Daily Archives: May 25, 2011

Atlanta J. Constitution: More than 2,000 Cherokee County high school graduates will walk across the stage of First Baptist Church of Woodstock to get their diplomas this weekend, despite a potential lawsuit from a civil liberties group over using the religious venue.

BBC: President Rousseff believes the footage is not suitable for youngsters. The education packs contain gay and lesbian video scenes and are supposed to combat homophobia.

Daily Tar Heel: North Carolina might be one step closer to becoming the final Southern state to ban same-sex marriage in its constitution if legislation at the General Assembly receives bipartisan support.

UPI: A Turkish family consultant says legalizing polygamy would protect women who are already involved in what are in effect polygamous marriages.

NECN: Legislation to reinstate a requirement for pregnant girls seeking abortions to tell their parents first is headed to the desk of New Hampshire Gov. John Lynn following its passage by the state Senate.

Stars and Stripes: Officials from OutServe, an association of more than 3,000 gay active-duty troops and veterans, on Wednesday announced plans for their Armed Forces Leadership Summit this October, to be held in Las Vegas.

Knoxnews.com: Sen. Stacey Campfield said today that he plans to ask Gov. Bill Haslam to use a line item veto to remove a provision in the state budget bill that could allow continued funding to Planned Parenthood authority.

LifeSiteNews.com: A Phoenix woman who doctors feared was in a life-threatening pregnancy due to the fact that she was carrying her child outside her womb, has now given birth to a healthy baby boy.

: The House has unanimously approved the nomination of the Rev. Patrick J. Conroy, a Catholic priest . . .

AP: The ACLU filed Wednesday in in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis seeking to block the state’s new E-Verify law.

LifeSiteNews.com: Following is a list of recent pro-life legislative gains on the state level . . .

LifeNews.com: The House voted 234-182 for the Foxx Amendment to stop the abortion funding with Republicans voting 221-10 for the amendment and Democrats voting 172-13 against it.

LifeNews.com: As expected, pro-abortion Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed two pro-life bills that would have banned late-term abortions and prohibited taxpayer funding of abortions in the state. The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, S.F. 649 and H.F. 936 . . .

Huffington Post: CRR is fighting against similar legislation in Oklahoma. The group was granted a preliminary injunction to block the law there, and Anderson says it is in the beginning stages of preparing a challenge to the Texas law.

Center for Reproductive Rights: Today, the Center for Reproductive Rights announced the opening of its new regional office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Bogotá, Colombia.

The Globe and Mail: So it was all the more surprising when a policy by the Burnaby School District to address homophobic bullying by giving teachers material that would allow them to instruct students on its impact met opposition from a parents group that said it smacks of indoctrination.

San Francisco Chronicle: . . . If Prop. 8 was meant to preserve opposite-sex marriages, they argue, then any judge, gay or straight, would have the similar conflict of interest.

In an emotionally charged decision that critics say will undermine marriage, the court reversed centuries of common law and its own 2008 ruling that held such children are presumed to be the offspring of the woman and her husband.

Reuters: Arizona will file a lawsuit in federal court to learn whether a controversial medical marijuana law passed by voters last November is legal, Arizona’s governor said on Tuesday.

How Appealing: An anonymous source reports that the three-judge panel will consist of Chief Judge Joel F. Dubina and Circuit Judges Frank M. Hull and Stanley Marcus.

Religion Clause Blog: The Los Angeles Jewish Journal reported last week that on May 19, two proponents filed a Notice of Intent To Circulate Petition (full text) with the Santa Monica (CA) City Clerk’s Office . . .

One News Now: The Texas Supreme Court is being asked to intervene in two homosexual “divorce” cases. According to Liberty Institute attorney Jeff Mateer . . .

One News Now: One pro-lifer says The Brookings Institution’s recent research reveals some startling information about the cost of unplanned pregnancies.

AP: Austrian authorities have filed incitement charges against a right-wing politician for commissioning a video game that required players to target and stop mosques, minarets and muezzins as they pop up on a screen.

Byron York at Townhall: It wasn’t just Liu’s legal positions that did him in. Republicans were particularly rankled by the professor’s testimony during the 2006 confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

AP: At issue is a move by oil state Sen. David Vitter, R-La., to not only block the almost $20,000 raise for Salazar last week but then offer to allow the raise to go forward if the Interior Department issues six new deepwater permits a month.

Family Research Council (FRC): News conference to discuss amendments to the Defense Authorization Act that will protect religious freedom in the military while reinforcing federal law that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Speakers will also encourage support for an amendment to strengthen the voice of military service chiefs as the historic prohibition of homosexuality in the Armed Forces is repealed.

NCPA Policy Digest: Nearly half of Americans say that they definitely or probably couldn’t come up with $2,000 in 30 days, according to new research, raising concerns about the financial fragility of many households, reports the Wall Street Journal.

NCPA Policy Digest: The shift in American labor unionism from a private to a public sector movement has been described as a structural break in American labor unionism with implications not for the profitability of firms but for the solvency of governments, says Eileen Norcross, a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

AP: A year after a widespread sex scandal rocked Roman Catholics in Pope Benedict XVI’s homeland, German intellectuals and faithful alike are turning their backs on the church, calling for change or simply leaving the congregation.

Charisma: The Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit Monday against the city, saying it is violating federal laws and that it has no real reasons to deny the permit.
“Churches shouldn’t be singled out for discrimination, especially when attempting to expand their ministries to safely serve the needs of the community—in this case, disabled children,” ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley says.

The Hill: House Republicans will hold a symbolic vote next week to pressure Democrats into accepting deep spending cuts in exchange for lifting the $14.3 trillion debt limit.

Metro Weekly: The Be the Change nonprofit announced today that Kevin Jennings, currently serving in the Obama administration’s Education Department as the assistant deputy secretary and the head of the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, will be leaving that role this summer to become the new president and CEO of Be the Change.

Shelby Steele at the Wall Street Journal: The point is that anyone who runs against Mr. Obama will be seen through the filter of this racial impressionism, in which white skin is redundant and dark skin is fresh and exceptional. This is the new cultural charisma that the president has introduced into American politics.

Life News: Dozens of pro-life groups are calling on pro-life Americans to boycott PepsiCo because it has contracted with a company that uses fetal cells from babies victimized by abortions to test and produce artificial flavor enhancers.

World Net Daily: WND reported last July the new Conservative-Party-led government of Prime Minister David Cameron informed the popular nationally syndicated host it would continue the ban initiated by the previous administration unless he repudiated statements made on his broadcasts that were deemed a threat to public security. The U.K., however, has never specified which statements it thought were so dangerous.

AP: A Tennessee missionary charged with helping a woman get her child out of the United States as part of a high-profile lesbian custody case in Vermont says he’s not guilty. Timothy David Miller . . .

LA Times: A bill introduced by Rep. Christopher S. Murphy would subject Supreme Court justices to the same ethical rules that govern lower court judges.

Life News: Steve Six was a thorn in the side of pro-life advocates in Kansas wanting to hold the abortion industry there accountable for violating late-term abortion laws, but you wouldn’t know that by his responses at a Senate committee hearing.

Heritage Foundation: Heritage released its plan as part of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s 2011 Fiscal Summit, in which six research organizations from across the political spectrum provided long-term fiscal plans to solve America’s spending crisis.

ADF attorney Steven Aden at Human Events: Over the years, politicians in the House and Senate got so accustomed to treating taxpayers’ hard-earned money like a slush fund that they began throwing money at their own pet projects, even when those projects were opposed by a majority of taxpayers. A case in point is Planned Parenthood . . .

Christian Post: In the letter, prepared with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund, the agencies ask that the branch chaplains lobby with them and that Congressional allies establish protections similar to those offered to medical professionals, for members of the chaplain core. “We strongly encourage the adoption of broad, clear, and strong protections for conscience,” the letter states. “Service members should know that chaplains’ ministry and their own rights of conscience remain protected everywhere military necessity has placed them.”

Charisma: “Service members should not be denied the very constitutional liberties they volunteered to defend,” Daniel Blomberg, legal counsel for the ADF, said. “If this government truly cares about protecting religious liberties as it says it does, why has it been afraid to put it in writing?” “We strongly encourage the adoption of broad, clear, and strong protections for conscience,” the letter states. “Service members should know that chaplains’ ministry and their own rights of conscience remain protected everywhere military necessity has placed them.”

Co-chairs of Christian Democrat Party arrested, sentenced to prison for expressing views after election

West, Robin L., Jurisprudence and Gender (May 19, 2011). University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 55, No. 1, 1988; Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 11-50. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1846810