Daily Archives: November 2, 2010

Business Week: “With 48 percent of precincts reporting, 65 percent of voters opposed the measure, and 35 percent supported it.”

AP report.

“I haven’t yet read through the reply brief, but am pleased to post substantial excerpts from its excellent introduction . . . ”

Associated Press: “Kentucky Republican Rand Paul has been elected to the U.S. Senate, riding tea party support and strong criticism of President Barack Obama to victory.”

FFRF: “Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor called the decision disappointing and said an appeal is likely. ‘No governor has the right to exhort citizens to pray, to set aside an entire day for prayer, much less an entire day for prayer every year.’”

Christian Post: “King City Manager John Cater said the 4-0 vote on Monday authorizes Mayor Jack Warren to work with the city’s attorneys, along with the Christian legal firm Alliance Defense Fund to develop the policy.”

CatholicCulture.org: “The Vatican’s representative at the UN denounced discrimination against Christians in an emotional address on November 1.”

Christian Post: “Christian and Muslim leaders are gathered in Geneva for a high-level interfaith dialogue on how to build strong and sustainable relationships between the two groups and how the religious communities can use their resources to transform their communities.”

ACLU of Ohio: “According to news reports, hundreds of voters were not informed that their traditional polling location had been changed. When the voters arrived at New Hope Church in Powell, there was a sign posted on the door directing them to new locations based on their ward.”

Daily Nation: “Polygamy is not news in Kenya, except when somebody like Akuku Danger marries over 46 wives and sires over 200 children. But the case of one Elisha Koli is rather unique. He has four wives… and two of them are biological sisters.”

WMFD: “A proposed ordinance to allow an innvocation before Shelby City Council meetings was defeated Monday night by a tie-breaking vote from Mayor Marilyn John.”

KansasCity.com (AP): “Lawyers for a coalition of Kansas school districts have filed a lawsuit against the state over the way public education is funded.”

A. Barton Hinkle writing in the Richmond Times-Dispatch: “Yet when it comes to Orwellian regulation of thoughtcrime, Tech remains a rank amateur next to George Mason University. GMU maintains a speech code that prohibits ‘any form of bigotry . . . . whether verbal, written, psychological, direct, or implied.’”

Ilya Somin, Associate Professor at George Mason University School of Law, comments at The Volokh Conspiracy: “. . . Hinkle is absolutely right to point out the egregious flaws in the GMU code and to urge George Mason and other schools to repeal their codes without waiting for a legal challenge to arise.”

MBTV: “The US would be spending a whopping $200 million per day on President Barack Obama’s visit to the city.”

WFMY News 2: “At Monday’s meeting, council voted to approve a ‘Limited Public Forum Approach’ for the memorial, which includes developing a policy that will recognize faith traditions at the memorial . . . The city is working with a group called the Alliance Defense Fund to draft the policy.” Read the resolution here. | Article includes video coverage.

Liberty Counsel: “Tomorrow the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Kathleen M. Winn. This case involves a challenge to an Arizona school choice law that provides dollar-for-dollar tax credits to taxpayers who make contributions to independent organizations, which in turn grant scholarships to students attending private schools. Liberty Counsel filed an Amicus Brief in this case. Mandi Campbell, Esq., Legal Director of the Liberty Center for Law and Policy, will be present at the hearing and also available immediately afterward.”

ABQJournal: “It cuts across all of that — stepparents, divorced parents, live-in relations, baby sitters, nannies,” says Rep. Al Park, an Albuquerque Democrat, who along with Sen. Mark Boitano, an Albuquerque Republican, plans to introduce a bill next legislative session to more clearly define what legally constitutes a parent. “It is a basic rule of law that the natural parents and the legal guardians have a paramount right to raise their children almost without interference. You don’t get a special right merely by being a roommate or a caregiver.”

World Radio Switzerland: “Canton Neuchâtel’s former head doctor went on trial today for having helped an incurably ill patient end her days.”

The Age: “THE Greens have taken on the Catholic Church, accusing the church hierarchy of trying to tell parishioners how to vote in this month’s Victorian election and wanting to ‘dictate’ to the terminally ill that they should suffer.”

Patrick Reilly writing at LifeNews: “The regulations issued Friday effectively force many states to increase oversight of postsecondary education through state chartering or licensing, which is a necessary condition for colleges to participate in federal student aid programs. Most Catholic colleges accept low-cost federal student loans and grants. If forced to forego federal aid, these colleges would be at a disadvantage in recruiting students.”

The ABA Journal: “A jury agreed and awarded Tubra $355,000 in damages after it found officials falsely accused him of stealing from the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in Vernonia, Ore.The judge differed with the jurors, though, and threw out the award. Following overwhelming precedent, he ruled that the First Amendment deprived the court of jurisdiction over the church and Tubra’s defamation claim against it.” John Elwood comments at the Volokh Conspiracy on Cook v. Tubra.

Superior Telegram: “This week, Wisconsin expanded a Medicaid program aimed at preventing unintended pregnancy and disease.”

Southern Courier: “The State Government has called for public comment on a proposal to allow students who do not attend religious study classes to be taught ethics in primary school.”

Times of Malta: “Teaching students about contraception encourages them to give in to the ‘culture of pleasure’ and is tantamount to abuse, according to Gozo Bishop Mario Grech.”

The News of Today: “The Republican Party of North Carolina has sued the NC Board of Elections because they claim that malfunctioning touch-screen voting machines are skewing the vote towards Democrats by preventing voters from casting their vote for Republicans.”

Wall Street Journal (full text via Google News): “Turkey shut down YouTube on Tuesday, just days after had lifted a ban of more than two years.”

London Telegraph: “The Rev Sharon Ferguson, a Metropolitan church minister, and her partner Franka Strietzel, will claim that Greenwich Register Office in east London breached their human rights by turning down their application.”

The Media Line: “Six-thousand students rallied in the center of Jerusalem late Monday against a plan to award government grants exclusively to ultra-orthodox Jews engaged in religious studies, a seemingly obscure issue that could blow in the face of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.”

Houston Chronicle (AP): “. . . from the evidence . . .  there was no legal marriage between Dutson, who was 21, and the 16-year-old girl. The San Angelo Standard-Times reports defense attorney Brandon Hudson suggested all that was lacking for a legal marriage ‘was the paperwork . . . ‘”

Christian Post: “Religious figures are urging government officials to continue longstanding bans on the Sunday sale of alcohol in stores and restaurants while industry advocates say Bible-belt bans are ‘archaic.’”

Christian Post: “Muslim villagers last month beat a 63-year-old Christian convert and his youngest son because they refused to return to Islam, the father told Compass.”

Kashmir Dispatch: “Mutaheda Majlis-e-Ulema, a body of Islamic scholars and clerics, Monday passed a resolution against the repeated curbs imposed by the government on Friday prayers at the Jamia Masjid and other major mosques during the past four months of unrest, terming it as ‘brazen interference in the religious affairs of Muslims’.”

Appeal-Democrat: “Confronting officials of the Yuba City Unified School District over their promotion of Christian-based religious materials — including ‘Character Counts’ classes — led to retaliation by the school district, a Jewish teacher says.” | Courthouse News Service has posted a copy of the complaint (E.D. Cal.).

LifeSiteNews: “A report by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) on a study of IVF ‘efficiency’ states that just 7.5 percent of all artificially fertilized embryos will go on to become live-born children.”

The Town Talk: “Caddo Parish School Board member Barry Rachal wants a Bible-based history elective in Caddo high schools next fall.”

The Christian Institute: “Labour’s controversial equality laws shouldn’t be used to silence people who disagree with homosexual conduct, a group of senior bishops has warned.”

BBC: “Police in Pakistan have forced a family of the Ahmadi sect to exhume the body of a relative because it was buried in a Muslim graveyard.”

Vancouver Sun: “The Roman Catholic Church will open on Wednesday its first new seminary in Cuba in more than half a century in a further sign of its improving relations with the island’s communist-led government.”

AHN: “Artificial insemination technology has allowed more British women to become mothers in what is considered already their menopausal years. 107 British women in their 50s had babies in 2009, a 55 percent rise from 2008.”

“For the leaders of Riverdale Baptist Church in Upper Marlboro, the county’s decision in 2005 and 2006 to pass new zoning legislation that prevented the evangelical congregation from building a private school in Bristol amounted to religious discrimination . . . Attorneys from both sides laid out their cases Monday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore during the first day of what is expected to be a two-week jury trial.” Complaint filed in 2006 in Riverdale Baptist Church, Inc. et al. v. Anne Arundel County et al., (D. Md.) | Background info from Religion Clause.

OneNewsNow: “An Iowa congressman hopes voters in his state will send three of the state’s Supreme Court judges to the unemployment line today.”

FRCblog: “It is a tragic consequence of the civil ‘right’ that, unfortunately, Lisa Miller, fought for – and now has to live in spite of. Only this time, an innocent child suffers at the hands of adults in a political milieu where the innocent loses and no one, especially little Isabella, wins.”

Boston.com (AP): “The nation’s homeownership rate remained at its lowest in more than a decade, hampered by a rise in foreclosures and weak demand for housing.”

Darren Rosenblum, Professor at Pace Law School, writing at The Huffington Post: “Recently, President Obama posted an ‘It Gets Better’ message to teens. The Obama message goes far to encourage LGBT teens to realize that it gets better but fails to speak to the people that really matter in these teens’ lives: their parents . . . Kids whose parents are homophobes have no safe haven from their bullying.”

TIME: “Declarations of solidarity and the $2 billion in promised military aid received by a high-level Pakistani delegation in Washington last week belie the hardening of U.S. attitudes toward Islamabad . . . ”

Washington Post: “[Judge John T. Noonan Jr.] took aim at the core of the Justice Department’s argument . . .  ’I've read your brief, I’ve read the District Court opinion, I’ve heard your interchange with my two colleagues, and I don’t understand your argument,’ Noonan told deputy solicitor general Edwin S. Kneedler. ‘We are dependent as a court on counsel being responsive. . . . You keep saying the problem is that a state officer is told to do something. That’s not a matter of preemption. . . . I would think the proper thing to do is to concede that this is a point where you don’t have an argument.’”

Oral arguments can be viewed on YouTube.

Phyllis Schlafly writing at Townhall: “A new study casts doubt on the value of CPS. . . The researchers concluded that CPS’s intervention did little or nothing to improve the lives of the children . . . Two cases involving Child Protective Services are now before the U.S. Supreme Court . . . Camreta and Alford v. Greene.”

The Sun News: “[A Charleston County mother] said her daughter was taken to the clinic by someone who worked for Carolina Empowerment Group, a nonprofit community organization whose goal is to increase awareness of and prevent teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS and substance abuse. The group has an office at Burke High and access to students, but the school district doesn’t pay for its services.”

New York Times: “China began tallying its population on Monday for the first time since 2000, an arduous task likely to be made even tougher by the need to count scores of millions of migrant workers in the nation’s big cities.”

Quin Hillyer writing at The American Spectator: “Under attorney general Eric Holder, the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) is dangerously politicized, radically leftist, racialist, lawless, and at times corrupt. The good news is that it’s also often incompetent. This means the Holderites can bungle their leftist lawlessness so badly that even the most reticent of judges are obliged to smack them down.”

Stanley Fish writing at The New York Times / Opinionator: “Liberalism is the name of an enlightenment theory of government characterized by an emphasis on procedural rather than substantive rights: the law protects individual free choice and is not skewed in the direction of some choices or biased against others; the laws framed by the liberal state are, or should be, neutral between competing visions of the good and the good life . . . The key distinction underlying classical liberalism is the distinction between the private and the public. This distinction allows the sphere of political deliberation to be insulated from the intractable oppositions that immediately surface when religious viewpoints are put on the table. Liberalism tells us that religious viewpoints should be confined to the home, the heart, the place of worship and the personal relationship between oneself and one’s God.”

Associated Press: “Hundreds of grieving Christians and other Iraqis packed a funeral service Tuesday for members of the faith killed in a militant siege on a Baghdad church. The attack, which an al-Qaida-linked group claimed it carried out, left 58 people dead and dozens wounded.”

Associated Press: “Premier Silvio Berlusconi dismissed calls Tuesday to resign over his involvement with an underage Moroccan runaway – and even created a new uproar by claiming it was better to love beautiful girls than gays.”

Dennis Prager writing at Townhall: “For better or for worse, the notion of voting for the candidate rather than the party is now mostly naive idealism. The Democratic Party is now fully left-wing, and is simply the American version of any European Social Democratic party. It is the party of ever-expanding government. (The Republican Party, in contrast, is — at long last — the party of small government.)”

CitizenLink: “Since President Obama took office in January 2009, his Department of Justice has managed to look like they’re working against the nation’s laws in federal lawsuits challenging two separate federal statutes: the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA); and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). For explanations, see here and here.”

Symposium on the Impact of Same Sex Marriage on Public Education: Implications for Schools, Students, their Families, and Educational Communities
Marriage & Family Law Research Project, October 29, 2010

General Information | Abstracts | Draft Papers

Daily Mail: “A morning-after pill that can be taken up to five days after intercourse is being sold online by a British company. Its website says the powerful drug can ‘help stop an accident from becoming something more life-changing’. The pill, called ellaOne, works for longer than the regular morning-after pill and is more effective.”

WSPA Channel 7: “Prayer at government meetings, has stirred debate across the Upstate and Western North Carolina. In recent months, Spartanburg County, the City of Woodruff and even Hendersonville NC have all revised their policies regarding pre-meeting invocations.”

Associated Press: “An Iraqi police commander was detained for questioning Tuesday in connection with the deadly attack on a Catholic church in the capital as a top political leader blamed the carnage in part on lax security.”

OneNewsNow: “A court intervention has saved the life of an unborn baby in Texas . . . ‘It was a difficult choice for the girl to make to have to involve help from the outside, including legal assistance from ADF attorneys, but she felt that the life of her baby was worth it,” [ADF Attorney Steve Aden] notes.”

Rev. Dr. Charles P. McGathy writing at The Winding Labyrinth: “Our [Baptist] faith is founded upon the notion that there should be religious freedom for all people and that the separation of church and state is a biblical principle supported by Jesus . . . [Alan Sears] who heads up the Alliance Defense Fund has actually advocated the removal of a wall of separation between church and government. He has said, ‘One by one more and more bricks that make up the artificial “wall of separation” between church and state are being removed, and Christians are once again being allowed to exercise their constitutional right to equal access to public facilities and funding.’ Surely John Leland would be turning in his grave . . .”

London Telegraph: “As the US Federal Reserve meets today to decide whether its next blast of quantitative easing should be $1 trillion or a more cautious $500bn, it does so knowing that China and the emerging world view the policy as an attempt to drive down the dollar.”

Via the Associated Press.

“The District of Columbia leads the nation in male same-sex households, while Massachusetts is tops in lesbian-led homes, a university-based research center says in a new report.”

NY Daily News: “In the recent blowup over the release of teacher ratings, the United Federation of Teachers couldn’t even rely on the Democratic White House for support. Education Secretary Arne Duncan sided with the city – the latest blow to the once-mighty union, which has seen public support dwindle and has been forced to make concessions unthinkable just a few years ago.”

Todd Zywicki writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “Several commenters on my post that I have a new article on the 17th Amendment in National Review argued that rather than repealing the 17th Amendment they instead would prefer more vigorous enforcement of the Commerce Clause and 10th Amendments, which would (they presumably would argue) bring about many of the same benefits without offsetting costs. This is certainly a reasonable position and actually raises some interesting issues in its own right.”

Kathryn Jean Lopez writing at National Review Online: “The fear of God takes on a whole new meaning this time of year. Folks on the right of the political spectrum want to create a religious state, you know. We want to tear down the wall between church and state . . . Of course, as every U.S.-history grad student (hopefully) knows, that ‘wall of separation’ we hear so much about was not in the U.S. Constitution — and still isn’t . . . Furthermore, can the party of former altar boy Joe Biden stop pretending it keeps a hermetically sealed wall between religion and politics?”

Associated Press: “Relations between Israel’s Jewish majority and its Arab minority have never been warm, but they appear to have hit a new low that has activists on both sides worried the troubled relationship is beyond repair.”

CNN: “A judge temporarily ordered a tabloid in Uganda to stop publishing lists identifying people it claims are gay after an advocacy organization filed a lawsuit.”

The Calgary Sun: “Maverick street minister Artur Pawlowski had defeated city hall — again. A provincial court judge ruled Monday Pawlowski’s Charter rights were violated when his Street Church Ministries was charged under Calgary’s parks bylaws.” Via Religion Clause.

Deroy Murdock writing at National Review Online: “Whether or not the GOP wins the U.S. Senate, several Republican contenders for the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body hope to promote some rather unique proposals. Republicans are running on such ideas as repealing Obamacare, curbing federal spending, and making permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Those are all fine concepts, but several candidates have gone beyond the old perennials to promote good, less-familiar ideas.”

“The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday in a California case testing whether states may ban the sale or rental of violent video games to minors.”

Crain’s Detroit Business: “The Warren-based Salvation Temple Church has filed a lawsuit against the city of Hazel Park, claiming a 2005 ordinance is unconstitutional because it effectively excludes any new religious institutions from opening in the city.”

Complaint filed in Salvation Temple Church v. City of Hazel Park, No. 10-14148 (E.D. Mich.)

Salina Journal: “Nancy Moritz Caplinger, of Topeka, who has been serving on the Kansas Court of Appeals, was appointed by Gov. Mark Parkinson to replace the late Chief Justice Robert Davis. Caplinger is the daughter of Louis (now deceased) and Carol Moritz of Salina.”

Lyle Denniston reports at SCOTUSblog: “A federal appeals court in California voted to allow the U.S. military to continue enforcing the 1993 law that bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. One judge of the three-judge panel would have stopped any discharges under that policy, but otherwise would have allowed it to remain in effect.” | Order, Log Cabin Republicans v. U.S. (Nov. 01, 2010)