Daily Archives: April 29, 2011

Law360.com: The plaintiffs are represented by Samuel Casey of Advocates International, Steven Aden of Alliance Defense Fund and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP’s Thomas Hungar, Bradley Lingo and Ryan J. Watson.

Thomas Messner of the Heritage Foundation write at The Moral Liberal: According to a complaint letter filed in this case,[5] conditions attached to federal funding that it receives require Vanderbilt not to discriminate against applicants who object to abortion, and after a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund became involved, the university clarified that its policy was that no health care provider would be required to assist with abortion if doing so would violate the individual’s religious beliefs or moral convictions

Tom Strode at Baptist Press: Egypt should be added to an infamous list of the world’s worst violators of religious liberty, a bipartisan commission told the United States government April 28.

Washington Times: Sex trafficking is so widespread, said Nathan Wilson, founder of the Project Meridian Foundation in Arlington, which helps police identify traffickers and their victims, that “no country, no race, no religion, no class and no child is immune.” He said 1.6 million children younger than 18 — native and foreign-born — have been caught up in this country’s sex trade.

Catholic Culture: Hindu extremists in Madhya Pradesh beat a Protestant pastor until he was unconscious; radicals in Maharashtra prevented tribal Christians from holding services; and extremists in Kerala beat Christians who were distributing copies of the Gospel.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today released its 2011 Annual Report and recommended that the Secretary of State name the following nations “countries of particular concern” or CPCs: Burma, China, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

WDIO.com: A Minnesota Senate committee has passed a bill that would let voters next year decide whether to ban gay marriage in Minnesota’s constitution.

Katrina Trinko reports at National Review that Indiana Governor Daniels has announced he will sign the legislation.

ADF provides legal opinion to Gov. Mitch Daniels affirming bill is legally sound

Real Clear Politics: With more than three decades in politics behind him, the governor has done more than develop a Rolodex he could deploy for fundraising, as most point out. The campaign operative in him also has built an organization ready to go whenever he tells them to — and the media doesn’t seem to know it yet. For the past year, he’s been playing its members like piano keys as he orchestrates his national rollout . . . Between his own experience in politics, the Bush team whispering that they hope he runs, and the potential support of Haley Barbour, Daniels has a vast fundraising network.

Slate: Soros was one of three panelists speaking about a new edition of The Constitution of Liberty, the most enduring book by the libertarian economist Freidrich von Hayek.

Daily Caller: “U.S. domestic energy policy cannot be based on crippling access, stifling permitting, and increasing taxes on production – as President Obama has recently proposed – while at the same time loaning billions to foreign government-owned entities to produce abroad,” Vitter said.

Rhode Island Catholic: However well-intentioned it is the experiment called “Civil Unions” is not an acceptable alternative to marriage as it too undermines the unique relationship of one man and one woman in holy matrimony by giving equal status, albeit by another name, to same-sex relationships. Further, it is clear from recent history that once civil union status is granted it quickly advances into the legal recognition of same-sex relationships as marriage.

Minneapolis Star Tribune: “The less-expansive language in the proposal could leave the door open for same-sex civil unions.”

Boston Globe (AP): A hard-line cleric warned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Friday to end an escalating power struggle with Iran’s supreme leader, calling it a religious obligation to do so and accusing the country’s enemies of trying to sow rifts among its leadership.

Houston Chronicle: Texas Senate subcommittee has advanced legislation barring Planned Parenthood from continuing as a member of the Medicaid Women’s Health Program.

LifeSiteNews: One of the reasons stillbirth remains “in the shadows,” is because of pro-abortion sentiments, the report says. The World Health Organization (WHO) does not count unborn children who die before 28 weeks as stillborn, even though stillbirth of viable 22-week babies is common in the developed world. Shoring the data gap could lead to a 40% increase in the number of recorded stillbirths.

LifeNews: The following map will give you a clear picture of the state of abortion coverage in insurance across the states . . .

“King & Spalding’s willingness to abandon a client, the United States House of Representatives, in connection with the lawsuit challenging the the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), was such an obsequious act of weakness, that I feel compelled to end your legal association with Virginia . . . ”

. . According to its website, King & Spalding represents a majority of states (plus many local municipalities) in municipal bond work (emphasis mine): It just so happens that almost every state in the country has either DOMA constitutional amendments or DOMA legislation, including Georgia. Here is a map . . .

“Gay-rights supporters have transformed the law and the legal profession, opening the doors of law firms, law schools and courts to people who were once casually and cruelly shut out because of their sexual orientation. But it was a process that took a half-century to unfold.”

St. Petersburg Times: A bill to overhaul the state Supreme Court has run into steep resistance in the Florida Senate, raising doubts about whether the top priority of House Speaker Dean Cannon will pass this session.

NY Times: King & Spalding had no ethical or moral obligation to take the case, but in having done so, it was obliged to stay with its clients, to resist political pressure from the left that it feared would hurt its business.

SouthCoastToday: Charles O. Cipollini repeatedly pressed Gov. Deval Patrick’s latest state Supreme Judicial Court nominee, Barbara Lenk, with questions about same-sex marriage during Wednesday’s confirmation hearing. Lenk, if confirmed, would be the court’s first openly gay justice in its history.

Judge James Gwin ruled that Hutchinson’s claim falls under the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, a decision that her lawyer described as far-reaching and unprecedented.

WIFR.com: The permit for a controversial ultra-sound van to park outside Rockford’s abortion clinic has been extended for seven weeks.

iNewsone.com: A doctor here was on the run after a 29-year-old woman died Friday following a botched abortion that has sparked mass anger in the Taj Mahal city.

AP: Vietnamese authorities have arrested the pastor of an outlawed Mennonite church for allegedly sowing division between the government and citizens of this communist nation, state media reported Friday.

AP: A story book about gay penguins, pushed with taxpayer funding to young children in the UK, is the most complained-about book in America.

AP: “Tibetan religious leader on Friday asked Chinese authorities to immediately release nearly 400 monks detained from the blockaded Kirti monastery in Sichuan province where two people died in a clash with police.”

AP: The tea party plate would feature the “”Don’t Tread On Me” slogan, rattlesnake emblem and yellow background of the historic Gadsden Flag that is a symbol of the movement.

AP: But this year, there has not been even a whimsical rumor of a departure.

Education News: Critics are protesting Ohio Governor John Kasich’s plan toexpand scholarships for students wanting to attend private schools at the same time as he’s cutting $1.8 billion in public school funding, Cincinnati.com reports.

WMFD.com: The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio sent a letter to school superintendents around the state Thursday, urging them to adopt proactive bullying prevention plans. | ACLU Press Release | ACLU Letter

Rasmussen Reports: A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just eight percent (8%) of adults now think China is a bigger threat militarily. Seventy-six percent (76%) disagree and say the Asian giant represents a bigger threat economically.

LifeSiteNews: In a statement from the Life Legal Defense Fund, Executive Director Dana Cody called this week’s final resolution of the case “an act of desperation on the part of Planned Parenthood.” “They went, in a matter of months, from litigating every inch of their defense to a sudden willingness to resolve the matter,” she said. In an interview with LifeSiteNews, ADF Senior Counsel Steven Aden offered his own speculation on why Planned Parenthood agreed to a resolution. “Planned Parenthood wouldn’t want the explosive facts of this lawsuit as alleged by the plaintiffs out in the public eye, given how much damage it has sustained in its public images from recent revelations of aiding sexual traffickers by Live Action,” he said.

Sonoran News: Christians shouldn’t be excluded and restricted from using public meeting rooms and other facilities simply because they plan to express a Christian viewpoint,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster. “The government officials who changed their policies have done the right thing, acknowledging that the Constitution prohibits the government from deciding who can and cannot use space based upon the viewpoints to be discussed at gatherings. We hope the remaining officials will follow the lead of the others and uphold everyone’s First Amendment protected right of free speech.”

JConline.com: About $1.3 million of that is Medicaid family-planning money, which comes with a federal requirement that the state not pick and choose among providers. Federal officials declined to say what sanctions Indiana might face for doing so, but the Family and Social Services Administration has expressed concerns it would lose all $4 million of its Medicaid family-planning money. An attorney for the anti-abortion Alliance Defense Fund says past cases show that Indiana would not face penalties.

Thomas G. Hungar, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, which includes the Alliance Defense Fund and the Christian Medical Association, said in 2009 when the lawsuit was filed, “the language of the [Dickey-Wicker] statute is clear” that it “bans public funding for any research that leads to the destruction of human embryos.” “NIH’s attempt to avoid Congress’s command by funding everything but the act of ‘harvesting’ is pure sophistry. The guidelines will result in the destruction of human embryos and are unlawful, unethical, and unnecessary,” he told LifeNews.com at the time.

The Witherspoon Institute: The 2011 Schreyer Seminar on Marriage, Family, and the Social Sciences will focus on The Family and the Market: How Do Marriage & Fertility Matter to the Economic Welfare of Business, the State, and the Market? — June 22-25, 2011

Aaron Goldstein at American Spectator: “With all due respect to Wilcox he paints an incomplete picture. While it is true that the report concluded children were more suspectible to abuse in a household headed by a single parent with a cohabiting partner than with married biological parents it is far from the only factor contributing to child abuse. Indeed the HHS report also states . . . ”

Joseph Lawler at the American Spectator: University of Virginia social scientist W. Bradford Wilcox takes a look at new federal data on child abuse, and comes up with some alarming findings about child abuse in households in which the caretakers aren’t a married couple . . .

W. Bradford Wilcox at Public Discourse: Cohabitation does not serve the “best interest” of children, regardless of what the courts say . . . This new federal study indicates that these cases are simply the tip of the abuse iceberg in American life. According to the report, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are about 11 times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than children living with their married biological parents.

W. Virginia Gazette: Exodus International plans a May 10 event at CMA Church in Morgantown to teach religious leaders how to minister to people who don’t want to be attracted to members of the same sex. The Family Policy Council of West Virginia invited Exodus to hold the seminar, the first of its kind that the Orlando-based group has held in the state.

Dennis Prager Radio: In the contemporary world, where left-wing attitudes are regarded as normative, it is a given that capitalism, with its free market and profit motive, emanates from and creates selfishness, while socialism, the welfare state and the “social compact,” as it is increasingly referred to, emanate from and produce selflessness. The opposite is the truth.

Michael Flaherty at the Wall Street Journal: Mr. Tulloss is the chairman of Parent Revolution, a grass-roots organization that has shocked the education establishment in California with a simple premise: Parents should have more say in the fate of their neighborhood schools. That’s because they are the one group in the education debate without a conflict of interest—their interests are entirely aligned with their children’s. Parent Revolution has made national news in its ongoing attempt to use California’s new “parent trigger” law, which allows parents to transform a failing school by, among other things, replacing it with a charter school.

The King & Spalding skedaddle is a blow to the institutional integrity of our legal system. Intimidation is now the default tactic of same-sex marriage advocates.

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell: When the royal couple said, “I will,” the roar of the crowd outside St. Paul’s Cathedral “was almost as if the world was cheering for itself,” Green reported. And indeed we do cheer for ourselves when we rejoice in wedding vows. Marriage is a promise. Not just between one man and one woman but to the community at large, to generations past and to those yet to be born. Wedding vows set apart this lifelong, life-giving relationship from all others.

Wall Street Journal (via Google): Pop quiz: What political party, in what state, this week passed a bill in the dead of night stripping public-sector unions of their collective- bargaining powers? Republicans in Wisconsin? The GOP in Ohio or Indiana? Try Democrats in Massachusetts. Maybe the debate over public-sector benefits isn’t all that ideological after all.

C-FAM: A US appeals court ruled that a Chinese man whose wife underwent a forced abortion and IUD insertion is not eligible to asylum, despite US law to the contrary. Even though the court recognized the couple’s clear desire to …

Washington Times: A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area. The product in question: unpasteurized milk.

James J. Knicely; John W. Whitehead, In God We Trust: The Judicial Establishment Of American Civil Religion, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 869 (2010)

There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject.

Polina M. Dostalik, Embryo “adoption”? The Rhetoric, The Law, And The Legal Consequences, 55 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 867 (2011)

Ryan Sullivan, Pre-Mortem Cryopreservation: Recognizing A Patient’s Right To Die In Order To Live, 14 Quinnipiac Health L.J. 49 (2010)