Daily Archives: June 17, 2011

FoxNews.com: Republicans are calling on the National Labor Relations Board to dismiss its complaint against Boeing and get out of the way of job creation, though Democrats argue Boeing is violating the law by retaliating against union employees.

The Guardian: In 1979 China signed a $50m four-year deal with a UN body designed to help it control its spiralling population through family planning. It was the largest foreign aid package Beijing had accepted in almost 20 years.

Archbishop Dolan, speaking on Fredric U. Dicker’s radio program on WGDJ-AM (1300), repeatedly made it clear that he strongly opposed gay marriage

OPB News: Oregon lawmakers want to stop companies from selling home suicide kits. The bill passed this week doesn’t affect existing “manslaughter” laws.

Mail Online: John Lawrenson, 80, and his wife Caroline, 70, who had cancer, arranged the pact after researching how to commit suicide on the internet.

LifeNews.com: Five of the Republican presidential candidates seeking the GOP nomination to take on pro-abortion President Barack Obama in 2012 have signed onto a pro-life pledge the Susan B. Anthony List has sponsored, but Mitt Romney and Herman Cain have declined.

LifeSiteNews.com: A town council in rural Ontario has been ordered by the court to cease opening meetings with the Lord’s Prayer after complaints from secularists, reports Bancroft This Week.

I just wanted to underscore how thrilled we are and the entire U.S. team at the Human Rights Council as well as the international community here that this historic resolution has passed the Human Rights Council. It is the first internationally recognized form of protection for lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual people, and it is based on a very simple and elegant idea that all individuals deserve universal rights

LifeSiteNews.com: French parents are being pressured by the medical system to kill their Down syndrome children in the womb, resulting in a 96% abortion rate in such cases, according to activists.

LifeSiteNews.com: If minors require parental consent to use a tanning bed, shouldn’t they also require it to get an abortion? That was the seemingly commonsense thinking behind a Connecticut senator’s move to amend a bill that was before the state senate – a move that ultimately contributed to the bill’s demise.

LifeSiteNews.com: The Vatican has invested $1 million in a U.S. company, NeoStem, that works with adult stem cells to find cures for disease and injuries. This is the first time the Vatican has entered into an agreement with a private company to advance stem cell research.

LifeSiteNews.com: The U.S. bishops are stepping up their efforts in defense of marriage by making what was an ad hoc committee ‘’for the Defense of Marriage” into a new permanent subcommittee within the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth. That United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) subcommittee has released the second of five videos . . .

LifeSiteNews.com: The top pro-life group exposing the racist roots and effects of Planned Parenthood’s abortion strategy has continued its attack with a new video and another billboard campaign, this time in California.

The Democrat-led Assembly passed the measure Wednesday as expected, and a vote in the Senate had been anticipated this week. That action could now be days away, after Senate Republicans didn’t even discuss Friday whether to take that action.

LifeNews.com: The House of Representatives today voted for an amendment to HR 2112, the Agriculture Appropriations bill, to ensure no funds authorized under the bill can be used to pay for the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug under a telemedicine grant section.

LifeNews.com: he human rights organization ChinaAid has obtained a letter from Yuan Weijing, the wife of blind attorney and forced abortion opponent Chen Guangcheng on Wednesday that offers details, for the first time, of the torture and beatings both have faced.

LifeNews.com: On Thursday night, the Wisconsin state Senate put the finishing touches on the state budget and it kept two important pro-life provisions in the legislation that is now headed to pro-life Gov. Scott Walker for his signature.

American Federation for Children: Thousands of additional Wisconsin children will have access to greater educational options following Thursday night’s passage of budget provisions that will significantly expand the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) in size and scope.

LifeNews.com: An unhappy White House called Kansas’ U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran’s office Thursday, in response to his public statement opposing confirmation of former Kansas AG Steve Six to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

LifeNews.com: Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women for America, writes in a new Washington Times opinion column that pro-abortion activists are continuing their efforts to push for abortion in documents ratified and supported by the United Nations.

The Volokh Conspiracy: Prof. Natelson, long time readers may recall, is no stranger to conflict with his former faculty colleagues. As noted here and here, he fought with the school over his teaching assignments, and some of his colleagues were not happy with his political activities.

The Hill: Starting in 2014, all plans will have to comply with the provisions of the law and the waivers will be moot.

CJOnline.com: Both of Kansas’ United States senators say they will oppose the nomination of a fellow Kansan, former Kansas Attorney General Steve Six, to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

Religion Clause: In Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance v. Dearman, (MS Sup. Ct., June 16, 2011), the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a public reprimand and a 30-day suspension without pay of a trial court judge who was charged with various instances of improper judicial conduct.

The United States worked with the main sponsor, South Africa, and a number of other countries from many regions of the world to help pass this resolution, including Brazil, Colombia, members of the European Union, and others.

Michael Glatze at the NYTimes.com: One Saturday afternoon last winter, I drove north on Route 85 through the rolling rangeland of southeastern Wyoming. I was headed to a small town north of Cheyenne to see an old friend and colleague named Michael Glatze. We worked together 12 years ago at XY, a San Francisco-based national magazine for young gay men, back when we were young gay men ourselves.

Daily Mail Online: A Massachusetts middle school has sparked outrage after forcing students to answer questions about oral sex. Parent Arlene Tessitore made an official complaint after her seventh and eighth grade daughters were forced to take the Youth Risk Behaviour Study at Memorial Middle School.

OneNewsNow.com: The Giles County School Board in Virginia is preparing for a long, costly court battle for approving to re-hang the Ten Commandments in district schools.

The Illinois Appellate Court has sent a never-enforced law requiring a girl’s guardians to be notified before she has an abortion back to the circuit court for trial.

“The top U.N. human rights body declared Friday there should be no discrimination or violence against people based on their sexual orientation, a vote Western countries called historic but Islamic states firmly rejected.”

The Colorado Independent: The poll was reportedly commissioned last month by the conservative Alliance Defense Fund. The firm that conducted the survey, Polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, is tied to Republican Party causes and has been linked to unethical election campaign strategies in the past. According to Raw Story, the firm was charged with violating Virginia polling disclosure laws and was accused of using push polls to influence elections in favor of Republican candidates . . .

The Washington Independent: The Alliance Defense Fund — founded in part by Focus on the Family, Campus Crusade for Christ and the American Family Association, which has been dubbed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — paid for the poll. The ADF opposes any rights for same-sex couples including marriage, civil unions and domestic partner benefits.

ADF attorney Greg Baylor at Townhall Conservative: After months of deliberation, the University of Texas at San Antonio Career Center has agreed to post job announcements for a pro-life, Christian residential home for needy pregnant women. UTSA originally declined to post the announcements on the ground that they were “discriminatory.”

LifeNews.com: Three pro-life legal groups have weighed in on the case — including the American Center for Law and Justice, Alliance Defense Fund and Thomas More Society — and they have said the law is constitutional.

Christian Post: ttorney Brian Raum noted that the survey also affirms what he and other counselors at the Alliance Defense Fund have seen in court. “This survey, along with the nearly 80 percent win rate in ADF marriage cases, shows the opposition has created an illusion of momentum, but not a real base of support or track record of victory in the courts.”

The Tennessean :
Jordan Lorence, a lawyer from the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the Bronx Household of Faith, said the church will appeal.

The Desert Sun: A request to dismiss the lawsuit, arranged by the Alliance Defense Fund on behalf of Lou Ann Hart and Sheryl Caronna, was expected to be filed June 9, said David Cortman, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a group of Christian attorneys lawyers.

Courthouse News Service: Matthew Bowman, an attorney working for another conservative Christian organization called the Alliance Defense Fund, said that many states have different views about abortion and public health. He noted that informed-consent laws in several states obligate doctors to warn women about the cancer and health risks that can supposedly accompany an abortion.

Jason Locy at CNN.com: Byron Babione of the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of Christian lawyers, attributed the April ruling to a “political movement afoot to undermine and destroy marriage.” Baptist Press, the publications arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, ran an article that quoted Babione as saying the ruling reflected “a campaign to place adult wants and desires over the best interests of children.”

Dakota Voice: Results from what is likely the most extensive national research survey of its kind show that 62 percent of Americans believe that “marriage should be defined only as a union between one man and one woman.” Fifty-three percent of Americans strongly agreed . . . “Americans recognize that marriage provides a strong foundation for a thriving society,” said ADF Senior Counsel Brian Raum. “The union between husband and wife benefits society–especially children–in unique ways that cannot be duplicated by any other relationship. Throughout history, diverse cultures and faiths have recognized this universally defined ideal as the best way to promote healthy, natural families for the good of future generations.”

PRNewswire-USNewswire: Family Research Council (FRC) responded today to the release of a national survey showing that 62 percent of Americans agree that “marriage should be defined only as the union between one man and one woman.” The national survey was commissioned by the Alliance Defense Fund and conducted by Public Opinion Strategies last month.

Charisma: “Americans recognize that marriage provides a strong foundation for a thriving society,” says ADF Senior Counsel Brian Raum. “The union between husband and wife benefits society—especially children—in unique ways that cannot be duplicated by any other relationship. Throughout history, diverse cultures and faiths have recognized this universally defined ideal as the best way to promote healthy, natural families for the good of future generations.”

News Hounds:: He introduced one of the women, a parent of a school senior, and her lawyer from the Alliance Defense Fund which specializes in persecuted Christians. Lou Ann Hart said that she wanted to commemorate her daughter’s “hard work in bringing people to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.” She held up one of the bricks that had a quote from Corinthians and said that she was told that her bricks couldn’t be placed.

SCOTUSblog: The new ruling in Bond v. U.S. (docket 09-1227) stands, in a technical sense, for one simple proposition: a lawsuit claiming that Congress has stepped on the states’ sovereign authority does not need to be filed or joined by a state government. A number of courts had been assuming, and ruling, that state involvement in such a case was absolutely necessary, when the Tenth Amendment was being used to challenge a federal law passed by Congress.

Children from single-parent families (most of which are headed by a single mother) are over five times as likely to live in poverty than are those from married families. The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector points to the root cause of the tragedy of child poverty in America . . .

Yahoo! News: The International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth on Friday and warned Washington and debt-ridden European countries that they are “playing with fire” unless they take immediate steps to reduce their budget deficits.