Daily Archives: January 12, 2011

LifeSiteNews: “Unborn twin babies socialize as early as week 14 of gestation, a new study has shown. Italian researcher Dr. Umberto Castiello of the University of Padova and associates used an advanced method of ultrasonography, which enables the movements of the babies to be recorded over time in 3D, to study five pairs of twins from a sample of low-risk pregnant women attending the Institute of Child Health I.R.C.C.S. Burlo Garofolo.”

LifeSiteNews: “The Catholic Marquette University Law School has hired a former senator, well-known for his pro-abortion views, as a visiting professor for the Spring semester.”

CNBC: “In the past few years, we’ve all been careful to choose our words carefully, not calling it a recession until it fit the technical definition and avoiding any inappropriate use of the ‘D’ word — Depression. Things were bad but the broader economy never reached Depression territory. The housing market, on the other hand, just crossed that threshold.”

Miami Herald: “Gov. Sam Brownback, who proudly wears his religious faith on both sleeves, declared the day of his inauguration a ‘gift from God’ not to be frittered away.”

LifeSiteNews: “Virginia pro-lifers are planning a demonstration Thursday to urge Republican Governor Bob McDonnell to implement health regulations that would protect the health of abortion-bound women and may even lead to the closure of sub-standard abortion mills in the state.”

NorthJersey.com: “Local officials are not worried about an injunction issued by state Superior Court judge ordering Point Pleasant to stop saying a prayer before the state of council meetings. ‘I am not worried about that, we haven’t heard anything from the ACLU (American Citizens Liberties Union),’ said Old Tappan Mayor Victor Polce.”

KBND: “More than one hundred Prineville residents showed up at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting to let them know they don’t want the City’s nativity scene to go away.”

Windy City Media Group: “The Catholic spiritual leader of Chicago visited Boston College recently, where a doctoral student pressed Cardinal Francis George about the Church’s recent opposition to civil-unions legislation recently passed by the Illinois General Assembly. George told student John Falcone his ‘argument was not with Mother Church but with Mother Nature,’ adding that anyone who advocates same-sex marriage or its equivalent ‘has lost touch with the common understanding of the human race.’”

CKNW: “Carolyn Jessop recounted how she escaped her abusive husband, and the community of Colorado City, Arizona in april of 2003. She loaded up all eight of her kids into an uninsured van and drove away with the lights off. She described the terror she felt every time a car approached her vehicle, convinced it was someone coming to force her back.”

LifeSiteNews: “A federal agency has told a New York Catholic college that it has distanced itself too far from the authority and teaching of the Catholic Church to merit government recognition as a sectarian institution – a development Catholic education watchdogs are using as a warning to other secularized Catholic institutions . . . ‘Federal and state laws are increasingly being used to coerce religious institutions into actions and commitments that violate deeply held religious convictions and moral principles,’ warns [Kevin Theriot], Senior Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, in that analysis.”

Jason Kuznicki writing at the Cato Institute: “As U.S. courts have repeatedly declared, marriage is fundamentally a private, individual right. One implication of this view, clear but not always consistently applied, is that the federal role in marriage should be to get out of the way. When it cannot, it should behave in predictable, orderly, and low-cost ways so that individuals may conduct their family and private lives as they think best. When the federal government must act in this area, it should do so only with a view toward preserving individual rights. This paper considers federal marriage policy in a new light by suggesting that some, though far from all, of the federal provisions governing marriage may be understood as protections of this kind, or as guarantees of individual responsibility, as in the case of children. When marriage acts in such a way, it merits federal recognition, but not otherwise.”

ADF attorney David French writing at National Review Online / Phi Beta Cons: “Yesterday afternoon, I wrote about Vanderbilt’s requirement that applicants for a nursing residency sign a “Women’s Health Acknowledgment” stating that applicants ‘will be expected to care for women undergoing termination of pregnancy.’ Shortly after my post went live, a second applicant came forward and filed a complaint with HHS. Vanderbilt now faces two discrimination claims with the Office for Civil Rights.”

Boston.com (AP): “Hundreds of Christians demonstrated late Wednesday near a large Cairo slum, blocking a major highway and clashing with police following the shooting death of a Christian man the day before, said a security official.”

FRC Press Release: “At a meeting today in the nation’s capital of a federal advisory committee on the new health care law, Family Research Council (FRC) expressed its strong opposition to designating abortion as a means of pregnancy-prevention. The Institute of Medicine Committee on Preventive Services for Women is hearing comments about regulatory mandates for women’s preventive services under Obamacare.”

Honolulu Star Advertiser: “State Senate leaders will recommend that the Senate end the invocations traditionally offered by clergy before floor sessions to avoid intruding on the separation between church and state.”

Christian Post: “The American Center for Law and Justice, which represents 9/11 first responder firefighter Tim Brown in a lawsuit against the Park51 project, is seeking an injunction in any demolition and construction at the downtown Manhattan site.”

Wall Street Journal [full text via Google News]: “Late last week, when Taseer’s assassin was presented at an antiterrorism court, no public prosecutor showed up out of fear for his safety. Instead, a throng of shouting lawyers and activists, bearing garlands for the assassin, crowded the streets hailing the killer as a hero.”

Miami Herald: “Alaska attorney general John Burns has found unconstitutional a proposed ballot initiative that was essentially seeking to outlaw abortion in Alaska.”

Christian Post: “A nursing student has partnered with a Christian legal defense group in filing a complaint against a Nashville, Tenn., university policy that requires participation in abortion procedures in order to enter its nurse residency program . . . ‘Christians and other pro-life members of the medical community shouldn’t be forced to participate in abortions to pursue their profession,’ said ADF Legal Counsel [Matt Bowman].”

Business Week: “Boehner is going to win this one. Government spending has surged so much in the past two years that cutting $100 billion is a piece of cake . . . The Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl came up with an ambitious plan for cutting $343 billion in spending. I’ll shoot for one-third of that target, with the added goal of avoiding some of his proposals — such as reducing Pell Grants and eliminating homeland-security funding to states — that would be most likely to lead to wailing in the echoing halls of the Capitol complex.”

Energy Tribune: “Our economy was built on and our lifestyles depend upon relatively inexpensive, abundant, reliable sources of energy. Looking just at the fossil fuels oil and natural gas, they are critical for transportation and, increasingly for electricity, but they also serve as feedstock for plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, lubricants and construction materials. With this in mind, here are a couple of steps Congress could take to improve the reliability and reduce the costs of energy.”

Charleston Daily Mail: “Tomblin, who is acting governor by virtue of being Senate president, contends that state law allows him to serve until the next general election. But in separate lawsuits, Citizen Action Group and Charleston attorney Thornton Cooper both say the state constitution – which overrides any state law – was not written with such a long period of service by a Senate president in mind.”

OneNewsNow: “Voydatch’s attorney, John Anthony Simmons, an allied attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, says the court modified the child’s school placement at the request of the father. ‘And the rationale that it used was that the child [and the mother] had religious beliefs . . . that were abhorrent to the father and that essentially were too narrow,’ says Simmons, ‘and that those opinions needed to be corrected . . .’”

Imperial Valley Press: “No action was taken by the Imperial County Board of Supervisors Tuesday after they discussed the lawsuit over California’s gay marriage ban.”

KITV: “Supporters of same-sex civil unions are optimistic that a new governor who supports their plight means 2011 will be the year a civil union bill becomes law in Hawaii.”

Bloomberg: “Daniels used about half of his 30-minute State of the State speech Tuesday night to promote his education proposals, including an expansion of charter schools, vouchers to help parents send their children to private schools and limits on teacher union contracts.”

Great Falls Tribune: “Groups opposed to abortion say the bill, sponsored by Rep. Keith Regier, R-Kalispell, is needed to prosecute those who kill an unborn baby, perhaps during a crime against the expectant mother. ‘House Bill 167 does not include legal abortions or infringe on a woman’s right to choose,’ Regier said.”

Breitbart: “One-third of Japanese men aged 16 to 19 were uninterested in or even averse to sex as of last year, doubling from 2008, a government survey showed Wednesday.”

LifeNews: “. . . Boehner has rescheduled the Obamacare repeal vote for next week, according to a Congressional Quarterly report. No formal announcement has been made, but HR 2 is expected to receive a vote next week.”

Blog of LegalTimes: “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has properly shielded from public review 2,000 whole-body scan images of air travelers, a federal judge in Washington said today in a public records suit.”

B92: “The Gay-Lesbian Info Center (GLIC) NGO has asked for the Serbian Constitution to be changed to include a new definition of marriage.”

ChristianNewsWire: “Michael Youssef, Founder and President of Leading The Way, is asking US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to pressure the Egyptian Government to bring back law and order, and to grant Christians the same liberties as Muslims.”

ChristianNewsWire: “On the heels of U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley’s staff report that holds major implications for churches and religious organizations, ECFA (Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability) will hold a free online/telephone briefing about these implications Friday, Jan. 14, at 1 p.m.”

Associated Press: “Jonathan, a Christian from the nation’s oil-rich southern delta, came into the presidency after the May death of elected leader Umaru Yar’Adua, a northern Muslim. Under an unwritten power-sharing agreement in the ruling People’s Democratic Party, the presidency should have been held for another term by a northerner because a southerner had it for the first eight years of democracy in the nation.”

The Week: “For the first time in two decades, the U.S. abortion rate didn’t fall in 2008 . . . so why have the numbers leveled off now? Here, three theories: Blame the recession . . . People had less money to spend on contraception . . . The ‘abortion pill’ has made abortion more palatable.”

Des Moines Register: “Iowa Supreme Court Justice Mark Cady warned lawmakers today that attacks on the judiciary based on misunderstandings poses a threat to the checks-and-balances system that protects individual rights.” | More from the Sioux City Register here.

Raymond Ibrahim writing at Hudson New York: “The mainstream position, the only one evoked by politicians, both Democrat and Republican, is that all the sacrifices America makes in the Muslim world (Iraq or Afghanistan), will pay off once Muslims discover how wonderful Western ways are, and happily slough off their Islamist veneer, which, as the theory goes, is a product of—you guessed it—a lack of democracy, liberty, prosperity, and freedom of expression. Yet here are American Muslims, immersed in the bounties of the West—and still they turn to violent jihad.”

The Province: “Provincial Justice Minister Don Morgan says the conservative Saskatchewan Party government is considering another way of accommodating the religious beliefs of marriage commissioners who balk at marrying gays.”

Daily Times: “It was literally and figuratively the 11th hour Monday when commissioners cast their votes on a controversial anti-discrimination ordinance. After listening to many voices speak passionately on both sides of the issue, engaging in heated debate themselves, and defeating a motion to table, commissioners approved the first reading of the measure 5-3 with one abstention.”

RTE News: “A baby boy was given a life saving blood transfusion under court order after his parents, who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, objected on religious grounds. The order was made after a late night court sitting in the home of a High Court judge on 27 December. The written judgment was published today.”

Al Masry Alyoum: “Authorities have captured the man responsible for killing one Egyptian Christian and injuring five others on a northbound train in Upper Egypt, security sources said on Tuesday evening . . . Security sources said the assailant had checked passengers for the green cross traditionally tatooed on the wrists of Coptic Christians in Egypt.”

UPI: “Witnesses told the BBC the bodies of 13 people killed by machetes and gunshots were found Tuesday in a mostly Christian village 25 miles southwest of the polarized city of Jos. There have been no arrests in the attack, and the culprits have not been identified.”

Chicago Tribune: “Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady says justices realized they would unleash a fury when they struck down a law in 2009 banning same-sex marriage.”

Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput: “Roll was devoted to St. Thomas More and kept a biography of the saint on a table near his desk. He liked mentoring young Christian attorneys because he believed their faith gave them a better moral foundation for the vocation of law . . . This life passes. Eternity is forever. We need to act in this world accordingly, with lives of Christian service. Maureen and John Roll shared a life of quiet, powerful, authentic Catholic witness. Please keep them both, and the entire Roll family, in your prayers.”

Columbia Free Times: “The 2011 legislative agenda for the Republican majority in South Carolina’s House of Representatives will include many bills the chamber has dealt with before, but one issue made it on the list this year that’s never gotten such high-profile early play.”

Robert W. Patterson writes at the Washington Examiner: “Just as LBJ’s Great Society never delivered as promised, Nixon’s social engineering effort — dispensing heavy doses of contraception to the low-income population on the theory that fertility is a cause of poverty — also backfired. Better known as Title X of the Public Health Services Act, the GOP-driven legislation fostered more disordering than ‘planning’ of families, rendering the underclass less capable of self-reliance while leaving America sitting on a demographic time bomb.”

Bloomberg: “The South Dakota Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a high-stakes challenge to the state’s system for funding schools, as lawmakers consider severe school aid cuts to balance the budget.”

Gateways to Better Education: “Each year since 1993, the President of the United States declares January 16 Religious Freedom Day. It is a time to celebrate the religious freedom we have in America. In 2011, January 16 falls on a Sunday. Gateways to Better Education and the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) have teamed up to help churches equip families with information on students’ and teachers’ freedom of religious expression in their public schools.”

Walter E. Williams writing at Townhall: “If the House of Representatives had the courage to follow through on this [Constitutional compliance] rule, their ability to spend and confer legislative favors would be virtually eliminated. Also, if the rule were to be applied to existing law, they’d wind up repealing at least two-thirds to three-quarters of congressional spending.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer: “Gov. Rendell urged his successor Tuesday to not cut education spending in the state’s next budget, and came out against a proposed voucher program that would help low-income students from low-performing schools attend either private schools or public schools in other districts.”

Rasmussen Reports: “A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 40% of Adults favor a 10% pay cut for all state employees to help reduce state spending. Forty-one percent (41%), however, oppose an across-the-board pay cut like this. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure.”

LifeNews: “The City of Angeles will be getting the message that a large number of black angels — unborn children — are killed there every year — more so than babies of other races. This week, the Radiance Foundation is launching its ‘Endangered Species’ billboard campaign in Los Angeles, California, after having experienced significant success and getting massive media attention with campaigns in other states.”

LifeNews: “The number of abortions would decrease in the United States if only contraception and birth control were promoted to a higher degree, abortion advocates say, but the new abortion report issued today by the Guttmacher Institute puts that notion to rest.”

WRCBTV: “The Alliance Defense Fund claims that Vanderbilt is violating a federal law that states recipients of federal funds cannot require someone to perform or assist in abortions if it violates his or her religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

ADF attorney Matthew Sharp writing at Townhall: “[T]he recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Byrne v. Rutledge, a lawsuit wrapped up Monday, assures us that no matter how short the message or the viewpoint it expresses, it is protected by the First Amendment . . . Shawn Byrne applied to the Vermont DMV for the tag ‘JN36TN,’ a creative reference to the popular Bible verse, John 3:16. But Vermont denied his request, citing a state law prohibiting vanity plates that reference religion or deity.”

Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “All told, 117 countries, mainly developing and emerging market economies, improved their Economic Freedom Index score. Meanwhile the U.S. dropped to 9th place, remaining ‘mostly free,’ weighed down by the burden of President Obama’s spending spree.”

Ilya Somin writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “Yesterday, the Supreme Court refused to hear United States v. Alderman, a potentially important Commerce Clause case [HT: Josh Blackman]. In Alderman, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld the constitutionality of a federal statute that banned the possession of body armor by felons.”

Sen. Tom Udall writing in the Harvard Law & Policy Review: “The United States Senate has become a graveyard for good ideas—increasingly crippled by the partisan abuse of the institution’s own rules. Instead of being the chamber of Congress where legislation is carefully debated and serving as an ‘additional impediment . . . against improper acts of legislation,’ the modern Senate too often serves as a brick wall, stifling debate rather than promoting it and disrupting important legislation and nominations for purely partisan reasons. The use of obstructionist procedural tactics such as the filibuster and secret holds has expanded rapidly in recent Congresses, to the point where they are now everyday rather than extraordinary occurrences. Such obstructionist practices, when abused, make a mockery of our representative democracy.”

New York Times Editorial: “It is unlikely that Iowa’s Democratic-controlled Senate would go along with removing the judges, but an impeachment trial would be disruptive and intentionally intimidating. The nation’s democracy and cherished rights rely on keeping court decision-making above the fickle tugs of ordinary politics. Ousting judges to register disagreement with a particular court decision is a dangerous road to go down.”

Denver Post: “A federal appellate court in Denver has denied the media access to video and autopsy photographs showing the mutilation of a prison inmate killed by his cellmates even though the images were used by prosecutors during two criminal trials.” Opinion is here.

AFP: “A Pakistan court has jailed a Muslim prayer leader and his 20-year-old son for life on controversial blasphemy charges in the rural centre of the country, court officials said Tuesday.”

ADF Attorney Kevin Theriot writing at Speak Up Movement / Church: Just before Christmas, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a claim that Arlington County Virginia violated the Establishment Clause when it worked with a church to develop a building that contained both a church and affordable housing. A link to the court’s opinion in Glassman v. Arlington County can be found here.

ADF attorney Casey Mattox writing at Speak Up Movement / University: ADF has today filed a formal complaint with the Department of Health & Human Services, asking it to enforce federal law and prohibit Vanderbilt from illegally discriminating against our client, a well qualified nursing student who happens also to be pro-life and unwilling to violate her conscience by assisting in abortions . . . Vanderbilt promised to comply with the Church Amendments, but it is blatantly breaking that promise.  ADF’s complaint, filed by my colleague Matt Bowman, asks HHS to inform us by January 26 (the effective deadline to apply to the program) if it will enforce the law and defend our client’s rights of conscience or permit Vanderbilt to violate federal law and its agreement with the taxpayers by barring the door to pro-life applicants.”

ADF attorney Matt Bowman appeared with Roland Lettner  on KFUO to discuss this: ADF attorneys, pro-life groups: Parental involvement more needed for abortions than for body piercings.  | MP3 audio 23:15 mins

ADF attorney Erik Stanley appeared with Roland Lettner  on KFUO to discuss this: Kansas town sued for taxing church attendance. | MP3 audio 23:50 mins

ADF President and CEO Alan Sears writing at Inside the Issues: “Paul warned the Christians of Corinth that the cross would always be ‘a stumbling block’ and ‘foolishness’ (1 Corinthians 1:22) to the people around them. He told the Philippians that there were many who act as ‘enemies of the cross of Christ (Philippians 3:18).’ That opposition took a significant new legal hold in a ruling issued January 4th by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The court ruled 3-0 that the memorial cross that has stood at Mount Soledad since 1954 violates the U.S. Constitution.”

ADF attorney Erik Stanley writing at Speak Up Movement / Church: “The court held that allowing marriage commissioners to refuse to perform same-sex ‘marriage’ ceremonies would violate the ‘Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ because it ‘would violate the equality rights of gay and lesbian individuals.’ In asummary of the opinion, the Court described its holding by stating, ‘The Court held that accommodating the religious beliefs of marriage commissioners could not justify discrimination against gay and lesbian couples.’ Well what about the religious freedom afforded Canadians in its Charter? The Court had a chilling answer to that as well. It said that ‘the obligation to solemnize same-sex marriages does not affect or interfere with the core elements of a commissioner’s religious freedom: the freedom to hold beliefs and the freedom to worship.’”

ADF Attorney David Cortman writing at Speak Up Movement / Church: “You probably didn’t know that several of our Presidents, past and present, have declared January 16th of each year to be ‘Religious Freedom Day’ . . . But don’t we have religious freedom every day of the year? Why do we need a special day? And doesn’t it exist in our public square as well as in our public schools?”

Religion Clause: “The complex procedural history of the Establishment Clause challenge to the Sunrise Rock Cross in the Mojave Preserve veterans’ memorial has just become more complicated. Liberty Institute announcedyesterday that it has filed a new lawsuit on behalf of the VFW seeking to enforce the statute passed by Congress in 2003 (Defense Appropriations Act 2004, Sec. 8121) directing the Secretary of Interior to transfer title to the property to the VFW.”

Pacific Justice Institute: “Prominent atheist Michael Newdow is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that the national motto, ‘In God We Trust,’ is unconstitutional. Pacific Justice Institute is a co-defendant in the lawsuit, alongside U.S. government officials.”

Associated Press: “The nation’s first gay museum opening in San Francisco’s Castro district showcases a variety of items ranging from Harvey Milk’s pink-framed sunglasses to manuscripts and sex toys.”

Religion Clause: “Alliance Defense Fund announced yesterday that it had filed a complaint (full text) with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights challenging Vanderbilt University’s nurse residency application requirements.”

The key is to see that while procreation is the biological good in virtue of which a man and woman’s intercourse unites them in mutual bodily coordination, this bodily union is an aspect of a comprehensive relationship valuable in itself and not just as a means to procreation. So the ancient philosophers saw what our legal tradition has long affirmed: marriage is a procreative relationship, but its intrinsic value remains whether or not children are born as the fruit of the spouses’ union.

In the article, we argue that as a moral reality, marriage is the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other of the type that is naturally fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together, and renewed by acts that constitute the behavioral part of the process of reproduction.

Des Moines Register: “Sixty-one people – including two who have spoken publicly about gay marriage – have applied to replace the three Iowa Supreme Court justices who were voted off the bench in November.”