Daily Archives: August 10, 2011

Charisma: Four months after a recent convert to Christianity from Islam in eastern India’s West Bengal state was stripped and beaten, about 50 Muslim extremists yesterday disrupted a prayer meeting held in her home, threatening to burn it down if she did not return to Islam, area Christians said.

AP: Dixie County officials and residents say support for their monument is unanimous and they accuse outsiders of trampling on their way of life.

AP: The United States’ budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for a third straight year, adding pressure on Congress and the White House to make more progress on a long-term plan to shrink the growing imbalance

LifeNews.com: Four more Texas abortion practitioners face investigations following an undercover investigation showing abortion centers in the Lone Star State breaking numerous Texas laws concerning abortions and engaging in illegal dumping of patient records and medical waste.

Catholic Culture: A gang of 50 Muslim extremists disrupted a prayer meeting at a Christian woman’s home in West Bengal, an Indian state that borders Bangladesh.

Catholic Culture: Looting and burning homes, thousands of Muslims attacked a largely Christian village in southern Egypt on the night of August 7-8. A local priest was beaten, and a 50-year-old layman was murdered.

The Washington Post: A new Siena Research poll suggests that Republicans could win the Sept. 13 special election in former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s New York City district, a result that would be embarrassing for Democrats and would likely complicate redistricting plans.

The Nation: Veterans in college are six times more likely to attempt suicide than the typical student and more than a fifth have planned to kill themselves, a new study presented at the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting shows.

Indian Country Today Media Network.com: Six students from reservation schools in Poplar, Montana took their lives last year and nearly 20 attempted suicide. The reservation’s Sioux and Assiniboine tribes have declared the situation an emergency—and it is on the rise, according to Indian Health Service statistics, reported the AP.

LifeNews.com: Washington Trust Bank funded the loan that made the new abortion facility possible, according to records the Catholic Sentinel newspaper obtained recently

he University of Montana School of Law has agreed to several reforms to their system of allocating funding to student groups, prompting Christian Legal Society and Alliance Defense Fund attorneys representing the CLS student chapter to withdraw a federal lawsuit.

This has ultimately been sanctioned by Parliament, which refuses to accept, for instance, that children are more likely to prosper with two parents than with one, and that the dependency culture is a tragedy for those who receive something for nothing.

WSJ.com: “The No. 1 complaint that we hear from community bankers is that they feel that regulators have gone one step too far and are choking off lending,” says Paul Merski, chief economist at the Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade group that represents small banks.

PRI’s The World: Norway has been vigorously defending its multicultural model, after the twin attacks last month. The confessed attacker, Anders Behring Breivik, said he killed to stop what he called “the Muslimization” of Europe.

WSJ.com: Having given birth to the Protestant Reformation and the current pope, Germany is now at the fore of a broad effort to foster a European theological tradition for a relative newcomer: Islam.

Voice of America: A sampling of European analytical opinion shows there is great concern in the region about “accommodating” Islam and immigration in general.

National Review Online: The deeper cause of the violence, then, seems to be a generalized anarchy, that special lawlessness which is the hallmark of poorly socialized young males. Neither parents nor teachers have taught these “hoodies” to know any better. They have grown up outside restraints of conscience or manners, and without any fear of discipline, never mind punishment.

John Bellamy at CrossRhythms: The destruction is shocking, the thieving violates us all, and the lack of respect for authority shakes our confidence in our law and order values.

The Christian Institute: Christian pharmacists who object to selling the morning-after pill are facing pressure from their professional regulator to recommend other outlets to customers.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has hit out at the rioters for “a complete lack of responsibility, a lack of proper parenting, a lack of proper upbringing, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals”.

AFP: A gay rights group and the Quebec government unveiled a guide Tuesday on caring for homosexual and transgender seniors in a bid to combat homophobia and abuse of the elderly.

LifeSiteNews.com: Montreal priest has turned away young pro-life pilgrims from entering the city’s basilica because their message in defense of the unborn was too political.

NY Daily News: A group of gay activists is petitioning the producers of “Sesame Street” to declare that Bert and Ernie have been living in the closet and to bring the orange and yellow guys to the altar as a married couple.

LifeSiteNews.com: Ontario’s largest association of Catholic parents has opposed the homosexual “anti-bullying” clubs being developed for Ontario’s Catholic high schools. The group also called on the Toronto Catholic District School Board to pass amendments to its equity policy designed to protect Catholic teaching in the schools.

LifeSiteNews.com: The U.S.-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights announced August 1 that they were taking the Central American nation to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights after legislators failed to legalize IVF by the Commission’s July 31st deadline.

American Federation for Children: With the eyes of the nation watching, Wisconsin citizens yesterday voted to retain the school choice majority in the Wisconsin Senate — a triumphant victory for supporters of the state’s school voucher programs and a rebuke of divisive, special interest-sponsored recall efforts.

Mayor Michael A. Nutter, telling marauding black youths “you have damaged your own race,” imposed a tougher curfew Monday in response to the latest “flash mob” — spontaneous groups of teens who attack people at random on the streets of the city’s tourist and fashionable shopping districts.

Janice D’Arcy at the Washington Post: There needs to be some acknowledgment that the ‘Me Generation’ of baby boomers and their false illusion of independence when in fact they’ve been economically robbing their children is also part of the problem here.”

LifeSiteNews.com: group of therapists dedicated to providing therapy for unwanted same-sex attraction has criticized the American Psychological Association’s (APA) new declaration in favor of same-sex “marriage” as tainted by primarily political motivations.

LifeNews.com: As if the new York Times couldn’t sink any further down the hole of warped and twisted pro-abortion activism, the Gray Lady is out with yet another “news” piece that moves the newspaper further beyond the pale. Ruth Pawder is out today with a new story titled “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy,” that focuses on “selective reduction” . . .

LifeNews.com: A federal judge held a hearing this morning over a lawsuit the Planned Parenthood abortion business has filed against a new provision in the North Carolina state budget that revokes its taxpayer funding.

Nebraska.tv: A race for freedom of religion, freedom of education, and most of all freedom from slaughter took place in Grand Island Nebraska, Saturday. Sudanese refugees from across the state locked arms with local residents, with a loud and clear message — stop genocide now.

Ekklesia: Christian advocacy groups are among a 28-strong international coalition calling for North Korea, criticised by many for its human rights abuses and nuclear threats, to step down from the presidency of the United Nations Conference on Disarmament (UNCD) – writes John Zarocostas.

WSB Atlanta: The dispute over a Lilburn county mosque is heating up again. Opponents plan to protest its expansion at a Monday night City Council meeting.

Politics.hu: The letter referred to Hungary’s new church law and said that it had deprived over 100 religious communities of their church status, many of which are playing a key role in providing services to the homeless, the elderly, the Roma and other disadvantaged groups representing tens of thousands of people.

Dayton Daily News: The Springboro school board member who raised the prospect of the district teaching creationism said this week she now wants parents of students in public schools to have options if they want their children to learn about theories like intelligent design.

Christian Post: Observing that Islamabad has failed to protect freedom of religion or belief, the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom on Thursday demanded Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declare Pakistan a “country of particular concern.”

The Jakarta Globe: In the latest wave of international condemnation over the ‘lenient sentences’ handed out to a extremist mob, British MPs are calling for Indonesia to uphold human rights and squash religious intolerance.

LifeNews.com: Yesterday, the Kansas Attorney General’s office filed an appellate brief in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals asking it to halt a judge’s decision placing a temporary hold on enforcing the new law de-funding the Planned parenthood abortion business.

AP: “I’m a fairly irreverent person and at first I thought, “This is not you. You’re an old union man,’” Levine said during a recent telephone interview from his home in Fresno, Calif.

AP: Militant online forums are abuzz with calls to Muslims in Britain to launch Internet campaigns in support of the British rioters and to urge them to topple the government.

AP: Parents will be able to have their children opt out of the lessons on birth-control methods.

Religion Clause:: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life yesterday released a new report on the rising restrictions on religion around the world. The report (full text) uses both a government restrictions index and a social hostilities index in examining restrictions on religious beliefs and practices.

Religion Clause: In Salman v. City of Phoenix, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86984 (D AZ, Aug. 5, 2011), an Arizona federal district court dismissed a suit that had been brought by a couple who were born-again Christians who alleged that the city of Phoenix and certain city officials and employees had conspired to deprive them of their rights to the free exercise of religion . . .

Religion Clause: A North Carolina federal district court has rejected a religious organization’s “ministerial exception” defense in a Title VII racial discrimination case brought by a former administrative assistant in the group’s Global Ministries office. In McCallum v. Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86997 (WD NC, Aug. 5, 2011) . . .

Findlaw: Now that Wisconsin Republicans have rebuffed a massive effort to oust them from power, the political implications could extend far beyond that state.

Petherbridge, Lee and Schwartz, David L., An Empirical Assessment of the Supreme Court’s Use of Legal Scholarship (July 12, 2011). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1884462

NCNN.com: Mike Johnson is an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the board. He said other courts have not come to the same conclusion as the 4th Circuit did. “Most all of the cases have gone our way on this. In other words, agreeing with the county’s position that a private person supplying a prayer in a public body should not have to censor what they say, so because of all that, really the 4th Circuit, this opinion is the one that’s out of step and we think that the Supreme Court will set it straight,” said Johnson.

CBN News: The ADF argued that the decision is in “conflict with other federal court decisions and out of step with the history of invocations in America.”

The Daily Record: The commissioners approved a resolution to continue the case if the Alliance Defense Fund Inc. would continue to pay the county’s legal costs. The conservative Christian organization has said it will not pay the attorney fees, costs and damages of the plaintiffs if the county ultimately loses the lawsuit, so the county’s appeal also depends on the backing of a local group, the North Carolina Partnership for Religious Liberty.

Rebecca Hagelin at Townhall : The vast majority of American women use contraceptives during their reproductive years. So what’s wrong with the new HHS regulations that require insurers to cover the costs of contraceptives, emergency contraceptives, sterilizations, and contraceptive counseling as “preventive care,” with no out-of-pocket cost to women? Three things, for starters . . .

The Hill: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blamed President Obama and the Democrats Tuesday for the recent downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, saying that if Democrats had joined with Republicans in passing the GOP budget, which the House passed in April, “”it’s unlikely anyone would be talking about the United States being downgraded today.”

TheHill.com: Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) will serve on the ‘supercommittee’ tasked with assembling a $1.5 trillion deficit-reduction package by Thanksgiving.

Pacific Justice Institute: An appeal has been filed with the California Court of Appeal in a lawsuit challenging a refusal by the superintendent and school board president of San Jose Unified School District to allow a parent to formally request changes to a controversial program at her child’s middle school.

News from Missouri Family Policy Council: Missouri legislative leaders are calling on Attorney General Chris Koster to provide a strong legal defense for the proposed religious liberty amendment to the Missouri Constitution.

The Hill: The GOP has announced its picks for the powerful deficit-reduction “supercommittee” established by the debt-ceiling deal.

William J Federer’s American Minute: Herbert Hoover was born AUGUST 10, 1874. The son of a Quaker blacksmith, he studied at Stanford and became a world renowned engineer.

Michael Foust at Baptist Press: “They are doing an outstanding job,” Holly Carmichael, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, which supports DOMA, told Baptist Press. “They are drawing from the same main argument that the Department of Justice used to make — responsible procreation, having a mom and a dad, is the best model for children. Those are really the reasons the House enacted DOMA.” [more]

LifeNews.com: In a new letter to the editor to the Napa Valley Register newspaper, Norman Fleishman, praises the policy as he offers his support for the Obama administration’s recent decision forcing insurance companies to cover birth control and drugs that can cause abortion.

TheSunNews.com (AP): The commissioners approved a resolution to continue the case if the Alliance Defense Fund Inc. would continue to pay the county’s legal costs. The conservative Christian organization has said it will not pay the attorney fees, costs and damages of the plaintiffs if the county ultimately loses the lawsuit, so the county’s appeal also depends on the backing of a local group, the North Carolina Partnership for Religious Liberty.

Ga. Family Council: Many Georgians are shocked to find out that Atlanta is one of the nation’s top places for sex trafficking, where men and women (and children) are trapped in prostitution.

American Medical News: he plaintiffs have not decided whether to appeal Lamberth’s dismissal but are considering all options, said Steve Aden, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund in Washington, part of the plaintiffs’ legal team. “In these tough economic times, it makes no sense for the federal government to use taxpayer money for this illegal and unethical purpose.”

OneNewsNow.com: Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel Action tells OneNewsNow that he has had a good deal of respect for Coulter in the past. “[But] unfortunately I think she really is putting herself in a position here where she could marginalize herself and do damage to her conservative credentials, if you will,” he offers.

Reuters: Republican Governor Sam Brownback said the state would give back the $31.5 million it received from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to become an early leader, along with six other states, in establishing health insurance exchanges that other local government could use as a model.

Wisc. State Journal: After tens of millions of dollars spent by outside interest groups, dozens of attack ads and exhaustive get-out-the-vote efforts, Democrats on Tuesday fell short of their goal of taking control of the state Senate and stopping the agenda of Gov. Scott Walker.
Republicans won four of six recall races,

Skene, Loane, Should Women Be Paid for Donating Their Eggs for Human Embryo Research? (August 3, 2011). Monash Bioethics Review, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2009; U of Melbourne Legal Studies Research Paper No. 552. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1904140