Daily Archives: July 14, 2010

AikenStandard.com: “The Aiken City Council meeting on Monday night began a little differently – instead of the usual prayer said by a council member, a moment of silence was held. Mayor Fred Cavanaugh explained to the audience that they were having a silent prayer that evening because of a ‘possible litigation,’ and after their regular meeting, they were going into an executive session to discuss it . . . ”

Reuters: “At least four people have been killed in the northeastern Nigerian state of Taraba after security forces opened fire to quell clashes between Christian and Muslim youths, witnesses said on Wednesday.”

The court issued the stay after the state pharmacy board agreed to propose revisions to its rules to allow what the pharmacists have sought from the beginning: to be allowed to refer patients seeking drugs that risk taking human life to other pharmacies.

Powerline (ad video at the link): “From Ben Smith at Politico, we learn that NBC and CBS have refused to air a provocative ad by the National Republican Trust PAC that calls on Americans to oppose the building of a mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center site . . . ”

Reuters: “Republicans must sweep nearly all of the competitive races to pick up the 10 seats needed for a majority in the Senate, where Democrats now hold a 58-41 edge . . . The polls show Republicans gaining seven seats in November. That would give Democrats a narrow 51-48 edge, with independent Charlie Crist winning in Florida . . . ”

NPR: “The National Right to Life Committee, Family Research Council, and House Minority Leader John Boehner, (R-OH) are up in arms about what they contend is Pennsylvania’s plan to provide abortion coverage to people who sign up for the state’s new high-risk health insurance plan . . . Both Obama Administration and Pennsylvania officials say the NRLC’s interpretation is simply incorrect — elective abortions will NOT be allowed in the new program.”

Ilya Somin reports at the Volokh Conspiracy: “Richard Epstein and John Yoo have responded to Elizabeth Wurtzel’s critique of the bar exam, which I previously commented on here.”

AP: “President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva sent a bill to Congress on Wednesday proposing that Brazil join the two dozen or so countries around the world that have moved to curb spanking.”

USCCB: “’To claim that defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman is somehow irrational, prejudiced, or even bigoted, is a great disservice not only to truth but to the good of our nation,’ Archbishop Kurtz said. ‘Marriage exists prior to the state and is not open to redefinition by the state. The role of the state, instead, is to respect and reinforce marriage. Thursday’s decision, by contrast, uses the power of the state to attack the perennial definition of marriage, reducing it merely to the union of any two consenting adults. But only a man and a woman are capable of entering into the unique, life-giving bond of marriage, with all of its specific responsibilities. Protecting marriage as only the union of one man and one woman is not merely a legitimate, but a vital government interest.’”

“Gov. Jay Nixon has allowed new requirements for Missouri abortion clinics to become law without his signature on the bill.”

Natural Moral Theory says that if we are to have healthy sexual lives, we must return to a connection between procreation and sex. Why? Because that is what is REAL. It is based on human sexual anatomy and physiology. Human sexuality is inherently unitive and procreative. If we encourage sexual relations that violate this basic meaning, we will end up denying something essential about our humanity, about our feminine and masculine nature. . . . As a final note, a perceptive reader will have noticed that none of what I have said here or in class depends upon religion. Catholics don’t arrive at their moral conclusions based on their religion. They do so based on a thorough understanding of natural reality.

Eurasianet.org: “The legal hurdles still threatening the Patriarchate’s existence are formidable, and in an interview last December, the church’s leader, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, told the Milliyet newspaper: ‘We are without oxygen. The Patriarchate is dying.’ Bartholomew is regarded as the spiritual leader of the world’s 300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians, and his church has existed in Istanbul, formerly know as Constantinople, for more than 1,700 years.”

ADF attorney Doug Napier appeared on the Mike Gallagher Show to discuss the case of the Catholic professor terminated for teaching Catholicism in Catholicism class. They also discuss this case: NY high school cancels Christian club, lets 60 others remain. | MP3 9:35 mins

AP: “Prosecutors have dropped all charges against an openly gay Iraq War veteran who twice chained himself to a White House fence to protest the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.”

MySuburbanLife.com: “Dozens of anti-abortion activists lined Randall Road at busy intersections in the Tri-Cities Friday to get their message across in a shocking way.he groups displayed large posters showing pictures of aborted babies. ‘When people see what abortion looks like, they can’t forget it,’ said Eric Schiedler, director of Pro-Life Action League, which organized the rally. ‘We know that these signs upset people, but abortion should upset people.’”

Daniel Blomberg writes at the Speak Up Movement Blog: “While homosexual advocacy groups are complaining that Service members who engage in homosexual behavior can’t speak up in support of DADT repeal (as if they needed more advocates with the Commander in Chief, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary of Defense on their side), it’s those who support keeping the current policy who are feeling the real heat.”

Thomas More Law Center: “In an unprecedented and astonishing development, the City of Dearborn, through its mayor and its official website, has personally attacked the four Christian missionaries arrested at the annual Arab International Festival on June 18, 2010. The Mayor’s intrusion into the case destroyed whatever semblance remained of an unbiased and professional law enforcement action following the illegal seizure of video cameras to prevent recording of the events surrounding the arrests.”

LifeSiteNews: “The Center for Disease Control and Prevention released a new study last month showing that most teens are virgins – which American Life League (ALL) has said contradicts propaganda disseminated by sex-education giant Planned Parenthood . . . ”

National Law Journal (Law.com): “The case represents the only formal constitutional challenge to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which allows the discharge of service members who are found to have engaged in a homosexual act, make a statement that demonstrates a ‘propensity’ to engage in a homosexual act or have entered into a same-sex marriage or attempted marriage. In a courtroom nearly packed with attorneys and spectators, lawyers on both sides spent a combined 30 minutes outlining their arguments. The trial should last about a week, the attorneys said.”

Foundation for Moral Law: “The Foundation for Moral Law (FML) in Montgomery, Alabama, founded by Judge Roy Moore, sent a letter yesterday to the Hoover City Board of Education in Hoover, Alabama, encouraging the Board to bring back invocations at its meetings, despite a threatening anti-prayer letter from a liberal secularist group in Washington,D.C.”

LA Times: “In a new ad, the group cites Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s recent vote to uphold a handgun ban. Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee delays its nomination vote a week.”

One News Now: “The professor is being represented by the Alliance Defense Fund in his quest for reinstatement at the school. Jordan Lorence, senior counsel with ADF, explains his firm’s approach in the case. ‘We have written a demand letter to the university explaining what the law on freedom of speech is for professors and urging them to restore Dr. Howell to his teaching position,’ says the attorney. ‘And if not, we will examine our options and consider filing a lawsuit against the University of Illinois.’”

Rick Santorum writes at The Philadelphia Inquirer: “. . . when last week’s ruling in Boston knocked down the last defense against judicially mandated same-sex “marriage,” there was largely silence from the political class. With the exception of a core group of conservatives, most politicians – including the president – continue to publicly back marriage while eagerly awaiting the day when judges will take this issue out of their hands. In this case, silence, as my former colleague Zell Miller once said, is not golden; it’s yellow.”

The Hill: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is blasting the Obama administration and congressional Democrats for policies it says are expanding government and hindering an economic recovery.”

“Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence that the disclosures mandated by LB 594, if applied literally, will require medical providers to give untruthful, misleading and irrelevant information to patients,” Smith Camp said in her ruling.

NY Times: “Six months after the British government handed control of the police in Northern Ireland to local officials, the worst rioting in years has left 82 police officers injured in Belfast, the provincial capital, including an officer who was hospitalized in stable condition after a concrete slab was dropped on her head from a rooftop.”

AP: “More than 300 people attended a school board meeting Tuesday and about 65 people commented on the proposed curriculum.” | FRC Blog: Excerpts from proposed Helena, Montana sex ed curriculum

CNS: “The chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage July 12 criticized a federal judge’s ruling in two Massachusetts cases that a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. ‘To claim that defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman is somehow irrational, prejudiced or even bigoted is a great disservice not only to truth but the good of the nation,’ Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., said in a statement July 12.”

Jeff Mirus writes at Catholic Culture: “The rejection of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in U.S. District Court on July 8th signals the same flight from reality that led to the firing of two pro-marriage university professors earlier this Summer (see Is Academic Freedom Merely Academic?).”

ACLU: “Please send a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, asking her to investigate hospitals that refuse to provide emergency abortion care, and issue a bulletin making clear that refusing to provide this care violates federal law.”

ACLU: “In a critical acknowledgment of the discrimination surrounding HIV/AIDS, the Obama administration today, in its newly released strategy, emphasized the government’s responsibility to enforce nondiscrimination laws and made clear that education about the transmission of HIV is crucial to fighting the stigma that many living with HIV face . . .”

USA Today: “Lawsuits over gay marriage have escalated on the nation’s two coasts, energizing advocates on both sides and bringing the legal battle over same-sex marriage closer to the U.S. Supreme Court . . . Still, resolution of the cases now in lower U.S. courts and any Supreme Court determination on same-sex marriage is far from predictable. ‘I’m still optimistic about the Supreme Court,’ says Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, which wants to preserve marriage for heterosexuals . . . ‘Many people do not understand that Proposition 8 is not just about California,’ Gallagher says. ‘This is a national case with national implications.’”

“The U.S. will subsidize a new $500-million United Nations agency that conservatives say will likely promote an abortion agenda.”

Google News (Canadian Press): “Spain’s highest court has rejected suspending a new law allowing abortion without restrictions in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy while it rules on an appeal filed by the conservative opposition.”

Rapid City Journal: “A disagreement over when church property becomes tax exempt has led to a $17,000 property tax dispute between the former First Evangelical Free Church of Rapid City and the Pennington County Equalization Department. First E Free Church, which now goes by the name Parkview Evangelical Free Church, has filed an appeal in Seventh Circuit Court of its 2009 property tax bill. And the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal fund, has taken on the case as an example of religious persecution through tax policy. The church and its defense fund-allied lawyer, Stephen Wesolick of Rapid City, said the county commission was wrong when it denied the church’s property tax abatement request on June 1. . . . ”

KOAMTV.com: “Nixon faced a Wednesday deadline to sign or veto bills . . . One would expand Missouri’s 24-hour abortion consent law by requiring clinics to give women the chance to view an ultrasound image and listen to the heartbeat of the fetus . . . ”

Yesterday, a federal appellate court decided that Kentucky judicial candidates can say what political party they are a member of and personally ask for funds for their campaign. The Court also affirmed that judicial candidates cannot constitutionally be prohibited from stating their views during their campaigns

AP: “A leading Chinese Internet regulator has vowed to reduce anonymity in China’s portion of cyberspace, calling for requirements that people use their real names when buying a mobile phone or going online, according to a human rights group.”

AP:  ”Thousands of demonstrators opposed to same-sex marriage have gathered outside Argentina’s congress ahead of a key vote by lawmakers . . . ”

AP: “Dozens of opponents and some supporters of a mosque planned near ground zero attended a raucous hearing Tuesday about whether the building where the Muslim place of worship would be created warrants designation as a city landmark and should be protected from development.”

SCOTUS Blog has this coverage yesterday’s ruling in Fox News Television, Inc. v. FCC. It includes a brief summary of the case history. The Blog also posted this analysis of the ruling yesterday.

Catholic Tide: “Go straight to: Alliance Defense Fund Demands U of Illinois Reinstate Catholic Professor ‘In relieving Dr. Howell of his teaching responsibilities, the University is firing him for teaching …” (links to more coverage of the situation)

FRC Action: “If there was ever proof that the Obama Administration has gone off the rails, it’s Amtrak. For the first time in the train service’s history, Amtrak has decided to spend a quarter-million dollars recruiting homosexual passengers. As you may know, Amtrak isn’t a private business. This is a government-run business, meaning that this $250,000 is taken directly from taxpayers’ pockets.”

Austin News KXAN.com: “Burnet County Commissioners voted in favor of changing a Marble Falls Public Library policy this afternoon that states, ‘Meetings in which a religious worship service are held are not permitted,” after the Alliance Defense Fund , a non-profit Christian organization, charged it was religiously discriminatory. The library is among 151 government entities who received a written letter from the ADF Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster last month.’Christians shouldn’t be excluded and restricted from using public meeting rooms and other facilities simply because they plan to express a Christian viewpoint,’ Oster said in a recent press release.”

Political Cortex: “Now that Alabama Senate Republican Jeff Sessions has won a weeklong delay on the final vote to confirm Soliciter General Elena Kagan as a supreme court justice, a right leaning. tea party affiliated organization called Judicial Action Group or Jag, also based in Session’s home state, is reportedly buying up commercial time for a new video ad aimed at swaying three important senate votes to ‘no on Kagan.’ . . . That said, more recently, Jauregu’s JAG has made the opposition of Kagan as a supreme court justice a priority. JAG’s website points visitors to research and analysis by Alliance Defense Fund, American United For Life, Family Research Council and the Aiken Scotus Blog . . .”

The Hill: “Democrats agreed to send the Wall Street reform conference report, an extension of unemployment benefits and legislation bolstering credit for small businesses to Obama’s desk in the next two weeks.”

The Heritage Foundation Foundry Blog:  ”The front page of USA Today claims: ‘President Obama’s attempt to use the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to help propel comprehensive energy legislation has failed.’ Don’t believe it for a second. On Monday the Obama administration reissued a ban on offshore oil drilling in the gulf after federal courts twice invalidated the first ban, calling it “arbitrary and capricious.” The new ban is, if anything, more restrictive than the first, thus guaranteeing even more job losses for the already devastated Gulf region. Meanwhile, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is set to introduce a bill . . . ”

CNA (Spanish Version): Administrators at the University of Illinois are asking a faculty committee to review the case of a professor who was fired after a student complained that his explanation of the Catholic teaching on homosexuality was “hate speech.” . . . he Alliance Defense Fund responded to the situation by sending a letter to the University of Illinois calling for Howell to be immediately reinstated. Travis Barham, litigation counsel for ADF, asserted that what is at stake is the freedom of speech. “According to decades of Supreme Court precedent, the University simply cannot relieve Dr. Howell of his teaching post based on how third parties respond to his speech,” Barham said. “For decades, the Supreme Court has consistently held that university campuses are ‘not enclaves immune from the sweep of the First Amendment.’” If the university does not respond to the letter by July 16, the legal fund said it will advise Howell to file a lawsuit.

Religion Dispatches: “Predictably, the institutional Church is unhappy, conservative media including the local Fox affiliate are all over the story, and Dr. Howell is being supported in his efforts at redress by the Alliance Defense Fund. The Fund was created in 1994 in response “to the urgent need for the legal defense and advocacy of religious freedom” by religious leaders including Bill Bright, Larry Burkett, and James Dobson, among others. “Their prime concern was the dramatic loss of religious freedom in America’s courts and the resulting challenges to people of faith to live and proclaim the Gospel.” It is a good guess that a court case is in the offing.”

Yahoo News (AP): “A government document reveals that the Obama administration is planning to cut the U.S. nuclear stockpile by up to 40 percent by 2021.”

AUL: Dr. Charmaine Yoest, President and CEO of Americans United for Life, was in Chicago on Friday to receive the prestigious Alliance Award from Alliance Defense Fund . . . ”