Daily Archives: May 13, 2011

The ADF Alliance Alert is on a reduced publication schedule today. The Alert is being sent early so coverage will be slightly reduced. Normal publication will resume on Monday. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to readers.

WSPA.com: In the past the district left it up to students to vote on whether they wanted to have a prayer. But this year a student says a school endorsed prayer is not legal and so he contacted the Freedom from Religion Foundation about it.

Anthony Stevens-Arroyo at the Washington Post: The lesson to the bishops in Catholic America today is clear: Take care that preaching against the liberal idea of “reproductive rights” does not wind up promoting worse moral consequences. With huge imbalances in the current budget where the poor and declining middle-class face cutbacks in jobs and services, population control is likely to make a comeback. I’m not saying that mass sterilization of women will necessarily become an acceptable option in the USA, but we would be foolish to think it impossible.

Washington Post (Apr. 29th): Kagan said it was not a surprise that Clement would resign from his law firm “rather than abandoning a client.” Those who criticize Clement “misunderstand the traditions and ethics of the legal profession,” she said.

LifeSiteNews: The deep suffering of infertile couples must not tempt them to choose “the tragic pathway of in vitro fertilization” that destroys human life, said the archbishop of Ottawa on Wednesday.

Leonard A. Leo and Dr. Don Argue at The HIll: In short, every place where Osama bin Laden fled had either perpetrated or tolerated world-class violations of religious freedom and other human rights.

LifeSiteNews: Polish registry offices announced recently that the Ministry of Interior would issue new certificates that will effectively allow homosexual couples to “marry” outside the country; however, gay “marriages” will still not be recognized within Poland.

Wall Street Journal: A former branch manager for Bank of America Corp.’s (BAC) Merrill Lynch is suing the company on charges he was discriminated against because he is a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

LifeSiteNews: “Compassion in Dying, an offshoot of the campaign group Dignity in Dying, said that it will instead be setting up the telephone line that will dispense information for those wishing to commit suicide on their legal rights.”

LifeSiteNews: In a video released today, American Life League, the nation’s largest Catholic pro-life group, has called for a complete investigation of Catholic social justice organizations for embracing population control advocate Dr. Jeffrey Sachs.

Michigan Messenger: The Michigan House approved an amendment to the education budget on Thursday night that will penalize state universities and colleges five percent for offering domestic partner benefits for same-sex or unmarried partners.

Randy Barnett at the Volokh Conspiracy: I just returned from a press conference announcing the introduction today in both the House and the Senate of the “Repeal Amendment,” a proposed amendment to the Constitution that reads: “Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose that particularly describe the same provision or provisions of law or regulation to be repealed.” . . .

Journal Sentinel: Kloppenburg had every right to request the recount, but given the cost and the political fallout, it would have been better had she graciously accepted the loss.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: There’s long been something of a debate about this question, and I thought I’d note an interesting and apparently quite credible article touching on it, Nanette K. Gartrell, Henny M. W. Bos & Naomi G. Goldberg, Adolescents of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Sexual Orientation, Sexual Behavior, and Sexual Risk Exposure, Archives of Sexual Behavior (2010). (I learned of it because one of the coauthors is affiliated with the Williams Institute for sexual orientation and the law here at UCLA School of Law.)

AP: Leaders of underground Chinese Protestant churches condemned the government’s persecution of a fellow congregation, while Catholics voted under the watchful eye of security forces for a new government-approved bishop, reports said.

AP: Uganda’s parliament adjourned Friday without acting on a criticized anti-gay bill that would mandate the death sentence in some cases, drawing praise from an advocacy group that said parliament’s failure to act was a “victory for all Ugandans.”

AP: “An international prosecutor said Friday he will seek arrest warrants next week for three top Libyan leaders on charges of murder and persecution during their attempts to crush the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.”

Bloomberg Business Week: In the months before Justice David T. Prosser Jr. and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg faced off in Wisconsin’s Apr. 5 Supreme Court election, unidentified contributors poured $4.4 million into the race—almost six times as much as the candidates spent on the campaign.

LifeNews: Governor Brian Schweitzer continued his abortion advocacy in Montana on Thursday when he vetoed a bill that would have protected girls and their parents on the issue of abortion on minors.

Kansas lawmakers have put the finishing touches on a bill that would shift funding away from the Planned Parenthood abortion business and stops abortion funding in health insurance programs.

How Appealing reports on and links to the ruling by Florida Second District Court of Appeal

AP: The Internal Revenue Service is investigating five donors for making contributions to the kind of nonprofit groups that have become popular for spending millions of dollars on political ads in the past few years.

AP: lanned Parenthood of Indiana says it will cover the health care costs of current Medicaid patients for at least another week after losing much of its public funding under a new state law.

Reuters: A senior Chinese diplomat, on a visit to Hungary on Thursday, defended the government’s detention of artist and activist Ai Weiwei.

AP: Gov. Jack Markell has signed legislation making Delaware the 16th state to allow the use of medical marijuana.

ACLU: The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Massachusetts filed a lawsuit in federal court today challenging the suspicionless search and seizure of electronics and personal data belonging to activist David House. The lawsuit charges that the government targeted House solely on the basis of his lawful association with the Bradley Manning Support Network when it seized House’s laptop, USB drive and camera, and proceeded to copy and possibly disseminate their contents.

One News Now: he victory thus far does give those who oppose assisted suicide another chance to educate voters and the public to ensure that the bill does not pass next time around, but Beerworth expects a full-court press from pro-life proponents.

NBCPhiladelphia.com: Mark my words, there will be litigation over this,” said Douglas Napier, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative religious rights organization.

Bob Ellis at Dakota Voice: For several generations now, America’s pastors have allowed themselves to be led around by the nose using an unconstitutional tax exempt requirement, ignoring their duty to ensure their flocks are informed on how God’s word speaks to their daily lives and their duty to be salt and light in this world. But the Alliance Defense Fund has challenged that nonprofit muzzle for the last three years, and the IRS has done nothing. Now is the time for YOU, America’s pastors, to join a growing number of pastors and speak up . . .

Christian Today (May 6th): Christian Solidarity Worldwide has expressed concern over the detention and interrogation of three Protestant pastors by Cuban authorities over the weekend.

WorldNetDaily: Violence against Christians in Muslim regions of Africa is on the rise, and advocates for religious freedom are expressing concern over the deaths of 17, including the family of a Nigerian pastor, as well as the deaths of a dozen Christians in Egypt.

The Post.ie: The government has been told that it may be risking causing offence to Muslims living in Ireland who wish to engage in polygamous marriages.

Andre Picard at the Globe and Mail: Let’s just be clear about the distinction between what is medically necessary and what is socially desirable. IVF offers tremendous benefits in the form of little bundles of joy and future taxpayers, but it comes at a cost, one that we may (or may not) wish to share collectively. But let’s dispense with the fiction about “savings.”

Daily Mail: A senior family judge yesterday called on David Cameron to prepare sweeping reforms of marriage and divorce law. Sir Paul Coleridge, who sits as Mr Justice Coleridge in the family division of the High Court, said that family laws are decades out of date because of ‘the inactivity of lazy politicians’ . . . Sir Paul, who presided over the divorce settlement of Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, said that any review should consider giving more legal force to marriage . . .

Peter H. Schuck and John Tyler at the Wall Street Journal (via Google): Our current policy is plain stupid. Of the more than one million permanent admissions to the U.S. in 2010, fewer than 15% were admitted specifically for their employment skills. And most of those spots weren’t going to the high-skilled immigrants themselves, but to their dependents . . .

Christian Post: . . . However, Johnson contended that the clergy’s prayers, shared during time allotted for a private forum, constitute private speech. The Constitution’s establishment clause does not apply to private speech, he said. “It becomes an issue of free speech and free exercise for those who come to speak as volunteers,” he informed The Christian Post . . . Johnson, a former senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, is now the founding dean of the Pressler School of Law at Louisiana College. The private Baptist college will launch the new law school late this summer. According to Johnson, it is the first Christian law school of its kind in the South . . .

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Washington Post: A museum exhibit about slavery in Frederick County is as notable for its location as its subject matter.

NPR: The Verrilli nomination ran into a wall of Republican hostility after the Obama administration announced it would not defend the constitutionality of the federal law banning gay marriage.

SCOTUS Blog: Officials of the state of California and of San Francisco urge a judge to reject a plea to throw out another judge’s ruling striking down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. The plea, officials contend, is a disguised effort to keep gay judges out of cases involving gay rights.

FRC: Next Tuesday, Family Research Council (FRC) will host Dr. William Jeynes, professor of Education at California State University in Long Beach and a Non-Resident Scholar at Baylor University, to deliver a talk entitled, “God, China and Capitalism: Is Christianity in China the key ingredient for economic success?” . . . .

LifeNews: Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels appears closer than ever to indicating he will seek the Republican nomination for president, but, for pro-life voters, one key question remains about his talk of an abortion truce.

U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Labor, and Pensions (May 11, 2011): Sen. Rand Paul has a brief discussion of the Hyde Amendment in the video starting at 79:55 mins. He cites the Alliance Defense Fund for the proposition that abortions are being performed with federal funding at “community health centers. ” ADF attorney Matt Bowman authored the document that Sen. Paul asks to insert into the record.

ABC (includes video): Former President George W. Bush made his first candid public comments on the killing of Osama bin Laden during an appearance Wednesday at a conference of hedge fund managers in Las Vegas.