Daily Archives: April 12, 2011

Catholic Culture: Many Egyptian Christians, fearful that elections could bring an Islamic government to power, have begun to weigh the possibility of emigration.

Catholic Culture: “Armed with machetes and guns, 1,000 militants attacked the village of Bar Arewa in the northern Nigerian state of Bauchi on April 7 . . . ”

Centre Daily: The state Senate is poised to vote on a bill giving public health officials authority to investigate and inspect sanitation and safety conditions in health care facilities where invasive medical procedures are performed.

Boston Globe: A bill that would end the practice of requiring non-union members to pay a share of collective bargaining costs in New Hampshire won the support of a key Senate committee Tuesday.

Blog of the Legal Times: “The bipartisan deal on the federal budget includes a $15.8 million midyear cut for the Legal Services Corp., according to new details released on Tuesday.”

BBC: An unofficial Chinese church says it will continue to hold outdoor services, despite pressure from the authorities.

Tom Chivers at The Telegraph: As you can probably work out from the headline, for the first time in the UK, men who have had sex with other men are expected to be allowed to donate blood for use in transfusions, but only if they have not had sex with any men for at least 10 years.

NewRiverValley.com: A Giles County parent wants schools to display a collection of founding documents that includes the controversial biblical list that has caused a stir.

SMH.com.au: THE former NSW Liberal premier Nick Greiner has backed the legalisation of same-sex marriage, saying it would not impede religions or individuals acting in accord with their own views.

Clint Bolick at the Sonoran Alliance: “Monday the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the latest challenge to Arizona’s tuition scholarship tax-credit program, which provides dollar-for-dollar tax credits for contributions to private school scholarships . . . Later in the week, the Arizona Legislature increased the amount of the tax credit for the scholarship program from $1,000 to $1,500 per couple. Then on Thursday, the Arizona Legislature became the first in the country to approve education savings accounts, an idea born at the Goldwater Institute . . . ”

Washington Post: In detailing his opposition to the fiscal year 2011 budget negotiated by the White House and congressional leaders, Rand wrote: “I didn’t come to Washington to settle for $6 billion less in spending than if I had not been here” — a reference to the roughly $33 billion in cuts initially proposed by House Republican leaders before House freshmen objected. “I suspect most of my freshmen House friends didn’t, either. That’s barely half a day’s spending at our current pace… ,” Rand said.

NOLA.com: Monks at St. Joseph Abbey near Covington can sue for the right to sell handcrafted caskets to the public without a license from the Louisiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, a federal judge in New Orleans has decided.

LJWorld.com: He has already signed House Bill 2218, according to the Kansas Legislative Information Systems and Services website. The other bill, House Bill 2035, has yet to be signed, according to the website. That one requires parental consent for minors to have an abortion

The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELDHaeEsNF0

East Valley Tribune: “Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed legislation designed to shield people from being disciplined professionally because of their religious views, at least in part over the issue of polygamy.”

Huffington Post: Democratic Sen. David Koehler introduced the civil unions bill in the state Senate, and now is sponsoring an amendment to it, SB 1123. The amendment says that religious child welfare agencies “may decline an adoption or foster family home application” to a couple in a civil union if “if acceptance of that application would constitute a violation of the organization’s sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Huffington Post: Although the military divorce rate has begun to level off, according Pentagon statistics, 7.9 percent of women in the armed forces got a divorce last year — versus 3 percent of their male counterparts. Those numbers are part of an ongoing trend, according to Dr. Benjamin Karney, a psychology professor at UCLA and head researcher of a 2007 RAND study that looked at marriage and divorce rates in the military over 10 years between 1996 and 2005data.

LifeNews: Yesterday, the Pennsylvania House Health Committee voted for legislation (HB 574) that would require the state’s abortion clinics to be regulated like every other ambulatory surgical facility.

AP: A federal judge in Pennsylvania says the popular “I (heart) boobies!” breast cancer fundraising bracelets aren’t lewd or vulgar, so it’s OK for public school students to wear them.

Canada.com: The bid aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to “dominate and exploit” — to the point that the “well-being and existence of many beings” is now threatened. The wording may yet evolve, but the general structure is meant to mirror Bolivia’s Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, which Bolivian President Evo Morales enacted in January.

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal: On Friday, the federal government almost shut down over abortion, more than 38 years after Roe v. Wade was supposed to have settled the question. Politico reports on the Thursday-night negotiations over funding the government for the remainder of fiscal 2011 . . .

Carrie Lukas at the Wall Street Journal: A study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30 found that women earned 8% more than men.

WHSV.com: The American Civil Liberties Union is asking Prince William County public schools to stop restricting access to educational Websites about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues.

WSJ(full text via Google): The Obama Administration continues to ignore court decisions on Internet regulation and use agencies like the Federal Communications Commission to circumvent Congress. We’re happy to see House Republicans vote to overrule this behavior.

TheTownTalk.com: Concerned about legal ramifications, the Rapides Parish Police Jury voted down a proposal to place a display of the Ten Commandments in the parish courthouse by a 2-to-1 margin Monday.

Advocate.com: Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, announced the move to work as a distinct center operating under the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

StarObserver.com.au: Chile’s El Mercurio newspaper has reported that the Uruguayan Parliament is considering legislation legalising same-sex marriage.

NY Times: “In a case with a truly unusual set of factors, Mr. Devoureau filed a discrimination lawsuit on Friday that could break new ground in New Jersey and across the country, turning on the question of who is or is not a man. An employer fired Mr. Devoureau because it said only a man was allowed to do his job: watching men urinate into plastic cups at a drug treatment center.”

Las Vegas Review Journal: Senate Commerce and Labor Committee members voted 4-3 for Senate Bill 331 that would make it unlawful for hotels and motels to discriminate on the basis of one’s gender . . . The committee also backed Senate Bill 368, which forbids discrimination through refusal to rent, lease or sell a home, apartment or property to a transgender person.

Scotsman: A LEADING Italian academic is facing growing calls to resign after he blamed the collapse of the Roman Empire on homosexuality. Professor Roberto De Mattei, vice-president of Italy’s Centre for National Research and who is also a devout Catholic, has already faced criticism after claiming that the Japanese tsunami and earthquake disaster was “divine punishment”.

AP on CanadianBuisiness.com: A proposal that would void a Nashville ordinance barring companies that discriminate against gays and lesbians from doing business with the city is headed for a full House vote.

In a development that stunned LGBT advocates, the Maryland State Senate voted 27-20 on Monday to recommit the Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Act to committee, effectively killing the bill for the year.

LifeSiteNews: “Over the last year, the Catholic school boards in Ontario have signed on to a controversial province-mandated equity and inclusive education strategy. Pro-family activists have warned that it is aimed at giving homosexual activists a foothold in the Catholic schools.”

LifeNews: The office of Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, who claims to be a pro-life Democrat, has confirmed he will not vote for an amendment to de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business.

ADF attorney Doug Napier on Coffee with Creamer. | MP3 audio 24:15 mins

ADF attorney David Cortman appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss the victory for parental choice in education at the U.S. Supreme Court. | MP3 audio 11:15 mins

ADF attorney Doug Napier on the Mike Gallagher Show to discuss: Decision Points: An Evening with President George W. Bush. | MP3 audio 4:15 mins

LifeSiteNews: No, the reason that the policy may be ended has nothing to do with human considerations at all, but with cold dollars and cents calculations. You see, as a result of the elimination of 400 million productive young people from the population over the past three decades, China now has a labor shortage.

ACLU: The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Louisiana called on the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) today to clarify that new mothers do not have to disclose private medical information before a birth certificates are issued for their newborns.

Telegraph: Police fined her 150-euros (£132) “without incident” in a shopping centre in Mureaux, northwest of Paris.

The Hill: The lawmakers’ comments come more than a week after ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity published an investigative story linking major contributors to President Obama’s election campaign to companies that have received loan guarantees.

The Hill: Senate Republicans are taking advantage of the amendment process to keep alive many of the spending-cut proposals that were excluded from the deal to avoid a government shutdown

Asbarez.com: “The Armenian National Committee of America recently joined the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and more than 150 people representing a diverse group of more than 30 interfaith and human rights groups in saluting the ongoing efforts of the Congressional International Religious Freedom Caucus . . . Joining the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in cosponsoring the evening were (in alphabetical order): Alliance Defense Fund . . . ”

One News Now: “We had the students contact the Alliance Defense Fund. They wrote a letter to the university saying that they needed to provide written information [explaining] why they were violating the students’ freedom of speech,” Hawkins reports. “And the same day that the university received the letter, the group ironically just came up and got approved….”

Rasmussen: A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 22% of Likely U.S. Voters think most judges should be appointed. Sixty-five percent (65%) disagree and think most judges should be elected. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

One News Now: A Canada-based euthanasia prevention group is trying to save the life of a disabled man.

LifeNews: Vincent Gray, the mayor of Washington, DC, was arrested along with three dozen pro-abortion activists on Monday for protesting the budget deal in Congress that will result in banning taxpayer funded abortions in the District of Columbia.

One News Now: The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is representing a teenager at St. Michael-Albertville High School near Minneapolis who, according to ADF’s Matt Sharp, is “very active in the pro-life movement based upon his devout religious beliefs.” The student “wanted to start a pro-life club called the Alive Club at his school, so he went to the principal [and] asked permission.” But Sharp laments that “after a couple of weeks, the principal comes back to him and says, ‘I’m sorry; your club is denied’ because it does not — quote — ‘support the student body as a whole.’”

One News Now: The Bible Belt city known for its country and Christian music has joined other communities in passing ordinances concerning sexual orientation . . . Had the ordinance been presented as a referendum before the general public, Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), says it would have been defeated. “Clearly the metro council members, a majority of them succumbed to the…intense lobbying of a minority

. . . Republicans added more cuts in the long-term resolution as one section cuts funding to the pro-abortion UNFPA (United Nations Family Planning Agency) that has worked hand-in-hand with Chinese population control officials who have enforced the one-child rule with forced abortions and other human rights abuses.

John O. McGinnis at the Wall Street Journal: In “Schools for Misrule,” Walter Olson offers a fine dissection of these strangely powerful institutions. One of his themes is that law professors serve the interests of the legal profession above all else; they seek to enlarge the scope of the law, creating more work for lawyers even as the changes themselves impose more costs on society. By keeping legal rules in a state of endless churning, lawyers undermine a stable rule of law and make legal outcomes less predictable; the result is more litigation and, not incidentally, more billable hours for lawyers, who must now be consulted about the most routine matters of business practice and social life. | Hat tip: David Bernstine at the Volokh Conspiracy.

AP: “Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor continues to hear cases in U.S. appeals courts, while also playing a role in public policy issues. Her critics say she should do one or the other, but not both.”

Religion Clause Blog: “AP reports that the compromise reinstates a ban on the District of Columbia using its own local tax funds to pay for abortions for poor women.  Also, according to World Magazine, the President agreed to include the SOAR Act as part of the final budget bill.  The act reopens the voucher program . . . ”

Salt Lake Tribune: “In a rare move, 3rd District Judge Denise Lindberg on Monday ordered the court-appointed trust administrator not to comply with a federal court order giving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints temporary control of the trust.” Hat tip: Religion Clause Blog

AP: In a crowded courtroom on the city’s outskirts, the once unthinkable is reality: dozens of couples – rich and poor, educated and barely literate – seek divorce for reasons as varied as domestic violence to a simple inability to live together.

Houston Chronicle: Texas recorded the largest population growth in the nation over the past decade, adding 4.5 million people for a total of 25.1 million. But 79 of its 254 counties lost people, all but a handful of them west of Interstate 35. Even more would have lost population if not for the decade’s phenomenal Latino growth; the number of Anglos declined in 162 Texas counties, including much of West Texas and the Panhandle.

Charles M. Cannizzaro, Comment, Marriage in California: Is the Federal Lawsuit Against the Constitutionality of Proposition 8 About Applying the Fourteenth Amendment or Preserving Federalism?, 38 Pepp. L. Rev. 161 (2010).