Daily Archives: August 26, 2011

Idaho Mountain Express: : Opportunity and hard work often go hand in hand. It’s a concept not lost on Roger Burdick, new Chief Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, and one he has frequently capitalized on.

Houston Chronicle: A federal lawsuit over a new Kansas law restricting private health insurance coverage for abortions appeared to be moving forward quickly Friday, but a separate suit challenging new rules for abortion providers was slowing down after the state won a temporary halt to evidence-gathering.

Joseph Farah at The big same-sex marriage lie: I have to laugh every time a same-sex marriage apologist suggests a society can somehow, arbitrarily, without consequences and further confusion, redefine marriage as an institution between two people of either sex.

Abby Tolchinsky and Ellie Wertheim at NY Law Journal: If the financial settlement is fairly complex and rigid, the parenting decisions are similarly fraught, though tend to entail more flexible options. For gay couples in mediation negotiating parenting agreements, the legal analysis tends to be splintered into two prongs. First, where there is an unknown donor, the non-biological parent must proceed with a second-parent adoption. Until the second-parent adoption is finalized, the non-biological parent has no parental rights.

Andrea Lafferty at KansasCity.com: Proponents of homosexual marriage are trying to pretend that New York’s recent enactment of a pro-same-sex marriage law is just one more step in the inevitable march of history to establish yet another new civil right. This could be a trend but it is not about any increase in public acceptance of same-sex marriage. The trend is the continuing injustice of activist judges trying to thwart legitimate legislation and the will of the citizenry.

Frank Turek at Townhall : Will they get away with their bigotry and bullying? Not if Americans start thinking. Thinking people realize that equating homosexuality with race, though presently fashionable, is just as fallacious as calling marriage based in biology a form of bigotry. As G. K. Chesterton pointed out, “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

Mercatornet.com: Why is President Obama giving drug companies such an easy ride?

Carol Moynihan at Mercatornet.com: The Obama administration thinks it can, but it has completely misdiagnosed the illness.

New Mexico Daily Lobo: A UNM student said he plans to protest “Mass on the Grass” to be held at the Duck Pond Aug. 28, calling it a violation of the separation of church and state.

Catholic Culture: Vandals broke into a Syro-Malankara Catholic church in the southeastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, setting fire to the altar, Bibles, and other sacred objects.

Catholic Culture: The federal Supreme Court of India, in a historic ruling, has upheld compensation for a pregnant woman who gave birth to a stillborn child following an accident.

LifeNews.com: Two new pro-life laws go into effect in Nebraska on Saturday — one that requires teenagers to get parental consent before getting an abortion and another that is receiving more attention, that bans webcam abortions.

LifeNews.com: As debate over the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) Bill continued Wednesday in the Philippine House of Representatives, a co-sponsor of the bill admitted that the RH Bill was a means to control the population size of poor Filipinos in apparent contradiction to statements made by other bill sponsors.

LifeNews.com: An Australian woman is in a hospital intensive care united following a failed abortion at a clinic run by the British-based Marie Stopes International abortion business.

LifeNews.com: The Virginia state health department today released a draft of new regulations for abortion centers that pro-abortion groups are aggressively opposing because it could force some abortion facilities that put women’s health at risk to close.

Rebecca Taylor at LifeNews.com: So SCNT in animals: egg + somatic nucleus = cloned embryo. Got it. But for humans: egg + somatic nucleus = formless group of cells that is smaller than the cross-section of a human hair. Don’t got it.

OneNewsNow.com: Residents of Asheville, North Carolina, are upset about a recent public topless event that is apparently legal. So a movement has been initiated to prevent it from happening again in the future.

Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy: On August 21st, Greek Newspapers reported that new Family Law reforms jettison the practice of allowing Sharía Law to govern family matters for a Muslim enclave of over 110,000 living in Western Thrace.

Center for AZ Policy Foundations Blog: Maricopa County Community College’s Governing Board is considering adding “gender identity” to the district’s non-discrimination policies. Center for Arizona Policy submitted this letter explaining why these changes should not be approved.

Religion Clause: This year’s 9-11 memorial service at Ground Zero threatens to become mired in controversy as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office determines who will participate in the special tenth anniversary ceremony.

Religion Clause: In the South Pacific island nation of Fiji, the military government– for the third consecutive year– has cancelled the annual conference of Fiji’s Methodist Church.

AP: Activists said Friday that proposed changes to Chinese criminal law would effectively legitimize the disappearances used against high-profile dissidents.

Fox News Radio 550 KFYI: In yet another expansion of government through Executive Order, the Obama administration has created an Office of Diversity and Inclusion to boost minority participation in the federal work force.

AP: Somali Islamist rebels have beheaded at least 11 civilians in the capital in the past two weeks, a campaign of terror that residents said Friday is designed to show the insurgency can still act in Mogadishu after withdrawing from their bases there earlier this month.

AP: Rick Perry has signed a pledge to back a federal constitutional amendment against gay marriage – a reversal from a month ago when the Texas governor said he so supported individual states’ rights that he was fine with New York’s approval of same-sex marriage.

AP: Presbyterians in Mexico are breaking ties with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) because of differences over homosexuality.

Personhood USA: Danish newspaper Berlingske is reporting‏ that an analysis of the country’s abortion rate indicates that the last child with Down syndrome could be born around the year 2030. 61 babies were born with the genetic disease in 2004 when the government of Denmark began offering screenings through the socialized health program. The following year, the number was less than half of that. Today, 99 of 100 children with Down syndrome are aborted in the European nation.

A new Missouri law prohibiting teachers from having private online conversations with students suffered a double setback Friday.

AP: An Ohio woman who gave birth to a Michigan woman’s baby after a fertility clinic mix-up says she and her husband are new parents again.

ABQJournal Online: adets in the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department will head over to their boss’s church today for a graduation ceremony. And the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico is urging Sheriff Dan Houston to switch the venue to avoid “religious coercion.”

Lower courts had called the so-called “pole tax” an improper burden on the free expression of nude dancing and a violation of the First Amendment.

The Hill: The conservative Heritage Action released its legislative scorecard on Thursday and barely gave House leaders a passing grade.

SCOTUSblog: O’Melveny partner and former assistant solicitor general Sri Srinivasan has been selected to the number two spot in the Solicitor General’s Office.

SCOTUSblog: Deborah Hellman, Professor of Law at the University of Maryland and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, responds to recent posts in our symposium by both Erwin Chemerinsky and William Eskridge. She argues that the Court should not use the Due Process Clause in ruling on the constitutionality of Proposition 8 but that the Court should instead prefer equal protection analysis for reasons of principle rather than reasons of policy.

SCOTUSblog: Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe argues that based on precedent, the Court will ultimately have to find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Kentucky.com: A state lawyer’s recommendation that the Bell County school district stop allowing prayer over the public-address system at football games has sparked controversy in Kentucky’s gubernatorial election.

Tulsa World: We now have a president, and I don’t mean this disrespectfully, who is destroying these very institutions that made America great,” Inhofe, R-Okla., said.

Lake View News: The Alliance Defense Fund, an organization who represents victims of the ACLU’s abuses sent our superintendent a letter dated August 8, offering to assist the Camdenton R-III School District in this matter. The administration thanked ADF for its offer and is working with its attorney at this time, declining ADF’s offer.

The Commercial Appeal: Thankfully, the board of commissioners in Winston-Salem, N.C., represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, has decided to stand up to bullies like the FFRF. It voted 6-1 to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision regarding prayer at public meetings.

LifeNews.com: The outpouring of outrage over Vice President Joe Biden’s failure to criticize China’s one-child, forced abortion policy is taking a new angle as an expert on the policy says he fully briefed Biden on it years ago.

Christian Post: ADF letters to the Pascagoula district Superintendent contend, “The Supreme Court has recognized that ‘there is a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect.’” ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman concluded, “Contrary to what the Freedom From Religion Foundation is arguing, this is not a government establishment of religion by any stretch of the imagination, except theirs.”

The Alliance Defense Fund sent a letter this week to Cedar Falls Community School District to discount an atheist group’s claim that the district cannot make safety and handicap-accessibility renovations to a nearby church property so that it can use the facilities to accommodate overcrowding for its pre-school program and meet city codes.

LifeSiteNews.com: nyone opposed to the acceptance of homosexual behavior as a healthy, normal, moral equivalent to heterosexuality is often accused of homophobia – an irrational fear of those engaged in homosexual behavior. This same label is applied to any church that teaches biblical morality on the issue.

Baptists Today, The Source for Daily Baptist News for You and Your Church: The Alliance Defense Fund has sent a letter signed by chaplains to Congressional leaders urging the protection of religious liberty in light of the implementation of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal.

VirtueOnline: The Alliance Defense Fund has issued a press release urging a group of veteran service members–primarily chaplains–who, on behalf of their faith groups, represent thousands of currently-serving military chaplains and several million Americans asking key officials to protect military religious liberty from the dangers created by the government’s decision to force open homosexual behavior on the U.S. armed forces through the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” next month.

Carroll Conley, Jr. at Maine Family Policy Council, The Record: When it comes to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, you can’t have one without the other. The attempt to re-define marriage here in Maine (again) tests this union of freedoms.