Daily Archives: January 20, 2011

Associated Press: “Senate Democrats don’t plan to join the House in voting to repeal the massive new health care law, but they do want to eliminate a small portion of the law that is unrelated to health care.”

Reuters: “Verizon Communications is going to court to challenge the top U.S. telecommunications regulator, saying the FCC overstepped its authority with the recent adoption of open Internet rules.”

Times of India: “In a new study, scientists at the Centre for Evolutionary Biology, University of Western Australia, have found being polygamous could be more than being monogamous, when it comes to fertilization. The team discovered that sperm from polygamous mice are better competitors in the race for fertilisation.”

Experimental evolution of sperm competitiveness in a mammal

Detroit Catholic Issues Examiner: “Petitions opposing an abortion clinic in Auburn Hills are quickly and quietly being circulated at area churches and throughout the communities of Auburn Hills, Lake Orion, Pontiac, Rochester and Rochester Hills as citizens learn that Planned Parenthood has purchased property nearby on Opdyke Road.”

Common Dreams: “A bill was introduced in the House of Representatives today that would make permanent policies that deny abortion coverage to women who depend on the federal government for their health care and extend these unjust prohibitions into the private sector. The bill, introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), would effectively eliminate insurance coverage for abortion. Currently, more than 80 percent of insurance plans offer abortion coverage.”

LI Herald: “A Gay-Straight Alliance chapter starts today at Valley Stream South High School, announced interim Superintendent Dr. Richard Marsh on Jan. 20.”

Times of Malta: “The Professionals Against Embryo Freezing – as the group is called – said today that it was disappointed by the recommendations of a parliamentary committee, which, it said, was calling for the setting up of a national embryo freezing service. ”

PhysOrg.com: “Some Colorado lawmakers say their state should be the first one where people become organ donors by default, even though other states’ efforts have been halted by worries about making such a personal decision automatic.”

Dutch News: “The Dutch voluntary euthanasia society is looking for a partner to open a special clinic later next year where people can go to end their lives, the Volkskrant reports.”

Wilken said that two federal laws used to deny the same-sex spouses the right to buy long-term care insurance “do not bear a rational relationship to a legitimate government interest.”

C-FAM: “Will a new $40 billion maternal and child health fund include abortion? A just-announced UN commission will decide. The new commission is supposed to ‘make transparent’ funds slated for the UN Secretary General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, announced last September at a UN summit.”

WTOP: “A House of Delegates committee on Thursday endorsed legislation to toughen state regulation of abortion clinics. The Health, Welfare and Institutions Committee voted 15-6 for the bill, which would require clinics to meet the same standards as outpatient surgical centers. The clinics now are regulated the same as doctors’ offices.”

Julia Dinn writing at The Washington Post / On Faith: “Al Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, released a statement late Wednesday saying the governor’s comments ‘were completely consistent with mainstream evangelical piety and conviction’ in that those who believe in Jesus are ‘brothers.’ As for those who don’t, there’s always the hope they will come to believe in Christ.”

ABC: “Speaker of the House John Boehner this morning expressed support for a new bill that would permanently ban federal funding for abortions and called the measure one of the House’s ‘top legislative priorities’ in the 112th Congress.”

Dallas Morning News: “When the newest Rick’s Cabaret gentleman’s club opens south of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport tonight, the girls — as they say in the adult entertainment business — will be wearing nothing but their smiles. Local officials and businesses, though, will be wearing everything but theirs. Fort Worth and Tarrant County politicians, airport officials and nearby businesses aren’t pleased that a strip club is opening just outside the airport.”

moneycontrol.com: “Instead of drawing primarily from its traditional pool of aircraft engineers, mechanics and laborers that runs generations deep in the Puget Sound region around Seattle, Boeing leads an international team of suppliers and engineers from the United States, Japan, Italy, Australia, France and elsewhere, who make components that Boeing workers in the United States put together.”

Pravda: “It seems that those women, who do not use cosmetics, wear plain clothes, cover their heads with kerchiefs and follow religious rules, are no competition to fashionable and liberated women when it comes to love affairs. Real life proves the opposite, though. Religious women get married one after another and celebrate the joy of motherhood. The prototypes of Sex and the City women keep meeting each other in restaurants and cafes to sip cocktails and complain to each other of their failures in relationships with men.”

Christian Today: “The interdenominational event is being held in London on January 29 in association with United Action for Egyptian Christians. It follows the bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria on New Year’s Eve which killed 23 people and injured another 80, and the murder of a 71-year-old Christian man who was travelling with his wife on a train bound for Cairo when a gunman opened fire. His wife and four others were injured in the attack.”

ADF attorney David French writing at Phi Beta Cons: “Coming on the heels of June Sheldon’s $100,000 settlement after San Jose Community College fired her for providing a (literally) textbook answer to questions about the origin of homosexual desire, it’s becoming clear that religious discrimination in academia is growing increasingly costly (and those figures don’t include the considerable sums the universities paid to outside counsel to defend their illegal conduct).”

Times Colonist: “For the first time in Canadian history, there are more unmarried adults than married ones. And that suggestive statistic helped send happily married Esquimalt story producer Sara Darling on an 18-month foray into the state of contemporary matrimony. Directed by Sue Ridout, the program illustrates how marriage is adapting — or not adapting — to the 21st century, according to couples, sociologists, neurologists and historians from Canada and the U.S and further afield.”

Associated Press: “Washington’s Supreme Court on Thursday reaffirmed the state’s authority to collect business-and-occupation taxes from out-of-state companies that do business here, even if they have no local sales force, offices or stores.” Opinion is here. Dissent is here.

Sacramento Bee: “Opposition is mounting against a proposal to create a network of charter schools in Sacramento County. Area school board members and union representatives say their concern is that local control is being thwarted by Margaret Fortune petitioning for 10 charter schools with the Sacramento County Office of Education and not individual school districts.”

Vancouver Sun: “A polygamous mother from Utah on Wednesday agreed to lift an anonymity order and testify using her name at the polygamy trial in B.C. Supreme Court. Alina Darger, who has seven children, spoke glowingly of her experiences growing up in a polygamous family and as one of three sister wives to her current husband.”

USA Today: “Marriott International, one of the nation’s leading hotel groups, tells Hotel Check-In that it’s pulling access to adult movies from the new hotel rooms it will be opening the next several years.”

This is Cornwall: “The Christian owners of a Marazion guesthouse who refused to let a gay couple share a room acted unlawfully, a judge ruled earlier this week. Peter and Hazelmary Bull are considering making an appeal after they were said to have discriminated against civil partners Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy by banning them from staying together in a double room at the Chymorvah Hotel.”

St. Louis Review: “Those involved in promoting a culture of life will be pleased to hear that in Missouri, the abortion rate is on the decline. But what remains a concern is the alarming increase in the ways in which women are able to access abortion.”

KFDM: “A spokesman for the Jasper Independent School District, Chris Coleman, said Thursday, that while it is true that some students had been asked to remove some items from necklaces or other jewelry, that there is no crack down on religious symbols.”

Vatican Radio: “Members of the European Parliament today adopted a resolution condemning persecution and discrimination based on religion. In particular MEP’s condemned attacks against Christians in countries including Egypt, and Iraq.”

Rob Stein writing in The Washinton Post: “Economic pressures are spurring greater consolidation in the hospital industry, prompting religiously affiliated institutions to take over or merge with secular ones, imposing church directives on them. At the same time, the drive to remain competitive has led some medical centers to evade the directives. Alongside those economic forces, changes in the church hierarchy have led increasingly conservative bishops to exert more influence over Catholic hospitals. The clashes have focused attention on the limitations on care available at Catholic hospitals.”

Magic Valley Times-News: “Legislation introduced Wednesday by Rep. Leon Smith, R-Twin Falls, would keep those decisions in the hands of those facing this question: If I enter a vegetative state, do I want to die or continue on life support? Smith’s bill, if passed, would amend a law passed by the Legislature last year that gave health care professionals the right to opt out of providing any care they object to based on religious, moral or ethical principles.”

GMA News: “To come up with a win-win solution on the much-debated reproductive health (RH) bill, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III decided to have his own version and called it the ‘responsible parenthood’ (RP) bill.”

Merrimack Journal: “Under the proposal introduced last year by the planning board, businesses could post temporary signs for no more than 30 days, and religious and non-profit organizations would be forced to keep all signs off the streets and on their own property . . . But the changes could also prove suffocating to businesses and organizations that depend on temporary signs to boost sales, local business leaders said.”

Haaretz: “Guests at an Istanbul film premiere were among the first victims of new curbs on alcohol that have raised secularist fears Islamic strictures may be encroaching on everyday life.”

Balkanalysis.com: “In 2006 this controversy hit home in Bulgaria: the EU member state with the largest Muslim minority (estimated between 13-15%) . . . The Commission’s decisions in two key cases as to whether girls should be allowed to wear headscarves in schools have created a legal limbo wherein the state has abdicated its responsibility for interpreting the Bulgarian constitution. Instead, individual headmasters are now allowed to make their own policy regarding religious tolerance in public institutions.”

FRC Press Release: “Family Research Council praised bipartisan legislation introduced today by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) that would codify abortion funding restrictions across government programs. Also, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) introduced legislation to remove abortion funding from the Obama health bill. Both bills are necessary given the actions of the previous Congress to fund abortion in health care, and in the District of Columbia.”

Associated Press: “The pre-eminent institute of Islamic learning in the Sunni Muslim world said Thursday it is freezing its dialogue with the Vatican to protest Pope Benedict XVI’s recent remarks calling for the protection of Christians in Egypt.”

MySanAntonio.com (AP): “The Hawaii Senate isn’t doing away with daily prayers before its sessions just yet. The Senate opened with a Hawaiian-language invocation by Danny Kaleikini on Wednesday despite previously announced plans to do away with religious speeches.”

Wall Street Journal: “House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) issued a statement saying the group discussed a range of issues including the need for China to provide stronger intellectual property protections and curtail North Korea’s aggressive behavior. It said the lawmakers ‘raised our strong, ongoing concerns with reports of human-rights violations in China, including the denial of religious freedom and the use of coercive abortion as a consequence of the “one child” policy.’”

The Patriot-News: “Earlier this month, Derry Township officials found themselves considering a legal challenge when the owner of Shane’s City Limits sought to revive his business by having scantily-clad dancers shimmy for customers several nights a week . . . The Shane’s incident was unusual not only because of the novelty . . . but because cases involving adult establishments have quieted in the past decade.”

Des Moines Register: “House Republicans today introduced a joint resolution that would begin the process to allow Iowans to vote on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. House Joint Resolution 6 would not only ban same-sex marriage in Iowa, but also prohibit the recognition of civil unions and domestic partnerships.”

New York Times: “The cause for this fundraiser — extravagant even when measured against Hollywood events — was the legal fight to overturn Proposition 8, the California voter initiative that banned gay marriage. At the end of the night, as the crowd headed to a long line of waiting limousines and shuttle vans, Rob Reiner, the director and a leader of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, announced that the event had raised $3 million.”

Dallas Voice (“the premier media source for LGBT Texas”): “Attorney James ‘Jody’ Scheske confirmed Wednesday that his client, J.B., plans to appeal the August decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that gay couples can’t divorce in Texas because the state doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage.”

The Morning Call: “Allentown City Council on Wednesday extended medical benefits to partners of gay employees in the city’s largest union and white-collar staff, but delayed extending the same benefits to firefighters and police officers.”

Telegraph: “Islamophobia has ‘passed the dinner-table test’ and is seen by many as normal and uncontroversial, Baroness Warsi will say in a speech on Thursday. The minister without portfolio will also warn that describing Muslims as either ‘moderate’ or ‘extremist’ fosters growing prejudice. Lady Warsi, the first Muslim woman to attend Cabinet, has pledged to use her position to wage an ‘ongoing battle against bigotry.’”

Melanie Phillips comments: “But hang on — there is a division between those British Muslims who are happy to live as British citizens under one law for all and thus subscribe totally to British and western values of democracy and who thus pose no threat to anyone at all, and those who want instead to live under sharia and as such are attempting to subvert Britain and the west in order to negate its democratic values and human rights and replace them by an Islamic theocracy. Yet Warsi is saying this distinction is in itself evidence of bigotry.”

“The question is, and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the constitution?”

Philadelphia Daily News: “Time and time again, authorities alerted to Kermit Gosnell’s filthy and macabre abortion clinic – and to the injured, diseased or dead women he left in his wake – failed to rattle the alarm bells loudly enough to shut his house of horrors, the district attorney’s grand-jury report found.”

Canadian Press: “For more than a year, a Palestinian couple belonging to an Islamic sect rejected by many mainstream Muslims endured insults from some of their neighbours and even death threats while struggling to maintain a quiet existence in this West Bank town. As word spread about them, things got worse. A local Islamic court branded them apostates and dissolved their marriage. The couple, Mohammed and Samah Alawneh, now live in legal limbo.”

Christian Post: “The New York Supreme Court denied a request Wednesday to block construction of the Islamic mosque near Ground Zero. Last week, the American Center for Law and Justice, which is representing 9/11 first responder Tim Brown in a lawsuit challenging the project, asked the state’s High Court to grant a temporary restraining order on demolition or construction at the proposed Park51 site.”

“Freedom of conscience and of religion is a primary and inalienable right of the human person; what is more, insofar as it touches the innermost sphere of the spirit, one can even say that it upholds the justification, deeply rooted in each individual, of all other liberties.”

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit against the city of Port St. Lucie Wednesday on behalf of Palm Beach Gardens Baptist Church, which has been prohibited from leasing property in a shopping center to hold worship services.

Tulsa Beacon: “With 53 million children killed in their mothers’ wombs since 1973, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade on January 22 points to a life-and-death issue that is still a battleground in American life.”

Associated Press: “Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., is retiring and his party has a big problem in 2012 – and beyond. Farm Belt and Southern voters who prefer a Republican president but have often backed moderate Democrats for Congress seem increasingly inclined to vote GOP in all federal races.”

New York Times: “When the conservative financier Charles Koch sent out invitations for a political retreat in Palm Springs later this month, he highlighted past appearances at the gathering of ‘notable leaders’ like Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court . . . [Common Cause] is now trying to use that connection to argue that Mr. Scalia and Mr. Thomas should disqualify themselves from hearing campaign finance cases because they may be biased toward Mr. Koch, a billionaire who has been a major player in financing conservative causes.”

Christian Century: “The U.S. Catholic bishops will not join efforts to repeal the new health care law, even though they staunchly opposed the bill last year after concluding it permits federally funded abortions.”

LifeSiteNews: “Pro-family advocates are urging a federal appeals court to overturn a federal judge’s ruling that struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional. They have also criticized the Obama Justice Department’s defense of DOMA as inadequate and a deliberate recipe for failure.”

LifeNews: “Americans United for Life released a new state-by-state report on the status of state legislation that protects women and unborn children on abortion and on bioethics issues. The report found Oklahoma the most pro-life state in the country and Washington the most pro-abortion.” | AUL report

Associated Press: “A Danish cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad told a court Thursday that the ax-wielding Somali man who broke into his home wanted to kill him and is lying about the purpose of the attack.”

WorldNetDaily: “Army Major John Jackson and his wife Carolyn, devout Christian homeschoolers with a history of serving as adoptive and foster parents, had their five children taken away in April 2010 by the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services – and despite the collapse of the evidence against the Jacksons, DYFS hasn’t returned the children to their parents.”

Associated Press: “The United Nations warned Thursday that violence is spreading across Ivory Coast, citing nearly two dozen rapes in the country’s west and one case where a political opponent was sexually tortured.”

New York Times: “In recent days, executives at the cable channel became concerned that some scenes from the provocative new show ‘Skins’ may violate federal child pornography statutes . . . for ‘Skins,’ the producers purposefully cast actors ages 15 to 19, most of whom had never acted before . . . With ads that feature groups of barely clothed teenagers, ‘Skins’ is surely one of the most sexually charged programs that MTV has featured.”

Mark Tooley writing in The American Spectator: “More revealing during the 2009-2010 Obamacare debates was the new Evangelical Left’s support for Obamacare, while carefully pivoting around abortion funding. Evangelical Left elites share the old Religious Left’s statism, but must appeal for support from still socially conservative evangelicals . . . Purportedly the Evangelical Left represents a new generation of believers less wed to social conservatism and more committed to endless expansion of the federal welfare and regulatory state, especially on health care and the environment. But there seems to be no overall shift of evangelicals to the left, as reflected in 2010 election polling and the Tea Party’s popularity among evangelicals. So will the Evangelical Left as ardently defend Obamacare from repeal as it urged its original enactment?”

The Daily Caller: “A number of the House GOP’s leading conservative members on Thursday will announce legislation that would cut $2.5 trillion over 10 years, which will be by far the most ambitious and far-reaching proposal by the new majority to cut federal government spending.”

Stephen Brumwell reviews George Washington’s First War by David A. Clary in the Wall Street Journal: “In late 1753, the 21-year-old Washington had volunteered for a diplomatic mission deep within the hostile wilderness . . . Sent, in 1754, with a small force to secure the Forks of the Ohio (present-day Pittsburgh), Washington ambushed a French party intending to warn him off under the command of Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville. That sharp encounter triggered the French and Indian War, which itself spurred much wider hostilities between Britain and France known as the Seven Years’ War.”

Wall Street Journal editorial: “In an op-ed last week in these pages, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center noted that a plurality of Americans, 47%, are under the erroneous impression that China is the world’s leading economy . . . The rise of China combines economic opportunities for the U.S. with competitive and strategic challenges. At a minimum, it’s an occasion to pull up our collective socks and rethink some welfare-state attitudes about work, investment, entitlements and spending.”

Ed Feulner writing at The Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “The vote last night was an important step in the democratic process of protecting and conserving our constitutional freedoms . . . Our country, it is increasingly clear, has arrived at a pivotal moment – perhaps the pivotal moment – in its history. Together, we face a choice between two futures. One is a collectivist future where the federal government claims ever increasing shares of our income and grants itself the authority to make decisions affecting virtually every aspect of our daily lives. The other future is built upon the idea that individual freedom trumps government authority, and that in those rare cases when solving a problem requires government, the government that governs best is the one that is smallest and closest to the people.”

Karl Rove writing in the Wall Street Journal: “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid described this week’s House vote to repeal and replace ObamaCare as ‘partisan grandstanding.’ Other Democratic congressmen called it ‘a political scam,’ ‘unfortunate’ and ‘fruitless.’ Liberal pundits described it as ‘useless’ and ‘meaningless.’ All of which confirms that the GOP is on the right path.”

BusinessWeek: “The U.S. asked a federal appeals court to overturn a Virginia judge’s ruling that the Obama administration’s health-care overhaul is unconstitutional because it requires some Americans to buy insurance.”

BBC: “The pastor, who last year planned a Koran-burning protest in the US, had been invited to address right-wing group England Is Ours in Milton Keynes.”

San Gabriel Valley Tribune: “A judge has given permission for the U.S. Justice Department to go forward with a discrimination lawsuit against Walnut . . . The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division sued Walnut in September, accusing the city of discriminating against the Chung Tai Zen Center group when city officials denied its request to build a Buddhist worship center in January 2008.” | United States v. City of Walnut, California, (CD CA, Jan. 13, 2011) | Via Religion Clause.

Michael Prell writing in The Washington Times: “‘If China becomes the world’s No. 1 nation … .’ That was the headline in the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, The People’s Daily, on the eve of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington. The article went on to boast how ‘China’s emergence is increasingly shifting to debate over how the world will treat China, which is the world No. 1 and has overtaken the U.S.’”

Politico: “Anti-abortion legislators will introduce the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act as H.R. 3 on Thursday. The bill intends to prevent federal funding for abortion procedures by codifying the Hyde Amendment, which has long barred federal agencies from paying for abortions.”

Christian Concern: “A Christian counsellor, due to appear before a Professional Conduct Panel for giving therapy to a homosexual man who pretended to be a Christian, has sought an adjournment and is calling on her professional body to bring in the police to investigate intimidation of one of her key witnesses.”

Blog of LegalTimes: “R. Edward ‘Ted’ Cruz, who argued eight cases before the U.S. Supreme Court during his tenure as solicitor general for the state of Texas, jumped into a race today for U.S. Senate. Cruz joins a growing field of Republicans hoping to win their party’s nomination to succeed Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who is not running for re-election in 2012.”

The Hill: “The Democrats supporting repeal – Reps. Dan Boren (Okla.), Mike McIntyre (N.C.) and Mike Ross (N.C.) – all voted against the reform law in the last Congress.”

The Engage Family Blog: “In September of 2010, Cassandra experienced complications with her pregnancy. Rushed to the hospital, the doctors did all they could to save the pregnancy. But, at only 20-weeks into the pregnancy, little Bobby James was born. Too weak to survive, Bobby died within minutes . . . Because of a shortcoming in West Virginia law, the hospital could not issue a birth certificate. Without a birth certificate, Cassandra and Jason could not get a death certificate.” | Jeremy Dys discusses the issue on “The Catholic Connection,” a production of the Ave Maria Radio Network.