Daily Archives: May 17, 2011

ArkCity.net: City Attorney Tamara Niles is concerned that the way the beginning of the meeting is conducted could leave the door open for someone to file a lawsuit against the city.

ADF attorney Brett Harvey appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss the litigation in Joyner v. Forsyth County. | MP3 audio 15:58 mins

The Alternative Right Blog has this post and chart tracking wealth by religious affiliation.

Boston Globe: A committee of the Rhode Island House is scheduled to decide Tuesday evening whether to send the measure to the full House for consideration.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a briefing last Friday on bullying (and cyber-bullying) of K-12 students; there were many people speaking about various aspects of this question, and in particular about whether and to what extent the federal government should get involved . . .

Blog of the Legal Times: A federal appeals court in Washington today said expressive dancing is prohibited inside the Jefferson Memorial in a decision that upheld the dismissal of a suit alleging government suppression of First Amendment rights. | Oberwetter v. Hilliard, No. 10-5078 (D.C. Cir. May 17, 2011)

Blog of the Legal Times: Yale University’s deputy general counsel, Susan Carney, will join the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, after the Senate put aside concerns about her lack of recent litigation work and voted today for her confirmation.

Daniel Leddy at SILive.com: The problem is that marriage cannot be extended to same-sex couples without government’s altering the essence of the institution itself.

Christian Concern for Our Nation: My dear American friends, you cannot imagine how we envy your First Amendment. The day when America follows the example of Europe and Canada and introduces so-called “hate speech crimes” which is only used to punish people who are critical of islam, that day America will have lost its freedom.

Blog of the Legal Times: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is considering filing a cloture petition as soon as tonight, a spokesman said.

Daily Monitor: The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the European Union High Representative have urged Uganda to engage in an informed debate and repeal all legislation that criminalises same sex and other “unnatural” sexual behaviour.

Toronto Sun: A new research paper has found illegal abortions in Poland generate up to $95 million a year for doctors willing to perform them.

Star-Tribune: The organization, “Operation Save America,” hopes to make Wyoming the first abortion-free state. Wyoming is one of five states each with one remaining clinic that performs abortions.

MonstersandCritics.com: Officials in the Russian capital Moscow will defy threatened penalties by the European Court of Human Rights and ban a public demonstration by gays and lesbians, human rights officials said Tuesday.

LifeNews: The pro-life group seeking to run another commercial on MTV reaching out to young people on abortion is hitting back after LifeNews reported how the cable network decided against allowing Heroic Media to run its ad.

The Iowa Independent: Before Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal (D-Council Bluffs) could be recognized and call up Senate File 534, Sen. Kent Sorenson (R-Indianola) interrupted for point of order. When it was largely brushed off by Senate leaders, Sorenson continued to raise his voice, demanding a point of order to allow Ways and Means committee members to meet in full committee. “I can raise my voice just as much as you can, Senator,” Sorenson said to Gronstal in an escalated tone.

Roger Clegg at National Review: Everyone agrees that it is wrong for one student to beat up another student on the basis of sexual orientation, or any other reason for that matter. But the question is why bullying and harassment on the basis of sexual orientation should be singled out for special federal protection, especially when there are difficult line-drawing issues here — e.g., if one student tells another that gay sex is a sin, is that “harassment”?

The battle in Texas is continuing to de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business by diverting $61.7 million in family planning funds away from it and towards other more legitimate programs.

One News Now: Gov. Terry Branstad is urging Republican presidential candidates to compete in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, saying the state party isn’t dominated by evangelical Christians. Branstad was responding to a commentary published in the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Scott Barry Kaufman at the Huffington Post: Considering how universal, automatic, and potent these tendencies are, one might wonder: why doesn’t everyone cheat? Obviously, everyone does not cheat, raising the question: why are some people better able at resisting this immediate temptation than others? Recent research suggests that the answer has a lot to do with cognitive control.

“For several years people who have been promoting the idea of legal recognition for same sex partnerships have maintained that such recognition would have no affect on people of faith and others who in good conscience do not believe such relationships are morally valid. These attacks on the rights of faith-based adoption services

Christian Institute: A religious liberty campaigner has been heckled at an EU meeting for saying Christians should not be sent to prison for peacefully expressing their opinions. A room full of feminist and homosexual activists jeered at Dr Gudrun Kugler when she spoke about the intolerance faced by Christians in Europe.

Congratulations to allied attorneys Aronda Kerns, Brian Hurley, Dana Cody, Allison Aranda, Jim Hochberg, and Joseph Backholm as well as new Honor Corps members Bernadette Joyeux, Emilie Noteboom, Kaylan Phillips, and Steven Amjad for their recent accomplishments and successes listed below. Please take time to congratulate them!

Religion Clause Blog: The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals now has posted online a recording of the oral arguments in Joyner v. Forsyth County, North Carolina . . . Don Byrd also has transcribed excerpts from the arguments. (ADF allied attorney Mike Johnson argued for Forsyth County)

LifeSiteNews: The current controversies over marriage, oddly enough, affirm what Dr. Keith Ablow denies. Marriage is so essential to human happiness and to the organization of human society that it simply cannot be ignored or denied. Of course, there are those who want to deny the obvious — apparently even on the “Fox News Medical A-Team.” Keith Ablow’s assault on marriage is a sign of our times — and an embarrassment.

LifeSiteNews: The Argentinean government is in the process of distributing millions of copies of a United Nations “sexual education” publication that teaches that homosexual couples are a type of “family,” and states that gays have a “right” to “live [their] sexuality,” according to the pro-family Argentinean Center for Bioethics, the Person, and the Family.

LifeNews: The Iowa Senate, on Monday night, passed a weak bill that pro-life groups and lawmakers are not supporting that supposedly targets late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart but that does so insufficiently.

LifeNews: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is expected to file cloture sometime today on the nomination of Goodwin Liu to be a Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit. Liu is one of many pro-abortion activists Obama has named to lower federal court positions.

Washington Post: Russia’s most prominent gay rights activist says Moscow City Hall has banned a gay rights rally on the basis it might provoke civil unrest.

McClatchy: A controversial Florida law that restricts state colleges and universities from traveling to Cuba and other “terrorist states” could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court for review.

LifeNews: Republicans in Congress are looking to make more budget cuts and to give pro-life advocates another chance to make gains after the passage of bills that de-fund Planned Parenthood and stop direct taxpayer funding of abortions.

Religion Clause Blog: The First Apostolic Church of Milton and its pastor Larry Webb claimed that the county jail’s Interfaith Ministries Board and Sheriff Wendell Hall had excluded the church’s substance abuse treatment program from the jail because of doctrinal differences over proper baptism rites.

NCPA Policy Digest: Great Britain’s government-run health care system, the National Health Service (NHS), has long considered limiting coverage for people with illnesses deemed to be lifestyle-related.

NCPA Policy Digest: Starting next year, a typical husband and wife who reach age 66 and qualify for Social Security, receiving the average benefit, will begin collecting a combination of cash and health care entitlement benefits that will total $1 million over their remaining expected lifetime, says John Cogan, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute.

Timothy Shah, Daniel Philpott and Monica Toft at Public Discourse: All of our Harvard classmates (and in Monica Toft’s case, University of Chicago classmates) who entered, say, the State Department had lots of political economy, or political sociology, or international security, or theories of democratization, crammed into their heads, and were well prepared to analyze almost any conceivable global political problem. But the one thing they did not have crammed into their heads was any understanding of religion, or even any expectation that religion might be an important factor in shaping global politics.

So to combat this terrible scourge and break the cycle of fear and violence, we must work together to improve education and support those who stand up against laws that criminalize love and promote hate.

Religion Clause Blog: Last Friday, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a briefing on the federal response to Peer-to-Peer Violence and Bullying.

Religion Clause Blog: The Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal reports that a Jefferson County (KY) state court judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a former bookkeeper at Louisville’s St. Therese Catholic Church who claims she was fired for objecting to the fact that a priest who was on probation for sexually abusing a teenager was residing on parish property in violation of Archdiocese policy.

AP: Gov. Scott Walker has told a judge he wants to stop defending Wisconsin’s domestic partner registry in court because he doesn’t believe it’s constitutional.

AP: Taiwan’s health ministry says hospitals will be penalized for conducting gender selective abortions blamed for up to 3,000 aborted female fetuses last year.

AP: The European Union president called Tuesday for a level playing field in commerce between China and Europe, warning the European public could turn to protectionism if they felt China wasn’t playing fair.

AP: The United States plans to send an envoy to North Korea for talks on the North’s urgent request for food aid, a South Korean official said Tuesday.

AP: Former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson will strongly consider a run for the U.S. Senate in 2012 if U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan does not, two Republicans told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

AP: House Budget Committee Chairman U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan says he will not run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democrat Herb Kohl.

Paul Kengor at Townhall: “The ACLU’s early atheism is no surprise; its founders’ sympathies toward Bolshevism and the Soviet state are not disconnected from that atheism. Yet, most interesting, and unexpected, is how the ACLU’s founders’ views on the Leninist-Stalinist state’s advancement of abortion and birth control are connected—symbolically, at the least—to the organization’s advancement of abortion and birth control today.”

WPIX.com (includes video): Two New York City councilmen said they want to introduce a bill that would make it illegal to watch porn within 100 feet of a child in the library. The legislation would make it a misdemeanor and could be punishable with up to $1,000 in fines.

Washington Post: Oral arguments usually get most of the attention when cases make it to the U.S. Supreme Court, but Justice Samuel Alito said those arguments are a relatively small part of deciding each case.

The Hill: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is confronting a dilemma: run for the Senate and potentially vault into a GOP majority in the upper chamber, or stay put and keep climbing the House leadership ladder.

MO Family Policy Council: . If approved by Missouri voters, the amendment would strengthen the language in Missouri’s Constitution protecting the religious free exercise rights of Missouri citizens and schoolchildren.

The United States government currently own 33% of the GM company . . . Along with concern over China’s ownership of trillions of dollars of U.S. debt, it is truly troubling that an American company financially supported now by the U.S. taxpayer is happily promoting Communist propaganda that glosses over the atrocities of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.