Daily Archives: August 25, 2010

LifeNews: “The British pro-life group SPUC is saddened to learn that the proportion of recorded teenage pregnancies which end in registered abortions has increased in Wales. More than half of teenage conceptions in Wales end in abortion, new figures show. The figures show just under 60 percent of girls under 16 who become pregnant now have an abortion and 48 percent of girls under 18 do. That’s a rise from the 50 percent and 40 percent figures from one year ago for each category.”

Guardian: “Doctors who are atheist or agnostic are twice as likely to take decisions that might shorten the life of somebody who is terminally ill as doctors who are deeply religious – and doctors with strong religious convictions are less likely even to discuss such decisions with the patient, according to Professor Clive Seale, from the centre for health sciences at Barts and the London school of medicine and dentistry.”

MinnPost: “In a bit of non-surprising news, Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota South Dakota Action Fund today swung its support to DFL [Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party] gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton.”

Equality California press release: “August 23 – Today, the California State Senate approved a joint resolution, AJR 19, calling on the U.S. Congress and President Obama to immediately repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which explicitly forbids the federal government or any federal agency from recognizing state-sanctioned marriages between same-sex couples.”

Politico: “The alleged assailant, Michael Enright, is — according to his Facebook profile and the website of the left-leaning media organization Intersections International — a student at the School of Visual Arts and a volunteer for Intersections, which recently produced a statement of support for the Park51 project and is funded by the mainstream, liberal Collegiate Church of New York.”

Junge Freiheit [modified Google translation]: “Outgoing [Minister-President of Hesse, Roland Koch]: ‘I am against such an adoption law,’ Koch said . . . [Every child has the right to have a man and woman as parents] Such an attitude does not mean that one is intolerant of same-sex couples. ‘But the sexual togetherness of man and woman,’ said Koch was . . . ‘the condition for the survival of society.’”

The Globe and Mail: “A court case examining whether Canada’s polygamy laws violate religious protection might focus on a fundamentalist Mormon sect in southeastern B.C., but it will also explore rarely discussed polygamy within North America’s Muslim community.”

Marc Ambinder writing at The Atlantic: “Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.”

Fox News: “Durbin says he’s had his differences with former President George W. Bush. But Durbin says Bush showed leadership after Sept. 11, 2001, by making it clear that the war was against terrorists who had perverted the teachings of Islam, not with Muslims.”

New York Daily News: “Huntley said she had no idea who might be making the threats. But some blame seems to be assigned in this latest mailer (which is marked ‘Shirley Huntley for New York State Senate’). It says, among other things: ‘There are forces that have invaded our community who: Have threatened Shirley Huntley, our hardworking state Senator; Have contributed more than $100,000 from outside the district to her opponent; Care about one issue only — gay marriage.’”

Jeffrey T. Kuhner writing in the World Tribune: “It is widely known that Mr. Obama is a post-national progressive. Yet he is also a cultural Muslim who is promoting an anti-American, pro-Islamic agenda. This is the real meaning of his warm — and completely needless — embrace of the Ground Zero Mosque . . . he is strangely silent about the rampant persecution of Christians and Jews in Muslim-majority nations — especially Saudi Arabia, which likely will provide the bulk of the financing for the Ground Zero Mosque, where churches and synagogues are banned.”

Reuters: “Muslim, Jewish, Christian and civic groups formed a coalition on Wednesday to back a plan for a Muslim center near the site of the World Trade Center attacks in New York that has sparked heated national debate.”

Radio Bremen [Google translation]: “The Bremen citizenship has taken another step towards equality of registered civil partnerships with marriage. In future, for example, people can in a so-called gay marriage information about the health of the partner in hospitals. This decided the vote of the citizens on Tuesday and so changed the state constitution. Except for the CDU which all factions agree on it. [Some areas are not] affected by the decision are federal law, such as [] inheritance and tax law.”

Scientific American: “[A]s more and better epidemiological data has become available, the evidence is clear: men who have sex with men (MSM), regardless of whether or not they identify as gay, also are at the core of those generalized epidemics. MSM in developing countries are 19 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population, according to a 2007 literature review . . . The recent International AIDS Conference reinforced the trend: Just 2 percent of presentations focused on gay and bisexual men, according to George Ayala, executive officer of the Global Forum.”

The Washington Post: “Sharia in Arabic means a ‘way’ or a ‘path.’ Muslims agree that sharia is God’s law, but there is little consensus on the particulars. To some, sharia is a set of rules that are codified and unchanging. To others, it’s a collection of religious principles that shift over time . . . Imam Feisal Rauf, a Sufi Muslim who is spearheading the controversial mosque center, runs something called the Sharia Index Project, which seeks to create a more progressive benchmark for measuring the ‘Islamicity’ of a state . . . Daisy Khan, Rauf’s wife, said the couple believes the word ‘sharia’ primarily refers to several broad principles called ‘maqasid shariah,’ which include the protection of life, property and religion, among others. These principles are believed to be the foundation of the faith.”

Chicago Sun-Times: “22 projects that were due to get yearly checks in September, $54 million worth, ‘will be stopped in their tracks,’ said NIH Director Francis Collins . . . ‘The American people should not be forced to pay for experiments — prohibited by federal law — that destroy human life,’ said [Steven H. Aden], the group’s senior legal counsel.”

The Hill: “Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the chief authors of the healthcare law, suggested Tuesday he did not read the entire piece of legislation . . . ‘I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the healthcare bill,’ Baucus said, according to the Flathead Beacon. ‘You know why? It’s statutory language. … We hire experts.’”

CBN News: “Today, [Kristy Childs] works to rescue other women and girls who are trapped in the commercial sex trade through her organization Veronica’s Voice. It is named for a friend of Childs who was killed on the streets.Ministries in the Kansas City area are stepping up to answer the call . . . Exodus Cry is an international anti-trafficking organization committed to ending human trafficking and modern day slavery. They are headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., and recently opened a shelter for rescued victims of human trafficking.”

Catholic News Agency: “The Council of Catholic Analysts of Mexico issued a statement yesterday rejecting same-sex ‘marriage’ and the ruling by the Supreme Court allowing gay couples to adopt children in Mexico City. The council also demanded that civil registration officials who oppose the ‘marriages’ be allowed to exercise conscientious objection.”

Michael Sandoval writing at National Review Online / Battle ’10: “Sen. Michael Bennet’s recent appearance in Greeley, Colorado is sure to set political tongues wagging–Bennet is quoted as saying that though trillions of dollars of Federal debt has been incurred through spending since he was appointed to the Senate in January of 2009, ‘we have nothing to show for it.’”

Associated Press: “Mahan and other critics of the decision plan to gather this week in Columbus, Ohio, for another Lutheran convention. Leaders of 18 former ELCA churches are expected to vote Friday to create a brand new Lutheran denomination that they claim will follow the Scriptures more faithfully: the North American Lutheran Church.”

Radio Free Europe: “The president of Tajikistan has asked parents of students attending religious schools abroad to bring their children back home, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reports . . . The president requested that students go to study religion within Tajikistan instead, because those studying abroad ‘are all becoming terrorists and extremists.’”

The Jakarta Globe: “The former editor in chief of the short-lived Indonesian edition of Playboy magazine is just one piece of paper away from starting a jail term after a 2009 Supreme Court ruling convicting him of indecency charges was revealed this week.”

New York Post: “Teachers complain that the reading selections from the Regents exam in global history and geography given last week featured glowing passages pertaining to Muslim society but much more critical essay excerpts on the subject of Christianity.”

WXII 12: “The High Point Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously recommended the approval of two zoning requests that could allow a new mosque to built in the city after a lengthy public hearing that included several testimonies of support and several in opposition to the requests.”

The Independent: “The 24-year-old claims bosses at Housing and Support Solutions Limited, in Cleethorpes, terminated her contract without reason just days after she announced her gender change decision.”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: “Said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, ‘This opinion reads more like an op-ed than a legal advisory. Cuccinelli is encouraging local governments to wade into a deeply controversial arena of the law without adequate guidance . . . It is a green light to Religious Right activists to cajole local officials into erecting sectarian displays on public property. Unless local officials are extremely careful, this is likely to lead to lawsuits.’”

The Christian Post (Compass Direct News): “In separate cases typical of how Pakistan’s blasphemy laws enable the predominantly Sunni Muslim society to terrorize lower-class Christians, the cleaning worker in Bahawalnagar district, Punjab Province was forced to leave his job and flee with his family, and the married couple in Karachi, Sindh Province are running from threats from the Muslim bride’s parents.”

The Blog of LegalTimes: “A report released today by the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration details some of the problems the IRS has in managing [tax-exempt organizations] cases, which have declined in the past three years and tend to yield low rates of conviction. In a separate report also released today, the inspector general urged the IRS to crack down on section 527 tax-exempt political organizations that don’t file timely or complete reports.”

Associated Content: “‘The American people should not be forced to pay for experiments — prohibited by federal law — that destroy human life. The court is simply enforcing an existing law passed by Congress that prevents Americans from paying another penny for needless research on human embryos,’ senior legal counsel of the group, [Steven H. Aden], said.”

Yahoo (Reuters): “A gay rights group urged the Polish government on Wednesday to withdraw a book authorized for use in secondary schools that it says portrays homosexuality as an illness that can be cured.”

Law.com: “The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed on a technicality a lower court that upheld the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct, which bars judges and candidates in judicial elections from making statements that are ‘inconsistent with the impartial performance of judicial office.’ The court dismissed the case, brought by Indiana Right to Life Inc., as unripe. The defendants were the Indiana Commission on Judicial Qualifications and the Indiana Disciplinary Commission.” Bauer v. Shephard, No. 09-2963 (7th Cir. Aug. 20, 2010)

Washington Post editorial: “But do the women of the commonwealth need additional protection? Has the state experienced a spike in abortion-related complications, including those that, as Mr. Marshall suggests, imperil future pregnancies? No, and no. State medical and health boards already provide oversight of abortion facilities and the medical personnel who perform roughly 25,000 abortions each year.” | Cuccinelli’s opinion is here: PDF / Google Viewer (Va. AG Opinion #10-067)

San Francisco Chronicle (AP): “A gay couple has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Wyoming law that defines marriage as existing only between a man and a woman . . . They are asking U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson to block Wyoming from enforcing any laws that block gays and lesbians from access to civil marriage.” | Shupe-Roderick v. Freudenthal, No. 2:2010-cv-166-F (D. Wyo. August 13, 2010)

LifeNews: “The Republican Party is predominantly pro-life and one of just a handful of pro-abortion Republicans in the U.S. Senate may have lost her bid party’s nomination for her re-election campaign. Sen Lisa Murkowski is currently losing to pro-life candidate Joe Miller, after Tuesday night’s primary.”

Asbury Park (NJ) Press: “One man’s criminal accusation that a teacher molested his young son has widened the rift in the Orthodox Jewish community over where religious rights stop and the justice system begins. Some inside the tight-knit enclave praised the child’s father for bypassing religious protocols last year and reporting the alleged attack first to Ocean County prosecutors. Others believe he committed a sin because he failed to get permission from a rabbinic court before pressing charges against a fellow Jew.”

LifeNews: “Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, is responding to a judge’s decision issuing a temporary injunction against the funding President Barack Obama mandated through his executive order . . . Before the ruling, DeGette had filed legislation intended to codify Obama’s executive order and overturn the Dickey-Wicker law preventing taxpayer funding involving the destruction of human embryos the judge used to stop Obama’s order . . . Thomas G. Hungar, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, which includes the Alliance Defense Fund and the Christian Medical Association, said [that the statute] ‘bans public funding for any research that leads to the destruction of human embryos.’”

Star-Ledger: “It appears Seton Hall University will offer a controversial course on gay marriage over the objections of Newark Archbishop John J. Myers, according to the professor scheduled to teach the class. The undergraduate seminar course — called ‘The Politics of Gay Marriage’ — is to begin Tuesday with about two dozen students, said W. King Mott, an associate professor of political science.”

Associated Press: “A survivor has told police that 72 people found dead at a ranch near the Mexican border with Texas were migrants kidnapped by an armed group, a federal official said Wednesday.”

Associated Press: “A drunken passenger riding in a New York City taxi cab attacked the driver after asking him if he was Muslim, police said Wednesday. The driver told police that when he answered yes, Michael Enright pulled out a folding hand tool, reached into the front seat and slashed him.”

Findlaw (AP): “Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered an impassioned speech at an event marking the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, saying that not allowing a proposed mosque to be built near ground zero would be ‘compromising our commitment to fighting terror with freedom.’”

Bryan Fischer writing at American Family Association / Rightly Concerned: “Our enemy is authentic Islam and our enemies are devout Muslims who actually believe in their holy scripture and are determined to follow the sacred teachings of their god. They are our enemies for the simple reason that their god commands them to kill us. Treason consists in adhering to such enemies or giving them aid and comfort. This is precisely why the mosque should not be built at Ground Zero, and why zoning commissions are well within their rights to deny permits to build any more mosques in the United States.”

The Guardian: “A record number of women are running in Afghanistan’s critical parliamentary elections next month despite many being inundated with threatening phone calls, including death threats from insurgents.”

Associated Press: “Mexico is the most dangerous country in the Americas for journalists and the violence against reporters may increase, investigators from the United Nations and the Organization of American States said Tuesday.”

“This year, the Obama administration will spend nearly $6 million to restore 63 historic and cultural sites, including mosques and minarets, in 55 nations, according to State Department documents.”

Attorneys for Wendell Loy Nielsen . . . said at a hearing Tuesday they intend to challenge the Texas bigamy laws their client is charged with violating under amended indictments.”

OC Weekly: “[T]he Ninth Circuit panel (dominated by two Democrat presidential appointees) determined that Judge Klausner had prematurely ended the suit because Stossel and ABC presented Price’s ‘statement in a misleading context, thereby changing the viewer’s understanding of the speaker’s words.’” Via Religion Clause. | Price v. Stossel, (9th Cir., Aug. 24, 2010)

The Daily News Egypt: “Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud on Monday referred the publisher of Islamic books to a State Security Court on charges of contempt of the Christian religion. Publisher Ahmed Abdallah Abo-Islam, was charged for accusing Christians of fabricating the Bible and threatening social stability and security.” Via Religion Clause.

Associated Press: “Bombers and gunmen killed 55 Iraqis in two dozen attacks spanning the country Wednesday, mostly targeting security forces in seemingly coordinated strikes the day after the number of U.S. troops fell below 50,000 for the first time since the start of the war.”

Associated Press: “With 98 percent of election day precincts counted, Murkowski trailed Joe Miller by 1,960 votes out of more than 91,000 counted. The race was too close to call, with as many as 16,000 absentee votes and an undetermined number of provisional or questioned ballots, remaining to be counted starting on Aug. 31.”

Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, writing in the Wall Street Journal: “Here are six key strategies that a Republican Congress could employ to put on the brakes . . . Defund it . . . Dismantle it . . . Delay it . . . Disapprove regulations . . . Direct oversight and investigation . . . Delegate to the states.”

Associated Press: “Fighting in Somalia’s capital flared for a third straight day Wednesday, killing eight people and pushing the week’s death toll past 80 as insurgents tried to force government troops back toward the presidential palace, officials said.”

Mike Brownfield writing at The Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “General Conway confirmed what Heritage Foundation analysts have been warning about for the last nine months, that the deadline is ‘giving our enemy sustenance.’ Conway revealed that indeed the U.S. has intercepted communication of Taliban insurgents telling each other that they only needed to hold out for so long.”

Frank Gaffney writing at Townhall: “[T]here was something pivotal about the fact that throngs of ordinary Americans – many of them family or friends of those who died on 9/11 – had come together to stand for hours in an intermittent rain not just to contest the construction of a megamosque at a wholly inappropriate location, but in informed opposition to the impetus behind that mosque: shariah.”

Marybeth Hicks writing at Townhall: “Next year’s Academy Awards program ought to have a new category: Best Portrayal of a Sperm Donor. At least, that’s the role that’s being cast with increasing — and alarming — frequency.”

Walter E. Williams writing at Townhall: “In my opinion, it takes a special form of callousness and disregard for the welfare of future generations of Americans for today’s senior citizens to fight against [Social Security] reform. Nobody’s talking about abolition of federal senior programs. We must accept that serious mistakes were made and we must take compassionate corrective action. But what the heck! As I said in my ‘What Handouts to Cut?’ column, ‘Both today’s politicians and seniors will be dead so why should they make sacrifices now to prevent an economic calamity decades off into the future?’”

Terry Jeffrey writing at Townhall: “Why has President Barack Obama on at least two occasions told specifically Muslim audiences that America is a nation of — among other things — ‘non-believers’? . . . The Census Bureau’s official Statistical Abstract of the United States says a miniscule 0.7 percent of American adults — or 1,621,000 out of 228,182,000 — are atheists.”

Pete du Pont writing in the Wall Street Journal: “If we continue the very large annual increases in federal spending that our current government has pushed–Washington is estimated to spend $30,543 per household this year, $5,000 more than two years ago–our economy will face serious decline, if not collapse . . . So America needs a different and better national economic policy.”

Wall Street Journal editorial: “In a 29-page report submitted last Friday to the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Administration offered a summary of the status of human rights in the U.S. . . . For many years, the cause of human rights has been systematically corrupted by people who cannot distinguish between the rights themselves and their own political hobbyhorses. What this report mainly accomplishes is to make the U.S government an accomplice to that corruption.” The report is available here.

2theadvocate.com: “The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals set oral arguments for Oct. 5 to consider the ACLU’s appeal of a federal district judge’s decision to allow single gender classes to continue at a Kaplan middle school.”

Yahoo (TIME): “Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway – and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements. That is the bizarre – and scary – rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants – with no need for a search warrant.”

United States v. Pineda-Moreno, 591 F.3d 1212 (9th Cir. January 11, 2010)

Yesterday, the denial of rehearing en banc was entered, with Judge Kozinksi dissenting, with four others.

LifeNews: “The new poll has Perry earning 49% support, while Democrat Bill White, a former mayor of Houston, receives 41% of the vote.”

Boston Herald: “A study by two Children’s Hospital doctors has found that Google searches on ‘abortion’ rise in areas with more conservative abortion policies or where the procedure is less available.”

Dr. Joseph J. Horton writing at The Center for Vision & Values: “While I am neither a clinical psychologist, nor a counselor, I do have some graduate training in clinical psychology. I am confident that Judge Steeh’s ruling not only harms religious freedom, it will harm counseling and ultimately harm those who seek counseling. Proponents of the decision are attacking a belief system they find particularly odious, but they are also attacking the freedom of counselors to best meet people’s needs. The issue is whether a given counselor should counsel any and every client. Historically, the answer to this question has been that counselors should not counsel every possible client . . . Ms. Ward was striving to treat homosexual clients with integrity and respect for their right of self-determination.”

The Alliance Defense Fund’s reaction to the 10th Circuit’s reversal of a district court ruling in American Atheists v. Davenport upholding roadside memorials to fallen Utah state troopers was featured on the Fox News Channel. See two different videos below. ADF News Release: ADF will appeal decision to strike down roadside memorials to fallen Utah troopers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u14RXKd5f3c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcsDVRIkXeo

The Washington Post: “Lamberth, 67, is no stranger to controversy. Tall, garrulous and proudly Texan, Lamberth commands his court with the presence and wit of a Sydney Greenstreet character cast as a heroic defender of the Alamo . . . Larry Klayman, former chairman of Judicial Watch, a conservative activist and a Clinton antagonist who accused his administration of improperly accessing FBI files in a case that Lamberth finally dismissed after more than a decade, has called the judge ‘an iconoclast who has a healthy skepticism of government power, and . . . is sensitive to the needs of the common man, a trait sometimes lacking in conservatives.’”

Reuters: “Dr. James Sherley, whose lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health has threatened to stall human embryonic stem cell research, has challenged authority before but has also been honored by the NIH itself for his work.”

New York Times: “The two researchers whose claims of injury led to a judge’s decision Monday banning all research using human embryonic stem cells have a history of disputes with colleagues as well as ethical objections to embryonic stem cell research.”

New York Times: “A few years ago, two groups of researchers . . . discovered that all they had to do was add four genes and a cell would reprogram itself back to its original state when it was a stem cell in an embryo. Like an embryonic stem cell, that reprogrammed cell seemed to be able to then turn into the many kinds of specialized cells in the body, an ability called pluripotent. What has happened since that discovery, scientists say, is that stem cell biology turned out to be more complicated than they anticipated. Besides the stem cells from embryos, there are so-called adult stem cells found in all tissues but with limited potential because they can only turn into cells from their tissue of origin. And there are these newer cells made by reprogramming mature cells. Now researchers are trying to figure out whether stem cells made by this reprogramming process really are the same as ones taken from embryos.”

Newsweek: “Embryonic-stem-cell research has provoked more controversy—political, religious, and ethical—than almost any other area of scientific inquiry . . . As yet another new chapter begins, we look back at the evolution of the field.”

BusinessWeek: “Shares of several stem-cell developers fell Tuesday following a judge’s ruling to temporarily block government rules expanding stem cell research.”

Nature News: “US stem-cell researchers are reeling from a court order handed down yesterday that puts a temporary hold on the current policy for federal funding of human embryonic stem-cell (ESC) research. Now, many are calling for legislation that would make such research unambiguously legal once and for all.”

BioWorld: “Had Congress intended to limit Dickey-Wicker to only discrete acts that result in the destruction of an embryo, like the derivation of hESCs, or to research on the embryo itself, lawmakers could have written the statute that way, but they didn’t, the judge wrote in his ruling, stating that the court was ‘bound to apply the law as it is written.’ If one step or piece of research of an hESC research project results in the destruction of an embryo, ‘the entire project is precluded from receiving federal funding by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment,’ the judge said.”

Adam Keiper & Yuval Levin writing at National Review Online: “Whichever way the matter is finally resolved in the courts, it is certainly a great improvement to be asking this question — does the research being funded involve the destruction of human embryos? — and presuming that if the answer is yes, then the research should not be funded, rather than debating whether the destruction of developing human lives is of any consequence, and whether it should be supported by taxpayer funds. Putting the question this way, and presuming the incalculable moral significance of human life, was certainly the intent of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, and should be the aim of any decent society.”

David Prentice, senior fellow for the Center for Human Life and Bioethics at the Family Research Council, writing at Aol.: “The U.S. District Court injunction that stops federal taxpayer funding of human embryonic stem cell research should make patients happy . . . The good news is that this ruling should free up more funding for adult stem cell research — which is legal, uncontroversial and already helping treat thousands of patients.”