Daily Archives: July 22, 2011

NYTimes.com: Should the standard three-year model of legal education, followed by taking and passing the bar exam, be the only path toward becoming a lawyer? Could law school be shortened, or should those three years of classes have a different focus?

NYTimes.com: An angry and frustrated President Obama demanded that Congressional leaders return to the White House Saturday morning after House Speaker John A. Boehner broke off debt talks Friday afternoon.

NJ.com: A provision that would protect religious minorities in Egypt has been added to a State Department bill, Rep. Albio Sires, D-West New York, said yesterday. Sires authored a portion of the bill — H.R. 2583, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 . . .

KansasCity.com: Phill Kline’s hearing on state ethics charges ended in a flourish this morning as the former Kansas attorney general presented a two-hour closing defense of his abortion investigations.

Dr. Keith Ablow at FoxNews.com: The abortion debate has left one issue largely off the table: The proper rights of men to prevent the abortion of their children.

The Christian Institute: The Government said yesterday that it will work with civil liberties groups to “assess the benefits” of amending a law which criminalises the use of insulting words.

National Law Journal: The Thomas Jefferson School of Law has filed its response to a class action brought in May by a 2008 graduate alleging that the school misrepresented its graduate employment statistics. Essentially, it argued that the graduate hadn’t done enough research before enrolling.

Ron Paul at Bloomberg: Default will be painful, but it is all but inevitable for a country as heavily indebted as the U.S. Just as pumping money into the system to combat a recession only ensures an unsustainable economic boom and a future recession worse than the first, so too does continuously raising the debt ceiling only forestall the day of reckoning and ensure that, when it comes, it will be cataclysmic.
We have a choice: default now and take our medicine, or put it off as long as possible, when the effects will be much worse.

Today, in “Remarks by the President at University of Maryland Town Hall,” he responded to questions regarding religious discrimination by religious organizations. The relevant excerpt is copied below.

Law against openly practiced homosexual, bisexual behavior in U.S. military to end in 60 days, but records remain secret

Jordan Lorence at the Speak Up Movement Church Blog: Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony on a bill to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). ADF attorney Austin Nimocks testified against the bill and did an excellent job explaining the purpose of marriage in having children raised in the best social environment possible, one consisting of the child’s own biological mother and father who are united in marriage, and the importance of maintaining that common understanding of marriage in federal law.

Jordan Lorence at theSpeak Up Movement University Blog: Stanford University overflowed with leftist culture when I attended there in the mid-1970′s. During my junior year, in the spring of 1976, I created a project for an assignment in a poli sci class to expose the liberal bias and proto-political correctness at Stanford. My little classroom assignment succeeded far better than I expected.

The New American: If you want to know whether homosexuals think size matters, the National Institutes for Health can tell you. That’s because NIH dumped nearly $1 million into a study of penis size among homosexuals, the Traditional Values Coalition has revealed.

FRC: “The entire process by which the Obama administration has orchestrated repeal of this law was dishonest from the start. The recent revelation of a Defense Department Inspector General’s report on unauthorized leaks to the media showed that the conclusions of the Pentagon’s report on repeal had already been written before the troops were even asked their views.

The Miami Herald carries the link.

LifeNews.com: Wednesday morning, the Virginia Department of Health held an Informal Fact Finding Conference on Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need (COPN) application to expand their Virginia Beach center to include two operating rooms.

AP: Kansas is one of the five states – along with Alabama, Idaho, Indiana and Oklahoma – that enacted abortion bans this year modeled after the groundbreaking fetal-pain bill passed in Nebraska in 2010.

The Washington Post: To show their displeasure, gay and lesbian activists donned Viking-esque attire, called themselves a “gay, barbarian horde” and descended on the clinic to shower the lobby with glitter.

Law.com: Nearly 70 percent of the entering class at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law was black in 1998. A decade later, that figure hovered at around 30 percent — the lowest percentage among the country’s six historically black law schools. The catalyst for that shift was a 1999 letter from the American Bar Association urging the school to examine its admissions standards and low first-time bar-passage rates.

AHN: This is compared to about 3 percent of exclusively heterosexual teens who say they are homeless, according to researchers at the Children’s Hospital Boston.

San Jose Mercury News: The latest casualty of the long-running Protestant conflicts over the Bible and homosexuality is a massive network of social service agencies that work in areas ranging from adoption to disaster relief.

The Washington Post: Gov. Martin O’Malley says he will sponsor gay marriage legislation. The Democrat made the announcement Friday at a news conference to discuss how he will support legislation in the next regular session of the General Assembly in January.

Nathan A. Cherry at the Engage Family Blog: In a stunning victory for the family the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that half of a one-time lesbian duo is not entitled to custody of the other woman’s child.

Boston Globe: Seven years after a presidential campaign in which he threaded the needle by explaining his support for the gay rights revolution taking place in his home state while not supporting gay marriage himself, US Senator John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has a declaration. He now supports gay marriage . . .

His statistical analysis, published by Georgetown University Press last year, found that as more members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community were elected to a state’s legislature, the number of pro-LGBT bills introduced and adopted rose.

LifeNews.com: A ruling by a judge in Graz, Austria is a case of blatant persecution of pro-lifers, says Human Life International president Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro-Carambula.

LifeNews.com: The state of Minnesota is now paying scientists to engage in the grisly practice of human cloning. After the state legislature failed to re-authorize a ban on state funded human cloning during the special session, it is now legal to use taxpayer dollars to create cloned human embryos.

Catholic Culture: Father Joseph Guo Jincai, who was ordained a bishop in November 2010 without a papal mandate and now serves as vice chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, has announced that seven more bishops will be ordained in China at an unspecified time.

Catholic Culture: Bishop Daniel Adwok told a Catholic radio station in South Sudan that the largely Muslim population of North Sudan is increasingly less tolerant of Christians and that the government is poised to implement Sharia law fully.

Guardian.co.uk: Half a million girls a year are being aborted in India, equal to the total number of girls born in the UK. The scale of sex selection in Asia is extraordinary, yet it has not attracted the attention it deserves in the west. This is the age of “missing women” – an estimated 30 to 70 million of them. The number of girls born has dropped significantly because of sex selective abortions, and the sex imbalance has been aggravated by higher mortality rates as boys receive better care.

George Weigel at National Review Online: With the appointment of Charles J. Chaput as archbishop of Philadelphia, the deep reform of the Catholic Church in the United States — the reform that is giving birth to Evangelical Catholicism even as it leaves the old post–Vatican II arguments fading into the rear-view mirror — has been accelerated.

LifeNews.com: Pro-abortion vandals recently attacked the web site of Students for Life of America, the national pro-life organization for college and university students. In fact, the vandals have repeatedly worked to destroy the SFLA outreach web site.

LifeNews.com: The House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved an amendment to its appropriations bill yesterday that provides support for Chen Guangcheng, the blind attorney who has campaigned against forced abortions in China.

LifeNews.com: A new study conducted by a pro-abortion research group based in California claims the use of telemed abortions — giving women the abortion drug without physician supervision — is safe. But pro-life advocates say that’s not the case.

Religion Clause: : Earlier this month,in EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., an Oklahoma federal district court held that Abercrombie & Fitch violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by refusing to hire a Muslim teenager because her religious belief requiring her to wear a headscarf violates the company’s “Look Policy” for sales models.

Religion Clause: The city of San Leandro, California announced yesterday that it has filed a petition for certiorari seeking U.S. Supreme Court review of the 9th Circuit’s decision in International Church of the Foursquare Gospel v. City of San Leandro. (links to the city’s press release and petition)

Religion Clause: As reported yesterday by the AP, two members of the California state Assembly on July 7 introduced a bill that would bar San Francisco and other cities from regulating male circumcision.

AP: A Canadian judge Thursday upheld the deportation of one of China’s most wanted fugitives, calling him a “common criminal.”

AP: Unlike the fiery debate that erupted two years ago, an expected fight over teaching evolution in Texas public schools has likely fizzled after state education officials made only minor changes to new science materials for the coming school years.

Kyle Olson at Townhall: But thought and reason are totally absent from the “Gender doesn’t limit you” lesson plans, which only provide children with a designated slogan to shout at suspected bullies . . .

OneNewsNow.com: ADF attorney Jonath[a]n Scruggs says the good news is that the city reversed itself after receiving a demand letter from the Christian legal group. “Christians shouldn’t be silenced and threatened with arrest for attempting to express their beliefs at a free public event on public property,” says the attorney. “The city did the right thing by directing police officers to stop restricting constitutionally protected expression.”

Personal Liberty Digest: The Alliance Defense Fund will reportedly testify before the Senate in defense of DOMA. Daniel Blomberg, a lawyer for the organization, said that the Administration’s decision to support Feinstein’s bill was hypocritical.
“Our perspective is that it’s not only incorrect, but deeply disappointing, to have a politician claim support for marriage between one man and one woman on the campaign trail, then actively undermine that once in office,” he told the newspaper. “We are confident Congress will make the right decision here.”

Christian Post: Meanwhile, the Alliance Defense Fund, the Christian legal group representing the Bronx church, says it is appealing the court’s ruling. “Religious groups, including churches, shouldn’t be discriminated against simply because they want to rent a public building just like other groups can,” ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence said in a statement. “The idea that people of faith may be singled out for discrimination is flagrantly contrary to the U.S. Constitution,” he said. “The 2nd Circuit greatly erred by not putting an end to the board’s continued defiance of the First Amendment.”

Christian Post: An Alliance Defense Fund/ Public Opinion Strategies poll also found that 62 percent of Americans still believe that marriage should be defined only as a union between one and one woman. “Americans understand marriage,” ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks testified at the hearing. “Since 1968 over 32 jurisdictions have voted on marriage it’s passed by an average of 63 percent. They don’t need a legislature to define it for them.”

Charisma: “No one should have their free speech rights threatened just because they advocate a position that some consider politically incorrect. Stifling the advocacy of attorneys is simply unconstitutional,” says Gary McCaleb, ADF senior counsel. “Our legal system promises all of its citizens the freedom to fully and fairly debate the important questions of our day. This proposed amendment needlessly undermines that constitutional guarantee within the very profession that protects constitutional rights.”

WNYC: In addition, the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian group in Arizona, has issued a memo to New York State clerks advising them that New York State Human Rights law requires employers to try to accommodate employee’s “sincerely held religious beliefs”, and that clerks are not prohibited from delegating their responsibilities to their deputies.

Yesterday, the Janet Mefferd Show highlighted the marriage testimony by ADF attorney Austin R. Nimocks at the Senate Judiciary hearings. | MP3 audio 2:22 mins

Yahoo! Finance: The Senate has rejected a House Republican bill to cut spending and require a balanced-budget amendment. The vote Friday was 51-46.

Washington Times: China’s military is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an intelligence report made public on Thursday.

“Pentagon chief Leon Panetta has decided to end the ban on gays serving openly in the armed services and certify that repealing the 17-year-old prohibition will not hurt the military’s ability to fight, officials said Thursday.”

The Hill: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday said House Republicans’ pending “cut, cap and balance” proposal is among the worst pieces of legislation to appear on the floor in Senate history. Claiming he did not want to waste any more time on the “senseless” proposal, Reid also said he would move a procedural vote on the bill forward to Friday. The vote had been scheduled for Saturday.

After SB 48 was signed into law last week by Gov. Jerry Brown, Pacific Justice Institute worked quickly behind the scenes, with several other pro-family organizations to launch the referendum. Papers have been filed with the California Attorney General’s Office.

Maine Family Policy Council: Maine parents have known for a long time that their rights are slowly being taken away by the school system and the government. Parentsrights.org looks to end the erosion of parents’ rights by giving you talking points when contacting Maine’s Congressional reps to urge the passage of the Parents Rights Amendment. The proposed Parental Rights Amendment will preserve the traditional view that parental rights are a fundamental right, and restore the traditional strict scrutiny standard of protection, while preserving the government’s power to prevent and to prosecute child abuse and neglect.

William Jeynes at Public Discourse: Five suggestions for how our nation can regain a healthy marriage culture and the economic prosperity and personal flourishing that comes with it. The second in a two-part series.

Campus Ministry Drops ‘Christ’ From Name – FoxNews.com: Campus Crusade for Christ International announced this week that it will change the name of its U.S. Operations to “Cru” in early 2012. | Campus Crusade press release: New Name — Same Commitment to Christ