Daily Archives: May 27, 2011

. . . a Texas federal district court issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Department of Veterans Affairs from regulating the content of the invocation and benediction that are to be delivered at a Memorial Day ceremony in Houston’s National Cemetery.

The American Spectator: Joshua Green at the Atlantic takes note of an interesting situation: Herman Cain, currently undertaking a populist and Tea Party-based campaign for the presidency, is a former Kansas City Federal Reserve chairman.

ADF attorney Joe Infranco appeared on Talkback with Chuck Wilder. | MP3 audio 18:32 mins

ADF attorney Daniel Blomberg appeared on the Georgene Rice Show to discuss the topic. | MP3 audio 10:40 mins

Deborah Orr at The Guardian: You cannot call yourself ‘pro-choice’ and then bar people who disagree with you from expressing their view

The Christian Institute: Christianity is seen to be fair game for criticism and abuse while Islam receives special protection, an MP has said. David Simpson warned ministers earlier this week that they need only “look to our own back door” to witness the mistreatment of Christians.

Rochester City Newspaper: Legislation introduced in the New York State Assembly would deny state funding to Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide abortions.

LifeNews.com: Tennessee lawmakers approved a bill that they thought would de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business, but an unnamed legislator has thrown a wrench in the plans and now the governor is getting calls to help.

I am skeptical of their recent poll which finds that for the first time a majority of Americans support legalizing same-sex “marriage.” . . .

David Lapp at FamilyScholars.org: James says while they never really articulated their fear that marriage would ruin their good relationship, he thinks they did have it in the back of their heads. “In the back of our heads”–it’s a telling phrase.

Reuters: A Wisconsin man who allegedly planned to shoot a doctor at a Madison abortion clinic was charged on Friday under a federal law that allows freedom of access to the clinics, prosecutors said.

WNYC.org: The debate about how much economic benefit legalizing same-sex marriages in New York will have might be in doubt, but Bloomberg’s libertarian message will do more than add dollars and cents to the argument. By providing intellectual cover for those Republican senators he’s been targeting, Bloomberg’s conservative argument for gay marriage might keep the fence-sitters from feeling like they’ll have to fall on their swords.

LifeNews: Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman signed into law two pro-life pieces of legislation yesterday and today when he put his signature on bills to ban webcam abortions and require parental consent before abortions.

Washington Post: According to research by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, Americans have become less tolerant of marital infidelity over the last forty years, and somewhat less likely to stray over the last 20 years.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation: sent a letter of complaint May 26 to Giles County Director of Schools Tee Jackson in Pulaski, Tenn., objecting on behalf of district residents to sectarian prayer at kindergarten graduation May 20 at Pulaski Elementary School.

: Some 85% of them are young people, that is, activists under 30 years old.

Interfax: . . . head of the Council of Trustees of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation and JSC Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin believes tolerance to homosexuality is harmful . . .

CNN: “Kobe Bryant, Joakim Noah and Roger McDowell are not any different from many people in our society who use offensive language like that on a daily basis,” said Jarrod Chin of the Society for the Study of Sport in Society at Boston’s Northeastern University. “These incidents provide a real opportunity for the NBA and MLB to take a strong stance against homophobia.”

Blog of the Legal Times: Senate Democrats are planning to push ahead on two high-profile legal nominations that they’ll need Republican support for if they hope to get confirmation votes.

National Law Journal: A 2008 graduate of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law filed a class action in California state court on May 26, alleging that the school committed fraud by misrepresenting the employment statistics for its recent graduates.

Star Tribune: Two national groups have urged the Anoka-Hennepin School District to repeal a policy that requires teachers remain neutral about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues (GLBT).The Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights . . .

Thirty Democratic senators sent a letter to the Obama administration on Thursday, urging them to warn Medicaid directors at the state level that it’s against the law to block Medicaid funds or Title X family planning funds from going to clinics that provide abortion services, like Planned Parenthood.

Inside Costa Rica: Judge Arturo Marcheno Rosabal, who issued the decision, noted that paragraph 6 of Article 14 of the Código de Familia (Family Code) states that marriage is legally impossible for same-sex couples and that in this case he had no other alternative but to reject the application.

Catholic Culture: Plowing over tombs with a tractor, Muslim landowners in a town near Pakistan’s third-largest city desecrated a Christian cemetery. The attack took place in Chak Jhumra, which is located near Faisalabad

CNA: Though 81 percent of the victims were post-pubescent males, researchers downplayed the homosexual connection by suggesting that this simply reflects the fact that offenders had greater access to boys.

India Times: Child marriages are rampant in the rural areas of Rajasthan. Before the Akshya Tritiya (a day considered auspicious for marriages) observed on May 5 this year, the state government had threatened to take action against anybody involved in organising child marriages, including priests, catering firms and photographers.

Gallup: U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian. More specifically, over half of Americans (52%) estimate that at least one in five Americans are gay or lesbian, including 35% who estimate that more than one in four are. Thirty percent put the figure at less than 15%.

Briwn Clowes at LifeNews.com: Of all of Azerbaijan’s contradictions and contrasts, however, the most startling is the rise of the culture of death among a people who treasure their children.

: Family Research Council’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI) released a synthesis paper today showing that economic well-being in the United States is strongly related to marriage. The paper, entitled Marriage and Economic Well-Being . . .

LifeSiteNews.com: The real issue goes much deeper, and the Catholic bishops’ conference and other Christian groups have raised the alarm, because of the stand of both appointees on gay rights and abortion.

Advocate.com: Austin Nimocks, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, said at a Thursday press conference in Washington, D.C. that he has “no doubt that legal action will be required,” should the Senate not include the same antigay language.

Governor Sam Brownback, on Wednesday, signed into law a bill that would shift funding away from the Planned Parenthood abortion business and stops abortion funding in health insurance programs.

FIRE: FIRE is seeking one energetic person to serve as our next Justice Robert H. Jackson Legal Fellow. Working closely with FIRE’s President and Director of Legal and Public Advocacy, Jackson Fellows produce legal scholarship on issues central to FIRE’s mission of protecting core constitutional liberties on campus—freedom of speech, due process rights, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience, academic freedom, and more . . .

The Republic: The Prince William County school system has removed a filter that blocked school computers from accessing information about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues.

Education News: New data released by the UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children shows that an average of 64 crimes against children take place every day in England and Wales, the BBC reports . . .

: The lawsuit charges that HB 1217, which passed the South Dakota legislature in March and is scheduled to go into effect on July 1, is unconstitutional because it requires a woman who is seeking an abortion to first prove that she has received so-called “counseling” from an unlicensed, unaccredited and unregulated crisis pregnancy center. Further, it imposes a 72-hour mandatory delay for an abortion after a woman’s initial consultation with her doctor and requires her doctor to obtain written proof from her that she sought counseling at a crisis pregnancy center. | Complaint

LifeSiteNews.com: Figures released by the United Nations Population Fund earlier this month projected Nigeria’s population to skyrocket from 160 million this year to 730 million by 2100 – behind only India and China.

Ed O’Keefe at theWashington Post: But Austin Nimocks, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, said his conservative legal organization would sue to ensure that federal law — instead of the Pentagon personnel policy — protects chaplains. “If the Senate does not follow the House and protect chaplains and service members, we have no doubt that legal action will be required,” Nimocks said at a news conference Thursday on Capitol Hill.

Washington Post: But Austin Nimocks, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, said his conservative legal organization would sue all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to ensure that federal law — instead of the Pentagon personnel policy — represents the group’s position. “If the Senate does not follow the House and protect chaplains and service members, we have no doubt that legal action will be required,” Nimocks said Thursday at a news conference on Capitol Hill.

Minnesota Post: The conservative Alliance Defense Fund’s senior counsel Jordan Lorence has a slightly different view. [Jordan's post quoted at length]

CBN: Jordan Lorence, a religious rights lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, said the muzzling law goes back to the 1950s.”For most of American history, there was no restriction at all on what pastors could preach from the pulpit,” he said. “Lyndon Baines Johnson, when he was the majority leader of the Senate, basically got irritated with some pastors who were on the radio opposing his re-election as senator,” Lorence continued. Johnson eventually amended the tax code to limit what church leaders could say. “The Johnson amendment violates the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment,” Lorence said.

AP: Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has taken his claim that he is being persecuted by leftist judges to the G-8 summit, telling a clearly perplexed President Barack Obama that in Italy they represent “almost a dictatorship.”

AP: The autocratic president of Belarus on Friday threatened to ban some foreign media organizations from working in the country after what he described as their alarmist coverage of the deepening financial crisis.

Ken Klukowski at the Washington Examiner: Tens of thousands of convicted felons could be coming to a neighborhood near you. How do you feel about letting your kids go outside tonight?

Charisma News: “Christians shouldn’t be punished simply for expressing their views. The free expression of ideas is a basic human right that is protected by both Belarusian and European law,” Roger Kiska, ADF legal counsel, says. “These two men were groundlessly arrested, denied their rights and sentenced to prison because of their views. They broke no laws and have only peacefully expressed themselves.”

A federal district court in Virginia struck down the federal ban on corporate contributions to candidates.

Religion Clause Blog: The amendment would have permitted faith-based groups to refuse to hire workers on the basis of religion, sexuality, marital status or gender.

Heritage Foundation: Finding effective solutions to our nation’s education problems is one of the most pressing issues facing America today. Many children lack quality educational options and are too often relegated to attending low-performing schools.

CBS Los Angeles: The 91-year-old says she opened the door Wednesday and was greeted by about a dozen federal agents who were there to seize helium hood kits that Hydorn sells online and that people can use to kill themselves.

Reuters: “We did not risk our lives to bring Mubarak down in order to have him replaced by Salafists,” Gerges said. “We want an Egypt that will be an example of democracy and freedom for the whole world.”

Stephen Moore at the Wall Street Journal: Democrats have said they only intend to restore the tax rates that existed during the Clinton years. In reality they’re proposing rates like those under President Carter.

The Local: Health authorities in southern Sweden are launching a public awareness campaign to encourage couples to have children sooner to combat the trend of women having their first child at an increasingly older age.