Daily Archives: August 4, 2011

Vicki Larson at The Huffington Post: But that might have been the problem; childfree couples divorce more often than couples who have at least one child, according to researchers, despite numerous studies that indicate marital happiness plummets in the first year or two after the birth of a child and sometimes never quite recoups.

AP: Transportation Security Administration managers at Los Angeles International Airport are undergoing mandatory sensitivity training after a transgender employee alleged she was ordered to dress like a man, pat down male passengers and use the men’s restroom.

Boston.com: Gov. Deval Patrick signed a sweeping overhaul of the state’s court system Thursday, even as he faulted lawmakers for not adopting one of his key proposals and tweaked the courts for pushing to add extra jobs in the bill.

In today’s political environment, we have two parties that are so ideologically separated on so many issues that compromise, though it is often important and needed, is not a viable option and party lines must be kept. What I am not ok with, however, is when these ideologies become so consuming that law is disregarded or, even worse, misused to promote ideologies and crush opposing stances. It is a mockery of our political system when it is twisted and manipulated for such means . . .

For the first time, researchers have produced healthy mice offspring using sperm derived from precursor cells generated in vitro.

CNBC: Italian prosecutors have seized documents at the offices of rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s in a probe over suspected “anomalous” fluctuations in Italian share prices, a prosecutor said on Thursday.

Christian Newswire: Ethnic cleansing, murders, rapes and the growing humanitarian crisis in the Southern Kordofan region of Sudan were described in grisly detail by witnesses testifying at a congressional hearing on Thursday. Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-04) convened the emergency hearing as chairman of the House congressional panel that oversees African issues and international human rights

Catholic Culture: The township’s attorney has told the Alliance Defense Fund, which defends religious liberty, that “he is recommending changes to Livingston’s ordinance so no one can use it to apply to crosses.”

Tom Marcelle (MAR’-sell) serves as senior counsel with ADF and earned his J.D. in 1988 at Cornell Law School. Upon graduation, Marcelle worked as an assistant public defender in Albany County, N.Y. In 1990, he served with the U.S. Department of Justice under President George H.W. Bush in Washington, D.C., where he litigated cases protecting the rights of institutionalized persons. In 2008, President George W. Bush nominated Marcelle to serve as a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. Most recently, Marcelle served as an Albany County Legislative Minority Counsel and ran his own private practice from 1991 to 2010.

About Michael J. Norton

Michael J. Norton serves as senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund and is based in Denver, Colorado. He plays an integral role in helping to defend the sanctity of human life in the courts. Norton has been practicing law since 1976 and is admitted to the bars of the states of Colorado and Virginia, as well as Washington, D.C. He is also admitted to federal courts in Colorado and pro hoc vice to federal courts in, among other jurisdictions, Nebraska, the Southern District of Texas, the Eastern District of Texas, and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Before joining ADF in 2011, Norton was a top litigator with the Denver law firm Burns, Figa & Will, P.C. and built a reputation as a bar leader. He served as U.S. Attorney for Colorado from 1988 to 1993, appointed by President Ronald Reagan and reappointed by President George H.W. Bush. Norton joined ADF in 2011 and earned his J.D. from American University’s Washington College of Law in 1968.

The world’s largest organization of psychologists took its strongest stand to date supporting full marriage equity, a move that observers say will have a far-reaching impact on the national debate.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen atPOLITICO.com: The politics of the debt fight were a drag for President Barack Obama, yanking his popularity to new lows. Here’s an even bigger drag: Obama emerges from the months-long fracas weaker — and facing much deeper and more durable political obstacles — than his own advisers ever imagined.

Daily Mail: A family of albino Muslims are being terrorised by bigots because their daughter married a man from another religion. The so-called ‘honour’ retribution has included smashed windows at their Coventry home, vandalised cars and death threats.

Persecution News: Two homes used as churches were burned to the ground in Riau on Tuesday night, a report said.

Persecution News: An excommunicated bishop is continuing to make life miserable for Anglicans in Zimbabwe. Norbert Kunonga, a close ally of President Robert Mugabe, reportedly went on national television to declare that he was in charge of a popular shrine and all churches in the Diocese of Masvingo.

Allan Carlson Front Porch Republic:
Paper prepared for “The Moscow Demographic Summit: Family and the Future of Humankind, ”29-30 June 2011, Russian State Social University, Moscow, Russia.

The Christian Institute: A public consultation on whether to redefine marriage in Scotland will be launched before the end of 2011, the Scottish Government has said.

AP: A Seattle-area Muslim is suing his former employer, claiming he was fired as a security guard for refusing to shave his beard, which he wears for religious reasons.

LifeSiteNews.com: LifeSiteNews reporter and managing director Steve Jalsevac was live-blogging and taking photos from the Mogentaler abortion mill on Hillsdale Ave in Toronto this morning as pro-life activist Linda Gibbons was arrested.

Tad Armstrong: It’s still OK to say ‘God’: What lawsuit will Christianity be faced with next week? Ignorance abounds on this topic, so much so that I was compelled to write my first book to set the record straight. “It’s Ok to say God” will be released soon.

Ventura County Star: “The framed poster at issue was presented to the city not by, or on behalf of, any religious or religiously affiliated organization, but rather was an expression to the City Council of appreciation by families of those serving in our armed forces.”

Rasmussen Reports™: A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 76% of Adults say Americans are becoming more rude and less civilized.

Beliefnet News: According to a new Rasmussen poll, 72 percent of Americans disagree, saying the cross should be included in the memorial on the Twin Towers site. Only 10 percent oppose the cross. Seventeen percent are undecided.

WorldNetDaily: A woman who originally came to the United States for a marriage arranged by her family stayed after being abandoned at the altar, because of the humiliation she would have faced on her return to China. Later, she met someone else, married and now has a family.

Wall Street Journal: ormer Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum have signed a pledge from the National Organization for Marriage to oppose gay marriage at several levels of the federal government. But former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has sought to burnish his credentials as an evangelical Christian, declined to sign . . .

BusinessWeek: Aetna Inc. informed the Indiana Department of Insurance in an April 29 letter that it intends to cancel all individual policies on Dec. 1.

NRA Chief LaPierre: Eric Holder Must Go: Patience is a virtue that Americans practice perhaps better than any other civilization on earth. However, when our own Attorney General is at the forefront of a criminal scheme so unbelievable that you would only expect to see it in a B-level mobster movie, the time for patience is over. Now is the time for all Americans to demand Eric Holder’s immediate resignation, firing, or impeachment.

Newsmax: Congress approved and President Barack Obama signed a deal to raise the U.S. government’s debt ceiling Tuesday after the Senate passed it by a 74-26 vote. Here is a list of how each Republican (R), Democratic (D) and Independent (I) senator voted . . .

Newsmax: Some of the 28 Republican senators who voted for the new debt/deficit law may find themselves on the receiving end of powerhouse conservative Sen. Jim DeMint’s ire.

LifeSiteNews.com: – On Monday, an Obama-nominated federal judge ruled that former Ohio Congressman Steve Driehaus may proceed with his defamation suit against a prominent pro-life group. Driehaus claims the Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List contributed to his 2010 election cycle defeat to Republican Steve Chabot.

LifeSiteNews.com: On Monday, Sangamon County Judge John Schmidt agreed to let the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois (ACLU) join the state’s battle against a lawsuit filed by four Catholic Charities agencies. Catholic Charities in Joliet, Peoria, Springfield, and Belleville filed the lawsuit against the state this summer, asking the court to declare that their policy of not recruiting unmarried couples, including same-sex couples, for foster care was within the law.

KAJ18.com: he American Civil Liberties Union is asking the Montana Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision to dismiss a same-sex domestic partnership case.

Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy: The case is Alpha Delta Chi-Delta Chapter v. Reed (9th Cir. Aug. 2); the opinion basically agrees with Justice Stevens’s concurrence in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, which took the same view. The Christian Legal Society majority held only that a policy that recognized groups must take all comers — with some modest exceptions — is constitutional. But the logic of that opinion does suggest that policies which simply require groups not to discriminate based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and so on would likewise be constitutional, if they are applied evenhandedly to all groups.

Government Share of Health Care Bigger than Advertised: The truth hidden from view, however, is that government’s share of health spending already exceeded 50 percent in 2009, says Christopher J. Conover, a research scholar at Duke University’s Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

NCPA Policy Digest: The estimates show that, on average, regulations imposed by government at all levels account for 25 percent of the final price of a new single-family home built for sale.

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell: Americans are paying more for gasoline today than they were six weeks ago when President Obama released 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In the Gulf of Mexico, meanwhile, 10 drilling rigs — more than one-third of the fleet — have left on Obama’s watch.

TheHill.com: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is likely to sue the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) if it finalizes a set of proposed rule changes that would hasten union elections.

LifeNews.com: However, legislation sponsored by pro-life Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, HR 1179, and several pro-life members of the U.S. House would help mitigate those conscience concerns. Fortenberry is the sponsor of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a measure designed to protect rights of conscience with regard to requirements for coverage decisions under Obamacare and federal law . . .

ADF attorney Michael J. Norton at the American Thinker: So, apparently, the groups that are cajoling the Beckhams would be praising them if they’d only availed themselves of “family planning” and killed their child in the womb. That’s how twisted things get when people exchange worshiping the Creator with worshiping the creation instead

Guardian.co.uk: A senior Iranian revolutionary guards commander targeted by international sanctions has taken over the presidency of Opec after he became Iran’s oil minister on Wednesday.

The opinion, which affirms the lower court’s finding, is also a reminder — according to CQ HealthBeat — that decisions still haven’t been announced in two other pending suits.

AP: President Barack Obama is moving to strengthen the United States’ ability to prevent mass atrocities abroad, and tightening immigration rules to ensure that human rights violators don’t enter the country.

Chuck Donavan at the Heritage Foundation: The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) new preventive services guidelines are a disaster for freedom of conscience and a fresh illustration of the political hammerlock “reproductive rights” organizations have on the Obama Administration.

The Hill’s On The Money: The Dow Jones Industrial Average had lost more than 300 points at midday Thursday, erasing gains for the year.

FindLaw Blotter: On the outside, Domingos Jose Oliveira may seem like any concerned father – except most parents won’t post “Wanted: Dead or Alive” signs about their daughter’s boyfriend even if they disapprove of the relationship.

LifeNews.com: A new poll released today by Rasmussen Reports finds Americans strongly oppose the decision by the Obama administration force insurance companies to cover birth control (and abortion drugs) in the Obamacare health care plan.

Religion Clause: The Tennessean, however, reports that one person at the meeting objected on First Amendment grounds to one of the eight “Whereas” clauses with which the resolution begins. That clause reads: “WHEREAS, the Lord of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob promises in Genesis 12:3 to bless those that bless Israel . . .

ADF attorney Greg Baylor with Kevin Wall on KTSA to discuss this. | MP3 audio 10:17 mins

ADF attorney Jordan Lorence on KVOR with Bill Maier. | MP3 audio 43 mins

ADF attorney Tom Marcelle on the Zeb Bell Show. | MP3 audio 15 mins

ADF attorney Kevin Theriot on the Mary Reichard Show at 1340AM The Ozark’s Big Talker. | MP3 audio 21 mins

Charisma: The idea that Internet filters somehow result in student suicides is preposterous, and the ACLU should be ashamed for making such a connection,” says Jeremy Tedesco, ADF legal counsel. “The ACLU cannot mask its attempts to turn school computers into porn portals for children with a supposed concern for bullying and suicides. “Parents expect schools to be places where their children will learn knowledge, information and skills that will make them productive members of society, not places where they can access pornography.” [ADF attorney David Cortman also quoted]

OneNewsNow.com: But ADF attorney Jonathan Scruggs thinks “it’s ridiculous” to stop people from having a religious symbol on their property. “The Constitution guarantees the right of Americans to express their religious beliefs in this fashion, and no local ordinance can trump that,” he contends. “In this case, however, the ordinance itself doesn’t actually even prohibit these crosses. The law is being used in a vague fashion to stop him from doing what he wishes on his own private property.”

Catholic Culture: The township’s attorney has told the Alliance Defense Fund, which defends religious liberty, that “he is recommending changes to Livingston’s ordinance so no one can use it to apply to crosses.”

JournalNow.com: A: The ACLU estimates its current legal expenses at $200,000, which is what the county would have to pay if it does not appeal the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against the county, according to Wesley Young, the Journal reporter who has been covering the case. The Alliance Defense Fund is paying for the county’s legal work, although it would not pay the ACLU’s legal fees if the county ultimately loses. A local group, N.C. Partnership for Religious Liberty, has pledged $300,000 for the county’s defense, so at this point no county money would be needed. Of course, a U.S. Supreme Court appeal, if granted, would cost an unknown additional amount.

Passport Magazine: This is part of the ACLU’s nation-wide “Don’t Filter Me” campaign. The ADF stood with the Gwinnett Schools, saying they “should not bow to the ACLU’s demand” to remove the filters. The ACLU said they would take legal action if nothing was done.