Daily Archives: August 9, 2010

Washington Post: ine openly gay college presidents gathered in Chicago last weekend and resolved to form an organization to provide professional support to ‘out’ presidents and faculty. An account in the online journal Inside Higher Ed says 25 openly gay presidents were invited . . . ”

Baptist Press: “Crawford acknowledged Kennedy has sided with the liberal bloc on homosexuality but called it an “enormous stretch” to ask the court to reverse the marriage laws of 45 states. Only five states recognize ‘gay marriage.’”

Fox News Radio: “A group of high school students attending a conservative leadership conference in Washington, D.C. said they were ordered by a security guard to stop singing the national anthem during a June 25 visit to the Lincoln Memorial.” | Audio at link

Catholic Culture: “A Chinese bishop who left the ‘underground’ Church to join the government-backed Catholic Patriotic Association has been installed as the bishop of the Baoding diocese. To complicate matters, the ‘underground’ Church in Baoding already has a bishop, who has been imprisoned since 1997 . . . the appointment of . . . was made by the Patriotic Association without approval from the Holy See. ”

Metropolitan News-Enterprise: “The Commission on Judicial Appointments on Friday confirmed the appointment of Madera Superior Court Judge Jennifer R.S. Detjen as a justice of the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Fresno . . . ”

DFW.org: “Two groups representing thousands of attorneys nationwide are disputing claims by the American Bar Association that it speaks for the legal profession in its plans to endorse same-sex ‘marriage’ later this week. Attorneys associated with the Alliance Defense Fund and National Lawyers Association point out that about three-quarters of American lawyers don?t even belong to the ABA, and many actively work to protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”

Bluegrass Policy Institute: “School choice supporters told state lawmakers today that charter schools offer the kind of innovation that could bring true reform to Kentucky’s education system.”

Thomas More Law Center: “Although there have been 15,000 Muslim terrorist attacks around the world since 9/11, New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) had no problem displaying bus ads that promoted Muslims for peace. Yet that same governmental body refused to place an ad requested by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI) that dramatically showed the connection between the proposed Ground Zero Mosque and the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks.”

Kevin Theriot writing at Speak Up Movement: “If believing what the Word of God says about homosexual conduct is irrational, we’re just one step away from courts holding sermons articulating that belief are not protected speech at all. And if orthodox teaching on sexuality is irrational hate speech, what’s next? It’s likely to be biblical teachings such as creation, proper discipline of children, and Christ’s position as the only path to the Father.”

Doug Gibson writes at the Standard Examiner Blog: “Why do we waste all this time shopping for judges to issue opinions on gay marriage, immigration or guns, why not just send Justice Anthony Kennedy an e-mail and have him tell us how he’ll rule. . . When this case, or a similar case in Massachusetts striking down the Defense Against Marriage Act, eventually reach the Supreme Court, whatever Justice Kennedy decides will hurt the cause of gay marriage.”

Family Research Council: “Family Research Council today praised House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) for his resolution condemning Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision that declares the U.S. Constitution includes a right to same-sex ‘marriage.’”

Terence P. Jeffrey writes at CNSNews: “U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who ruled last week that a voter-approved amendment to California’s constitution that limited marriage to the union of one man and one woman violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, based that ruling in part on his finding that a child does not need and has no right to a mother. Nor, he found, does a child have a need or a right to a father.”

LifeNews: “Like Climategate, the public policy debate over hESCR has shown that scientists are not always disinterested parties . . . Rather, scientists can be every bit as political and partisan as the politicians, selectively using scientific ‘evidence’ to justify their ideological viewpoint . . . President Obama characterized his executive order lifting the Bush-era restrictions as “ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda, and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”

LifeSiteNews: “The fate of marriage in the United States will likely come down to the vote of U.S. Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, and more than one commentator has noted that Walker seems to have issued his ruling with the court’s swing vote in mind.”

LifeSiteNews: “Despite regular polls showing that about 30 percent of Italian Catholics claim to attend Sunday Mass regularly, a closer look at the numbers reveals a more uncertain future for the Italian Church, and consequently for Italy as a moral vanguard in Europe.”

Religion Dispatches: “‘Jewish Bolshevism’ will not die. At least the idea of a Jewish socialist plot to take over our American judicial system has been kept alive by some on the religious right who opposed the nomination of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. Now that Kagan has been confirmed by the Senate, and California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage has been overturned, rightist activists have achieved one of their goals: discrediting the judicial system and Democratic support for justice issues in the eyes of their base. All this is just in time for the midterm elections.”

NPR: “This summer, federal judges have once again been horning in on issues of great interest and high stakes. Gay marriage. Immigration. The health care law. The post-BP moratorium on deepwater drilling. Each of these decisions will be reviewed by federal courts of appeal and ultimately by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Christian Science Monitor: “There is, however, a constitutional context in which the views of California citizens (and citizens of every state) may be very relevant to the right to marry. It is a circumstance in which a right declared fundamental by the United States Supreme Court may be submitted to a vote. Although most observers (myself included) believe it unlikely that the Supreme Court as currently comprised would embrace Walker’s legal analysis, it is a virtual certainty that if the Court did so, there would be an attempt to ‘overturn’ its decision by constitutional amendment.”

The Queensland Times: “An Ipswich political hopeful fighting for the seat of Blair says he will fight for gay marriage to remain illegal in Australia. Family First candidate for Blair Joshua Olyslagers, who is running in his first election, said marriage as an institution between a man and woman should be preserved.”

The Inquirer: “Online Classified Ads Network Craigslist is facing a call for it to shut down its adult section from Connecticut’s attorney general after claims were made that the online service is used to advertise child sex trafficking.”

NorthJersey.com: “An anti-abortion group wants Governor Christie to drop the state’s opposition to proposed specialty license plates that bear the slogan ‘Choose life.’ The New York-based Children First Foundation has been fighting the State of New Jersey in federal court since the Motor Vehicle Commission rejected its initial plate design seven years ago.”

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/09/marriage/index.html

Medical News Today: “On Thursday, Republican Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Orrin Hatch (Utah) introduced a bill, ‘Excluding Abortion Coverage from Health Reform Act,’ that would prohibit any health insurance plan, public or private, that receives federal subsidies from covering abortion services, The Hill’s “Healthwatch‘ reports.”

ADF Attorney David French writing at Phi Beta Cons: “Evidence shows that academics have disdain for evangelicals. Evidence also shows that students at secular colleges tend to abandon both their faith and their faith practices. There is also absolutely no doubt that the campus has become quite decadent . . . I don’t know a single serious evangelical leader who believes (as the author asserts) that ‘no degree of accommodation [with academia] aside from outright mass conversion is ever going to be enough.’ In fact, I know quite a few serious Christians — including my colleagues at the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom — who have a much simpler, more modest goals, like free speech, freedom of association, and giving Christian scholars a fair chance at tenure and promotion in the academy.”

The Hill: “The House ethics committee said Monday it has charged Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) with three counts of violating House rules and the federal ethics code.”

LifeNews: “Two pro-life leaders have written a new editorial in the Washington Times designed to give encouragement to pro-life advocates who are distraught by last week’s Senate confirmation of pro-abortion activist Elena Kagan to join the pro-abortion majority on the Supreme Court. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Americans United for Life president Charmaine Yoest, are behind the new opinion column.”

The Federalist Society’s Barwatch Bulletin for Sunday, August 8, 2010: “David Boies, who served as lead counsel for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election challenge, delivered the keynote address at the Opening Assembly on Saturday. Boies is currently serving on the legal team challenging Proposition 8 in California. He discussed the case in his remarks, which addressed challenges to the rule of law . . . ‘[T]here is only one area in our society in which there continues to be not merely social discrimination, but state-sponsored, state-enforced discrimination against a group of our citizens. And last Wednesday, the federal district court here in the northern district of California took an important step in eliminating that last official discrimination against our gay and lesbian citizens.’”

The Haverhill Gazette: “A women’s health clinic that provides family planning and abortion services has relocated from Methuen to Haverhill. Already the Groveland Street practice of Dr. Marcus Gordon has attracted the attention of Operation Rescue, a protest group that also pickets at North Shore Women’s Health Center in Lynn, Gordon’s other practice.”

LifeNews: “Brazilian police have charged one of the country’s biggest soccer stars with planning the murder of 25-year-old student Eliza Samudio, his pregnant girlfriend who refused an abortion. Bruno Fernandes das Dores de Souza is the captain and goal-keeper of the Rio de Janeiro team Flamengo.”

Fox News: “In an ornate courthouse conference room full of family and special guests including five justices, Elena Kagan was sworn in Saturday as the 100th Associate Justice in Supreme Court history. Kagan, 50, did not say anything except for the words of the oath that was administered by Chief Justice John Roberts whom Kagan now supplants as the court’s youngest member . . . During the oath, Kagan placed her left hand on a Bible owned by Justice Stephen Breyer. It is the same one that he used in his ceremony in 1994 and was also used by Kagan last year when she took the oath to become Solicitor General.”

Politico: “The nation’s oldest anti-abortion group is lending its first-ever political endorsement to Colorado Senate candidate Jane Norton less than a week before the Republican primary. The president of Americans United for Life said the group chose to back Norton for her work defunding Planned Parenthood while she was lieutenant governor.”

Alliance Defense Fund: “A Christian charity said Monday it had no plans to leave Afghanistan despite the brutal murders last week of 10 members of its medical aid team, six of them Americans.”

ADF’s Weekly Update is on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q32QWZhrivg

Liberty Counsel Press Release: “Liberty Counsel filed an Amicus Brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Kathleen M. Winn. The case involves parents that challenged an Arizona school choice law that provides dollar-for-dollar tax credits to taxpayers who make contributions to independent organizations, which in turn grant scholarships to attend private schools.”

Associated Press: “In this impoverished town in central Mexico, a sinister trade has taken root: entire extended families exploit desperation and lure hundreds of unsuspecting young Mexican women to the United States to force them into prostitution.”

Associated Press: “A small Hamburg mosque once frequented by Sept. 11 attackers was shut down and searched Monday because German authorities believed the prayer house was again being used as a meeting point for Islamic radicals.”

New York Times: “There’s a class war coming to the world of government pensions. The haves are retirees who were once state or municipal workers. Their seemingly guaranteed and ever-escalating monthly pension benefits are breaking budgets nationwide.”

Eileen Norcross and Todd Sywick write at the New York Daily News: How public worker pensions are too rich for New York’s – and America’s – blood
“He did nothing illegal. At 44, Hugo Tassone retired from the Yonkers police force with an annual pension of $101,333 – thanks to overtime pay he tacked on to his $74,000 salary. Tassone told The New York Times it was the pension he could collect after 20 years of service that attracted him to the job in the first place . . . These and other sweeteners are part of the reason why the city’s annual pension payout has increased 900% since 2000.”

Nelson Lund writes at the San Francisco Chronicle: “A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that President Obama is a bigot. And not just the president. Joe Biden as well, and Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sandra Day O’Connor. And maybe you, too . . . It was a strange charge to make against the people of California. California has the most progressive domestic partnership law in the nation, which gives same-sex couples all the same substantive rights and privileges available to married couples. Why would the judge think that the only possible reason for favoring the traditional definition of marriage was bigotry? He reasoned that every other possible explanation for the voters’ decision was so ridiculous that only anti-gay feelings were left.”

Kamala Harris: “‘Attorney General Brown, Judge Walker, and I have all sworn to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States. So, if I am given the privilege to serve as California’s next Attorney General, I will not defend the anti-gay Proposition 8 in Federal court.’”

Michael C. Dorf writes at FindLaw: “In this column, after briefly summarizing the decision in Perry, I ask whether Judge Walker could or should have trimmed his ruling or rhetoric to avoid the potential consequences of Supreme Court review. I conclude that despite a couple of questionable decisions regarding the defendants’ standing, he probably was right to reach the merits. However, the Supreme Court itself has more wiggle room to duck this contentious issue.”

EducationNews.org: “‘Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,’ Gates said at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA today. ‘It will be better than any single university,’ he continued.”

Honolulu Star Advertiser: “Gov. Linda Lingle blasted the state Senate’s rejection of Katherine Leonard as chief justice of the Hawaii Supreme Court yesterday, calling the 14 lawmakers who voted against her nominee hypocritical.”

NJ.com: “Patterson, an attorney who Christie nominated to the state Supreme Court in May, has been in limbo since then, caught in the middle of a spat between Christie and Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), the state’s second most powerful elected official . . . Derek Roseman, a spokesman for state Senate Democrats, said Sweeney remains committed to leaving Wallace’s seat open for what would have been the remainder of his term.”

Eugene Volokh writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “[T]he legal issue is open and shut. The Free Exercise Clause means that the government may not discriminate against an entity because of its religious denomination. The Free Speech Clause means that the government generally may not discriminate an entity because of what it says or teaches (and that applies to discrimination against religious speakers as much as to discrimination against secular speakers). There are some exceptions to the latter principle, but none apply here.”

OneNewsNow: “A little over a year ago, I wrote a column suggesting that due to the blatant hostility the National Education Association was expressing towards Christians, it was time for Christian teachers to withdraw their membership from the NEA. As it turns out, the focus of my call to abandon this radically left lobby group was a bit too narrow. As evidenced by its own website, the NEA is not merely anti-Christian, they are anti-American as well. How else can you explain the plan that appeared on the NEA’s ‘Diversity Calendar’ instructing teachers to make October 1st a special recognition of the Communist revolution in China?”

OneNewsNow: “‘I firmly believe that Elena Kagan is a solid, liberal vote for same-sex marriage,’ [Bruce Hausknecht of Focus on the Family] states. ‘The question is perhaps what does Justice [Anthony] Kennedy think about this. Since he wrote the Lawrence v. Texas opinion, he’s provided evidence that he’s in the camp of same-sex marriage.’”

Hartford Courant / Capitol Watch: “U.S. Senate Republicans have derailed President Obama’s nomination of Hartford district judge Robert N. Chatigny to the federal appeals court . . . The nomination is opposed by Judiciary committee Republicans who say Chatigny exceeded his judicial authority when he intervened in the case of notorious, serial killer Michael B. Ross and postponed Ross’s execution.”

Voxy.co.nz: “Jews in New Zealand have won a temporary exemption from a key animal welfare requirement for livestock slaughter that animals being killed must first be stunned.” | Via Religion Clause

American Bar Association: Moderator: Marcia Coyle, Chief Washington Correspondent, National Law Journal | Speakers: Edwin Kneedler, Acting U.S. Solicitor General 2009; Gregory Garre, U.S. Solicitor General 2008-2009; Drew Days III, U.S. Solicitor General 1993-1996; Kenneth Starr, U.S. Solicitor General 1989-1993; Charles Fried, U.S. Solicitor General 1985-1989

NPR: “The U.S. Senate by a 63-37 vote on Thursday confirmed Elena Kagan as the nation’s 112th Supreme Court justice and its fourth-ever female member –- but, as predicted, with just a handful of votes from Republican senators . . . Court-watchers are already puzzling out how the potential depletion of the Democrats’ Senate majority, now at 59-41 (counting the two independents), could affect how Obama fills high court vacancies if any emerge during the last two years of his term.”

OneNewsNow: “Despite the opposition, Youngblood is sure the ‘Bible As/In History and Literature’ course will be taught in the Chino Valley district this fall. ‘The funds have been donated,’ he reports. ‘The training is going to happen for the teachers. We have four high schools, and [the Bible class] is authorized for [all] four.’”

Associated Press: “Victoryland casino closed voluntarily Monday as a court ruling loomed that could allow a raid of Alabama’s largest electronic bingo operation, the last non-Indian casino doing business in the state.”

NCPA: “For the first time in Medicare history, the Medicare Chief Actuary has called the projections in a Medicare Trustees Report ‘unreasonable’ and ‘implausible’ and encouraged everyone to ignore them and view instead an ‘Illustrative Alternative’ report, says John C. Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.”

OneNewsNow: “Judge Ewing Werlein, Jr. has thrown out a lawsuit against Houston over city council prayer. Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of Liberty Institute, represented Houston in the lawsuit filed by Kay Staley and Ray Hill, two non-believers.”

The Heritage Foundation | The Foundry: “As noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article, the new law cuts $200 billion from Medicare Advantage, a public-private ‘hybrid’ of Medicare. As a result, more than 11 million seniors will likely see their Medicare Advantage premiums rise significantly or their benefits noticeably lessened. Either way, it will violate President Obama’s promise that all who liked their current coverage would be able to keep it under Obamacare.”

Washington Times Editorial: “A homosexual judge branded 7,001,084 California voters as hateful people on Wednesday. In so doing, Vaughn R. Walker, a man never elected to his lifetime position, decided he would reshape the state to better suit his personal lifestyle preference. In striking down Proposition 8′s simple statement that, ‘Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California,’ Judge Vaughn undermined not just the political process, but society itself.”

ADF attorney Jim Campbell appeared on several TV news reports in connection with the California marriage ruling. | KTVK 3 –  MP4 3:20 mins | Fox 10 AZ – MP4 7:39 mins | ABC 15 – MP4 2:02 mins

Dallas Morning News: “[T]he debate [over birthright citizenship] could resonate in Texas, where not only 1.5 million illegal immigrants are estimated to reside but at least 60,000 babies are added to their households annually.”

ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss the implications of the White House’s emphasis on “freedom of worship” rather than “freedom of religion.” | MP3 20:52

Related:

The New American
Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra (Christian Today): ‘Freedom of Worship’ Worries
Ashley Samuelson (First Things): Why “Freedom of Worship” Is Not Enough
George Weigel (Ethics and Public Policy Center): The Erosion of Religious Freedom
Michelle Boorstein (Washington Post): Freedom of religion vs. freedom of worship

Fox News: “House Minority Leader John Boehner on Sunday said he’s open to talks on changing the U.S. Constitution — or at least the way it’s interpreted — so that U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants are not automatically U.S. citizens.”

NPR: “For many years, researchers assumed so-called ‘late-life lesbians’ were simply repressed by society until they felt comfortable coming out. But that’s not entirely the case, says Lisa Diamond, a researcher at the University of Utah who is studying whether sexuality is fluid or fixed . . . ‘It does appear to be that women’s erotic desires are pretty tightly linked to their emotional feelings,’ she tells NPR’s Guy Raz. ‘So for some of these women, they authentically did not feel attracted to women before they met one particular woman that they completely fell in love with.’”

“I am bullish on polygamy. It has a bright future. Now that The Very Reverend Vaughn Walker, High Priest of the Church of Political Correctness, has cleared the way for the creation of the oxymoronic idea of ‘homosexual marriage,’ polygamy’s life just got a whole lot easier.”

Melanie Kirkpatrick reviews The Five-Year Party by Craig Brandon at the Wall Street Journal: “If you have a child in college, or are planning to send one there soon, Craig Brandon has a message for you: Be afraid. Be very afraid. ‘The Five-Year Party’ provides the most vivid portrait of college life since Tom Wolfe’s 2004 novel, ‘I Am Charlotte Simmons.’ The difference is that it isn’t fiction. The alcohol-soaked, sex-saturated, drug-infested campuses that Mr. Brandon writes about are real. His book is a roadmap for parents on how to steer clear of the worst of them.”

Michael P. Fleischer, “Why I’m Not Hiring” [full text via Google News]: “With unemployment just under 10% and companies sitting on their cash, you would think that sooner or later job growth would take off. I think it’s going to be later—much later. Here’s why . . . When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally’s pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally’s job each year. Because my company has been conscripted by the government and forced to serve as a tax collector, we have lost control of a big chunk of our cost structure.”

Ross Douthat writing in The New York Times: “So what are gay marriage’s opponents really defending, if not some universal, biologically inevitable institution? It’s a particular vision of marriage, rooted in a particular tradition, that establishes a particular sexual ideal . . . The point of this ideal is not that other relationships have no value, or that only nuclear families can rear children successfully. Rather, it’s that lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.”

Religion | Link: “Islam’s holy month of Ramadan is expected to begin on or around Wednesday, Aug. 11. The month of fasting and abstaining by Muslims is increasingly recognized as part of America’s religious life, but this year it coincides with a bitter dispute over the construction of an Islamic center near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan.”

New York Times: “While a high-profile battle rages over a mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, heated confrontations have also broken out in communities across the country where mosques are proposed for far less hallowed locations.”

NBC Connecticut: “Muslim leaders in Connecticut are asking police to ensure that they can worship without being harassed after a group was confronted on Friday.”

The Columbus Dispatch: “Every weekend for the last four years, Dunfee and members of his ministry have stood watch over George’s joint, taking up residence in the right of way with signs, video cameras and bullhorns in hand. They videotape customers’ license plates and post them online, and they try to save the souls of anyone who comes and goes.”

Associated Press: “Ten members of a medical team, including six Americans, were shot and killed by militants as they were returning from providing eye treatment and other health care in remote villages in northern Afghanistan, a spokesman for the team said Saturday.”

Simcoe.com: “Bradford West Gwillimbury won’t get any new adult video or novelty stores or strip clubs unless town council approves.”

The Daily Bruin: “‘Essentially, in America, we respect the right for free people to make policy choices through the democratic system; in this case, defining marriage between a man and a woman,’ said Sara Tappen, litigation counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, the legal alliance that defended Proposition 8 in court.”

Fox News: “[Jordan Lorence], senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund defending the ban, told FoxNews.com earlier in the week that Walker’s decision was a ‘contradiction’ of the Constitution. He expressed confidence that those fighting to uphold the ban will ultimately prevail, calling Walker’s interpretation ‘clearly wrong.’”

San Francisco Chronicle: “Schwarzenegger raised eyebrows with his strong support for allowing gay and lesbian marriages as soon as possible . . . ‘Jumping into the case now is ‘just irresponsible,’ [Douglas Napier], a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, which took part in Prop. 8′s defense, said Friday. ‘He should have just let the judicial process take its course without sticking his nose into it.’”

On Top Mag: “The law was defended by a coalition of social conservative groups, including the Christian-based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) and Protect Marriage, the sponsor of the measure. The groups have already appealed the decision to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and asked the court to put Walker’s order on hold during the appeal process.”