Daily Archives: April 14, 2011

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit rejected a lawsuit filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation that sought to strike down the National Day of Prayer. The court determined that “a feeling of alienation” was not sufficient legal grounds for the atheist group to file suit.

Family Research Council praised the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for its 3-0 ruling today that dismisses a lawsuit against the National Day of Prayer . . .

LifeNews: The Senate vote had all three of the self-declared pro-life Democrats, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, vote against de-funding the pro-abortion, pro-rationing Obamacare law.

AP on TBO: School districts would be authorized to allow students to pray at public high school and middle school events under legislation approved Thursday by the state Senate Education Committee.

Reuters: A Canadian law criminalizing polygamy is not unlike the country’s stance on homosexuality, which was decriminalized in 1969, a lawyer for members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints told a British Columbia court yesterday.

Reuters: The Wisconsin judge who blocked the implementation of the state law limiting collective bargaining by public workers threw out one of the three lawsuits on Thursday challenging the controversial measure.

Reuters: Some 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women in the United States have used contraceptive methods banned by the church, research published on Wednesday showed.

C-FAM: Both voices spoke out during a UN panel hosted last week by the Holy See, Honduras, and Malta called “Secure Human Development: Marriage, Family, Community.” Laurie Shestack-Phipps, a US representative to the UN, castigated the Holy See and other organizers for not being “comprehensive” in their approach to the panel, specifically mentioning family planning and abortion. She complained further about high fertility rates in the poor countries of Africa.

Columbia Reports: Colombia’s Constitutional Court has approved an amendment to the Civil Code which now allows same-sex couples and unmarried life partners to inherit their partner’s assets in the case of their death.

LifeNews: The House of Representatives voted today for the Continuing Resolution funding the federal government that contains a ban on abortion funding in the nation’s capital. Lawmakers also supported efforts to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

TheLocal.se: Swedish county health authorities should be allowed to pay for funerals in return for the relatives allowing the donation of the deceased’s organs, Swedish researchers have argued in a new study.

Erica Manfred at the Huffington Post: A year ago, Cynthia Shackelford, a 62-year-old North Carolina wife won an “alienation of affection” case against her husband’s mistress. The case is ironic on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to start. The facts: Shackelford charged that the other woman, Anne Lundquist, 49, broke up her marriage of 33 years by setting out to deliberately seduce her husband in 2004. A jury awarded her $5 million in compensatory damages and $4 million in punitive damages to be paid by Lundquist. Lundquist has appealed.

Christian News Today: “A growing number of Egypt’s 8-10 million Coptic Christians are looking for a way out as Islamists increasingly take advantage of the revolution . . . ”

Liberty Counsel: Parents and students will protest the so-called “Day of Silence” agenda tomorrow. Last year, some parents chose to withdraw their children from any school that promotes the Day of Silence. The Day of Silence is a project of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which promotes a radical sexualized agenda, including the promotion of books that encourage sex between adults and minors.

A House committee voted 4-1 Wednesday to release Delaware’s first civil unions bill, and the bill — S.B. 30 — is expected to reach the full House of Representatives for a vote late this afternoon.

Telegraph: Waiting lists lengthened over the winter as NHS trusts cancelled planned operations to care for critically ill flu patients, but are likely to increase still further as health authorities begin in earnest to make savings of £20billion over the next four years.

LifeNews: One bill, House Bill 1888, prohibits abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the scientific evidence showing unborn children have the capacity to feel intense pain. A second measure, Senate Bill 547, prohibits taxpayer funding of abortions via the state health insurance exchange created under the Obamacare law.

LifeNews: As soon as scientists begin discussing the differences between embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, and altered nuclear transfer, most non-scientists become overwhelmed by the technicalities and quickly lose their moorings in the ethical and funding debates. This is needless and easily cleared up with a simple analogy.

The Hill: The House on Thursday passed a bill reflecting last week’s agreement to fund the federal government for the rest of fiscal year 2011, in a 260-167 vote in which most Republicans supported it, and most Democrats opposed it even though it was brokered by President Obama and has the support of Democratic leaders in Congress.

RedState.com (includes video): “First of all, no program can be untouched. This notion by some of my colleagues here that this program can’t be touched and somehow it can’t be on the table is absurd. I don’t care what they do. There’s no program in our budget that should be off the table in terms of looking at it and understanding whether it’s justified or not. Second of all, we simply can’t afford to continue fund things like this

USA Today: Only 45.4% of Americans had jobs in 2010, the lowest rate since 1983 and down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000. Last year, just 66.8% of men had jobs, the lowest on record.

Jason Bradley writes at Breitbart Big Government: The state of our national government is in shambles. We are so far removed from the traditional political divide. To explain what is going on in Washington would require use of a metaphor such as The Mariana Trench to explain it. The Democrats might as well be speaking Mandarin and the Republicans, Latin. The American people as a consequence are, of course, def, blind, and dumb. Our politics has really devolved into the ‘us-them’ model and the only real losers are the American people.

IOL News: By the age of 17, Sindi* had had three legal abortions – two within six months and a third a year later. She is the face of a shocking trend sweeping through the nation’s youth – using abortions as a form of contraception.

“The state Senate has approved legislation that would require California’s public schools to include gay history in social studies lessons.”

LifeSiteNews: A Pennsylvania man arrested by police for walking by an abortion clinic because he was recognized as a regular pro-life witness has been paid $10,000 by the city of Ligonier.

LifeSiteNews: Advocating the use of contraception in Utah schools is against the law.

LifeNews: A pro-life organization that conducted an undercover investigation in 2002 has released today additional tapes showing staff at hundreds of abortion centers across the country covering up statutory rape.

LifeNews: President Barack Obama is facing criticism from a conservative group for cutting women’s health care while holding steadfast to funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business.

Front Page Magazine: A physicians’ organization employed an intriguing argument in joining the suit against the Affordable Care Act. The legal brief declared, in effect, that under the health law patients have fewer rights than perpetrators of violent crimes. “Under the Constitution, a patient has a right to a ‘private enclave’ where his or her medical care and information are private. The individual mandate [in the law] obliterates that enclave,” the brief said.

Miami Herald: The lawsuit said school officials knew Hope was the victim of “extraordinary ridicule and harassment” because of the “sexting” incident in the fall of 2009 at Beth Shields Middle School.

PNJ.com:  Legal fees in the federal prayer-in-schools fight in the Santa Rosa County School District have topped $700,000, according to School District figures. And they’re climbing. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the district in 2008 . . .

Freedom from Religion Foundation: A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago today ruled 3-0 that the Freedom From Religion Foundation and its plaintiffs do not have standing to continue their historic challenge of the 1952 congressional act declaring an annual National Day of Prayer and requiring the president to issue a proclamation exhorting citizens to pray. FFRF announced immediately it will seek a rehearing by the entire Seventh Circuit (“en banc” review).

One News Now: Dr. Peggy Elliott, ministry founder and president, says it is time for the genocide to stop. “Between abortion and black-on-black crime, as a people group we’re exterminating ourselves. We’re not loving our children in the womb or outside of the womb,” she shares.

ACLU: A landmark bill was introduced in the Senate today that would, for the first time, make workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity illegal in most workplaces. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was introduced by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Susan Collins (R-ME). A companion bill, introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), was formally introduced last week in the House.

CNN (includes interactive map): As two states imposed the latest rounds of laws against abortion or its providers this week, a new study contends “hostility” toward abortion rights is on the rise in legislatures across the country, according to the Guttmacher Institute

The ProtectMarriage.com legal team filed a motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Wednesday in Perry v. Brown requesting an order “that former district judge Vaughn Walker cease further disclosures of the video recordings of the trial proceedings in this case” and that all copies be returned to the court.

Keen News Service: The Nuxoll case began in 2006, when Heidi Zamecnik, a student at a public high school in Illinois, wore a t-shirt with “Be Happy, Not Gay” on the “Day of Truth,” an event developed by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a conservative Christian legal organization. ADF sees a “Day of Truth” as a conservative response to GLSEN’s “Day of Silence,” and promotes the event on the school day following the “Day of Silence.” . . . The Day of Truth is now sponsored by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family and has been renamed the “Day of Dialogue.” ADF is continuing to provide free legal assistance to participating students.

Centre Daily (PR Newswire): Family Research Council (FRC) praised the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for ruling in Adar v. Smith that a Louisiana registrar’s insistence that only one father’s name could go on a birth certificate for a child adopted by a homosexual couple did not violate the child’s right to equal protection under law, while not denying legal recognition of the New York adoption by both men . . . FRC submitted an amicus brief in the case, along with the Louisiana Family Forum, in support of the defendant, registrar Darlene Smith. Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Austin Nimocks authored the brief for FRC . . .

Religion Clause Blog: The agreement in Westphal v. Wagner, (CD CA, March 31, 2011), calls for an end to prayers at scholarship ceremonies and Chancellor’s Opening Session at the community colleges involved. However commencement ceremonies will continue to feature either a non-sectarian prayer or moment of silence . . .

Religion Clause Blog: For the second time this year (see prior posting), a federal lawsuit has been filed against Coweta County, Georgia challenging its denial of a conditional use permit to a predominately African-American church . . . Alliance Defense Fund issued a press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit.

NPCA Policy Digest: Using a narrow definition, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined in 2010 that there were 151 K-12 and early childhood education programs housed in 20 federal agencies, averaging $55.6 billion annually, says Jennifer A. Marshall, director of domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation.

NCPA: Concerns have long been voiced that workers with employer-based insurance may be reluctant to leave their jobs to start new businesses because of the high cost of premiums or the possibility of disrupting or losing insurance coverage — a phenomenon referred to as “entrepreneurship lock,” says the Kauffman-RAND Institute for Entrepreneurship Public Policy.

SCOTUS Blog’s updated list of Petitions to Watch is here.

SCOTUS Blog: The judge who presided over the Proposition 8 trial on same-sex marriage in California is accused of defying a Supreme Court order against any public broadcast of videotapes of that trial.

AP: Journalist Ahmet Sik was preparing a book about the alleged infiltration of Islamists into the Turkish police, a sensitive theme in a nation divided over the role of religion. Now he is in jail, suspected of links to what authorities say is a secularist plot to topple the government . . .

AP: His family denied the paper’s claims and said the government is trying to punish him for his social activism.

AP: School officials in eastern Pennsylvania will appeal a federal judge’s ruling that allows students to wear breast cancer fundraising bracelets that say, “I (heart) boobies! | ACLU information and link to court documents

Roll Call: Republican won 24 of the 37 Senate contests last year, giving them a head start not only on winning a Senate majority in 2012 but possibly winning a 60-seat supermajority two years later.

Wall Street Journal Editorial: Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship—which “starts,” he said, “by being honest about what’s causing our deficit.” The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards.

Brad O’Leary at Townhall: The Obama administration is working with Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) to pass S. 679, the “Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act,” which would sharply curtail the number of presidential appointees that must be confirmed by the Senate.

Pacific Justice Institute: Pacific Justice Institute is sending a legal demand letter to a high school in Oregon that reportedly used last year’s pro-LGBT “Day of Silence” to suppress student speech that supported heterosexuality. The next “Day of Silence” is scheduled for this Friday, April 15.

The Hill: The data mining will be driven by keywords, including lawmakers’ names, and also by threatening terms such as “kill,” “slash” and “shoot.” Asked at what point comments would require further attention, Gainer said it would be depend on the situation.

Education News: Republicans are delaying the vote to shore up waning support while Democrats dispute the bill’s true cost.