Daily Archives: May 4, 2011

FRC Washington Update: wo weeks ago, the Office of Navy Chaplains shocked everyone by ordering their corps to toss the old training materials and replace them with a version that’s more accepting of same-sex “marriage.” Citing “additional legal review,” the Navy says it “has concluded that… if the base is located in a state where same-sex marriage is legal, then the base facilities may be used to celebrate the marriage…

Christian Law Journal: Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Steven H. Aden said in statement that the law is reasonable and gives women important information they need. “Everyone deserves full and accurate information before undergoing any medical procedure,”said Aden. He continued, “These lawsuits are more about protecting ‘bottom lines’ than protecting women’s rights.” “If Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights really cared about women’s rights, they’d support laws that allow women to make fully informed choices instead of challenging these laws in court. These types of protections have been repeatedly upheld and are overwhelmingly supported by the public.”

A independently-run Christian school in Stockholm has been criticised by the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (Skolinspektionen) after being reported for presenting homosexuality as a sin in its teaching.

The House passed HR 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, on a 251-175 vote with Republicans voting 235-0 for the bill and Democrats voting 175-16 against it.

Reuters on Yahoo: The United Nations’ top human rights official called on the United States Tuesday to give the U.N. details about Osama bin Laden’s killing and said that all counter-terrorism operations must respect international law.

enate Republicans joining all Democrats to end debate and approve McConnell include Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Susan Collins of Maine, Lyndsey Graham of South Carolina, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Mark Kirk of Illinois, John McCain of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Olympia Snowe of Maine, and John Thune of South Dakota.

A “yes” vote meant ending debate on McConnell’s nomination, while a “no” vote meant supporting a filibuster. Hatch said neither option appealed to him, so he voted “present,” recording that he was physically in the Senate chamber.

Chicago Tribune: Catholic charities are warning that they may halt adoption services if Illinois law requires them to place children with gay couples.

AP: More than two dozen states challenging the health care overhaul urged a U.S. appeals court on Wednesday to strike down the Obama administration’s landmark law, arguing it far exceeds the federal government’s powers.

Courthouse News Service: The highest court of the European Union ruled that member states may not jail immigrants who enter their countries illegally and then refuse to leave.

Kevin Theriot at the Speak Up Movement Church Blog: If you’ve ever watched “Leave it to Beaver” re-reruns, you know that Beaver, the young star of the show, was always getting hassled by his older brother’s friend, Eddie Haskell. Eddie was the neighborhood smart-mouth. When the abuse became unbearable, the Beaver would say something like this, “Gee Dad, Eddie’s giving me the business again.” That’s exactly what the Sixth Circuit did to a church’s religious school in the EEOC v. Hosanna-Tabor case last year.

BBC: One of the country’s most high profile barristers has been appointed a judge to the UK’s highest court.

Boston Globe: The Vermont Law School is lifting its 25-year-old ban on military recruiters on campus because the military is ending its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about gays and lesbians serving in the military.

Harford Courant: President Obamaon Wednesday nominated federal district court Judge Christopher F. Droney to the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, a source involved in the appointment process said.

AsiaNews.it: In a message to the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which is discussing ‘Universal Rights in a World of Diversity – The Case of Religious Freedom’, Benedict XVI stresses that “authentic freedom of religion will permit the human person to attain fulfilment and will thus contribute to the common good of society.”

NY Times: Fewer than half of American eighth graders knew the purpose of the Bill of Rights on the most recent national civics examination, and only one in 10 demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances among the legislative, executive and judicial branches, according to test results released on Wednesday.

BBC: China has set up a new government body to control information on the internet.

More information here.

Telegraph: Teenage girls should be taught the benefits of abstinence to cut sexually-transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancies, MPs have been told.

Glenn T. Stanton at Baptist Press: Well, here’s one: New data emerging consistently for decades show that premarital sexual activity seems to be associated with a significant elevated risk of divorce. This is not a small consideration for teens and young adults. Let’s look at the handful of leading population-based studies exploring this question and what they find . . .

The Huffington Post: As several states have moved to make it harder for same-sex families to adopt children or become foster parents, Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would make such discrimination illegal across the country. he Every Child Deserves a Family Act . . .

Christian Newswire: Christianity Today International is pleased to announce the launch of ChurchLawAndTax.com, a completely redesigned website that helps church leaders with critical church legal and tax matter.

Boston Globe : Barbara A. Lenk, a veteran Appeals Court judge, today won confirmation to a seat on the Supreme Judicial Court, becoming the first openly gay judge to serve on the state’s highest judicial body.

AP on Boston Globe: The U.S. is urging China to lift restrictions on foreign investors which it says are a major barrier to improving commercial relations.

Rich Lowry at National Review: The good news is that wages still make up a majority of the nation’s income. Barely. USA Today reports that in 2010, “wages accounted for the lowest share of income — 51.0 percent — since the government began keeping track in 1929.

AlterNet: The survey in question was released in March by the Pew Research Center and it asked questions about marriage and parenthood . . . For example, only 30 percent of the 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed said that, in life, having a successful marriage “is one of the most important things.” Also noteworthy, 66 percent of respondents in that age group disagreed with the statement that “unmarried, but coupled parenthood is bad for society.”

How Appealing links to reports and the roll call vote.

The Palm Beach Post: Florida lawmakers are poised to make the state’s parental notification of abortion laws stricter, making it more difficult for a minor to get a judges’ approval for the procedure.

Superior Telegram: the invocation at the start of each Eau Claire County Board meeting will be replaced with a “moment of reflection,” but that doesn’t prohibit supervisors from offering a prayer.

MN Independent: The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota is demanding that the Northfield School District stop filtering LGBT internet content on the district’s computers. Calling it unconstitutional . . .

Stamford Advocate: The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico is asking Clovis Municipal Schools to approve a Gay-Straight Alliance club at Clovis High School before the school year ends May 24.

AP: The wife and a friend of a prominent Chinese civil rights lawyer said he returned home Wednesday after disappearing for five days amid an ongoing government crackdown on dissent.

AP: Religious groups in Australia are allowed to discriminate against people who are gay or transgender, prompting criticism from gay rights activists who find it galling that their social service programs receive millions of dollars in government funding.

LifeSiteNews: Controversial Louisiana state Representative John LaBruzzo filed legislation recently that would ban all abortions in the state. House Bill 587 . . .

LifeSiteNews: Ohio’s “Heartbeat Bill,” which would ban abortion from the moment of a detectable fetal heartbeat, is gaining support from U.S. presidential hopefuls as it advances through the State legislature.

LifeNews: The new Hungarian constitution, which protects life from conception, has evoked a maelstrom of protest from the European institutions, not to mention the pro-abortion lobby.

LifeNews: Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, is not expected to sign either bill. Minnesota taxpayers have been required to fund elective abortions since the Minnesota Supreme Court’s 1995 Doe v. Gomez ruling.

LifeNews: The budget state Republican legislators have floated in North Carolina would end the practice of funding abortions in the state with taxpayer dollars — to the tune of $50,000 annually.

LifeNews: Under a bill the Texas state House approved yesterday, motorists would be able to purchase Choose Life license plates to express their pro-life views and help support programs helping pregnant women.

ADF attorney Matt Bowman at Human Events: The American Civil Liberties Union and its “pro-choice” allies want to force all hospitals in the country to perform abortions. They are claiming that a bill being debated in the U.S. House this week should be defeated or amended simply because it shores up existing federal conscience protections. HR3 . . .

Inside Higher Ed: If courts are going to go the wrong way on these issues, it’s critical to start to enshrine these kinds of protections” for religious students, said Jeremy Tedesco, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, which has backed religious students in many of these disputes. Tedesco said that the Arizona law is needed because the various court rulings have threatened the religious freedom and rights to free expression of religious students at public universities

One News Now: But ADF attorney David Cortman does not buy that excuse. “It’s simply ridiculous in this case that Hicksville High School says it has no budget for a Christian club but somehow has enough to pay for 35 clubs, including a ping pong club,” he notes . . .
“Public schools cannot ban Christian student clubs simply because they’re religious,” he contends. “If officials at government-run schools did their homework, they’d know that the students have a First Amendment right to express their beliefs.”

Washington Post: In the 1960s and ’70s, many questioned whether female or black judges could fairly decide cases of sex or race discrimination, said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University who teaches legal ethics.

Religion Clause Blog: Last week, the Tulsa World reported that a number of Oklahoma parents of students with special needs have filed a federal lawsuit against Broken Arrow, Union, Jenks and Tulsa public school districts after those districts announced they would not comply with a 2010 state law setting up a voucher program for students with disabilities.

Religion Clause Blog: In Kenya, Seventh Day Adventist students at Masinde Muliro University say that the school’s scheduling of exams on Saturdays violates their freedom of conscience and religion as protected by Kenya’s new constitution.

Bloomberg: The world’s population is likely to grow to 10.1 billion by the end of this century, from the current total of about 7 billion, according to the first United Nations forecast for the year 2

LifeNews: After debating in favor of a bill that would require ultrasounds before abortions, Democrat leaders openly harassed, threatened and belittled Democratic Rep. Daphnee Campbell

Fox News: “The principal said, ‘I don’t want any of these Christian clubs at my school,’” said David Cortman, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative advocacy legal group. The ADF filed the lawsuit Monday against the Hicksville Union Free School District in Central Islip, NY . . .

AP: A group of attorneys using children and young adults as plaintiffs plans to file legal actions in every state and the District of Columbia on Wednesday in an effort to force government intervention on climate change.

AP: The starving girls in this hospital ward include a 21-month-old with arms and legs the size of twigs and an emaciated 1-year-old with huge, vacant eyes. Without urgent medical care, most will not live to see their next birthday.

AP: A U.S. commission that accused Beijing of restricting religious freedom is biased and is meddling in China’s internal affairs, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

ACLU Blog: Late last week, the U.S. Department of Labor took an important step forward for its transgender employees by adding gender identity to the department’s internal equal employment opportunity (EEO) policies. The Labor Department will now explicitly prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of gender identity, as well as pregnancy, under existing bans on sex discrimination.

AP: The body of a man with his hands and feet nailed to a wooden cross and a crown of thorns on his head has been found in an abandoned stone quarry, South Korean police said Wednesday.

AP: “The Treasury Department says it will proceed with a $72 billion auction of new debt next week . . . ”

AP: The group, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the local Hausa language, has previously attacked churches and engineered a massive prison break.

AP: A Canadian Roman Catholic bishop has pleaded guilty to importing child pornography . . . Police say they found hundreds of files and dozens of videos, many of them showing young males engaged in sexual acts.

AP: New Hampshire’s Senate has voted unanimously to reject changes to the state’s anti-bullying law, such as limiting school responsibility in dealing with off-campus incidents.

AP: Turkey has launched a project to conserve an ancient Armenian cathedral and church in what is seen as a gesture of reconciliation toward its neighbor.

AP: Chipping away at European unity, the EU began to revamp its unique system of unfettered cross-border travel across much of the continent Wednesday, bowing to the stresses generated by a flood of North African immigrants.

LifeNews: Senate Democrats want a vote soon on a pro-abortion activist President Barack Obama selected for a federal district court position in Rhode Island, Jack McConnell.

Wall Street Journal (via Google): Tennessee GOP Senator Lamar Alexander along with South Carolina Senators Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint are this week introducing legislation to rein in the labor board’s latest assault on business. The board’s complaint against Boeing, filed last month, is the first shot in a new union war on federal right-to-work law, a policy shift that is every bit as threatening as the drive to get rid of secret ballots in union elections

Wall Street Journal: Growth in the food stamp program appeared to reach a plateau in February — with 14.3% of the population relying on the safety net program.

Joseph S. Jackson and Lauren G. Fasig., The Parentless Child’s Right to a Permanent Family, 46 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1 (2011) Online: http://works.bepress.com/joseph_jackson/1/

Jessica L. Thornhill, Clear As Mud: Pleasant Grove City V. Summum And Riding The Undefined Line Between Government Speech And Private Speech In A Public
Forum, 30 Miss. C. L. Rev. 121 (2011)

Hensel, Wendy Fritzen and Wolf, Leslie, Playing God: The Legality of Plans Denying Scarce Resources to People with Disabilities in Public Health Emergencies (2011). Florida Law Review, Vol. 63, p. 725, 2011; Georgia State University College of Law, Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2011-09. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1825565