Daily Archives: October 5, 2010

“Alliance Defense Fund attorneys representing U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, the ranking Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee, filed two motions to intervene to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act in federal court Tuesday.”

LifeSiteNews: “LifeSiteNews (LSN) has learned that the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (D&P) has applied to the federal court to block an access to information request from LifeSiteNews.”

Otago Daily Times: “The five-year battle between anti-abortion group Right to Life and the Abortion Supervisory Committee (ASC) resumed today, with both parties appealing an historic 2008 High Court ruling that found the law had been misinterpreted.”

Santa Rosa Press Gazette: “The ACLU has asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit against the Santa Rosa County School District that claims it violates the rights of students and teachers by agreeing not to promote religion in schools.”

OneNewsNow: “Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis (USA-Ret.), a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and now a Pentagon advisor, has followed Weinstein’s complaints over the years . . . ‘The fact that you have a large group of evangelicals [on campus] who are open about their faith — there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s not against the First Amendment, and it’s certainly not against any military regulation,’ he adds.”

Press TV: “Muslim preacher Zakir Naik is to sue the Home Office for banning him from entering the UK for a speaking tour for unjustified reasons.”

OneNewsNow: “Fifteen Planned Parenthood affiliates were awarded grants — or a part of a wining grant as a subcontractor — totaling nearly $19 million. The grants are part of President Obama’s ‘Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative’ that focuses less on abstinence and more on contraceptive use.”

The Christian Institute: “Scottish police officers could be forced to investigate ‘hate incidents’ that took place up to ten years ago – even though no crime was ever committed. The alarming policy comes in light of the new ‘hate crime’ guidance published by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS).”

Fox 11: “The City of Green Bay could be extending benefits to the domestic partners of city employees. The issue hasn’t reached the full council yet, but Tuesday night the Personnel Committee tried to better define the debate.”

Catholic News Agency: “On Oct. 3, the University of Michigan wrote in a press release that ‘after several attempts,’ the school successfully created a new embryonic stem cell line known as UM4-6 . . . In a statement on Oct. 4, however, Michigan Right to Life condemned the creation . . . ”

The Record: “A week after publishing a same-sex marriage announcement for the first time in its history, The Jewish Standard said Monday that it will not publish such announcements in the future because it received a “firestorm” of criticism from Orthodox rabbis.”

TIME News Feed: “Ancentus Akuku, a legendary Kenyan polygamist, passed away due to natural causes; he was in his late 90s. He first married in 1939, became a polygamist at 22 and married his last wife in 1992. He had more than 100 wives, and more than 200 children, each of whom he named personally.”

AFP: “A gay Saudi prince strangled and beat his male servant to death during an apparent sex attack in a London hotel room, a court heard on Tuesday.”

Reuters: “One in four high school students and adults ages 18 to 34 engaged in binge drinking in the past month, putting themselves and those around them at risk, U.S. government researchers said on Tuesday.”

Religion & Politics Examiner: “Advocates for polygamy are closely watching the Supreme Court in British Columbia, Canada, as a case is set to challenge the legal obstruction of polygamy there. With the new TLC reality show, ‘Sister Wives’ (about a family of polygamists) gaining attention here in the United States, how far off is the challenge to the laws in this country that make polygamy illegal? Advocates for it argue that what right does the law have to come between what consenting adults agree to?”

Christian Post: “The study, reviewed this past weekend at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Breast Cancer Symposium, challenges traditional medical advice that expecting mothers should terminate their pregnancies in order to receive life-saving cancer treatment.”

UPI: “U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C., defended his comment that gays and unwed mothers should be banned as teachers, saying school boards should control hiring.”

Office of the Spokesman of the Secretary of State: “Question: What is our reaction to the burning of a mosque and copies of the Quran in Hebron by Israeli settlers?

We condemn this attack in the strongest terms and call for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. We note that Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Barak have also condemned the attack and have called for an investigation.”

New York Magazine / Daily Intel: “As Alicia Keyes croons about concrete jungles in the background, Michael Bloomberg’s new ad on behalf of the Human Rights Campaign to support gay marriage shows the mayor saying, ‘I’m a New Yorker and I support marriage equality.’”

Rob Vischer writing at Mirror of Justice: “Of course the DVD campaign is political — how could it not be? It may not be partisan, but we should be careful not to conflate ‘partisan’ and ‘political.’ The Church’s teaching has political implications, just as the Gospel has political implications. That’s not a bad thing, and it’s difficult to conceive of how it could be otherwise.”

Telegraph: “Married couples could get new tax breaks to compensate for losing child benefit, David Cameron has suggested.”

Iona Institute: Government should consider cuts to child benefit for higher earners, Minister for Children says

Reuters: “A blogger who filmed himself burning the Koran and urinating on it to put out the flames is to appear in court in eastern France, charged with incitement to religious hatred, legal sources said on Tuesday.”

Christopher Kaczor, Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University, writing at U.S. Catholic: “At the upcoming Conference on Life & Choice in the Abortion Debate, held at Princeton University, I plan to talk about the importance of protecting the right of conscience by looking at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) Committee Opinion #385 entitled, ‘The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine‘ . . . Unless conscience protections remain protected by law, the ACOG ethics report could be the end of the pro-life doctor and the Catholic hospital–a serious loss of providers and institutions which would make health care even more expensive.”

The Dominion Post: “The religious beliefs of a Muslim family outweighed public interest in deciding whether a full autopsy was needed to determine the cause of death of two Malaysian tourists, a coroner says.”

Interlochen Public Radio: “Last night, the Traverse City Commission voted unanimously to approve a law that says gays and lesbians can’t be fired or denied housing solely on the basis of their sexual orientation.”

NPR: “So, first, it’s an overwhelmingly Christian group. 81% identify as Christian, and nearly half (47%) say they are part of the religious right or conservative Christian movement.” Public Religion Research Institute.

Reuters: “Muslims in southern Malawi have been burning Bibles in protest against their distribution in Islamic schools by Gideon’s International, a senior Muslim Association of Malawi official said on Tuesday.”

Wilmington Star News: “Talk about not holding the lighting ceremony at the Word’s Largest Living Christmas Tree this year spurred another potentially controversial topic during the council’s agenda meeting Monday – religious symbols on public property.”

ABS CBN News: “About 14 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were reportedly among the 100 expatriates arrested during a forbidden religious service in Saudi Arabia.”

WCNC (AP): “Johnston County school officials have upheld the suspension of a 14-year-old student who says her nose piercing is an article of faith.”

Associated Baptist Press: “Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, recently signed on as a charter member of the Interfaith Coalition on Mosques, an initiative sponsored by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.”

IBN Live: “Ruling that Bangladesh is now a secular state, the country’s High Court has said that the constitution of 1972 has automatically been restored by a landmark judgement of the apex court that nullified a controversial amendment earlier this year.”

Charisma Mag: “Authorities in the Maldives last week had to transport a Christian teacher from India off one of the Islamic nation’s islands after Muslim parents of her students threatened to expel her for ‘preaching Christianity.’”

LifeNews: “The national 40 Days for Life campaign continues producing live-saving dividends for the hundreds of cities where local pro-life people are praying and helping women outside abortion centers find alternatives. Organizers say that they can confirm 138 babies have been spared from abortion so far.”

Law.com: “On Oct. 4, a day of heightened concerns about international terrorism, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard a multipronged appeal concerning three men charged with giving false information to the Internal Revenue Service about a charity allegedly connected to jihadist fighters and the mujahedeen.”

Findlaw (AP): During Shahzad’s statement, Cedarbaum cut him off at one point to ask if he had sworn allegiance to the United States when he became a citizen last year. “I did swear but I did not mean it,” said Shahzad, a former budget analyst from Connecticut who was born in Pakistan. “So you took a false oath,” the judge told him . . . “We do not accept your democracy or your freedom because we already have Sharia law and freedom,” Shahzad said.

The Alliance Defense Fund together with several other Christian groups submitted a consultation paper Thursday to a United Nations human rights body urging it not to reinterpret language in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in a way that could turn Christian speech into “hate speech.”

“That is four teenagers in just one month. And look at those ages. Two were only 13, one was 15, and Tyler Clementi was 18. That is four dead boys in the space of one horrible month, and all were struggling with sexual identity.”

“Another installment in our ongoing series ‘So This Is How It Ends’ (STIHIE), which chronicles instances of decadence so advanced that one can only conclude and hope that we are living in a terminal stage of Western civilization.”

NBC 12: “The ‘Dominion Holiday Parade’ will make its annual trek down Broad Street on Saturday, December 4.”

AFA Action Alert: “This year, a company which took over sponsorship of the annual Richmond, Virginia, Christmas parade has ordered the city’s organizers to change it to a ‘holiday’ parade.”

Fox News: “The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that more than $69 million in welfare money was spent or withdrawn out-of-state since 2007, at hotels and restaurants and ATMs across the country. Of that, nearly $12 million was withdrawn in Las Vegas, some of it at high-dollar shops and casinos along The Strip.”

Debora Spar writing at The Daily Beast: “Dr. Edwards’ work has clearly led to massive joys for millions of individuals but, more quietly, it has also raised a host of issues that the U.S. refuses to grapple with, much less resolve . . . In the United States . . . it can be said that ‘anything goes.’ No regulation, no (or little) insurance coverage, and a correspondingly greater chance for bad things to happen in what has become a multibillion-dollar industry . . . [A]s reproductive technologies continue to expand, they are bringing [women] options that push the notion of personal choice to terrifying limits.”

LifeSiteNews: “New ‘equality’ legislation combined with the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ and Islamic terrorist bombings in New York and London have created an atmosphere in Britain in which religion in general is held in suspicion, said an expert on religious discrimination law late last month in Dublin. British barrister Neil Addison told the Iona Institute’s conference on religious freedom that in Britain and elsewhere, the attitude is taking hold that religion must not in any way be given expression in public or working life.”

“A team of researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Boston published a series of experiments Thursday showing that synthetic biological signals can quickly reprogram ordinary skin cells into entities that appear virtually identical to embryonic stem cells.”

Eugene Volokh writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “ . . . But it seems like [in Yates v. Fithian (W.D. Wash. Sept. 23, 2010)] the university rented the space out only for a nonexclusive event, to which students, faculty, and staff were invited. Once it has done so, the court concludes, the government cannot then enforce any viewpoint-based restrictions imposed by the renters.”

Ilya Somin writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “When I first considered the question, I thought that Raich’s reasoning was expansive enough to justify the individual mandate . . . A closer look at Raich, however, led me to reconsider my initial view. I presented my revised position in the amicus brief (pp. 6–10) I recently wrote on behalf of the Washington Legal Foundation and a group of constitutional law scholars.”

Associated Press: “Judicial officials say an Algerian court has acquitted two recent converts to Christianity on trial for offending Islam by eating lunch during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.”

Wall Street Journal: “A senior German official played down warnings of a potential terrorist attack in Europe, as Pakistani intelligence officials told reporters a U.S. missile strike in northwest Pakistan reportedly killed several suspected German militants.”

WorldNetDaily: “Savage’s 37-point plan – ‘Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama’s Attack on Our Borders, Economy and Security’ by HarperCollins – hits bookstores today with a call to ‘run the country like a business, not an empire; close the borders; institute a flat tax; use profiling to prevent terror attacks; and privatize the regulation of Wall Street;’ among others.”

USA Today: “Federal prosecutors are supposed to seek justice, not merely score convictions. But a USA TODAY investigation found that prosecutors repeatedly have violated that duty in courtrooms across the nation. The abuses have put innocent people in prison, set guilty people free and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and sanctions . . . Congress in 1997 enacted a law aimed at ending such abuses. Yet USA TODAY documented 201 criminal cases in the years that followed in which judges determined that Justice Department prosecutors — the nation’s most elite and powerful law enforcement officials — themselves violated laws or ethics rules.”

Erwin Chemerinsky writing at the Los Angeles Times: Los Angeles Times: “During the first years of the Roberts court, it has consistently ruled in favor of corporate power . . . the high court has struck down laws regulating firearms as violations of the 2nd Amendment and held that the Constitution protects a right of individuals to possess guns. It has dramatically cut back on the rights of criminal defendants . . . It has greatly limited the ability of the government to formulate remedies for the segregation of public schools. It has significantly expanded the power of the government to regulate abortions.”

ADF attorney Steve Aden appeared on KCMN with Tron Simpson to provide an update on the embryonic stem cell litigation. | MP3 audio 7:10 mins

How Appealing Extra by Lawrence Hurley originally published at the Daily Journal: “Of 54 cases the court has agreed to hear so far, 18 are 9th Circuit rulings. The justices will also be reviewing one California Court of Appeal opinion in a product liability case and a direct appeal from the three-judge district court panel that has ordered the state to release thousands of prison inmates.”

WXVT (AP): “A federal appeals court is the latest setting for a fight over single-sex classrooms between lawyers for a south Louisiana school system and the American Civil Liberties Union.”

“So, why experiment on Guatemalan ‘patients?’ Because they were far removed from American consciousness and laws. They were voiceless, vulnerable, and unprotected. Kind of like human embryos are now.”

Associated Press: “A wrestling coach who claimed he lost his job at a suburban Detroit high school because of his Christian beliefs has settled the lawsuit for $24,500 . . .The 65-year-old Marszalek was wrestling coach at Fordson High School, where Muslim students are a majority.”

Religion Clause: “In Greene v. Greene, (GA Ct. App., Oct. 1, 2010), a Georgia appellate court upheld a trial court’s finding that a divorced husband was in contempt for violating a Settlement Agreement that gave his former wife final decision-making authority over matters related to their daughter’s religious upbringing. The wife was Jewish and the husband was Christian.”

Religion Clause: “In United States v. New York City Transit Authority, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 102704 (E.D.N.Y., Sept. 24, 2010), the Department of Justice sued the New York City Transit Authority claiming that it violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act through polices and practices that discriminate against employees whose religious beliefs require them to wear certain head coverings . . . The court rejected three arguments for dismissal put forward by the Transit Authority.”

Family Security Matters: “On August 20 in these pages, Rael Jean Isaac compared the issue of the proposed Ground Zero mosque with a grubby mosque in Hamburg, Germany. This mosque lies in a side street, next to the Olympic Fitness center, and had been a haunt of at least three of the hijackers who were in planes that were involved in the 9/11 attacks.”

Shawn Ambrosino writing at Townhall: “But over the past couple of decades – as more and more businesses deferred their production to the cheaper, overseas work-force – China has slowly gained more and more control over this market, till last year, they produced over 97% of the world’s supply or Rare Earth elements . . . Rare Earth metals are vital for many of our defensive entities, used in such things as the magnets that help direct the fins on our smart bombs to the silencing the whir of the blades on some of our combat helicopters.”

EducationNews.org: “Islamic leaders led by grand mufti Mustafa Cerić are working closely with the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) to establish an Islamic university. A close partner of Malaysia’s IIUM, the IIIT is a US-based non-profit organisation working towards Islamising ‘secular’ spheres. It was first set up with seed funding from the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamisation project of Bosnia’s new elite trained in Malaysia may complicate social harmony and its entry into the EU.”

Associated Press: “Mexico and 10 other Latin American countries want a federal appeals court to consider their viewpoints in Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s appeal of a ruling that put parts of her state’s new immigration law on hold.”

Deutsche Welle: “German President Christian Wulff’s speech to commemorate the 20th anniversary of German reunification, in which he called for the integration of Muslims in Germany, has met with praise and light criticism among religious groups and politicians in the country . . . German Chancellor Angela Merkel, while endorsing Wulff’s words, also expressed reservations on Monday with regard to the position of Islam in German culture.”

Associated Press: “The center’s national survey, released Tuesday, found 51 percent of Latino registered voters were absolutely certain they would vote – compared with 70 percent of U.S. voters – and 65 percent of Latino voters planned to support the Democrat in their congressional district, compared with 47 percent of U.S. voters.”

Associated Press: “European leaders on Tuesday urged China to let its currency rise and narrow a trade deficit that has strained relations, while promising Asian countries in return more power in global financial institutions.”

Associated Press: “An Amsterdam court Tuesday ordered the hate speech trial of anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders to resume, rejecting his arguments that judges are biased against him.”

Christian Today: “Most youngsters consider Christianity irrelevant to their lives but they are not as hostile towards religion as their parents’ generation, researchers in the Church of England have found . . . [Sylvia Collins-Mayo, a sociologist of religion] said that young people only sought a religious perspective on ‘rare occasions’ and that when they did, they often ‘made do’ with a ‘very faded, inherited cultural memory of Christianity in the absence of anything else.’”

Shreveport Times: “Michael Johnson, lead attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, will be the guest speaker. A question and answer session will follow Johnson’s talk.”

“The plaintiff underwent sex change surgery from man to woman in 2008 and obtained identification documents listing her new gender.”

Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, writing at The Hill: “Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) recently introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2010. It includes the Uniting American Families Act, which allows citizens to sponsor their same-sex partners, and the DREAM Act, which would give young people who came to the U.S. as children a chance to achieve citizenship through completing two years of college or spending two years in the military.”

Above the Law: “This year, 97 Biglaw firms (out of 130 who responded to the survey) received a perfect score from the HRC. That’s up from last year and makes the legal field the best industry when it comes to LGBT issues. Banking was next and retail finished third.”

Breitbart: “The case of an alleged pimp suspected of abducting two teenage girls and keeping them captive while forcing them into prostitution could include dozens of other victims, authorities said Monday.”

Reuters: “In vitro fertilization (IVF), the pioneering technique that won Robert Edwards the 2010 Nobel Prize for medicine, opened up a wealth of scientific options and a Pandora’s box of ethical dilemmas. Edwards’s success in fertilizing a human egg outside of the womb led not only to ‘test tube babies’ but also to innovations such as embryonic stem cell research and surrogate motherhood.”

“Those poll numbers are stunning,” said Brian T. Fitzpatrick, a Vanderbilt University associate law professor who has followed Iowa’s retention debate. “It is virtually unheard-of for a judge to lose a retention race.”

The 5th Circuit panel ruling in February: “A federal appeals court Thursday ordered the state to issue a birth certificate to two men who adopted a Louisiana-born baby boy in 2006 only to have the registrar of vital statistics refuse to give them the document because they were unmarried.”