Daily Archives: December 21, 2010

Leonard Link: “The latest chapter in litigation over second-parent adoptions — two appellate decisions issued in recent days — bears this out, as the North Carolina Supreme Court overruled both trial and intermediate appellate courts to find that a second-parent adoption approved five years ago was ‘void ab initio,’ while Minnesota’s intermediate appellate court found that a trial judge erred by sanctioning an attorney for raising a similar argument in seeking to set aside an eight-year-old second-parent adoption decree.”

Hindustan Times: “Campaigners against forced marriages were left worried after a British court, ruling on an immigration matter on Tuesday, struck down a law aimed at preventing such marriages. The High Court overturned a ban on married people from outside Europe joining their British spouses if they are below 21 years of age.”

Times of Malta: “The Attorney General has filed an appeal from a court sentence which had granted Joanne Cassar the right to marry a man after her gender reassignment surgery.”

New York Times: “Thirty years after it introduced some of the world’s most sweeping population-control measures, the Chinese government continues to use a variety of coercive family planning tactics, from financial penalties for households that violate the restrictions to the forced sterilization of women who have already had one child, according to a report issued by a human rights group.”

Independent: “The evidence is clear. Legalisation increases abortion rates dramatically. Irish figures for abortion remain comparatively low because we have not legalised abortion in this country. We have an average rate of approximately 6,000 abortions per annum (4,422 performed last year in the UK).”

Miami Herald: “A state tourism board gave preliminary approval Monday for a religious theme park to apply for up to $37 million in state tax incentives.”

FFRF: “Crosses belong on churchtops, not on public libraries, even in the bible belt. That’s the gist of the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Dec. 10 letter to library officials in Hawkins County, Tenn., about the display of an illuminated Latin cross atop a Christmas tree decoration in Church Hill. ”

The Day: “With the historic repeal of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ law, Sen. Joe Lieberman says the next step for gay rights is to ensure that same-sex partners of federal employees receive the same benefits as heterosexual spouses.”

CNSNews: “Veterans of Foreign Wars issued a statement warning that implementation of the new law should proceed with caution and take into consideration the opposition of nearly 60 percent of combat troops who say the repeal will have ‘a negative or very negative impact on unit cohesion and performance.’
The VFW also warned that allowing open homosexuals in the armed forces – a new ‘social experiment’ – could bring an end to America’s all-volunteer army.”

Times of Malta: “Malta’s strict anti-abortion laws will not be affected by the recent judgment of Europe’s supreme court relating to abortion in Ireland, according to a Maltese judge who sat on the case.”

California Catholic Daily: “Catholic Healthcare West granted money to the San Francisco Health Plan, a health care program that provided funding for abortion to children as young as 12. Worse than this, the San Francisco Health Plan does not provide parental notification or consent for these services, meaning that one’s 12-year old daughter could have an abortion performed upon her through the plan without a mother or father’s knowledge or consent, and with the financial backing of a Catholic institution.”

Irish Central: “A woman who was terminally ill with cancer was refused an abortion at Cork University hospital and had to travel to Britain to have the procedure.”

CNN: “The presidents of Harvard and Yale universities have expressed interest in ROTC programs after Congress voted to repeal the military’s controversial ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that has banned openly gay and lesbian service members.”

News Observer: “North Carolina’s highest court on Monday voided a state senator’s adoption of her former domestic partner’s biological son, a move that appears to close a method for same-sex couples to adopt unless the legislature steps in.” Opinion is here.

Judgepedia: “President Barack Obama nominated Judge Bernice Donald to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.”

Judgepedia: “President Barack Obama nominated seven judges to U.S. District Courts across the nation.”

Typically Spanish: “The Partido Popular leader, Mariano Rajoy, is now saying that before overturning gay marriage legislation in Spain he will wait to see what the Constitutional Court decides over the appeal placed to it by his party. Rajoy says he will also see what the people think before eliminating the law which allows couples of the same sex to get married.”

BBC: “A bid by eight British couples to challenge the UK’s ban on gay marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships has been postponed, campaigners have said. Campaign group Equal Love postponed the legal challenge at the European Court of Human Rights to next month.”

KCTV: “The suit was filed Monday by the Alliance Defense Fund on behalf of First Baptist Church of Mission and the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. Mission assessed the church property and parsonage of First Baptist Church at nearly $1,000 and St. Pius X Catholic Church at about $1,700 for the upcoming year.”

Gather: “Virgin Valley High School won’t be having a Merry Christmas this year. Alliance Defense Fund Attorney [David Cortman] said an agreement was reached between the school and the Nevada ACLU disallowing Christmas activities. Employees and teachers are banned from saying “Merry Christmas”, but are they?”

WORLD Mag: “Will chaplains be allowed to preach on what the Bible says about homosexuality without being accused of hate speech? Will conservative denominations pull their endorsement of chaplains? . . . ‘We hope that our nation’s leaders will work to ensure that none of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are ever made to choose between serving their country or obeying their God as result of this damaging policy decision,’ said Alliance Defense Fund’s [Daniel Blomberg].”

ADF Attorney Erik Stanley writing at Speak Up Movement / Church: “ADF filed a lawsuit against the City of Mission, Kansas, after the City instituted a ‘driveway tax’ and applied it to churches and other non-profits . . . the charge is a property tax in disguise. And this new and unique property tax conflicts directly with the Kansas state law that exempts churches, non-profits and charities from property taxes. The City of Mission cannot institute a new property tax on churches and non-profits when the State has already declared these organizations exempt from property taxes.” | ADF News Release.

ADF President and CEO Alan Sears writing at Inside the Issues: “Call it a ‘two-fer’: a long-awaited decision out of Wisconsin last week that scored a major victory for both the sanctity of life and religious freedom – specifically, the right of medical workers to honor their conscience.”

Breitbart: “Phillip Greaves of Pueblo, Colo., will be booked into the Polk County jail Tuesday. Officials say his first court appearance is scheduled for Wednesday.”

The News Tribune: “Washington state officials have approved the display of a Nativity scene with life-size figures on the Capitol Campus grounds east of the Legislative Building.”

William J. Watkins, Jr. writing at the Christian Science Monitor: “The courts’ opinions exhaustively discuss and interpret modern Supreme Court case law, but barely touch upon the history of the commerce power and the intent of the Constitution’s framers. Judges apparently fear that discussion of relevant history would not only cast doubt on the constitutionality of Obamacare, but also myriad federal laws based on the regulation of commerce.”

Boston.com (AP): “A philanthropist has thrown a wrinkle into a plan for a Boy Scouts of America chapter to buy their city-owned headquarters in Philadelphia to resolve a discrimination lawsuit . . . real-estate investor Mel Heifetz tells the Philadelphia Daily News he would pay $1.5 million for the site, then donate it to a nonprofit that doesn’t discriminate.”

Reuters: “A suspected bomb was found on an empty underground train in Rome on Tuesday but police said it lacked a detonator and tests showed it contained no explosive.”

WSJ: “Federal telecommunications regulators approved new rules Tuesday that would for the first time give the federal government formal authority to regulate Internet traffic, although how much or for how long remained unclear.” FCC press release is available for download here.

The Hill: “Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) lashed out at fellow Republicans Tuesday for a ‘capitulation … of dramatic proportions’ to Democrats and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in the lame-duck Congress.”

E. Christian Brugger writes at the Culture of Life Foundation: “The bioethics website BioEdge (www.bioedge.org) just reported that an appeal’s court in Belgium recently upheld a similar suit brought by parents against doctors on behalf of their disabled son. The Court of Appeal of Brussels ruled that because of a faulty prenatal diagnosis, which led to a disabled boy being born, the doctors ‘have injured [the boy’s] certain and legitimate interest in being the object of a therapeutic abortion.’ In other words, the boy had a right to be killed through abortion, and that right was violated when, because of the doctors’ misdiagnosis, he was born alive.”

LifeNews: “The Senate voted 82 to 14 today to invoked cloture on legislation to fund the government through March 4, 2011 after rejecting an omnibus funding bill containing several goodies for the abortion industry.”

“Nearly one-fourth of the students who try to join the military fail its entrance exam, painting a grim picture of an education system that produces graduates who can’t answer basic math, science and reading questions.”

Pajamas Media: “Consider the case of the student at the Menéndez Tolosa school in Cadiz who this week asked his geography teacher to stop discussing ham in class because it was disrespctful to him as a Muslim. It should be noted that the teacher, José Reyes Fernández, was not mocking the Koran’s prohibition against eating ham. What was so offensive to the student was Fernández’s use of the Granada town of Trevélez as an example of a cold moutain climate conducive to the curings of hams.”

Stanley Kurtz writing at National Review Online: Obama could easily have confessed his youthful radicalism and explained how he’d come to abandon it. As a man with national ambitions, we might have expected him to do so. Instead, Obama has consistently identified himself with a profession, community organizing, he knew to be quietly socialist . . . As I show in Radical-in-Chief, the young Obama was no hack, but a committed, hard-core Marxist. He didn’t fool his organizing mentors into believing that he shared their views; rather, those mentors taught him how to do socialism the pragmatic way, the sellable way, the Lawrence O’Donnell way.”

“If you dare to dissent from the prevailing left-wing orthodoxy on homosexuality, you will be branded a bigot and deemed unfit for military service. Traditional conservatives and religious believers need not apply. Keep your warped conservative views to yourself.”

Blog of LegalTimes: “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit again has a majority of active judges appointed by Democratic presidents, after the Senate confirmed Raymond Lohier Jr. on Sunday.”

New York Times: “Now that Republicans have won control of the House and increased their numbers in the Senate, many in Washington expect the political climate for gay causes to worsen. Some advocates of gay rights say their efforts will shift to the states; Maryland, New York and Rhode Island, for instance, are all contemplating legislation to legalize same-sex marriage.”

Rasmussen Reports: “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 38% of Likely Voters believe religious leaders have too much influence on government policy, while 25% say they don’t have enough. Thirty percent (30%) believe religious leaders have about the right amount of influence when it comes to actions by the government.”

Associated Press: “Most private employers would have to display posters informing workers about their right to form a union under a proposed federal rule that is bound to please unions and draw the ire of companies trying to resist labor organizers.”

Guardian: “A culture war has broken out at the UN over whether gay people should be offered the same protections as other minorities whose lives are threatened. The issue will come to a head today when the general assembly votes on renewing its routine condemnation of the unjustified killing of various categories of vulnerable people.”

Department of State: “The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) has contributed $12.1 million to the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) to fund the two-year program: ‘Supporting the National Justice Sector Strategy of Afghanistan: Improving Security, Legal Rights and Legal Services for the Afghan People.’”

The Hill: “New data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau shows sizable shifts in population from Democratic-leaning states in the Industrial Midwest to Republican-leaning states in the Sun Belt.”

Zenit: “The religious dimension fosters genuine progress, and the state would do well to protect its role in the public sphere, says Benedict XVI. The Pope said this today upon receiving in audience Francesco Maria Greco, the new ambassador of Italy to the Holy See, who was presenting his letters of credence.”

Deseret News: “The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has denied a request to have an entire panel of judges to rehear whether the 14 large, white crosses that currently commemorate fallen Utah Highway Patrol troopers are unconstitutional.” Order in American Atheists v. Davenport is here.

Associated Press: “A Muslim gay man in Malaysia says he fears for his safety after speaking about his sexuality in an Internet video that attracted online death threats and accusations by religious authorities that he is insulting Islam.”

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit Monday on behalf of two churches in response to a city of Mission property tax disguised as a “driveway fee” to evade having to grant exemptions.

Associated Press: “Pending lawsuits against the military ban on openly gay troops will remain in place for now, even though Congress has voted to repeal the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.”

Associated Press: “Gays and lesbians will be treated just like any other soldiers, sailors, airmen or marines, the new rules say. But commanders will have some flexibility when they believe it’s needed to maintain order and discipline in their units.”

“On December 9, the Bopp law firm of Indiana filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on behalf of four Iowa residents, arguing that Iowa’s current ‘Missouri Plan’ method of selecting judges is unconstitutional because citizens are not allowed to directly vote for the judges.”

Andrew C. McCarthy writing in The Washington Examiner: “Islamism is a mainstream ideology to which millions of Muslims — only a bare fraction of whom would ever participate in terrorism — are beholden. Islamists and Muslim terrorists agree on the goal: the implementation of Sharia to strangle individual liberty and foster Islamicized societies. They differ only on methods and pace. Islamists are not moderates even if they don’t kill in order to get their way, and they target not only the West but millions of Muslim moderates everywhere who embrace Enlightenment principles.”

Stanley Fish writing at The New York Times / Opinionator: “The left is right to point to the withdrawal of state funds from public universities as precipitating ‘the neoliberal rush to privatize and vocationalize all facets of higher education’ . . . But the right is right to point out that the faculty who work within these ever-more-pinched spaces are predominantly liberal and have over the years created ‘new inter-disciplinary fields whose inspirations were ideological and closely linked to political activism’ . . . Each side, then, has its points and some evidence to support them, but what is most interesting is that each looks backwards to the same idealized past and laments the loss of the same values and practices.”

“The lighting of the tree after a seven-year hiatus marked a pointed return to a tradition condemned in Pyongyang as propaganda.”

“The Catholic Diocese of Phoenix has removed St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center’s status as a Catholic hospital for failing to strictly adhere to Bishop Thomas Olmsted’s demands that the hospital comply with church moral teaching.”

Lord Nicholas Windsor writing at First Things: “Is it still possible then that we can point to anything of any real significance that had been overlooked, anything dangerous smuggled into this new phase of history that has caught us unawares? I would say that this is indeed the case, and I would like to focus especially on a matter and a practice that constitutes the single most grievous moral deficit in contemporary life: the abortion of our unborn children . . . All else that we concern ourselves with in the lives of human beings derives from the inescapable fact that first we must have human lives with which to concern ourselves. By disregarding this self-evident fact of the debt owed immediately to the unborn—which is to be allowed to be born (and let us not forget that all of us might have suffered just the same fate before our birth)—humanity’s deepest instincts are trampled and shattered.”

LifeNews: “A Texas-based Planned Parenthood affiliate has resigned as a member of the national organization because Planned Parenthood Federation of America wanted it to do abortions.”

Reuters: “Hungary’s parliament passed legislation on Tuesday to tighten government control over news outlets that media watchdogs say is arbitrary and ill-defined.”

UPI: “An overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, and most of those who do say they consider it a religious celebration, a poll indicates.”

Associated Press: “A large-scale terror attack was aimed at British landmarks and public spaces, security officials said Tuesday as more details emerged and police searched the homes of 12 British suspects being held for questioning.”

Bendict XVI: “We are well aware of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests and of our corresponding responsibility. But neither can we remain silent regarding the context of these times in which these events have come to light. There is a market in child pornography that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society. The psychological destruction of children, in which human persons are reduced to articles of merchandise, is a terrifying sign of the times . . . ”

Courthouse News Service: “A fired court employee can sue the chief judge who ordered her termination in his personal capacity, but the court and the judge, in his professional capacity, are immune from federal claims the 6th Circuit ruled.” | Pucci v. Nineteenth District Court (6th Cir. Dec. 16, 2010) | Via Religion Clause.

News Observer: “James Iredell, one of the first U.S. Supreme Court justices, and father of the state’s 23rd governor, was a prolific letter writer . . . Harvey Wilson Johnson, a Raleigh octogenarian with direct family ties to the 18th-century statesman, has sued the state Department of Cultural Resources and state archives, staking a claim on a collection that contains many of Iredell’s writings and a letter from King George V. Johnson and other Iredell heirs say the manuscripts and papers were lent, not given, to the state a century ago.”

C-FAM: “Homosexual activists just launched a new ‘toolkit’ which outlines methods to promote a controversial document which asserts that states have a legal obligation to fulfill ‘rights’ to gay adoption, reproductive technologies and state-funded sex changes . . . [Piero Tozzi], Senior Legal Counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund’s global practice group, stresses that multiple citations of the Yogyakarta Principles do not mean there is a new international norm.”

The Hill: “Senate Democrats appear to have the nine Republican votes they need to ratify the New START nuclear treaty this week and give President Obama his third major victory of the lame-duck session.”

“Lawyers who contend the Nov. 2 retention vote was unconstitutional said this morning that they will drop their push to temporarily prevent the justices from leaving office.”

Wall Street Journal: “Mrs. Palin is on the right track by giving C.S. Lewis a prominent place on her reading list. Yet Ms. Behar and other Palin critics have dismissed Lewis’s work, forgetting that Lewis was a medieval and renaissance scholar at Oxford and the author of several brilliant Christian apologetics. Ms. Behar’s dismissal of children’s books as less than important makes her a modern-day Eustace, the type of bully who mocks readers of fairy tales as simpletons.”

“For only in secularist ideology is it an article of faith that all sexual relations are morally equal and that to declare homosexual acts immoral is bigotry.”

William McGurn writing in the Wall Street Journal: “When you take the victory lap you are entitled to for ending the prohibition on gays serving openly in the military, follow up with a call to end the remaining discrimination faced by members of our military—the second-class status of Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) cadets on some of our leading college campuses.”

Mike Brownfield writing at The Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “Imagine a future where the Internet is governed by unelected bureaucrats in Washington, DC, who rule at their own whim, regardless of legislators’ demands or judicial rule. Sadly, that future is now. Today, the Federal Communications Commission is poised to make an unprecedented power grab and assert the authority to regulate the Internet, despite opposition from Congress and a contrary federal court ruling. And while it’s a story that has gone largely unnoticed amid Congress’ big-ticket lame duck decisions, it’s a tale of unchecked government expansion that must be told.”

Washington Examiner: “A document released by WikiLeaks described efforts by high-ranking Afghan officials to quash reports of police officers and other Afghans arrested for ‘purchasing a service from a child’ . . . The vast gulf between U.S. and Afghan attitudes about homosexuality and pedophilia has generated concern among U.S. advisers in Afghanistan since the American presence there began to expand.”

FFRF: “The Freedom From Religion Foundation has formally complained to Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr. of Tulsa, Okla., about unconstitutional sectarian prayers at Tulsa City Council meetings.”

Michael Foust reports at Baptist Press: “‘No Americans, and especially not our troops, should be forced to abandon their religious beliefs,’ Alliance Defense Fund attorney [Daniel Blomberg] said in a statement. ‘We hope that our nation’s leaders will work to ensure that none of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines are ever made to choose between serving their country or obeying their God as result of this damaging policy decision. And ADF stands ready to defend service members if they are ever unconstitutionally required to make that choice.’”

Fox News Radio: “‘Employees, including teachers, can’t even say the words, “Merry Christmas,” in the school,’ [David Cortman] told Fox News Radio. Students, however, are still permitted to use the traditional holiday greeting.”

WorldNetDaily: “On the legal front, the Alliance Defense Fund is preparing to defend the religious liberty of chaplains and service members. ‘Our concern is that chaplains and others will find their ability to work in the military will depend on their ability to censor themselves,’ said ADF Litigation Staff Counsel [Daniel Blomberg].”

CantonRep.com: “Appointed legal counsel to represent the district in the dispute over the district’s values statement. The Freedom From Religion Foundation has threatened to sue the district for valuing a ‘belief in God’ in the statement. The board removed the phrase last December and has tabled approval of the strategic plan, including the values statement, this year. The legal counsel appointed by the board includes Jon Troyer, Thomas Connors and the Alliance Defense Fund.”