Daily Archives: December 15, 2010

Thomas More Law Center: “This afternoon, the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national, public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, along with co-counsel, David Yerushalmi, filed its opening brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in its first in the Nation challenge to the constitutionality of Obamacare. TMLC is challenging the Obamacare mandate that requires all legal residents to purchase ‘minimum essential’ healthcare coverage under penalty of federal law.”

Blog of LegalTimes: “Majority Leader Harry Reid wants the Senate to vote in the next week on the nomination of Bryan Cave partner James Cole to be the U.S. Justice Department’s No. 2 official.”

Naples News: “The Ave Maria School of Law established the Center for Research on Marriage, Religion and Public Policy this fall. Its director is no stranger to ongoing debates about gay marriage, appearing as a frequent guest on news analysis shows where she has spoken strongly against gay marriage. She’s also a syndicated columnist on marriage and family issues.”

Evan Wolfson writing at The Huffington Post: “Freedom to Marry spent 2010 ramping up and reinventing itself to be the national campaign the movement needs to get the job done. Working together in this campaign, we can make 2011, like 2010, another winning year for the freedom to marry.”

LifeNews: “Thanks to a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling in December 1995, requiring taxpayers to fund abortions, the state health department reveals Minnesotans have paid $15 million for 50,000 abortions in the years since.”

Baltimore Messenger: “The arrival in Germantown of a doctor who has been frank about his performance of abortions late in pregnancy has not only spurred public protests in the community, but prompted legislators to propose new laws that would ban the practice in the state.”

Christian Post: “The interview, which took place in Dallas last week, was broadcast on the ministry’s daily radio program on Monday and Tuesday . . . ‘But it took me a while to understand that religion is not a course in self-improvement. Religion is a surrender – that you allow a living God into your life by surrendering to that living God. And then you improve to please God, not please yourself.’”

Huffington Post: “Reported sexual assaults at the three U.S. military academies rose 64 percent in the 2009-10 academic year compared with the previous year, the Defense Department said Wednesday.”

Christian Science Monitor: “German officials said the preemptive raids, conducted under German anti-Nazi laws of association, were aimed at uncovering unconstitutional or separatist acts and not part of an international terror hunt.”

Dual Illegality and Geoambiguous Law: A New Rule for Extraterritorial Application of US Law
Jeffrey A. Meyer, 95 Minn. L. Rev. 110 (2010)

“Part I provides a background on the concepts of ‘territoriality’ and ‘extraterritoriality,’ the landmark decisions of U.S. courts considering the extraterritorial application of U.S. law, and the customary international law of jurisdiction. Part II critiques the current extraterritorial jurisdictional framework as generally applied by U.S. courts today. It focuses on how the uneven application of the presumption against extraterritoriality ends up ensnaring judges in a highly subjective interpretive process that is inconsistent with the certainty and predictability needs that largely justify having jurisdictional rules. Part III sets forth the case for a rule of dual illegality to govern U.S. courts in deciding whether–in the absence of instruction from Congress–U.S. law should apply to criminalize or regulate conduct that occurs in foreign states. It demonstrates how a dual-illegality rule can work as it already has in the extradition context and responds to potential objections.”

Mail Tribune: “Ashland public schools can display a decorated pine tree if it is surrounded by symbols from other religious holidays, but in order to remain religiously neutral they should not display a Christmas tree alone, Superintendent Juli Di Chiro told the School Board Monday.”

“The 250-175 vote propels the issue to the Senate for what could be the last chance for now to end the 1993 law that forbids recruiters from asking about sexual orientation while prohibiting soldiers from acknowledging that they are gay.”

KETK: “Texas Department of Aging and Disabilities service wrote this an email to their employees across the state. It reads: ‘This is a reminder to all staff that prayer is considered a religious activity and therefore should not be included in unit/staff meetings at any time, not just the holidays.’”

“The other three GOP senators who have said they support repeal are Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Scott Brown (Mass.).”

MSNBC: “Lt. Dan Choi, the openly gay Army veteran who has been an outspoken critic of the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, has been hospitalized after suffering a mental breakdown, he told colleagues.”

In May, the Alliance Defense Fund obtained a letter from the Wisconsin Department of Justice stating that the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics had stopped pursuing the plan, but UWHC then made public comments that indicated they weren’t fully giving up at that time, despite public pressure brought to bear by ADF and its allies.

Congratulations to allied attorneys Peter Costea, Dan Dalton, Natalie Decker, Matthew Fender, Steve Fitschen, Brian Hurley, Katie Short, Allison Aranda, Phil Jauregui, Steve Taylor, and Randy Wenger for their recent accomplishments and successes listed below. Please take time to congratulate th

TIME: “A decade after they faced each other in the landmark Bush v. Gore case, power attorneys David Boies and Ted Olson found common cause and fast friendship as co–counsels working to overturn California’s prohibition on same sex marriage.”

PR Newswire: “The American Legion remains strongly opposed to a renewed and intensified Congressional effort to hastily repeal the Pentagon’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law during Congress’s rapidly expiring lame duck session. ”

CNSNews: “Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli told CNSNews.com that the federal government will be able to ‘order’ individuals to purchase any product or service if the individual mandate in health care law is determined to be constitutional by the Supreme Court.”

Montreal Gazette: “The House of Commons killed a private member’s bill Wednesday that would have criminalized ‘coercing’ a woman into an abortion. Bill C-510, sponsored by anti-abortion Winnipeg Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge, would have criminalized forcing a woman into an abortion through threats of violence, withdrawal of financial resources or a place to live.”

LifeSiteNews: “Harper had opposed the bill since it was first introduced by Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge in April. The PM had said he ‘will oppose any attempt to create a new abortion law.’”

American Prospect: “Anecdotal evidence suggests sexual assault rates in the military are high, with as many as one in three women being sexually assaulted during their service . . . frustrated by rejected Freedom of Information Act requests, the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have filed a lawsuit in federal district court demanding the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs release the data and disclose what they’re doing to treat victims and prevent future abuse.” | Related: Congressional panel: Let women serve in combat roles

Christian Post: “The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom wants the government to use Wednesday’s United Nations Security Council meeting on Iraq as an ‘opportunity’ to address the ‘grave situation facing that country’s Christians and other imperiled religious minorities.’” | USCIRF press release is here.

Chicago Sun-Times: “Arguing that Chicago Public Schools are ‘broken’ and that parents deserve a ‘choice,’ mayoral challenger James Meeks said Wednesday he would offer $4,500-a-year vouchers to 50,000 low-and-middle-income Chicago families to use toward private school tuition.”

Wall Street Journal / Washington Wire: “In what looks like a decisive blow, at least eight Republican senators – including some the White House was counting on – will announce this afternoon they cannot vote to ratify President Barack Obama’s New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia this year.”

Card. Joseph Zen Zekiun: “The Eighth Assembly of the Representatives of the Chinese Catholics was ‘victoriously’ successful, as ‘victoriously successful’ was the preventing of Liu Xiaobo from going to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Are our leaders are truly proud of similar ‘victories’? The fact that China has become an economic power, allows them to ignore so shamefully the human rights? Those who bow to you for business interests, do they respect you in their hearts? Wake up! Please, save a little the dignity of our great nation, famous for its ancient civilization and its refined etiquette.”

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “A bill that would validate conversions to Judaism through Israel’s military rabbinate passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset. The measure, sponsored by David Rotem of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, passed Wednesday by a vote of 75 to 18. It was opposed by the haredi Orthodox Shas Party. Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas are part of the majority government coalition.”

Washington Post: “Police fired tear gas and swung batons to disperse hundreds of Muslims participating in religious processions in the Indian portion of Kashmir on Wednesday. At least six people were injured, police said.”

aidsmap: “Doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with leukaemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection.”

California Family Council: “Legislators in California have incrementally pursued special homosexual rights and curriculum in the schools, promoting the acceptance of behaviors unacceptable to many parents. New legislation – introduced December 13 – would require that children be taught the contributions of homosexuals in California and American history.”

Telegraph: “David Cameron’s assertion that this Government would be the first in a generation to leave office wielding less power than it started with was more than a rhetorical flourish. The Localism Bill published yesterday sets out in some detail the mechanisms by which the Coalition intends to divest Whitehall of power and hand it instead to local communities and local government.” Text of the bill is here.

The Hill: “The Senate voted 81 to 19 in favor of the deal struck by President Obama and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).”

Bishop Jeffrey Lee writing at the Chicago Tribune / The Seeker: “The Illinois’ General Assembly’s approval of a bill authorizing civil unions is a step toward dismantling the barriers that limit access of gay and lesbian couples to the full protections and benefits guaranteed all Americans in our Constitution.”

Al Masy Al Youm: “Egyptian fathers and sons are expected to save 100 percent of their joint salaries for 3 to 8 years in order to save for marriage, according to Singerman. But with Egyptian saving rates currently at around 17 percent, it can take a father and son duo anywhere from 16 (highest income bracket surveyed) to 43 (lowest income bracket surveyed) years to come up with sufficient marriage funds.”

Globe and Mail: “More than half of Canadians in the 15-to-29 age cohort either have no religion or never attend a service of worship, says Statistics Canada. Only 22 per cent say religion is very important to them, down from 34 per cent in 2002. And in a recent poll done by Nanos Research for The Globe and Mail, just one in five of the under-30 age group say they are the generation of their family that attends weekly religious services.”

Student Free Press: “The group behind the ‘white privilege’ and ‘heterosexual privilege’ fliers has come forward. Stanford Students for Queer Liberation, now famous for its anti-military op-ed in the Daily, has claimed responsibility for the fliers. The group’s co-presidents, Holly Fetter ’13 and Alok Vaid-Menon ’13, emailed me about a week ago to let me know that they had posted the fliers around campus.”

Meidaite: “Former President Jimmy Carter tells Big Think that even as the fight over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell continues, he believes Americans are ready for their first gay president.”

St. Albert Gazette: “A group of Morinville residents are asking the Greater St. Albert Catholic Regional Division (GSACRD) to provide a fully secular, non faith-based education for their children and grandchildren. They argue that a public school education is a secular education and should exclude religious instruction.”

National Post: “The remains of a Canadian diplomat buried in Turkey were reportedly forcibly removed from a local cemetery after a prominent Muslim family said they weren’t comfortable praying next to a Christian grave.”

Washington Post: “A federal judge has blocked the sale of assets held in a polygamous church’s communal land trust while he decides whether the faith’s constitutional rights have been violated by Utah authorities.”

Townhall: “Mobs in Parliament Square set fire to the statue of 19th century statesman Lord Palmerston and urinated on the statue of Winston Churchill. Charlie Gilmour, son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, was swinging by a rope from the Cenotaph that memorializes the 700,000 British dead of the Great War . . . Can Europe’s welfare states be downsized without violence surging, governments falling and populists coming to power who will default on debts rather than force the masses that elected them to suffer to save the bank investors?”

Politico: “Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will offer a primer on the separation of powers as laid out in the U.S. Constitution at the first of a series of meetings for conservative members of Congress. The Supreme Court and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) confirmed on Tuesday that the conservative justice was scheduled to speak at the inaugural Conservative Constitutional Seminar, in coordination with Bachmann’s Tea Party Caucus.”

“The retention vote in which three Iowa Supreme Court justices were ousted was illegal, according to a lawsuit seeking to keep the three justices from being tossed from the bench.”

FRC: “Family Research Council (FRC) announced the placement of a full-page open letter in today’s print editions of Politico and the Washington Examiner responding to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) recent attacks on FRC and other groups.”

Boston.com [AP]: “Iranians convicted for same-sex activities are on death row and awaiting hanging, including several who were minors when arrested, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.” Access the report here.

LifeNews: “When LeRoy Carhart relocated much of his abortion business from Nebraska to Maryland, he apparently didn’t tell the state medical board the truth about the abortions he would do in Germantown.”

Medical News Today: “Abortion-rights advocates are preparing for ‘aggressive’ challenges from newly emboldened abortion-right opponents, who have increased their numbers in state elected offices and secured key congressional posts, Politico reports.”

Lancaster Online: “The American Civil Liberties Union has decided not to pursue a complaint by a substitute teacher who alleges she was ‘blackballed’ by Manheim Township School District after her husband publicly criticized township students for not participating in the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Associated Press: “Two suicide bombers blew themselves up near a mosque in southeastern Iran on Wednesday, killing at least 39 people, including a newborn baby, at a Shiite mourning ceremony, state media reported.”

ADF attorney Steven Aden appeared on the Bob Dutko Show to discuss this: Nurse forced to assist in abortion seeks to stop dismantling of her conscience protections. | MP3 audio 6:16 mins

Randy Barnett writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “The ‘necessary’ prong of the Necessary & Proper Clause is already being limited by a judicially administrable doctrine: the economic-noneconomic distinction. To execute its commerce power under the existing Necessary & Proper Clause doctrine, Congress may only reach intrastate economic activity that substantially affects interstate commerce. According to this settled doctrine, however ‘necessary’ it might otherwise be, it cannot reach intrastate noneconomic activity . . . ”

The How Appealing roundup is here.

Brussels Journal: “The bureaucrats and intellectuals who create the curriculum for Norway’s State schools, most of whom attended university during the 1960s and 1970s and partook of that era’s student radicalism, agree that the goal of education is not the transmission of knowledge, but the propagation of soixante-huitardisme, relativism, and a bellyfeel hatred of white Europeans.”

Dahlia Lithwick writing at Slate: “How can we balance a justice’s desire to get things off his chest against the need to protect our collective faith in the institution that cannot exist when that faith is annihilated? And how can we do so without permanently sacrificing the valuable insights we stand to gain by listening to those select few whose vantage point is unparalleled?”

New York Times: “Nevertheless, at a time when an uncommonly high number of judicial vacancies is threatening the sound functioning of the nation’s courts, Senate Republicans are persisting in playing an obstructionist game. (These, by the way, are the same Senate Republicans who threatened to ban filibusters if they did not get an up-or-down vote on every one of President George W. Bush’s nominees, including some highly problematic ones.)”

at Seton Hall University, writing in the Star-Ledger: “Justice Rivera-Soto has not only objected to Chief Justice Rabner’s temporary assignment of Judge Edwin Stern to the court, but decided to abstain from voting in cases heard by an unconstitutionally constituted court. In response, Justice Barry Albin has accused Justice Rivera-Soto of putting himself above the law, claiming that the rule of law requires adherence to decisions made by a majority of the court. Senators have called for Justice Rivera-Soto to resign or be impeached.”

Washington Post: “Virginia’s go-it-alone legal strategy to challenge the nation’s sweeping federal health-care overhaul – once questioned by both advocates and some opponents of the law – seems to be paying off for state Attorney General Ken T. Cuccinelli II after Monday’s court ruling, in his favor, that a key provision of the law is unconstitutional.”

Townhall: “The EPA can only regulate interstate commerce, Howell explains. If coal is produced in West Virginia and burned in West Virginia, it shouldn’t be under the EPA’s jurisdiction. This doesn’t mean that environmental standards won’t be adhered to. It simply means that state agencies can streamline and prioritize enforcement instead of it being handled by a centralized bureaucracy.”

“The Catholic bishop of Phoenix will strip St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center of its Catholic status on Friday if the hospital’s parent company, Catholic Healthcare West, does not meet his demands to guarantee compliance with church teachings.”

Theodore Dalrymple writing in The Salisbury Review: “There are few human types less attractive, surely, than failed materialists, which is what the British, or at least so many of them, now are. They consume without discrimination what they have not earned . . . Benedict’s ‘crime,’ apart from being German, goes much further than his failure (or worse his refusal) to screen out the unpleasant consequences of consumerist materialism from his vision . . . In other words, Benedict XVI presents not a challenge to this or that piece of social policy, but to a whole Weltanschauung. And hell hath no fury like a questionable Weltanschauung questioned.”

Herald Sun: “Andrej Pejic, 19, from Broadmeadows has taken the international modelling scene by storm in the past six months, with his gender- bender appearance . . . ‘At the start photographers really tried to work against my look, they tried to make me look more masculine,’ Pejic said.”

At The Weekly Standard, Eve Tushnet reviews What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church by Kenda Creasy Dean: “Instead of the life-changing, culture-challenging demands of the gospel, Dean argues, American teenagers follow a mutant creed best understood as ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.’ Almost Christian, a popularization of the results of the 2002-05 National Study of Youth and Religion, attempts to help Christian parents, youth pastors, and others who are alarmed at the shakiness and incoherence of most teens’ faith . . . It is not—as Dean’s title indicates—really Christianity at all . . . this belief system seems designed to minimize the importance of religious difference, partly as a way of defusing the tensions and passions of a pluralist society. It’s as if believing that other people are wrong about God in some important ways is bad manners.”

Daily Camera: “Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle will allow a Muslim woman to wear her head-covering in a jail booking photo, provided she push the scarf back far enough to expose her hairline and ears.”

Heritage Foundation: “By waiting until late yesterday to unveil this 1,924-page monstrosity, Reid is playing a high stakes game of chicken with small government conservatives. Since the FY 2010 budget expired on September 30th, the federal government has been operating on a series of continuing resolutions (CR). The most recent CR expires on midnight Saturday. If the Senate does not pass a bill by then the federal government shuts down. Reid believes that conservatives do not have courage to back up their spending cut convictions. Conservative Senators should call Reid’s bluff.”

US News & World Report / Health: “Some of those gains will come right away, such as the elimination of restrictions on people with preexisting conditions, while others — no more lifetime limits on health insurance and subsidized coverage through health insurance exchanges — are slated for 2014, as more provisions of the Affordable Care Act are rolled out.” | The Commonwealth Fund’s report is here.

The Hill: “The Department of Justice announced Tuesday afternoon it will appeal a district court ruling that a key part of the new healthcare reform law is unconstitutional . . . The administration will appeal the district court ruling to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.”

Missouri Lawyers Media [AP]: “Four Iowa residents filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday that notes since they are not attorneys they have no role in selecting the seven commissioners, who are lawyers elected through the Iowa State Bar Association. The lawsuit claims the selection system gives lawyers too much influence and is unconstitutional as a result.”

James Madison Center for Free Speech press release can be found here.

East Valley Tribune: “A member of a screening panel at the heart of a controversy about religion abruptly resigned Tuesday. Louis Araneta said his comments during the discussion of the nomination of Christopher Gleason to the Independent Redistricting Commission ‘were misinterpreted to infer that I was not in support of Mr. Gleason’s application because of his religious beliefs.’”

Center for Arizona Policy: “‘Yesterday, I called for Commissioner Araneta to resign from the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments because of comments he made last week citing an applicant’s Christian faith as a disqualification for service on the Independent Redistricting Commission,’ said Cathi Herrod, Center for Arizona Policy President.”

Douglas Murray writing in the Wall Street Journal [full text via Google News]: “It’s that time of the year again. And alongside the familiar traditions of carols, tinsel and unwanted gifts, comes a new tradition: Somewhere in the world a Muslim radicalized in Britain will try to blow up innocent men, women and children in a suicide mission.”

OneNewsNow: “The Alliance Defense Fund is urging a university in West Virginia to restore the traditional invocation and benediction to the nursing program’s pinning ceremony scheduled for tomorrow . . . “The federal courts addressed this very issue — the issue of graduation prayers at universities — and they have unanimously upheld these prayers [as consistent with the First Amendment],” [ADF Attorney Travis Barham] explains.”

At The Public Discourse, Andrew Haines reviews Polyamory in the 21st Century by Deborah Anapol: “Anapol’s account is designed as an all-around apologia of the consensual free love movement and attempts to radically and critically redefine the very meaning of sex . . . Two themes in Polyamory in the 21st Century are particularly striking: the author’s preoccupation with distinguishing love from lust; and the anthropological, relational, and ethical considerations she offers as a consequence of her findings.”

CBN: “The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, encouraged public school officials in Tennessee to continue recognizing Christmas despite recent threats from the American Civil Liberties Union. ‘Urban legends about the offensiveness of Christmas are clearly out of sync with the American people, common sense, and the Constitution,’ ADF Senior Counsel [David Cortman] affirmed in a statement.”

Dr. Jeff Mirus writing at CatholicCulture.org: “We must always remember that there is a great difference between a person afflicted with same-sex attraction who is sincerely seeking the best way to deal with it, and a movement which insists that same-sex attraction be recognized as good, and the resulting life-style wholeheartedly endorsed. Within such a movement, credibility depends first and foremost on agreement.”

“Most notably, Mr. Perry is proposing a British-style ‘loser pays’ rule, which would require plaintiffs to pick up the legal costs of their targets if they lose their suits.”

FRC: “Only 45 percent of American children have spent their childhood in an intact family, according to the [Index of Belonging and Rejection]. Fifty-five percent of American teenagers’ parents have rejected each other, either through divorce, separation, or choosing not to marry.”