Daily Archives: December 7, 2010

Christian Post: “Nearly 300 people gathered in prayer Monday to protest the first day of business of Leroy Carhart’s Germantown abortion clinic in Maryland.”

LifeNews: “The candidates seeking the critical post of chairman of the Republican Party will participate in a debate next month that will partly focus on pro-life issues, including abortion.”

LifeNews: “Wake County, North Carolina is the latest to cut taxpayer funded abortions for government employees — a move that is helping spread the new trend nationwide to get government out of the abortion business.”

“This week, the Tolerance Law Center, a civil rights association headed by a director who has spent more than a decade defending civil liberties, issued a report labeling the Southern Poverty Law Center a hate group. Previously, the TLC has condemned Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Taliban for ‘crimes against humanity.’”

Orlando Sentinel: “While many Floridians are spreading holiday cheer, one government agency has banned it: the Florida Turnpike Enterprise.”

Chillicothe Gazette: Chillicothe resident Rebekah Valentich formally has requested the Chillicothe City Council stop reciting Christian prayers at the beginning of every regular session.

Citizen Link: “This Proposition 8 case is bigger than California and bigger than the definition of marriage,” Jordan Lorence, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, told CBN News. “It not only affects the definition of marriage but also religious liberty and freedom of conscience.”

“Despite increased gloom among advocates for repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the White House is insisting that Congress will have time to take up the issue before it adjourns for the year.”

“Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said on Tuesday he thinks the Senate “will get to a vote” on the 2011 defense authorization bill, critical for military policy, this week.”

Washington Blade: “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) reaffirmed on Monday his commitment to bring “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal to vote in the lame duck session of Congress amid fears other legislative priorities will bump the issue from the agenda.”

Boston Globe: “The Boston Teachers Union is accusing city and school leaders of “meeting secretly’’ last week to offer charter school officials the chance to lease city schools slated for closure, even before parents and students at those schools knew their fate.”

ADF attorney Austin R. Nimocks appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show last Friday to preview Prop. 8 arguments. | MP3 audio 10:57 mins

ADF attorney Erik Stanley appeared on Q90 FM with Mike LeMay, “Stand Up for the Truth”: Pastors and Freedom of Speech. | MP3 audio 35:02 mins | ADF Pulpit Initiative

International Law Reporter: “Anne T. Gallagher has published The International Law of Human Trafficking (Cambridge Univ. Press 2010). Here’s the abstract . . . ”

The Sun: “The Christian owners of a seaside B&B are being sued in a landmark case — for refusing to let a gay couple share a double bed.”

Richard Land writes at the Christian Post: “The decision by Apple to remove surreptitiously an iPhone application related to the Manhattan Declaration is nonsense at best and censorship at worst.”

Pakistan Christian TV has posted this document which purports to be a filing with the Pakistan Supreme Court on behalf of Aasia Bibi and other persecuted Christians.

Leonard Link provides this lengthy review of yesterday’s proceedings.

WTKR.com: “But Americans United For Separation of Church and State says the policy is still a problem. They say King shouldn’t be sponsoring forums for religious expression. The Alliance Defense Fund, which helped craft the measure, disputes that. They say non-religious symbols can be displayed on the flagpole as long as they’re on a list approved by the federal Veterans Administration.”

American Constitution Society: “There is no rational basis for the banning of same-sex marriage, according to Matt McGill, a lawyer who joined with the American Foundation for Equal Rights to challenge Proposition 8. McGill debated Jordan Lorence, a lawyer from Alliance Defense Fund, who supports Proposition 8 and a ban on same-sex marriage . . . Lorence argued that the case should not have gone before the court. ‘In fact, there were times when I was at the trial that I felt I was at a legislative hearing as opposed to a judicial proceeding,’ he said.”

WDEF.com reports.

NPR (includes audio): “In February, historian Nathaniel Frank authored a comprehensive study of five U.S. allies that have successfully lifted bans or other restrictions on gays openly serving in the military — Britain, Israel, Canada, South Africa and Australia.”

KIROTV.com:
“The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the Aberdeen School District, claiming school officials failed to do anything to help a student who suffered ongoing harassment on the basis of his race and his perceived sexual orientation.”

Christian Science Monitor: “‘Shanghai-China’ outperformed all other global participants in an average of the three areas of evaluation (math, science, and reading). South Korea (2), Hong Kong-China (4), Singapore (5), and Japan (8) also placed in the the top 10. Non-Asian countries in the top 10 were Finland (3), Canada (6), New Zealand (7), Australia (9), and The Netherlands (10). The US was no. 17.”

“Just because you’re a leader in the Legislature doesn’t mean you’re a dictator where you have the right to make a unilateral decision, I think, on an issue of this importance and magnitude,” Branstad said. “Certainly the senators should be given an opportunity to vote on this.”

“Democrats appear to have the 60 votes necessary to overcome any GOP-led filibuster of the defense bill, because some Republicans — like Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Scott Brown (Mass.) — have said they support the repeal.”

“. . . the Republican unexpectedly announced he would support allowing gay troops to serve openly in the military . . . ”

Washington Post: “Yet with the lame-duck session of Congress hurtling toward a chaotic close, the effort to repeal the policy is in peril . . . en. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) said he would support repeal, which is included as part of a broader defense authorization bill. He joins Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who have signaled they would vote to end the ban . . . ”

LifeSiteNews: “The figures are leading some in Ireland to accuse the IMB is not showing due consideration for the health of young people vaccinated with the drug.”

LifeSiteNews: “Twenty-one of Canada’s 33 abortion facilities currently have a pro-life presence, reports the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) in a new study.”

LifeNews: “Brazilian police have charged one of the country’s biggest soccer stars with planning the October 2009 murder of 25-year-old student Eliza Samudio, his pregnant girlfriend who refused an abortion.”

Phyllis Schlafly writes at Townhall: “One of the greatest risks of the current lame-duck Congress is the possibility of Senate confirmation of President Obama’s radical appointments to federal courts, boards and agencies.”

David Kopel writes at the Volokh Conspiracy: “In brief: UNICEF has been at the forefront of pressuring national governments to set up so many hurdles as to make international adoption rare and extremely time-consuming. The result is that children languish in miserable, hellish orphanages for years. During the critical early months and years in which interaction with loving parents is essential to a child’s normal brain development, the children are neglected and left in squalor.”

AP: “Three dozen top Israeli rabbis threw their support Tuesday behind a religious ruling barring Jews from selling or renting homes to non-Jews – an indication of growing radicalism within the rabbinical community at a time of mounting friction between Israeli Arabs and Jews.”

The Daily Caller: “Many American colleges and universities are steering their students toward a new source of “financial aid”: food stamps.”

ADF attorney Matt Bowman appeared on the Don Kroah Show to discuss this:  Will DC Circuit allow funding of embryonic stem cell research to go on contrary to law? | MP3 audio 12:42 mins

Breitbart Big Peace: “The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is preaching a global Caliphate and Islamic Shari’a law over America to its members, according to the 2010 ICNA Member’s Hand Book. This is a very different message than the group’s public outreach efforts, and contradicts claims that the organization is a tolerant, mainstream Islamic group . . . ”

The Examiner: “More than 500 suspected Taliban fighters detained by U.S. forces have been released from custody at the urging of Afghan government officials, angering both American troops and some Afghans who oppose the policy on the grounds that many of those released return to the battlefield to kill NATO soldiers and Afghan civilians.”

Tom Strode writes at Baptist Press: “Religious freedom advocates welcomed the continued decline in international support for the concept of “defamation of religions” as evidenced in a recent vote in the United Nations.”

One News Now: “A letter signed by 42 members of Congress criticizes President Barack Obama for telling students in Indonesia last month that America’s national motto is “E Pluribus Unum.” . . .the national motto has been “In God We Trust” since 1956.”

Religion Clause Blog: “According to M and C, a Pakistani court yesterday temporarily blocked action on government-proposed amendments to relax the country’s blasphemy laws while the court considers a citizen’s petition claiming that Parliament does not have a constitutional right to amend the country’s laws relating to religion . . . ”

Religion Clause Blog: “Today’s Windsor (ON) Star reports on a law suit that has a Canadian court in the middle of a factional dispute at a Sikh Gurdwara in Windsor, Ontario. A power struggle among leaders of the Sikh Cultural Society of Metropolitan Windsor began in 2009 when a new executive was proclaimed . . . ”

California Watch: Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Boies called the proceedings “a turning point” in history. “Looking forward 20, 30 years from now, people are going to wonder, ‘Why was this necessary?’” he said. “People will look back on this case the way we look back on Brown v. Board of Education and say, ‘Why did it take so long?’” Asked to respond to Boies’ prediction, Austin Nimocks, legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which supports Prop. 8, said: “That’s the great thing about America. Everybody is free to disagree. The over seven million Californians who voted on this measure have a different opinion about that.”

Students for Life of America: The 2011 SFLA National Conference will be held on January 23, 2010 at the North Bethesda Marriott and will be co-sponsored by the Alliance Defense Fund.

One News Now: Matt Bowman  an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund . . .  We’re hopeful that the [DC] Court of Appeals will agree with the district court that simply made sure Americans don’t pay any more of their precious taxpayer dollars for needless research…made irrelevant by adult stem cell and other research that actually treats people.” ADF is asking the court to rule that the administration is violating federal law and halt the use of tax money for the research.

Winston-Salem Journal: “The King City Council voted unanimously last night to approve a limited public-forum policy for religious symbols on flags at the city’s Veteran’s Memorial . . . Joe Infranco, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund who helped craft the policy, and City Attorney Walter Pitt have said that the policy follows legal guidelines because it allows individuals to express their religious views, which are protected by the First Amendment. The Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative organization that supports public expressions of Christianity, offered free legal help to city officials who worked on the policy.”

LifeNews: Alliance Defense Fund legal counsel Matt Bowman talked with the Christian Post about the case and said that, while it continues, the Obama administration continues to make taxpayers fund embryonic stem cell research. “The government is shoveling tax dollars out the door while it can,” he said. “Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments, and violate federal law.” “They focused more on that desire (to explore the alleged benefits of embryonic stem cell research) than the statutes that say taxpayer money should not be spent in this destructive way,” Bowman said of the Obama administration’s attorneys.

Appellate Daily: “At least two votes on the merits for striking Prop. 8, if merits reached at all. Panel much as expected, with some twists.”

AP: A bomb hidden in a metal canister exploded Tuesday evening as thousands gathered for a Hindu ceremony, killing a toddler and triggering a stampede that left many others wounded in a holy Indian city . . . The Press Trust of India reported a Muslim terror group allegedly claimed responsibility for the blast . . . ”

WorldNetDaily: Jordan Lorence, counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund told WND after the arguments today that marriage advocates were able to get their points across.The arguments went very well. I think we got out our main arguments,” he said. “It is a totally constitutional public policy decision for voters to define marriage as one man and one woman.” However, he said, “exactly where the court’s going to go with this, I’m not sure.” . . . The ADF said the case has the potential to create “years of chaos and confusion in the legal battle to preserve marriage. It could impact marriage laws in up to 45 other states – including the … states where voters overwhelmingly adopted state constitutional amendments…”
The ADF report said also at stake is . . .

AP: “China’s bishops opened a meeting Tuesday to choose leaders of the government-backed Catholic church amid tensions with the Vatican after it denounced the recent ordination of a bishop who did not have the pope’s approval.”

AP: “A Greek Orthodox church in New York City that was destroyed on Sept. 11 is taking legal action against the agency that owns ground zero, saying it has reneged on a promise to rebuild the church.”

Ed Whelan writes at National Review: “The constraints of sound reasoning aside, Olson of course is free to abandon the principles of constitutional interpretation that he professed to embrace during his previous life as a constitutional conservative. But Olson is pretending that he hasn’t done so and is trying to leverage his past reputation in support of his newfound cause.”

Lyle Denniston reports on yesterday’s oral argument at SCOTUS Blog: “If there was a surprise, it was that the one judge on the three-judge panel known as a conservative, Circuit Judge N. Randy Smith, found a possibly fatal flaw in logic in support of the ban.  What is rational, Judge Smith asked, about a state giving gay and lesbian couples complete equality in the legal rights and benefits that married couples have, including the right to raise children, but then to deny them marriage itself.  The state’s voters, he said, had just opted to omit a single word, “marriage,”  and how is that rational? ”