Daily Archives: July 26, 2011

Center for Reproductive Rights: Pushing back against recent efforts by opponents of reproductive rights to reimpose the Global Gag Rule, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that the Center for Reproductive Rights says will protect U.S.-supported family planning groups overseas against politicized attacks.

Department of Health figures show that over 30 embryos are created for every successful IVF implantation in a woman.

The Christian Institute: A baby boy has defied the odds to be born as the country’s most premature twin, even though his mother was advised to abort him shortly before his birth.

Daily Journal: The House voted 72-47 in favor of legislation requiring a woman to have an ultrasound of the fetus, consider an offer to see the shape and hear a heartbeat in her uterus, receive state-mandated counseling, and wait 24 hours before an abortion.

Bloomberg: New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman filed court papers challenging as unconstitutional the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages.

The National Law Journal: Lawyers for the law school filed a complaint on July 14 against Kurzon Strauss, claiming the firm defamed it in online posts advertising a potential class action. That action stemmed from what Kurzon Strauss has called as the school’s “blatant” manipulation of graduate employment and salary data.

The Washington Post: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton might be reluctant to interfere in Saudi Arabia’s affairs, but the women of the U.S. Senate are more than happy to tell the king what they think.

AP: Voters will get the chance to decide whether Ohio can opt out of the national health care overhaul after the state’s top election official said Tuesday that opponents of the federal law have enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Colour pictures revealed of London blitz from Nazi bombers in World War II | Mail Online: For many, photographs from the World War II have only been seen in grainy black and white. But now, new colour images have emerged that show the full horror of the destruction inflicted by Nazi bombings across London. The powerful images were released to mark the 70th anniversary of the launch of Winston Churchill’s ‘V for Victory’ campaign on July 19, 1941.

LifeSiteNews.com: A survey of medical students in Britain, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, has found that almost half believe doctors should be free to exercise their right of conscience in refusing to perform any procedure to which they object on moral, cultural or religious grounds – a finding that has the country’s leading abortion providers worried.

LifeNews.com: South Dakota officials have decided not to fight the injunction a judge put in place against a new pro-life law the legislature approved. Instead, they will fight a Planned Parenthood lawsuit on the law itself.

At The Volokh Conspiracy , Eugene Volokh comments on a Utah sentencing ruling which holds that viewing “legal” pornography can be considered as a factor at sentencing.

The Blog of Legal Times: The U.S. Senate voted unanimously today to confirm Paul Engelmayer, the partner in charge of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr’s New York office, for a federal judgeship. Engelmayer is the second person confirmed in the past eight days for U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

Goodwin Liu was tapped Tuesday to sit on the California Supreme Court by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Shackelford, whose Plano-based group pushes for limited government and promotes Judeo-Christian values, said he has been telling callers that Perry has long favored an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage as being only between a man and a woman.

Politico: Bauer added, “The governor also seemed unaware that the threat we are facing is the same-sex laws of New York and Massachusetts being forced on the whole country. So I think he still has great potential, but I think it’s a sign that even if you are a governor, the transition to the presidential sweepstakes requires a lot of study and understanding the nuances of these issues.”

Religion Clause: In Dayner v. Archdiocese of Hartford, (CT Sup. Ct., release date 8/2/2011), the Connecticut Supreme Court adopted the Second Circuit’s version of the “ministerial exception” doctrine and dismissed claims by the principal of a Catholic school that she she was wrongfully terminated from her position. In reaching this conclusion the court focused on a split among circuits . . .

Religion Clause: The Merdeka Center for Opinion Research has recently released a survey of Muslim youth in Indonesia and Malaysia. The study, Values, Dreams, Ideals: Muslim Youth In Southeast Asia, reports on surveys conducted in October and November 2010 among young people age 15 to 25. A portion of the report deals with attitudes of those surveyed toward religion and government. Here is a portion of the report’s conclusions . . .

Religion ClauseCase: At issue is the request of a mother for a religious exemption from the vaccination requirements for her daughter. | Workman v. Mingo County Board of Education

Public Discourse: In a discipline whose point is dispassionate reasoning and discourse, some would shut down debate and silence dissenters on a deep and complex moral-political issue. And the view they would anathematize, far from irrational, is more coherent and more compelling than their slippery and ill-defined ‘default’.

SCOTUSblog: In a highly unusual plea in the Supreme Court, the two trade groups for the video game industry asked the Justices on Monday to require the state of California to reimburse industry lawyers for $1,144,602.24 (a figure that may later be increased) for legal fees and expenses — the professional costs of winning a major First Amendment victory in the Court.

CBS New York: So, he took it down and erected a larger cross about 10 feet from the curb and contacted the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of Christian lawyers.
The group may take legal action against the township.

OneNewsNow.com: Board members of the Chino Valley Unified School District agreed to alter the district’s yearly calendar by changing the name of the break students take for the holiday season in December.

OneNewsNow.com: The Institute for Justice has announced it will defend the Indiana school choice program in court against groups that feel their monopoly over public education is threatened.

The Advocate: The suit lists plaintiffs including the Rev. Jason McGuire and the Rev. Duane Motley of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, which primarily represents evangelical Protestants across the state and campaigned against the bill in Albany. In recent weeks, the group has announced support from the Alliance Defense Fund to defend city and town clerks who refuse to marry same-sex couples.

OneNewsNow.com: But Tedesco contends there is no cause-and-effect factor to blame. “But what these outside groups want to do, [what] the pro-homosexual groups want to do is they want the bullying policies and the curriculum policies to all advance their pro-homosexual agenda in schools,” the ADF legal counsel explains. “I don’t think there’s any link at all between the neutrality policy and the bullying that goes on at the schools.”

OneNewsNow.com: A compelling new film called Out of the Darkness addresses pornography from a range of perspectives. The narration is composed of four interviews, each of which covers a different aspect of pornography.

Daily Kos quoting The Christian Post: – ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND: “The reports of the chiefs of the services and combat commanders that supposedly justify this move should be released in full, allowing service members, the public, and Congress to evaluate the situation themselves. This administration cannot expect America to accept its ‘certification’ at face value.” [Christian Post, 7/23/2011]

7online.com: The story isn’t over yet. Racaniello contacted a group of Christian lawyers in Arizona called the ‘Alliance Defense Fund.’ They think Racaniello should be able to put a cross up anywhere on his property and they’re prepared to sue to allow it.

Man fights for yard cross – UPI.com: Racaniello contacted the Christian lawyer group Alliance Defense Fund, which said it will take the case to court if the township does not allow Racaniello to display his cross. “We believe this is private property, and therefore he has a right to engage in this expression,” alliance lawyer Jonathan Scruggs said. “We believe that either cross is protected by the First Amendment.”

Livingston, NJ Patch: With network news trucks outside a home on Sterling Drive and a front page story in the Star-Ledger, Livingston officials responded Monday to claims by the Alliance Defense Fund that they are trying to stifle a local man’s First Amendment right to put a cross on his lawn.

OneNewsNow.com: “We are seeing growing evidence that the polygamists are moving forward in their attempts to redefine marriage to being more than one spouse,” the Focus spokesperson warns. “To use the same-sex ‘marriage’ arguments will be one of the best ways that they will be able to achieve that.”

CNN.com: A group of atheists has filed a lawsuit to stop the display of the World Trade Center cross at a memorial of the 9/11 terror attacks. | American Atheists press release | American Atheists v. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Timothy P. Carney Washington Examiner: Soccer player David Beckham and his wife Victoria (formerly a performer) are being derided in the British press as “bad role models.” No, they’re not publicly carrying on affairs, fighting in public, or abandoning their children. Their sin: having four children.

Washington Times: House Republicans do not have enough support to pass their debt-ceiling increase plan on their own, a top conservative said Tuesday as his party’s leaders tried to cobble together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats to put the bill over the top.

The Barna Group:
George Barna, author of the new trends book Futurecast, has just released the first in a series of assessments of how America’s faith has shifted in the past 20 years on 14 religious variables. In the series of briefs, Barna explores not only the aggregate national patterns, but also digs into how matters have changed according to gender, ethnicity, region, generation, and religious segments.

Details available here: