Daily Archives: September 24, 2010

Star-Tribune: “Wyoming and nine other states will file a legal brief today saying a federal court ‘exceeded its judicial authority’ when it ruled that the U.S. Constitution requires legal marriage to include same-sex couples. In the amicus brief, which will be filed late this afternoon in the case of Perry vs. Schwarzenegger, the states disagree with the court’s ruling that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right.”

CBC News: “An Australian-based organization that promotes assisted suicide is considering legal action after Canadian regulators refused to allow one of its advertisements to be broadcast in Canada.”

Sacramento Bee / Capitol Alert: “Equality California, the state’s leading gay-rights advocacy group, is targeting Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and GOP attorney general nominee Steve Cooley with new ads on Proposition 8.”

SeaCoastOnline: “Portsmouth-Newington state Rep. Jim Splaine said an effort in the Legislature next session to repeal the state’s gay marriage bill is afoot, with three bills already filed.”

The Olympian: “In a unanimous ruling issued this morning, the Washington state Supreme Court denied a challenge to the state ban on Internet gambling. Two lower state courts came to the same conclusion . . . Justice Richard Sanders wrote the 9-0 opinion which is posted here. Seattle lawyer Lee Rousso, who the court said had played poker online, ad challenged the state law on grounds it violated a part of the federal commerce clause governing interstate business.”

OneNewsNow: “A California city voted 4-0 this week in favor of displaying the national motto in its city hall. With the help of Mayor Bill Kruger, Chino Hills will proudly display the words “In God We Trust” on a wall behind the council dais. The aluminum lettering will soon be on display in the octagonal room that seats about 100 people, so an audience facing council members will be able to see the motto. Kruger says this is something he has wanted to do for a long time.”

The Detroit News: “The Freedom From Religion foundation is going after two more local communities for using prayers during public meetings. The group announced today that it recently sent the cities of Dearborn and Troy asking city officials to stop including prayers during city council meetings.”

LifeSiteNews: “Erroneous reports of closed abortion clinics in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, have threatened to derail the 40 Days for Life effort in that city, with some pro-lifers being led to believe that there is no functioning abortion facility to protest against.”

“Judge Ronald Leighton ruled that Witt’s constitutional protections, and evidence that her unit did not suffer any loss of morale until she was discharged for being a lesbian, trump the general reasons set down by Congress for that policy.”

Associated Press: “The Texas State Board of Education adopted a resolution Friday that seeks to curtail references to Islam in Texas textbooks, as social conservative board members warned of what they describe as a creeping Middle Eastern influence in the nation’s publishing industry.”

PressDemocrat.com: “Public charter schools in California are skirting the worst impact of the state’s budget crisis, even as traditional public schools shorten the school year, increase class sizes and lay off teachers and staff by the thousands.”

IndyStar.com: “Hoosiers can buy specialty license plates supporting breast cancer awareness, juvenile diabetes research and Special Olympics. Now a group that serves gay teens is asking a federal judge to force the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to grant it a special plate.”

The Arizona Republic: “La Casa de Cristo Lutheran Church, one of northeast Phoenix’s largest churches and one of the state’s largest Lutheran congregations, is pulling out of its denomination because the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s policy allowing congregations to hire gay and lesbian ministers who are in committed relationships.”

Christianity Today: “Christian Solidarity Worldwide has called upon the Indonesian Government to safeguard religious freedom and pluralism in the wake of attacks on Christians and Ahmadiyya Muslims in the country.”

Christian Post: “New figures from the Office for National Statistics has found that most British people still consider themselves to be Christian. The number of homosexuals, meanwhile, is far lower than previously estimated. According to the office, 71 percent of the population is Christian. The statistic was welcomed by the Evangelical Alliance, which claims to have bolstered the cause for believers to become more open in expressing their faith.”

BioEdge: “The recent cliffhanger Australian Federal election returned a Labor government led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, but in coalition with the Greens. With the balance of power firmly in their hands, Greens leader Senator Bob Brown has demanded that a vote on euthanasia become a top priority for the new government.”

BioEdge: “France has become the first country to ban the controversial Our Body exhibits, which displays plastinated corpses stripped of their skin in grotesque poses.
The Cour de Cassion, the nation’s highest judicial authority, has ruled that ‘the exposure of corpses for commercial purposes’ violates the Civil Code, which states that ‘the remains of deceased persons should be treated with respect, dignity and decency.’”

World Bulletin: “Turkish State Minister Faruk Celik met with German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere in Ankara on Friday . . . Celik said that they welcomed the initiatives to establish Islamic theology departments in universities in Germany.”

WRAL: “The EEOC had charged that T.A. Loving Co. discriminated against three men by firing them for refusing to work on Saturdays, which is their Sabbath as members of the Seventh-Day Adventist faith.”

AFP: “Over 5,000 Bulgarians demonstrated Friday in Sofia to demand that religious instruction in this majority Orthodox country become compulsory in schools, police said Friday.”

Daily Comet: “A Christian rally open to the public will go ahead at Fort Bragg on Saturday, leaders at the post say, despite objections from national groups who say it’s a violation of the separation between church and state.” Related: Army must cancel evangelistic event at Fort Bragg, says Americans United

The Washington Post / The Checkup: “Teenagers who have abortions do not appear to be at increased risk for depression or low self-esteem, according to the first nationally representative study to examine the issue.”

The Bay Citizen: “The Commission held hearings at which some 100 members of the local community testified. Many said that Muslims are under a constant state of surveillance in the Bay Area. The hearings were prompted in part by Police Chief George Gascon’s plan to resume an intelligence-gathering operation that was halted under pressure from civil liberties groups in 1993. Those who attended also raised concerns about the police department’s continued collaboration with federal authorities.”

WTKR (AP): “The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against Lawrence Transportation Systems on behalf of Christopher Woodson, who grows his hair as a Rastafarian religious expression.”

The Boston Globe: “Harvard University, which expelled ROTC four decades ago, will welcome the military training program back to campus only when the ban on openly gay and lesbian service members is repealed, the university’s president said yesterday.”

AFP: “A senior Coptic bishop has caused a furore in Egypt by suggesting that some verses in the Koran, the Muslim holy book, were inserted at a date after it was first set down, press reports said on Friday.”

Telegraph: “Sacred Heart primary in Blackburn could become the first Catholic school in Britain to be converted into an Islamic faith school following a dramatic change in the pupil population. More than nine-in-10 of the school’s pupils were Catholic a decade ago but that number plummeted to just three per cent this year.”

Paul Williams, writing at Family Security Matters: “Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germans have failed to grasp how Muslim immigration has transformed their country and will have to come to terms with more mosques than churches throughout the countryside, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily. ‘Our country is going to carry on changing, and integration is also a task for the society taking up the task of dealing with immigrants,’ Ms. Merkel told the daily newspaper. ‘For years we’ve been deceiving ourselves about this. Mosques, for example, are going to be a more prominent part of our cities than they were before.’”

Washington Post: “Even as the NAACP engages in a tense debate over same-sex marriage, the group’s leaders have begun reaching out more forcefully to gay rights groups. The outreach has been steered by former chairman Julian Bond and the group’s president, Benjamin Jealous. Both men are supporters of same-sex marriage rights, though the NAACP’s national board has taken no stance on the issue.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina assured students at his alma mater on Wednesday that the gay ban will be struck down soon. ‘We’re going to get that done this year,

“This misperception [about how DADT is enforced] is largely because this debate has focused on sexual identity – a complex and often nebulous concept – when the military is largely looking to govern sexual conduct.”

The Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “The Department of Education (DOE) has proposed new rules for accrediting colleges and universities, including expanding the power of states to authorize higher education institutions, definitions of what constitutes a ‘credit hour,’ and de facto price controls through measures to ensure graduates’ ‘gainful employment.’ According to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, the new rules will mark a substantial shift in the accrediting process.

ADF attorney Doug Napier appeared on Family Policy Matters with Bill Brooks to discuss the Proposition 8 litigation. | MP3 audio 14:17 mins

ADF attorney Jim Campbell appeared on Moody Radio, “In the Market” with Janet Parshall to discuss the California marriage litigation. | MP3 audio 14:54 mins

Brent Bozell writing at Townhall: “The sexual revolution always seems to have another frontier . . . HBO started the normalization of polygamy with its drama ‘Big Love,’ but TLC is openly pushing for the walls of judgment to come falling down. Its slogan for the show is ‘Rethink love. Rethink marriage. Rethink family reality’ . . . This isn’t the only TLC show to promote the ‘poly’ — yup, the hip new word — lifestyle. They also aired a series this summer called ‘Strange Sex,’ which also had a plot about ‘polyamory,’ which is described as ‘consensual, responsible non-monogamy.’ TLC started as the Learning Channel; it’s fast becoming the Libertine Channel.”

Pat Buchanan writing at Townhall: “If you would understand why America has lost the dynamism she had in the 1950s and 1960s, consider the new Paycheck Fairness Act passed by the House 256 to 162. The need for such a law, writes Valerie Jarrett, the ranking woman in Barack Obama’s White House, is that ‘working women are still paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man’ . . . The assumption of the Jarrett-backed law is that the sexes are equal in capacity, aptitude, drive and interest, and if there is a disparity in pay, only bigotry can explain it.”

Linda Greenhouse writing at The New York Times / Opinionator: “So consider this column a standing alert: recent developments of potentially great consequence are pushing the question of standing to the forefront in a way that promises to make it one of the hot legal topics of the coming months or even years. Litigation over health care and stem cell research is scrambling the usual playlist. Conservative federal judges, who typically take a constricted view of eligibility to bring a federal lawsuit, are suddenly throwing the courthouse doors open wide.”

Eugene Volokh writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “James E. Graves, Jr., a Mississippi Supreme Court Justice, has been nominated to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit . . . In 2004, Justice Graves took the view that a judge was not constitutionally protected against being disciplined for saying . . .  that ‘gays and lesbians should be put in some type of mental institute’ . . . But in 2009, Justice Graves took the view that a judge was indeed constitutionally protected against being disciplined for saying . . .  that ‘White folks don’t praise you unless you’re a damn fool,’ and ‘If you have your own mind and know what you’re doing, they [white folks] don’t want you around.’”

Associated Press: “Hoping to reverse a ‘brain drain,’ the government and companies are scouring the globe for talent. Job fairs like the one Qiu attended – at the posh Prince Hotel in central Tokyo – are one of their tools, with dozens being organized around the world.”

Islamist Watch: “Does the First Amendment protect Christians who bring their message to Muslims at public events or in front of mosques? This is a good question, given the trend of missionaries being placed under arrest while proselytizing to followers of Islam — right here in the United States . . . At the core of all three cases is the principle that government or entities acting on its behalf cannot muzzle unpopular speech.”

The Hill: “Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said he spoke loudly Wednesday during a closed door meeting of Senate Republicans in favor of booting Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) from her spot as the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.”

Thomas F. Farr writing at Public Discourse: “Wahhabi teachings have been present in American mosques for decades (they were exported here by our Saudi friends and allies). And yet, American Muslims have seemed relatively immune, certainly in comparison to their counterparts in Western Europe, who have been far more easily radicalized . . . It seems to me that religious freedom remains a vital and highly effective bulwark against the radicalization of American Muslims. Indeed, U.S. foreign policy should be far more interested in advancing religious freedom abroad—especially in the lands of Islam—and American conservatives should be far more assiduous in supporting such a policy.”

Erin Miller writing at SCOTUSblog: “Journalist Linda Greenhouse and law professor Reva Siegel recently teamed up to publish Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling. The book is a compilation of original materials from the political dialogue about abortion leading up to the famous 1973 ruling. The co-authors kindly agreed to answer my questions (below) about their book.”

Christianity Today: “Alliance Defense Fund president [Alan Sears] lamented New York City’s designation of September 15 as American Civil Liberties Union Day. ‘[The ACLU] is leading America back to many of the totalitarian tyrannies we founded this nation to escape,’ he said. ‘Hardly a reason to celebrate, in New York or anywhere else. But it’s abundant reason to pray for those who lead this terrible organization—and for all the souls they are helping to lead astray.’”

CBN News: “At least 100 church pastors will defy the Internal Revenue Service by endorsing political candidates for the Nov. 2 elections from their pulpits this weekend during Pulpit Freedom Sunday . . . ‘The IRS should not be used as a political tool to advance the agenda of radical groups bent on silencing the voice of the church and inhibiting religious freedom,’ [Erik Stanley], a senior counsel for the ADF told WorldNetDaily.”

OneNewsNow: “A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a California college student who claims a professor violated his free-speech rights when he stopped him from finishing his speech defining marriage as between one man and one woman . . . ‘Jonathan went through all of this; [he] experienced all these deprivations of his First Amendment right to speak freely when given the opportunity to do so, yet the Ninth Circuit is saying he can’t challenge the policies under which the college acted to suppress his speech,’ laments Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney [David Hacker].”

The Tennessean: “On Sunday, a group of Tennessee preachers will step into the pulpit and say the only words they’re forbidden by law from speaking in a church . . . ‘We’re not trying to get politics in the pulpit. We’re trying to get (government) out of the pulpit,’ said [Erik Stanley], spokesman for the Alliance Defense Fund . . .”

Lisa De Pasquale interviews Dr. Mike Adams at Human Events. Excerpt from her introduction: “Adams has paid a price for being an outspoken conservative. With the help of the Alliance Defense Fund he is appealing a judge’s decision to dismiss his 2007 suit against UNC-Wilmington. ADF stated, ‘The suit contends the university denied Adams a promotion because his nationally syndicated opinion columns espoused religious and political views out of step with the opinions of university officials.’”

WorldNetDaily: “At least 100, and perhaps as many as several hundred, Christian pastors on Sunday will speak out on biblical issues and the political candidates on the November election ballot in direct violation of Internal Revenue Service regulations . . . ‘The IRS should not be used as a political tool to advance the agenda of radical groups bent on silencing the voice of the church and inhibiting religious freedom,’ [Erik Stanley], also a senior counsel for the ADF, said. ‘It is ironic that a group with a name like “Americans United for Separation of Church and State” continues to exploit a scheme of massive government monitoring and surveillance of churches.’”

Everyday Christian: “Earlier this week on a conference call, President Obama and his top healthcare officials charged religious leaders across America with spreading a new kind of gospel – the good news of nationalized healthcare . . . Ironically, or perhaps not, this Sunday September 26 marks the Alliance Defense Fund’s third annual ‘Pulpit Freedom Sunday,’ during which 100 pastors nationwide will exercise their right to free religious expression.” (ADF attorney Erik Stanley is quoted in the article)

K. Hollyn Hollman, General counsel, Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, writing at The Huffington Post: “Each year the issue grabs a larger spotlight partly because of a campaign, coordinated by a consortium of attorneys known as the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), to get pulpit endorsements and provoke a fight with the IRS . . . Factually, the campaign rests on a false premise. ADF greatly exaggerates the impact of the current rule, claiming ministers are muzzled . . . Legally, the campaign relies on a flawed theory that is unlikely to succeed. Despite claims to the contrary, tax exemption is not a constitutional right but a reasonable regulation . . . Historically, the campaign incorrectly frames the issue as one of regulatory overreach . . . Ethically, the campaign raises a number of concerns. Should pastors be writing sermons with a purpose of provoking a legal challenge? . . . Practically, the campaign urges unwanted change . . . With all these problems and an asserted interest in promoting religious freedom, it seems a consortium of Christian lawyers could find a greater cause to serve . . . ”

Dakota Voice: “‘Pastors and churches shouldn’t live in fear of being punished or penalized by the government—in this case, the IRS,’ said ADF Senior Legal Counsel [Erik Stanley]. ‘ADF is not trying to get politics into the pulpit; we want to get government out of the pulpit. Churches should be allowed to decide for themselves what they want to talk about. The IRS should not be the one making the decision by threatening to revoke a church’s tax-exempt status.’”

ADF Attorney Joel Oster writing at Speak Up Movement / Church: “So let me see if I can understand the left’s agenda. Holding a secular graduation ceremony in a comfortable church auditorium is unconstitutional because of the mere fact the students have to physically be in a church building. But taking public school kids to a mosque, teaching them about Islam, telling them they have to obey Allah, and then leading the boys in a prayer service is just ‘learning about a culture?’ Talk about a double standard.”

NECN (AP): “ADF Senior Counsel [Kevin Theriot] says participating pastors hope to provoke a court case so they can have the regulation overturned.”

ChristianNewsWire: “Advocates International (AI), part of the public interest legal team along with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (GD&C) who brought the case before the court more than a year ago, joined even the government’s opposition and filed their clients’ opposition to the University of California Regents’ untimely and insufficient motion to intervene in a desperate effort to try to protect their patently pecuniary interest in the unlawful, unethical and unnecessary continuance of federal funding of research involving the destruction of living human embryos pending the government’s appeal of the preliminary injunction barring such funding.”

Vorarlberg Online [modified Google translation]: FPÖ [Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs / Freedom Party of Austria] member Dieter Egger is pleased that at the meeting of the Social Policy Committee on Wednesday, the votes of ÖVP [Österreichische Volkspartei / Austrian People's Party] and the FPÖ formed a majority rejecting calls for anonymous abortions in Vorarlberg hospitals.

KathWeb.at [modified Google translation from German]: “[About] one and a half years after the state election on 1 March 2009 in Salzburg, [the] Supreme Court (OGH) [dismissed the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) of Austria's action against] Youth for Life for a parody of [an] election poster [featuring] Governor [Gabi Burgstaller] and [criticizing] the possibility of abortion [at] LKH Salzburg. According to the [SPÖ, Youth for Life violated] copyright [and harmed Burgstaller's reputation].” Press Release from Youth for Life (Jugend für das Leben)

Reuters: “Sweden’s ruling centre-right coalition picked up one seat but was still two short of a majority in parliament after a final recount of votes from Sunday’s election . . . The centre-right Alliance bloc beat the Social Democrat-led opposition by a wide margin, but lost its majority because the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, shunned by both blocs, won their first seats in parliament.”

The Christian Institute: “A study has shown rates of HIV in France are 200 times higher in homosexual men than amongst heterosexuals. Scientists from the French National Institute for Public Health Surveillance found that nearly half of the 7,000 people newly infected with HIV in the country in 2008 were gay men.”

“ADF is not arguing that churches should act like political action committees, or that pastors should routinely endorse or oppose candidates. What they are saying is that while many pastors and other church leaders may choose not—for various reasons—to talk about political issues from the pulpit, that should be their decision, not the IRS’s . . .”

The Hill: “Gulf Coast Democrat is vowing to block Senate confirmation of President Obama’s budget director until the administration agrees to lift or ease a federal freeze on deepwater oil-and-gas drilling.”

The Hill: “The legislation, known as the Disclose Act, is intended as a response to a Supreme Court decision earlier this year that relaxed limits on political spending by corporations and unions. A cloture vote Thursday afternoon to move forward on the legislation failed 59-39. Sixty votes were needed for passage.”

“But Obama’s lawyers asked in Thursday’s motion that Phillips refrain from applying her ruling nationally, or to the military overseas. Instead, the Department of Justice argued that the immediate effect of her decision should be to prohibit the military from expelling openly gay service members who belong to the Log Cabin Republicans.”

Scott Gaylord, When the Exception Becomes the Rule: Marsh and Sectarian Legislative Prayer Post-Summum (September 23, 2010). Elon University Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2010-08; University of Cincinnati Law Review, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1681618

“This Article examines recent developments that undermine the traditional view of Marsh as a limited exception and place Marsh at the center of the Court‟s current view of facially religious government speech. In particular, after analyzing the Court‟s discussions of legislative prayer in Marsh and Allegheny, the Article focuses on the recent flood of challenges to sectarian legislative prayers, comparing the widely divergent conclusions reached by the seven Circuit Courts that have heard such cases. It then explores how the Court‟s 2009 decision in Summum v. Pleasant Grove City provides a new lens through which to interpret Marsh, contending that the Court‟s ‘recently minted’ government speech doctrine (i) is inconsistent with the endorsement test and, in fact, (ii) mandates the Establishment Clause test the Court first developed in Marsh. In the last section, the Article considers the constitutionality of sectarian and nonsectarian legislative prayer in light of Marsh and Summum, arguing that, under this “new” standard, federal, state, and local governments can continue to engage in legislative prayer, even if those prayers contain sectarian references.”

Syed Tazkir Inam, Role of Supreme Court in Protection of Muslim Divorced Women (February 24, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1681527

“With the passage of time, mankind has clamoured for special privilege and treatment, and societies across the world have looked towards the courts for benevolent interventions. For this purpose sociological jurisprudence has come a long way from being a theoretical stream towards being consulted for mass reforms by the courts. The Supreme Court of India has played a major role, as the final arbiter of the Constitution. In its performance of this role the Supreme court of India has bring about equality and social change, building way for an advanced and modern outlook. The perspective has been entirely societal oriented and therefore ‘social change,’ has been made the focal point. The approach is to analyze the decisions of the Court, as the reflection of its opinion and contribution towards the attainment of this egalitarian objective. Supreme Court has even played a major role in the upliftment of the conditions of women in India through its landmark judgements.”

Carmine Guerriero, Democracy, Judicial Attitudes and Heterogeneity: The Civil Versus Common Law Tradition (September 21, 2010). Amsterdam Center for Law & Economics Working Paper No. 2010-10. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1681317

“A key feature of legal systems is the law making institution used to aggregate citizens’ preferences over the harshness of punishment. While under Case law appellate judges’ biases offset one another at the cost of volatility of the law, under Statute law the Legislator chooses certain rules that are biased whenever she favors special interests: i.e., when the preference heterogeneity is sufficiently high and/or the political process sufficiently inefficient. Hence, Case law can be selected only in the last scenario. Instrumental variables estimates based on data from 156 countries, which eventually reformed the transplanted law making rule, conrm this prediction.”

Geoffrey P. Miller, The Book of Judges: The Hebrew Bible’s Federalist Papers (September 23, 2010). NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 10-66. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1681529

“This paper continues the analysis of political theory in the Hebrew Bible. This book of Judges evaluates the pros and cons of a confederacy of semi-sovereign tribes, constituted by legal obligations and embodied in three institutions: judges, military leaders, and a tribal assembly. Although the author portrays the leaders of the confederacy as heroes who rescue Israel from distress, his evaluation of the confederacy is negative. He argues that its institutions are not strong enough to reliably deliver the benefits of nationhood – justice, security, prosperity, freedom from oppression, domestic tranquility, and fidelity to God.”