Daily Archives: August 10, 2010

Catholic Culture: “In yet another shocking example of the deep-rooted cultural prejudice against female children in India, a young mother who gave birth to a second girl child was murdered by her husband.”

Boston.com (AP): “This summer, Europe’s vacationers are hitting the highways with more or less uniform plates, after 12 years of slow-as-syrup and at times impassioned debate over color schemes and the EU’s role in everyday life. Belgium finally settled a political argument over the tags in June, clearing the last major hurdle to introducing the new plates in all 27 EU nations.”

Business First: “William T. ‘Bill’ Robinson III, the member-in-charge in the Florence, Ky., office of Frost Brown Todd LLC law firm, has been elected president-elect of the American Bar Association.”

Reuters: “The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved, and President Barack Obama promptly signed into law, an election-year bill providing $26 billion to struggling states by closing tax loopholes for multinational companies and cutting food aid to the poor.”

Boston.com (AP): “Rhode Island lawmakers don’t expect to reconvene to override the governor’s veto of a proposed ballot question authorizing full-scale casino gambling, a spokesman for the House of Representatives said Tuesday.”

KTBS: “Louisiana College plans to launch a Christian-oriented law school that would be located in downtown Shreveport. The Louisiana College School of Law would open at the old federal building and courthouse on Fannin Street. Louisiana College has not said when classes would begin, but the building has to be remodeled before that can happen.”

Christian Science Monitor: “BlackBerry messenger services will continue in Saudi Arabia after the company reportedly satisfied the kingdom’s demands for data access. It is unclear exactly what Saudi Arabia requested or what BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) allowed. But it amounts to RIM caving in to Saudi Arabia and compromising the security of users’ phone data, says Robert Guerra of Freedom House.”

Direct Administration: “Roughly 540 public schools IN THE United States offer single-sex classrooms. Vermilion Parish (La.) Public School District wants to add to that number–but it won’t happen without a fight from the American Civil Liberties Union.”

Family Research Council: “When I debated the lead attorney for that case on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ last Sunday, he insisted (like Hollywood) that the kids are all right in volatile same-sex households . . . As I said Sunday, he’s just plain wrong. Not only is there research, but much of it has been confirmed by scientists in the pro-homosexual movement. In his rush to throw 40 years of analysis under the bus because it didn’t suit his personal agenda, Judge Walker launched a full-scale assault on the international research community.”

CNSNews: “The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) on Tuesday called on the U.S. State Department to remove Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf from a taxpayer-funded trip to Muslim countries, citing his controversial views about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

AP: “The State Department says it’s sending the imam behind controversial plans for a mosque near the site of the 9/11 attacks on a religious outreach trip to the Middle East.”

ABA: “David Boies challenged America’s lawyers to ‘bring the rule of law to its full fruition here in this country … to fulfill the goals and lofty rhetoric of our founding fathers,’ as the keynote speaker at the Opening Assembly of the 2010 ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco . . . All lawyers must stand up for the independence of judges, resisting threats to their safety when they make unpopular decisions, said Boies, noting that there already have been threats to harm the judge who ruled in the Proposition 8 litigation.”

ABA: “During Monday’s meeting of the policy-making House of Delegates, the association honored Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with its highest recognition, the ABA Medal.”

“The country’s largest lawyers’ group has backed a resolution calling on all state legislatures to let same-sex couples get married.”

AP: “Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that all 31 states must recognize same-sex marriages performed in the capital, though its decision does not force those states to begin marrying gay couples in their territory.”

Johann Hari writing at The Huffington Post: “For centuries, religion was insulated from criticism in Britain. First its opponents were burned, then jailed, then shunned. But once there was a free marketplace of ideas, once people could finally hear both the religious arguments and the rationalist criticisms of them, the religious lost the British people. Their case was too weak, their opposition to divorce and abortion and gay people too cruel, their evidence for their claims non-existent. Once they had to rely on persuasion rather than intimidation, the story of British Christianity came to an end.”

The Week collects responses to Ross Douthat’s NYT column, “The Marriage Ideal.”

PR Newswire: “‘Elena Kagan will emerge as one of the Supreme Court’s most agenda-driven, reliably pro-abortion Justices. It is deeply troubling that the Senate voted to confirm Ms. Kagan without fully investigating her role in manipulating medical evidence during the partial-birth abortion debate in 1996-97. The American people want fair and impartial judges, and Justice Kagan’s negative impact will be felt for decades to come.’ – Dr. Charmaine Yoest, President & CEO of Americans United for Life Action”

LifeNews: “The local San Francisco, California affiliate of Planned Parenthood where teenager Holly Patterson died from using the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug has lost its affiliation with the national abortion business. The decision is not related to Patterson’s death but is said to be because of management problems.”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Tea party groups and other conservatives on Monday asked the state Supreme Court to strike down new political disclosure requirements, marking the third time the state has been sued over the issue since the rules went into effect Aug. 1. The new rules require groups that praise or criticize political candidates before an election to disclose where they get their money and how they spend it.”

” . . . there are multiple reasons for conservatives to think carefully before digging in their heels against gay marriage.”

Ross Douthat writing at his New York Times blog: “So if Anthony Kennedy follows Walker and finds that the traditional legal understanding of marriage is unconstitutional — and, by extension, that it’s irrational and bigoted to think otherwise — it’s just naive to say that this won’t have a ripple effect in the culture as a whole. The space for arguing for the distinctiveness of lifelong heterosexual monogamy will shrink, and the stigma attached to such arguments will grow. Old-fashioned beliefs about marriage will be regarded more and more like old-fashioned beliefs about race. And as with the stigma against racism, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to define where the legal regime ends and the cultural norm begins.”

The Advocate: “New York City council speaker Christine Quinn said she wants to hear New York state senate majority leader John Sampson commit to bring the marriage equality bill to the floor for another vote as quickly as possible.”

Cal Thomas writing in the Salt Lake Tribune: “The decision by a single, openly gay federal judge to strike down the will of 7 million Californians, tradition dating back millennia (not to mention biblical commands, which the judge decided, in his capacity as a false god, to also invalidate) is judicial vigilantism equal to Roe v. Wade.”

The Christian Post: “Tarek Fatah and Raheel Raza of the Muslim Canadian Congress say the proposed mosque and Islamic community center two blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks are undoubtedly an act of ‘fitna,’ or ‘mischief-making,’ which is forbidden in the Koran . . . The two Muslims point out that New York currently has at least 30 mosques and thus there isn’t a pressing need to find space for worshippers.”

ADF attorney Jordan Lorence appeared on All Sides with Ann Fisher to discuss the Proposition 8 ruling. | MP3 14:24 mins

The Christian Post: “Leaders of a church in West Java, Indonesia, demanded justice from police after a fifth attack from Muslim protesters left at least a dozen people injured Sunday.”

The Guardian: “An 18-year-old Iranian is facing imminent execution on charges of homosexuality, even though he has no legal representation. Ebrahim Hamidi, who is not gay, was sentenced to death for lavat, or sodomy, on the basis of ‘judge’s knowledge’, a legal loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where there is no conclusive evidence.”

The Christian Institute: “A teacher and former Tory candidate who said homosexuality is not the norm and Christians shouldn’t be penalised for their views has been given a written warning by his employer. Philip Lardner, who was dumped by David Cameron because of his opinions, intends to appeal against the warning for the sake of other teachers.”

The Christian Institute: “One of Britain’s leading abortion providers is offering its employees free abortions as part of a highly controversial benefits package. The free abortions, which are also available to employees’ partners and children, are part of the benefits package offered by Marie Stopes International (MSI).”

The Christian Institute: “A prominent Christian charity is set to receive £5 million in Government funds, which will be the largest public grant allocated to a church group in recent years. The Tablet, a Roman Catholic newspaper, has revealed that the Church of England’s Church Urban Fund is expected to receive the money later this year.”

The Christian Institute: “The Liberal Democrats will use their first party conference in Government to push a vote to make full ‘same-sex marriage’ official party policy. The motion also calls for the law to allow heterosexual couples to remain married if a transsexual spouse legally changes their sex by gaining a gender recognition certificate.”

The Christian Institute: “Civil partnership legislation in Ireland is just a stepping stone to the Green Party’s real goal of full ‘homosexual marriage’, admitted John Gormley, the Minister for the Environment . . . Mr Gormley, the leader of the Green Party, told attendees at its Party for Partnership event that he welcomed the passing of the Bill but added ‘tomorrow we continue the fight towards the final goal of full marriage equality’.”

The Christian Institute: “A Scottish GP who prescribed sleeping pills to an elderly patient so that she could kill herself has controversially been declared fit to practice by a medical watchdog.”

Associated Press: “New York Gov. David Paterson is offering state help if the developers of a proposed mosque near ground zero agree to move the project farther from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks.”

Patheos: “A rapidly evolving tradition with deep historical roots, evangelicalism confronts abundant opportunities and abundant challenges. How will current movements within the church shape the face of American Christianity in the next ten years? What is the best way to influence culture while retaining the distinctive qualities of evangelical faith? How should evangelicals relate to other Christian traditions, and even non-Christian ones? How ought evangelicals to engage in politics? And how are evangelical ministries responding to the swiftly changing circumstances of life in the twenty-first century? Patheos has assembled an extraordinary collection of essays addressing these questions. The essays are organized according to the themes listed below, and will be released on the Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays of the next two weeks.”

Hawaii News Now: “Judge Katherine Leonard’s rejection for Chief Justice by the state Senate may be the catalyst for change at the Hawaii State Bar Association. ‘What’s under consideration now is that the HSBA, the state Bar, will provide some brief explanation of what led to the qualified or unqualified vote,’ HSBA president Hugh Jones said.”

Associated Press: “An Associated Press-Univision poll finds that younger Latinos, as well as those who speak more English than Spanish, are much less likely to identify as Catholics than older Hispanics who mostly speak Spanish. The poll of 1,500 Latino adults also found significant divisions on social issues such as same-sex unions and abortion, along lines of age, language and whether one is Catholic or Protestant.”

Family Security Matters: “Zaytuna College, which has attracted applications from Muslims throughout the world and substantial financial support from Saudi Arabia, is located in Berkley, California. With the motto ‘Where Islam Meets America,’ Zaytuna upholds the goal of cultivating Islamic scholars. What kind of Islamic scholars? The examples have been set by the three Islamic radicals, who serve as founders of the college.”

AFP: “The Islamic Movement accused the municipality of destroying more than 200 Muslim graves that had been recently renovated in a centuries-old cemetery in mostly Jewish west Jerusalem.”

Fox News: “As the Muslim population grows and their communities spread throughout the state, religious leaders say their places of worship must do the same, spurring the construction of mosques and the massive Islamic centers that host them in several Tennessee cities, including Murfreesboro, Memphis and Antioch. But the physical size of these Islamic centers – and the associations and writings of some of the leaders behind them – are raising some concerns nationwide.”

Alison Lake, convert from Catholicism to Islam, writing at The Washington Post / On Faith: “This is a difficult time to be a convert to Islam. We all know how 9/11 changed the political and social landscape in America, and brought Muslims to the forefront of media coverage. Unfortunately one brand of Islam has been portrayed the most: a brand that does not adhere to the religion’s true tenets. Murder, torture, suicide bombings, plane hijackings, child brides, honor killings, and subjugation of women are not Quranic teachings. They are cultural distortions of Islam. When religion and culture intertwine, they can become mutually indistinguishable and sometimes reinforce harmful practices.”

Frank Gaffney writing at Townhall: “Americans across this country are struggling to understand the true nature of the threat we face from Shariah. They are entitled to straight talk about the extent to which it is being insinuated, promoted and legitimated not only in mosques but by financial institutions, banks, academic institutions and government agencies. Those who fail to provide such unvarnished truths are part of the problem, and should be treated accordingly.”

Pat Buchanan writing at Townhall: “If the Walker decision is upheld by the Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court, homosexual marriage will be imposed on a nation where, in 31 out of 31 state referenda, the people have rejected it as an absurdity. This is not just judicial activism. This is judicial tyranny. This is a perversion of what the authors of the Constitution wrote and what the states approved. Through such anti-democratic means, the left has imposed a social and moral revolution on America with only the feeblest of protests from the people or their elected leaders.”

The Star-Ledger: “[T]he South Brunswick Board of Education has approved school closings in the 2010-11 school year for two Islamic holy days . . . About 10 of the nearly 600 school districts in New Jersey acknowledge Muslim holy days as official school holidays, according to the New Jersey School Board’s Association.”

ADF attorney Erik Stanley appeared on Yes FM Radio to discuss Pulpit Freedom Sunday. | MP3 8:38 mins

LifeNews: “A new analysis from the Gallup polling organization provides more good news for pro-life advocates heading into the 2010 elections. Its review of presidential approval ratings just before midterm congressional elections finds presidents like Barack Obama with lower ratings see their party lose seats. If that is any indication of the potential November results this year, the pro-life movement can expect to see a slew of pro-abortion members of the House and Senate lose their seats.”

LifeNews: “Students for Life of America has discovered that the North Carolina Board of Governors will require all students enrolled in a University of North Carolina public institution, starting with the 2010-2011 school year, to have health insurance.”

Investment News: “For years, wealthy retirees from high-tax states in the Northeast and Midwest have been streaming to sunny, low-tax Florida. That stream is now turning into a flood . . . ‘We have this impending tax increase, and people are trying to look for ways to hide from that, but they’re not seeing many from the federal perspective. One of the ways they’re looking to do it is changing their state income tax rate,’ Mr. Rosica said.”

Townhall: “I’m sorry, there’s no such thing as gay ‘marriage’ — as distinguished from gay ‘relationships’ — because marriage as understood by the whole of humanity for the whole of human time, normally under religious auspices, exists for purposes no gay relationship can satisfy . . . One is the blending of the relationship between the only two human types there are — male and female . . . A second, genuinely urgent thing that marriage does — and no gay relationship possibly can — is project the human race into the future.”

San Francisco Chronicle: “U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lamented the partisan stalemate over judicial appointments Monday, telling a legal convention in San Francisco that the Senate should re-establish the cooperative spirit that attended her own confirmation 17 years ago.”

Family Research Council: “Family Research Council President Tony Perkins will participate in a news conference call today at 11 AM ET to discuss the release of a new survey by the Center for Military Readiness gauging the opinions of likely voters on the Defense Authorization bill’s amendments forcing open homosexuality on the military and turning military hospitals into abortion facilities.” [The call includes Daniel Blomberg, Litigation Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund]

Religion Clause: “After a lawsuit was filed on Friday, the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority agreed to permit a banner ad on its buses, sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative opposing the proposed mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero. (Press release from David Yerushalmi law firm). The ad (photo) reads “Why There?”, and equates the ‘WTC Jihad Attack’ with ‘WTC Mega Mosque’.”

Zawya: “Morocco will shut more than 1,000 unsafe mosques in a bid to avoid a repeat of a minaret collapse in February that killed 41 people, the ministry of religious affairs said Tuesday.”

The Press-Enterprise: “Differences in religious belief and biblical interpretation have led a Corona Christian school to dismiss four teachers and seven other employees . . . Most of the fired employees belong to the Catholic Church, which has key teachings that conflict with those of the conservative evangelical Crossroads Christian Schools and the adjacent Crossroads Christian Church, which with about 8,000 members is among the Inland area’s largest churches.”

Associated Press: “Two Malaysian Muslims testified in court Tuesday to deny charges that they torched a Christian church in an incident that set off a string of assaults on places of worship early this year.”

Associated Press: “Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet battled for his job Tuesday in a Colorado primary against Andrew Romanoff, a former state House speaker whose grass-roots campaign and embrace of the nation’s anti-establishment mood has him within striking distance of an upset.”

CNSNews: “‘America’s founders opened public meetings with prayer, and public officials today should be able to do the same,’ Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) senior legal counsel Brett Harvey said in a statement on Friday. ‘We were happy to assist the city of Woodruff with a prayer policy that can be followed with confidence.’” | ADF News Release

Aiken Standard: “The Aiken City Municipal Building echoed with a united ‘amen’ from hundreds of residents Monday night during a prayer rally . . . Jay Thompson, an allied attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a national group that advocates religious freedom, said that he was not aware of any law passed by the U.S. Supreme Court that stated that one could not specify a public prayer to a single religion.”

OneNewsNow: “The Rochester suburb has continued prayer — legally. But Oster believes Greece is an example of how to handle a situation if atheist organizations threaten a lawsuit. ‘This town did everything perfectly and they were respecting the Constitution,’ he comments. ‘And they were also respecting the heritage we have here in America of opening up legislative bodies and legislative sessions with prayer.’”

OneNewsNow: “The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to decide a child custody battle that has an unusual twist. Alliance Defense Fund (ADF)-allied attorney David Dye tells OneNewsNow the fight over the child developed after ‘a mom and a dad had a baby [and] subsequently divorced. Both parties got remarried, and then unfortunately mom died. But even more unfortunately, mom’s new husband was given custody of their child.’”

OneNewsNow: “Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney [Doug Napier] explains why his firm and the National Lawyers Association are asking the bar to get back to the basics as a legal organization, rather than a political one. ‘Well, once again the American Bar Association is purporting to represent American lawyers, when in fact they only represent about a quarter of American lawyers,’ Napier explains. ‘But they’re launching into the political arena with a proposal to push same-sex “marriage” in all of the states in which the American Bar Association has lawyers.’”

LifeNews: “[Jeff Shafer], senior legal director of the Alliance Defense Fund, a pro-life legal group that helped the Children First Foundation, responded to the news. ‘The government should not be singling out a pro-adoption group for censorship. Censoring the ‘Choose Life’ logo on New Jersey license plates is a textbook case of viewpoint discrimination, which blatantly defies the First Amendment,’ he said. ‘We are pleased that the appellate court has reinstated this lawsuit and look forward to the full vindication of the foundation’s free speech rights.’”

LifeSiteNews: “Couples from countries that ban sex-selective in-vitro fertilization (IVF) have found a haven in clinics in the United States, where the practice is far less regulated.”

Carson Holloway writes at Public Discourse: “Attempts to promote judicial restraint have failed to rein in a judiciary run amok. Is it time to consider more drastic measures?”

Joint Press Release from the Bioethics Defense Fund and Louisiana Right to Life on Court Challenge to Louisiana Ultrasound Before Abortion Act Contact: Dorinda Bordlee, Bioethics Defense Fund, 504-231-7234, dbordlee@bdfund.org Benjamin Clapper, Louisiana Right to Life, 504-228-4273, bclapper@prolifelouisiana.org August 9, …

SCOTUS Blog reports that the SCOTUS Wiki has been updated to add various documents including filings in Winn v. Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization.

California Family Council: “If nothing else, the decision has aroused the sleeping public with a new awareness of judicial activism – at a time when Californians are already reacting to the excesses of government, and nationwide a movement has begun to reassert “the people” into a government that seems to have forgotten its power is derived from the people. Read selected quotes from the Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision compiled by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).”