Daily Archives: October 8, 2010

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a Vermont motor vehicles statute that prohibits personalized license plates with messages that refer to “religion” or “deity.”

Arizona Republic: “But Hayden ultimately decided her fame and earnings came at too great a cost. ‘The money ends up being spent on medical bills to pay for all the health problems you get from sleeping with so many people, drugs, pills, and alcohol to numb the pain, and lavish material items that make you feel a temporary high and happiness,’ said Hayden . . . ”

Cathi Herrod, Center for Arizona Policy: “Most Arizona voters also will be deciding whether to retain judges who serve on our state courts. If there is one question I am repeatedly asked, it’s how people can learn about the judges to then cast an informed vote . . . As part of our voter education efforts, CAP surveyed more than 60 judges up for retention and posted their responses at azvoterguide.com.”

The Hill: “Congress will launch an investigation into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s financing, the third-ranking House Democrat said Thursday night. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) opened the door to a congressional inquiry into the Chamber and whether it’s used foreign dollars to fund its political activities.”

Christian Science Monitor: “Many Muslims in France feel increasingly targeted amid growing terror concerns and what some see as anti-Muslim measures, such as the banning burqas in public.”

Associated Baptist Press: “When evangelist Billy Graham, social activist Jim Wallis, pastor Rick Warren, theologian Al Mohler and author Brian McLaren all can fit under the umbrella term ‘evangelical,’ some theological and cultural observers wonder if the term has lost its meaning.”

Baptist Press: “Planned Parenthood of Southern New Jersey has shut down its Cherry Hill family planning clinic in a dispute over state funding, while a Maryland abortion clinic is closing after its operator’s medical license was suspended.”

Alaska Dispatch: “An Anchorage attorney with close ties to Democrats tops a new Alaska bar poll rating list of candidates to replace federal judge John Sedwick.”

ACLJ: “The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), focusing on constitutional law, today demanded that a Colorado middle school permit a 7th grade student to wear a small cross on a chain to school warning school officials not to violate the student’s First Amendment rights.”

ABC: “Not only did researchers find that couples with sons are more likely to stick together, unmarried pregnant couples were more likely to have shotgun weddings if the baby was going to be a boy and divorced mothers of boys are more likely to remarry and stay remarried.”

Montgomery News: “Let the bells ring freely and Philadelphia City Council seems to concur. An amendment exempting church and school bells from the city’s 2006 Noise Ordinance passed out of committee on Oct. 5 unanimously . . . According to Jack Kennedy, pastor of Church of the Living Savior, who attended the committee meeting, the council should have a first reading of the bill next week and a final vote a week after.”

Chillicothe Gazette: “The city council is poised Monday to read a second piece of legislation regulating nude dancing clubs . . . In September, [the council approved] an ordinance establishing a section of law that defines a sexually oriented business and establishes criminal violations for those who establish a strip club and do not obey Ohio Revised Code as it pertains to strip clubs.”

Orlando Sentinel: “Ormond Beach annexed a new bikini bar named ‘Cheaters’ near Interstate 95 on Tuesday night, to the raucous approval of residents, and despite a pending federal lawsuit.”

Argus Leader: “South Dakota’s attorney general is defending a 2-year-old state law that a Sioux Falls man says is unconstitutional because it unfairly targets adult-oriented businesses.”

“‘The only thing that David Barton got right is that gay and lesbian people do have a higher suicide rate,’ Barry Lynn said, adding that ‘this is only true because of people like Barton who ‘sow the seeds of this kind of bigotry.’

SCNOW: “Last week, the Hartsville Planning Commission postponed sending a recommendation to Hartsville City Council for an ordinance regulating sexually-oriented businesses in the city while one of its members reviews a model ordinance after the city attorney said certain provisions of the model appear to be unconstitutional.”

KGW: “Seth Stambaugh, a student teacher at Sexton Mountain elementary school, was apparently dismissed after answering a fourth grader’s question about his marital status by saying it would be illegal for him to marry because he would choose to marry a man.”

California Catholic Daily: “Rehearsals for a play ‘revolving around issues in the gay community’ have begun at St. Mary’s College of California in Moraga, a Christian Brothers institution in the Diocese of Oakland.”

Associated Press: “A federal judge ordered a North Carolina school to admit a 14-year-old high school student suspended for wearing a nose piercing she says is part of her religion, and the teenager was on her way to science class Friday afternoon, her attorney said . . . Ariana will be able to attend Clayton High School with her nose stud at least until Nov. 3, Sasser said, when another hearing is scheduled.” | ACLU Press Release

Chuck Colson writing at The Christian Post: “The central question here is, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted during the hearing, is whether the First Amendment must tolerate ‘exploiting this bereaved family.’ I hope and pray that the answer is, ‘No.’ It would be reasonable for the Supreme Court to rule that the Constitution does not protect the desecration of a sacred service such as a funeral, but that it does protect a family’s right to bury their son in peace.”

Spiegel Online: “The recent statement by German President Christian Wulff that ‘Islam belongs in Germany’ has provoked something of a conservative backlash. The German press is divided on whether the presence of Muslims in Germany is self-evident or cause for concern.”

Rick Santorum writing in The Philadelphia Inquirer: “The American Civil Liberties Union has launched an effort to force religious hospitals to provide abortions. The organization is asking the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – which controls nearly $800 billion in President Obama’s latest budget – to force hospitals to provide abortions or lose federal funding. The views of the centers’ administrator, Dr. Donald Berwick, are so controversial that Obama had to appoint him while Congress was in recess. Now he is overseeing the writing of countless new health-care regulations, and the ACLU can’t let an opportunity like that slip by.”

“I feel like my client is Goldilocks,” said James Bopp, Jr., general counsel for the Madison Center, “its always too early or too late to protect my client’s right to speak. But when the First Amendment is involved, the time is always just right for the court to step in to protect them. The courts must do more to protect First Amendment rights from government encroachment.”

Reuters: “At least 3.5 million Christians of all denominations live in the Gulf Arab region, the birthplace of Islam and home to some of the most conservative Arab Muslim societies in the world. The freedom to practice Christianity — or any religion other than Islam — is not always a given in the Gulf and varies from country to country. Saudi Arabia, which applies an austere form of Sunni Islam, has by far the tightest restrictions.”

Center for American Progress: “There have historically been two primary strands of progressive thought concerning the proper relationship between faith and politics—one secular and the other emerging directly from religious social values . . . Progressives working within these faith traditions applied religious morality to the task of transforming American society during the industrial age away from the exploitation of workers and toward more cooperative forms of economic life.”

The NY Times carries this article by Paul Vitello titled: In Fierce Opposition to a Muslim Center Echoes an Old Fight. Vitello argues that the Ground Zero Mosque situation parallels Protestant opposition to the erection of Catholic St. Peter’s Cathedral in Manhattan in 1785. Some readers of the article have observed that Catholics had not killed 3,000 innocent people in New York in the name of their religion and with intentions of imposing Shariah law.

KPLR: “Democrat Robin Carnahan and Republican Roy Blunt are taking opposite positions on variety of social issues in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race.”

“Within minutes of arriving on the Tory Quad, the busiest spot on campus, the students were taken away in handcuffs by Ottawa police and charged with trespassing.”

Telegraph: “The former prime minister said that there had been a failure to challenge the ‘narrative’ that Islam was oppressed by the West which was fuelling extremism around the world.”

Peter Saunders: “The ban, at the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, is intended to help cut levels of infectious superbugs such as MRSA. Apparently they want all bedside areas in Queen’s Medical Centre and City Hospital kept tidy and ‘clutter-free’ to stop disease spreading . . . A ban on Gideon Bibles makes little sense as an infection control measure. The MRSA risk is low and to be consistent hospitals would have to ban newspapers, library books and all paper from patients’ bedsides. One wonders about the real motivation here.”

LifeSiteNews: “In Illinois voters are faced with two pro-abortion politicians slugging it out for the lead in the senate special election race. However one third party candidate is pro-life, and Democrats are hoping that his candidacy could end up having a spoiler effect on the GOP’s chances to cobble together a majority in the U.S. Senate.”

The Advocate: “A White House spokesman told The Advocate Wednesday evening that administration officials ‘expect the Senate to act’ on repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ when they return from the midterm recess for the final days of the 111th Congress.”

Randy Barnett writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “Judge Steeh’s decision yesterday dismissing the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clause challenge to the individual mandate was certainly not welcome news to those of us who believe the mandate to be unconstitutional. But his remarkably thin opinion brings to the fore the revolutionary implications of upholding the individual mandate without addressing them.”

Associated Press: “Senators voted 27-9 in favor of the main bill in a legislative package aimed at ending a 100-day budget impasse and bridging a $19 billion budget deficit. They followed a 54-1 Assembly vote on Thursday. The bill, SB870, cleared both chambers with the bare two-thirds majority needed for passage.”

“So holds Slater v. Douglas County (D. Or. Sept. 24, 2010).

Los Angeles Times: “The Obama administration’s prosecution of major foreign terrorism suspects in U.S. civilian courts has hit another roadblock, after a judge in New York disallowed testimony this week from the government’s key witness against a prisoner about to stand trial in connection with the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998.”

Law.com: “But Breyer readily acknowledges that another reason — not the main reason — he wrote the book is to counter the concept of originalism. That’s the view espoused most of all by Justice Antonin Scalia that the Constitution is frozen in time, and its original words and meaning hold the answers even to the most modern disputes that the founders could not have imagined.”

PBS: “Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer talks to Jeffrey Brown about his new book, ‘Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View,’ the role and responsibilities of the high court, and the shift in dynamics that a new justice can bring.”

http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2010/10/suit-challenges-kentuckys-rejection-of.html

Times of Malta: “All those who ‘cooperate’ in the introduction of divorce, including judges who apply the law, would be ‘committing a grave sin’, according to the head of the Church tribunals.” | Via Religion Clause.

Maggie Gallagher writing at uExpress.com: “Why do women agree to take in, nurture and economically support men who are not gainfully employed? . . . We once lived in an economy that favored men and disfavored women in education and jobs. Today, the majority of college graduates and even Ph.D.s are women . . . As we increasingly produce economically (but not sexually) dysfunctional men, women are increasingly left with poor sexual choices: celibacy, serial sexual relationships or cohabitation with underemployed men. What seems out of reach is the kind of marriage the vast majority of our mothers could look forward to: marriage with a man who A. worked hard, B. was willing to give his income to his wife and children, C. believed in sexual fidelity (whether or not he succeeded), and D. didn’t abandon his wife or children.”

Associated Press: “A ‘for sale’ sign has been posted outside the Kansas medical clinic formerly operated by murdered abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.”

Associated Press: “There isn’t going to be a homecoming dance at Vermont’s Montpelier High School this year because of concerns about dirty dancing and student drug use.”

Associated Press: “Between 15 and 40 Germans and a smaller contingent of other Europeans are believed to be getting militant training in Pakistan’s lawless border region, intending to join the Taliban’s fight against NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan or return to Europe and strike at the soft underbelly of those countries.”

Associated Press: “National gay rights activists said Friday they’ll descend on Salt Lake City’s Mormon church headquarters to deliver more than 100,000 letters asking a senior church leader to recant recent anti-gay statements.”

Salem Communications SRN Insider links to this video featuring an ABC panel discussion about the nature of  Islam and posing the question – should Americans fear Islam.  Rev. Franklin Graham, Gary Bauer and others appear in the video.

Wesley J. Smith writing at First Things / Secondhand Smoke: “Euthanasia guidelines don’t work as advertised. We’ve seen that truth evidenced again–in the Netherlands–and again–in Switzerland–and again–in Belgium–and again–in Oregon. [A new study] published in the British Medical Journal shows that in Flanders, Belgium, only half of the euthanasia deaths are reported as required by the law.”

Edward Whelan has posted the Ethics and Public Policy Center amicus brief in Prop. 8 appeal online here.

LifeSiteNews: “The Cardinal Archbishop of Guadalajara, Mexico, Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, gave a speech Sunday in which he lashed out at the United Nations and other international organizations that he says are running a campaign to destroy the family.”

LifeSiteNews: “Google’s YouTube service decided to give an ‘X’ rating on Tuesday to a pro-life sermon given by a Brazilian pastor that has been seen by over four million people, and which appears to have had a serious impact on the Brazilian Presidential elections.”

Wesley J. Smith writing at First Things / Secondhand Smoke: “The organization believes that regulations should be created that are specific to the field. I don’t know what they have in mind and so won’t comment about that, but the ACE is correct–factually and ethically, embryos are not the same thing as tissues tested by pathologists. Stating otherwise has the effect–and I suspect, the intent–of reducing embryos to nothing more than a tissue sample, for which far different ethical rules would apply.” Link to ACE press release.

“The purchase agreement requires the new management to maintain the Catholic identity of the hospitals. However, a little-noted provision of the agreement allows the buyers to terminate that Catholic identity if, in their view, it becomes materially burdensome.”

CatholicCulture.org: “Catholics form a relatively low percentage of participants the Tea Party movement, have similar views to most Americans on abortion, and overwhelmingly support the legal recognition of homosexual unions, according to a survey published by the Public Religion Research Institute.”

Wilfred M. McClay reviews American Grace by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell in the Wall Street Journal: “Rather than wrangle over matters of theology and science, Robert Putnam and David Campbell focus on extensive survey data to explore the kinds of conduct and attitudes that religious beliefs produce in individuals and groups. The authors ask to be regarded as neutral observers, not partisans. And their criteria for the success or failure of religion are almost entirely sociological and behavioral: By their fruits ye shall know them . . . the result is a book that takes a mostly positive view of American religion, capturing its energy and variety.”

Pat Buchanan writing at Townhall: “41.8 million Americans are on food stamps, and the White House estimates 43 million will soon be getting food stamps every month. A seventh of the nation cannot even feed itself. If you would chart America’s decline, this program is a good place to begin.”

OneNewsNow: “25 Muslims recently burned down ten homes and left 80 Christians in Jimma homeless. Since then, they have been prevented from rebuilding their homes and are forced to live under trees. But Jonathan Racho, regional manager for Africa at International Christian Concern (ICC), tells OneNewsNow the episode gets more shocking than that.”

OneNewsNow: “The constitutional amendment, which is supposed to be on the state ballot in November 2011, would call for recognizing that human life begins at fertilization . . . The presiding judge has taken the arguments and briefs under advisement and will issue an opinion soon.” | Ballotpedia: Mississippi Life Begins at the Moment of Fertilization Initiative (2011)

OneNewsNow: “Nearly three dozen companies — McDonald’s among them — will be allowed healthcare waivers in 2011 to keep medical coverage for their employees . . . ‘They’re in effect . . . creating really arbitrary government where you have to go ask permission to do something — and you may or may not get it,’ [Ed Haislmaier, senior fellow of health policy studies at The Heritage Foundation] says, noting that that results in a lack of consistency from one time to another.”

KKTV: “An announcement made by a Colorado Springs middle school, stipulating how students can wear rosaries, has the ACLU speaking out against the decision. The group says religious liberty does not stop at the entrance to a public school.”

The Hill: “Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) won’t face public ethics trials until after the election. The House ethics committee announced Thursday that Rangel’s trial will begin Nov. 15 and Waters’s will start Nov. 29.”

Law.com: “An upstate New York appellate panel has affirmed the conviction of a Rochester-area funeral director who was sentenced to up to eight years in prison for harvesting and selling body parts without consent.” | People v. Batjer, KA 10-00875 [link - see pgs. 4-6]

Islamist Watch: “With Dutch MP Geert Wilders on trial for insulting Islam, American cartoonist Molly Norris in hiding after death threats, and other outrages against liberty, one may be tempted to think that the struggle to defend free speech — particularly speech that offends Muslims — is a hopeless endeavor. Not so. Several news items from the past two months are reason to applaud.”

Daniel Ikenson writing at Cato @ Liberty: “The Chinese currency issue is in full bloom this week, as the House of Representatives passed the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act of 2010 by a vote of 348-79 on Wednesday. Though there is so much to criticize about the bill and about the layers upon layers of misinformation, myth, and subterfuge that brought us to this point, this post concerns the dubiousness of the bill’s central premise: that Yuan appreciation will significantly reduce the bilateral trade deficit.”

Adam Summers writing at the Reason Foundation: “A new study released by the Foundation for Educational Choice and the Pacific Research Institute estimates California’s unfunded liability for state (CalPERS and CalSTRS) pensions and retiree health care at $379 billion. This includes $327 billion in unfunded pension obligations—more than four times the $75.5 billion obligation the state publicly admits to—and $52 billion in retiree health-care liabilities. The total shortfall is more than five times the amount of existing state debt outstanding.”

CitizenLink: “[Dale Schowengerdt], legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, said the same attorneys successfully defended the law during the Bush administration. ‘Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department has basically thrown the case, and has refused to make the winning arguments,’ Smith said. ‘Arguments that just a few years ago they were making to district court cases and similar challenges to DOMA and winning.’”

Wall Street Journal / China Real Time Report: “In its first Global Wealth Report, Credit Suisse predicts that total household wealth in China could more than double to $35 trillion by 2015 from $16.5 trillion at the moment. China currently is third in terms of the total share of global wealth after the U.S. and Japan, at $54.6 trillion and $21 trillion respectively, and is 35% ahead of France, the wealthiest European country.”

Dallas Voice: “‘We should be strengthening and protecting marriage, not subjecting it to a hostile takeover through the courts,’ said Dale Schowengerdt, legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, in a press release. ‘If the Obama administration won’t defend marriage, we are ready and willing to do so.’”

CBN News: “Four San Diego firefighters return to court Friday to defend their right to abstain from participating in the city’s annual Gay Pride Parade . . . ‘Government employees should never be forced to participate in events or acts that violate their sincerely held beliefs,’ said Alliance Defense Fund attorney Charles S. LiMandri, who is representing the firefighters.” | ADF News Release

OneNewsNow: “Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) and allied attorneys are working to defend Act 1, the voter-approved measure that protects children who are adopted or placed in foster care . . . ‘It says when it comes to foster and adoptive children — those children that are most in need of homes — the state of Arkansas places a premium on putting those children in homes consisting of a married mother and father. The law does not allow children to be placed in unstable cohabiting environments,” explains ADF attorney [Byron Babione].” ADF News Release

Christian Post: “In an effort to breathe new life into legislation to protect marriage nationwide, the ranking Republican in the House Judiciary Committee, Lamar Smith of Texas, and his legal team have filed two motions in defense of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act . . . ADF asserted, ‘The DOJ’s practical abdication of its own proven legal arguments, plus its ambivalence on whether it will even appeal, warrants intervention to ensure that widely-supported Congressional legislation like DOMA receives a fair and vigorous defense.’”

LezGetReal: “The originators of the Day of Truth, the Alliance Defense Fund, issued this in a statement: ‘As the organization leading the event, Exodus International is free to make decisions they deem best regarding the event. Contrary to comments by GLSEN falsely labeling the Day of Truth as “inappropriate and divisive,” the event was always about the right of students to peacefully express their point of view on the subject of homosexual behavior.’”

Student Press Law Center: “According to an agreement between attorneys for the school district and the students, the school board has decided to amend the district policies and student handbook. In return, the students will dismiss some aspects of the case, said [Jonathan Scruggs], an attorney at the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian group that defends freedom of religion . . . The board is scheduled to vote on the policy Oct. 19. However, Scruggs said regardless of the outcome of the dress code policy, the case is far from over.”

Russia Today video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHZVKcSxruM

“Faced with an increasingly democratic political system, American elites have turned to the courts as an alternate means of enacting their political and constitutional agenda.”

Rasmussen Reports: “A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 53% of Adults feel the federal government has too much influence over the economy already, while only 20% say it doesn’t have enough influence.”