Daily Archives: February 28, 2011

NECN: “A proposed amendment to the Wyoming Constitution that would specify the state wouldn’t recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere died Friday when it missed a procedural deadline in the state Legislature.”

“A British court has ruled that a Christian couple cannot care for foster children because they disapprove of homosexuality.”

“With Republicans upset at the Obama administration’s abandonment of the Defense of Marriage Act, Representative Eric Cantor, the Virginia Republican and majority leader, said on Monday that the House would take action by the end of the week to make certain the law is defended against legal challenges.”

CNA: “The Bishops’ Conference of Colombia is calling on the country’s Constitutional Court to reject arguments in favor of the adoption of children by same-sex couples.”

BizTimes.com: “The Wisconsin State Employees Union (WSEU), representing thousands of public employees, has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the state and Gov. Scott Walker.The complaint was filed by the WSEU, a unit of the AFSCME Council 24, AFL-CIO, with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) today on behalf of the members of the union.”

UPI: “She said investigators received troubling evidence last week that eight girls, some as young as 12, were sent to the United States to marry older men.”

The Hill: “Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.), the sixth-ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the Obama administration’s decision to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act is a “dereliction of duty,” and indicated that congressional oversight may be coming.”

Vancouver Sun: “The Ontario hospital housing terminally ill Windsor baby Joseph Maraachli is considering taking legal action to defend its doctors’ reputations in a case that has sparked public outcry.”

AZ Republic: “The Arizona House has given preliminary approval to two bills that would impact the state’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood Arizona.”

Jeremy Dys writes at the Engage Family Blog: “Downtown, 134 lawmakers took the time to affirm the life-saving, women’s health-loving, family-supporting work of the thousands of staff and volunteers who support their local PCC (maybe you call them Crisis Pregnancy Centers). Uptown, supporters of an unfettered abortion industry dodged the rain and the use of the word “abortion” except to point out how mean “anti-abortion” people were and how Planned Parenthood – who performed more than 330,000 abortions in 2009 – does not use Federal Funding to perform abortions (note how they never deny doing them, just not using your tax dollars to do it). I feel sorry for PP, what with all the scandal and proposed cuts in funding! So, I’m offering them some advice to help them tighten their budgetary belts and, while I’m at it, put a few fallacies to rest. So, here’s what I might tell Planned Parenthood if I were their budget analyst . . . ”

LifeSiteNews: “The Gay Liberation Network staged the rally on the eve of Valentine’s Day, shouting and chanting loudly as churchgoers entered to celebrate Sunday Mass. The demonstration’s primary target was Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who has spoken out in defense of traditional marriage between a man and a woman.”

Christian Post: “House Speaker John Boehner told Christian media leaders Sunday that the national debt is a moral threat to the country.”

Sarah Posner writes at Religion Dispatches: “Sociologist Darren Sherkat of Southern Illinois University has taken a close look at the General Social Survey data and found that in 2010, for the first time, more Americans support than oppose same-sex marriage.”

Albert Mohler, Jr. writes at the Christian Post: “Why does same-sex marriage make sense to so many people? The momentum toward the full legalization of same-sex marriage seems to intensify with every passing month – or even faster. The moral divide in this nation is now seen most clearly in the distance between those for whom marriage is exclusively heterosexual and thus a settled issue and, on the other hand, those who honestly see the legalization of same-sex marriage as a moral mandate required by justice.”

E.J. Graff writes at NPR: “But the headlines missed the technical but important note in Holder’s announcement: the Obama administration believes that any law affecting lesbians and gay men deserves “heightened scrutiny” by the courts. That obscure legal term means that the Obama administration believes — and will argue officially — that the federal and state governments can’t treat lesbians and gay men any less well than it treats our heterosexual siblings without giving an exceptionally good reason.”

Seattle PI: “The Supreme Court has refused to toss out a defamation award to a fired pastor, despite claims by the church that dismissed him that its actions are protected by the Constitution’s religious freedom guarantees.”

Pink News: “Ireland has elected its first openly gay Teachta Dála, the Irish equivalent of an MP.”

Austrian Independent: “More than 700 same sex couples decided to follow the government coalition’s offer of having their partnership “registered” last year.”

LifeNews: “The Planned Parenthood abortion business is rolling out a new television commercial designed to persuade members of the Senate to support the continuation of its taxpayer funding.”

Live Science: “A hall full of human corpses posed as if they were alive hardly seems like a setting for clean family fun. But Body Worlds — a series of exhibits of real, preserved human bodies by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens — is precisely that: a wildly popular museum experience viewed by more than 32 million people worldwidesince 1995.”

MSNBC: “A South Dakota bill to require all pregnant women seeking an abortion to undergo counseling and wait 72 hours has moved closer to becoming law.”

AP: “Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker said on Monday that absent senate Democrats have 24 hours to return and vote on a measure to reduce the power of public sector unions or the state will miss out on opportunity to refinance its debt.”

Lindsey Burke writes at the Heritage Foundation: “Wisconsin is a microcosm for a larger problem with education unions. According to Mike Antonucci, who specializes in research on education unions, during the 2007–2008 election cycle, the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers spent more than $71 million on campaigns for issues and candidates, or more than $100 per teacher in five states. These national unions receive their money from the dues of teachers forced to send money to their local affiliate, which then sends the funds to the state affiliate and then on to the national union.”

John Fund writes at the Wall Street Journal: “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has decided he’s had enough of liberal adversaries claiming he should recuse himself from future decisions because of his wife’s involvement in the tea party.”

Chicago Tribune: “The University of Iowa allowed one of its doctors to violate the school’s non-compete agreement to resign to work for Planned Parenthood as long as she continued to train students on abortion and other procedures, according to a legal agreement released to The Associated Press.”

I’d be very surprised if the House didn’t decide that they were going to defend law,” Boehner said . . .

In a decision released Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the video discovered on Alan Ray Steen’s camera was not sexually explicit and didn’t rise to the federal legal definitions that would have made the video warrant the charge.”

“Asked whether they favored or opposed the recent Iowa Supreme Court decision that allowed gay and lesbian couples to marry in Iowa, 30 percent told the Iowa Poll they just don’t care much one way or the other, while 37 percent opposed or strongly opposed the court ruling and 32 percent favored it or strongly favored it.”

Washington Post: But the other side of the question is represented by 18 amicus briefs joined by 70 groups across the political spectrum arguing that the 9th Circuit should be upheld. The case raises important questions about parental rights and the rights of children, they said. “The fact that the seized person here was a 9-year old girl requires, as a matter of constitutional law, more vigilance about protecting individual liberty from state abuse,” the Center for Individual Rights said in its brief.

Politico: “U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson has already dealt the Obama administration a staggering blow on health reform, and this week the administration may get another one from the fiery Florida judge.”

GlobeGazette.com: “With the Iowa Supreme Court set to return to its full complement of seven members, some are wondering whether efforts to oust justices who supported a gay marriage ruling will resume.”

The LA Times carries this editorial that argues: “Gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to marry while the Proposition 8 case works its way through the system.”

Vancouver Sun: In a startlingly frank speech at a University of Toronto legal conference, Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin last week was especially critical of high legal fees -now averaging nearly $340 an hour. “Do we have adequate access to justice?” Justice McLachlin asked.

The Hill: “The law allows states to request a waiver for the requirement in 2017, but Obama said he will support moving the date up to 2014, when the so-called individual mandate goes into effect.”

After receiving a letter from the Alliance Defense Fund, Indiana University-Bloomington officials have eliminated a policy that excluded funding for student group activities that involve “religious proselytizing” or “sectarian events (ceremonies, services, and religious rites).”

David French writes at National Review Phi Beta Cons Blog: “The outrage of the administration’s DOMA decision comes not from articulating this principle but from its declaration that, essentially, there are no reasonable constitutional arguments in support of Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. This is a truly astonishing assertion given the great weight of legal authority — some of which is outlined in the attorney general’s own letter. In fact, that political (rather than legal) calculation underlying this determination is given away by the administration’s continued enforcement in spite of its alleged conviction that the act has no reasonable constitutional support.”

Christian Post: Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Austin Nimocks said the administration is “playing politics with marriage” and has left DOMA virtually defenseless. “With the Department of Justice now refusing to defend any and all lawsuits against the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the federal definition of marriage has been placed in great legal peril,” he declared. [more quotes]

WorldNetDaily: ” . . . “Politicians should not be able to nullify a democratic act of the people by refusing their duty to defend it,” said ADF Litigation Counsel Jim Campbell. “The people of California have the right to be defended, and thus the official proponents of Proposition 8 must have standing to defend that law. “Otherwise, the governor and attorney general will succeed in indirectly invalidating a measure that they had no power to strike down directly. With this recent development, the Alliance Defense Fund and the rest of the Protectmarriage.com legal team remain confident that the right of the people of California to protect marriage in their constitution will ultimately be honored,” he said. [Robert Tyler of Advocates for Faith and Freedom also quoted]

Waxahachie Daily Light (Subscription): “In response to a letter from the US Department of Justice informing the speaker of the House that the DOJ and President Obama will no longer defend a key component of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the Alliance Defense Fund is …”

Chuck Colson writes at the Christian Post: . . . you can get the link to it at our website, breakpoint.org. You can also get at breakpoint.org a link to the Alliance Defense Fund, which is doing some heroic work in this area and has produced a brilliant and insightful paper. Holder’s decision is but the latest in a series of steps intended to intimidate us, to shut off debate, and to keep us out on moral issues: first the California case, then the huge corporation Apple taking down the Manhattan Declaration app from its iTunes store, and now this decision by Holder. The ACLU has hailed Holder’s decision as “the tipping point in the gay rights movement.” Sadly, that may well be the case unless we speak out loudly and quickly. Do not be intimidated.

Rasmussen: “Reports national telephone survey finds that just 33% of Likely U.S. Voters would rather have Congress avoid a government shutdown by authorizing spending at the same levels as last year. Fifty-eight percent (58%) says it’s better to have a partial shutdown until Democrats and Republicans can agree on what spending to cut.”

One News Now: ADF attorney David French reports that when a small number of pro-life students were denied access to the campus, they continued their demonstration anyway, “doing nothing but holding signs.” “Then it seemed like a literal squad of police officers descended upon them, and as [a] student literally read from the school’s handbook, [which] promised her free speech, they arrested her,” French continues. [more quotes from David French]

Pacific Justice Institute: “In light of the recent protests by public employee unions in Wisconsin and several other states, the Pacific Justice Institute is renewing its pledge to represent employees who seek to disassociate from their unions for religious reasons.”

AP: “A union representing teachers in the state’s financially troubled capital city says it has met with the mayor to discuss the decision to send them all termination notices.”

Robert Barro writes at the Wall Street Journal: “Collective bargaining on a broad scale is more similar to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty.”

SCOTUS Blog: “The Obama Administration, making only a tepid defense of the military’s ban on gays serving openly in the services, urged a federal appeals court on Friday not to issue any ruling and thus allow time for the Pentagon to carry out the new law passed by Congress that will repeal the ban, probably sometime this year.  The  48-page brief filed in Log Cabin Republicans v. U.S., in the Ninth Circuit Court, is here.”

Law Professor Gerard V. Bradley writes at Public Discourse: Most tellingly, the Attorney General advanced no argument—“professionally responsible” or otherwise—for the Department’s rejection of (what he called) “procreational responsibility” as a justification for traditional marriage. He said curtly that “the Department has disavowed already” this justification as “unreasonable.” Maybe so. But to “disavow” an argument is not to refute it. And no one in the Obama Administration (or anywhere else, for that matter) has successfully refuted the claim that marriage is intrinsically connected to procreation, such that only opposite-sex couples may marry.

FT.com: Mr Buckley, who has run the diversified manufacturer since 2005, said: “There is a sense among companies that this is a difficult place to do business. It is about regulation, taxation, seemingly anti-business policies in Washington, attitudes towards science.”

Pavone, Tommaso, Redefining Religious Neutrality: Lautsi vs. Italy and the European Court of Human Rights (February 16, 2011). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1763412

Luther, Robert, Marketplace of Ideas 2.0: Excluding Viewpoints to Include Individuals (February 23, 2011). Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, Vol. 38, p. 673, 2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1768388