, public schools have had both more money and more employees per student in each succeeding year.” Indeed, public schools have been so insulated from economic downturns that “there have been 11 periods during which GDP declined but mean total real per-pupil revenues still increased.”

Dallas Morning News: “And some leaders of a civil rights group that once battled for equal education in Dallas schools are now urging black parents to send their kids elsewhere. Some say the rising attention to the needs of children learning English is overshadowing the needs of black students.”

One News Now: “As birth-control advocates are celebrating 50 years of hormonal contraceptives, a coalition of pro-life groups across the country is participating in the largest protest of the birth-control pill in the United States.”

AP on MyWay: “The 2010 elections have changed the direction of government only half way through the primary season, with voter anger and economic jitters causing lawmakers to balk at their most basic duties as well as key elements of President Barack Obama’s agenda . . . ”

Yahoo News (AFP): “‘The case for (Egyptian) men married to Israeli Arab women is different to those married to Israeli women of Jewish origin because (Israeli Arabs) have lived under Israeli occupation,’ Husseini told the court.”

Telegraph: “Schools are neglecting to teach children the core beliefs of Christianity in religious education lessons, a damning new report will reveal.”

Liberty Counsel: “Responding to the gross violation of free speech brought about by the ACLU in the Santa Rosa County School District (District), the Florida legislature passed a law that requires school districts to obtain the consent of staff and students before entering into any agreement that infringes upon or waives their First Amendment rights. The new law takes effect July 1.”

Bloomberg: “President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a ‘debt super cycle.”

Adam S. Hofri-Winogradow, A Plurality of Discontent: Legal Pluralism, Religious Adjudication and the State (March 1, 2010). Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 101-133, 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1561463

“Can a modern state provide its citizens with a just and stable legal order while adopting religious normativities as part of its law? While dispute resolution according to some type of religious law is available in nearly every jurisdiction, it is Muslim-majority jurisdictions, as well as the only Jewish-majority jurisdiction, Israel, that explicitly adopt religious normativities as parts of their positive law. After discussing the different ways in which state legal systems may be made to apply religious normativities, the article concludes that such an integrationist approach leads not only to injustice, but also to continuous instability. To illustrate this conclusion by way of example, I describe the recent expansion of non-state religious adjudication in Israel.”