Daily Archives: August 31, 2011

Daily Mail: The babies of Roman prostitutes were regularly murdered by their mothers, archaeologists have found.
A farmer’s field in Hambleden, Buckinghamshire, yielded the grisly secret after a mass grave containing the remains of 97 babies – who all died around the same age – was uncovered.
Following a close study of the plot, experts have decided it was the site of an ancient brothel and terrible infanticides took place there.

Stateline: Mississippi is among just a handful of states to hold elections this year, and among the items on its ballot will be one that defines “person” to include every human being from the moment of fertilization. If approved, supporters say the measure would criminalize all abortion, including those applying to cases of rape or incest.

KAALtv.com: A new form of abortion is making its way to southern Minnesota and a pro-life group wants you to know about it. The procedure involves two pills and can be used up to 63 days after a pregnancy begins.

Religion Clause Blog: The Tennessean and the Murfreesboro Daily News Journal report that a Tennessee state chancery court judge this week denied a motion to reconsider his decision handed down in May dismissing challenges (other than an open-meeting law challenge) to the …

Family Scholars: While we’ve been having our own spirited debate about cohabitation here and here and here at FamilyScholars, today’s New York Times Room for Debate takes up the debate with this question “Should Parents Marry for the Kids?”

St. Louis News – Daily RFT: ​A University City scholar has been appointed head of the American Psychological Association’s Division 44, also known as the Society of the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues.

Michael New at National Review Online: New York Times house editorials on sanctity-of-life issues sometimes read like Planned Parenthood press releases, and Tuesday’s editorial, which condemns efforts in Kansas to prevent health-insurance policies from covering abortion services, is certainly no exception. Interestingly, the Times completely fails to realize that the primary culprit is Obamacare.

Perth Now: CANADA’S health agency has warned would-be parents not to purchase “fresh” semen online, saying it may be tainted with infectious diseases.

Christian Today: Christian Solidarity Worldwide has repeated its call for religious freedom to be respected in Nepal after the constituent assembly passed a Bill on Monday extending the deadline for a new constitution by a further three months.

Christian Concern: igures released by a selection of NHC foundation trusts have shown that almost 1,000 under-16s in their care have been diagnosed with venereal diseases such as herpes, chlamydia and gonorrhoea in the past three years.

The Christian Institute: But the demand to reduce twins to a single pregnancy has grown steadily in more recent years, fuelled by reluctance to accept multiple children.

TheStar.com: Unmarried couples who want to take the plunge and move in together, take heart. A Florida legislator is seeking to make you legal.

LifeNews.com: The state of Kansas will appeal the latest ruling from a federal judge forcing the state to send taxpayer funds to the Planned Parenthood abortion business. The state announced it will comply with the most recent decision.

Lake News Online: word to the ACLU: Stop wasting school resources anywhere with ridiculous lawsuits! You are lining the pockets of your lawyers, but doing little if anything to enhance education students need to function in the real world.

Boston.com:Maine Gov. Paul LePage is announcing two judicial nominations, which will face Senate confirmation votes on Sept. 27.

WSJ.com: Columnist Bill McGurn on Indiana school vouchers and Catholic school enrollment. Also, Heritage Foundation fellow Rachel Sheffield on the expansion of school choice.

Christian Post:
The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) has released a poll touting a growing acceptance of same-sex marriage and a widening gap between younger and older Americans on the issue. The Arcus Foundation, a group whose primary mission is to advance the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality, provided the funding for the poll.

MarketWatch: AHF officials will submit a health and safety complaint under Florida ‘Sanitary Nuisance’ statutes against Brazzers, the production company involved in the latest HIV case in the adult film industry; industry sources say male performer involved had worked directly with as many as a dozen female performers . . .

LifeSiteNews.com: A 23-week-gestation unborn baby is dead and a 40-year-old mother is in critical condition in a Melbourne hospital, following complications during a late-term abortion.

LifeSiteNews.com: An historic Polish bill banning all abortions was rejected on Wednesday afternoon by Poland’s parliament in an excruciatingly close 191-186 vote, with five abstentions. Seventy-eight lawmakers were not present for the vote.

LifeSiteNews.com: anada’s Evangelical Christians are calling on the trustees at the Toronto Catholic District School Board to uphold a vigorous and authentic Catholic identity as they prepare to pass judgment Wednesday on crucial amendments to a controversial equity and inclusive education policy.

LifeSiteNews.com: Dr. Judith Reisman, a researcher on pedophilia and an expert on the insidious effects of pornography, told LSN that she is unsurprised that such a young man would be involved in child pornography. “Our government leaders allow pornography to pollute our once great nations and act surprised that we are breeding inhuman men, women and children unlike any that have existed before,” she said.

Fortune Management: Budding law school students are still coming in droves, tuition coffers are plentiful, and faculty still receive generous six-figure salaries. And some top-performing graduates continue to land the golden $160,000 first-year law firm job.
But law schools are no longer the pathway to a secure, tony professional future they once were. The legal job market is undergoing shifts that could upend the way law schools do business and even how the public thinks about a legal diploma.

LifeSiteNews.com: A new approach to get information about the high abortion rate among black women in the U.S. to thousands of people was launched at a trade show for barbers and hair stylists in Atlanta over the weekend, reports Christina Martin of Bound4Life.

LifeSiteNews.com: Blind forced abortion opponent Chen Guangcheng and his wife, Yuan Weijing, will be transferred to a small prison built specifically for them, according to a Radio Free Asia report . . . They will be separated from their five-year-old daughter in the move.

FoxNews.com: At issue is the renewal of a transportation spending bill that expires Sept. 30 . . . although the president describes the proposal as a transportation bill, its key component is the federal gas tax, which has been 18.4 cents per gallon for nearly two decades.

The Times of India: The Union government’s decision to drop the proposal for a separate Sikh Marriage Act has come under severe criticism from various political as well as religious quarters in Punjab. If Akal Takht jathedar on Tuesday exhorted Sikhs to put pressure on UPA government to revoke the decision, ruling SAD (B) slammed the Centre for its “anti-Sikh posture”.

The Enid News and Eagle: This week Oklahoma learned it is No. 1 in yet another significant category. The Sooner State, it seems, is No. 1 in divorce

The Guardian: The Obama administration has given an important approval to a controversial pipeline that will pump oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the Texas coast.

Reuters: Child brides more often face psychiatric disorders than women who marry after they turn 18, researchers have found . . . Dr. Yann Le Strat, of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, and colleagues report in the journal Pediatrics. | Child Marriage in the United States and Its Association With Mental Health in Women

TIME: Even with an African American couple in the White House, the fate of the black family in America has never been so precarious. That’s the message behind Is Marriage for White People?, a new book by Stanford Law professor Ralph Richard Banks.

LifeNews.com: Texas officials say they will appeal a judge’s ruling late Tuesday striking down a new law the state approved allowing women considering an abortion a chance to see the ultrasound the abortion center does of their unborn baby.

An Idaho woman prosecuted for terminating her own pregnancy with an abortion pill ordered over the Internet has filed suit challenging a decades-old law under which she was charged, as well as a new state ban on abortions after 20 weeks of gestation.

Chicago Sun-Times: State Rep. Deborah Mell (D-Chicago) quietly made Illinois history last week. She got married. To a woman . . .

Robert John Araujo at Mirror of Justice: He does not identify the reasoning underlying these claims, but I wonder how he would consider this argument: Let us assume that two planets which have not yet been inhabited by humans are to be colonized by them; on Planet Alpha, heterosexual couples only are assigned; on Planet Beta, only homosexual couples. In one hundred years, will both islands be populated assuming that reproductive technologies are not available to either group? I suggest that Planet Alpha will be; but Planet Beta will not. Why? The basic answer is to be found in the biological complementarity of the heterosexual couple necessary for procreation that is absent in same-sex couple. This is a scientific argument, but perhaps it is, in Tribe’s estimation, counterfeit.

Teresa Collett at University Faculty for Life: The Virginia Department of Health has invited public comment on proposed regulations of abortion clinics in that state. UFL member, Michael New, has posted a brief comment on the proposed clinic regulations on NRO.

ADF Attorney Brian Raum at Townhall : Recently, Michael Barone had a column on NationalReview.com which served as a reminder that even the most politically and culturally astute among us have to avail ourselves of news outlets beyond the typical networks and/or print publications. Although this wasn’t the goal of the column, it’s the most valuable lesson we can draw from what was ostensibly aimed at convincing us that support for same-sex “marriage” is at an all-time high in this country.

NYTimes.com: he Department of Veterans Affairs buries 110,000 people a year — most of them veterans, but some family members — in the 131 national cemeteries it oversees. At a family’s request, the department is required to send uniformed service members to a veteran’s funeral. But many families ask local veterans organizations to send volunteer honor guard teams, which can perform special recitations and play taps on real bugles.

DelmarvaNow.com: Members of the Indian River School Board bowed their heads for a moment of silence at the start of last week’s board meeting — a departure from their typical practice of joining in a board-member-led prayer. Then they made a unanimous decision to seek U.S. Supreme Court review of the recent Third District Court of Appeals ruling that the district’s policy of opening board meetings with a prayer — often a Christian one — was unconstitutional.

FoxNews.com: I have no doubt that Meet The Press host David Gregory is a man of faith, but if his questioning of Michele Bachmann on a recent edition of the show was any indicator, he fits the description once offered by fellow Sunday host Bob Schieffer who unforgettably observed that there was a deep division in America between those who were merely religious and those who were religious “in a secular way.”

LifeNews.com: Texas governor Rick Perry has quickly vaulted to the top of the Republican presidential race and he now faces questions from pro-life advocates about what he would do as president. One news report says Perry has answered one question by saying he would name a pro-life Vice President.

TheHill.com: White House communications director said in a tweet Wednesday that Obama has asked for the 8 pm session on Sept. 7.

The American Independent: Confirmed conference speakers include the Family Research Council’s Patrick Fagan, Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman, 40 Days for Life’s David Bereit and representatives from the Christian litigation firm the Alliance Defense Fund.

ADF Attorney Erik Stanley at Speak Up Movement Church Blog: Over at Dakota Voice, Bob Ellis has an interesting post that details the history of politics from the pulpit in America. Bob does a good job of detailing many of the stories where pastors in American history spoke forcefully and with great conviction from their pulpits about political matters. From the very beginning of our country, pastors spoke from their pulpits about matters of American life and politics that intersected with morality and religion. After reviewing this extensive history, Bob concludes . . .

Instinct Magazine: Camdenton blocks LGBT-affirming websites such as the aforementioned by labeling them as “porn.” With the help of notoriously anti-gay “Christian” legal group the Alliance Defense Fund, it has beguiled local parents into agreeing with the faulty connection.

OneNewsNow.com: Cortman says groups opposed to prayers in schools have used the same argument — separation of church and state — to the point where even the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says that that has grown tiresome. “It seems to be that [that's] the only way they read it is the Establishment Clause — the so-called ‘separation of church and state’ — and there’s certainly more to it than that,” he offers. [more]

Christian Post: However, for David Cortman, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which supports conservative organizations, says, “School districts shouldn’t be bullied into exposing students to sexually explicit materials.” Letters by ADF, urging schools to reject ACLU’s demands, have been sent to at least eight school districts.
“We want to make sure that schools don’t unnecessarily cave to the ACLU’s demands,” Mr. Cortman said.

Christian Post: The Alliance Defense Fund is currently working with Mauck’s firm on behalf of his clients in order to protect the brothers’ religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment and allow them to continue to witness to their peers. “By suing Elias, Saul, Oscar, and Ruben, Plantiffs have substantially burdened their religious exercise of sharing the gospel of Jesus with others,” the motion stated.

The New American: As reported by The New American, a group called the Coalition for the War on Illegal Pornography, led by Morality in Media, “said the show is nothing more than a pornographic attack on families and the culture that should never see the light of day.” The coalition, made up of such groups as Focus on the Family, the Alliance Defense Fund, the Family Research Council, and Concerned Women for America (to name just a few), said in a press release that “NBC is contributing to the sexual objectification and exploitation of women and encouraging greater acceptance of pornography with its soon-to-be-aired series.” The Parents Television Council added to the attack, charging that The Playboy Club is little more than a “blatant attempt to obliterate any remaining standards of broadcast decency.”

AP: Still, 43 million girls have “disappeared” in China due to gender-selective abortion as well as neglect and inadequate access to health care and nutrition, the United Nations estimated in a report last year. Yin Yin Nwe, UNICEF’s representative to China, puts it bluntly: The one-child policy brings many benefits for girls “but they have to be born first.”

Education News: Study finds parochial, private, home education have startling effects on faith. A two-year study of graduates from Catholic, Protestant and home schools found the choice of private education, when compared to public education, had significant effects on the students’ academics, civics and faith – but not necessarily the effects one might expect . . . The Cardus Education Survey, a million-dollar study conducted by Cardus in a research partnership with the University of Notre Dame, analyzed both quantitative and qualitative research into the lives of nearly 2,500 American high school graduates between the ages of 24-39, measuring at least 43 different categories of academic, spiritual and civic life.

Islamist Watch: First, any ADGC analysis should be taken with a rather hefty grain of salt, considering that Dalia Mogahed directs the center. In addition to her well-documented history of promoting Islamists, whitewashing Shari’a, and beclouding Islamic terrorism, a 2008 book-length study by Esposito and Mogahed was criticized for using creative accounting to downplay Muslim radicalism . . .

John Stossel at Townhall: ix states and the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage. Most so-called liberals are happy about that. Most conservatives are not. As a libertarian, I think all consenting adults who want to commit to a life partner ought to be treated the same way.

AP: Dutch police say they have uncovered huge caches of child pornography on “hidden” websites, including four based in the United States.

World Net Daily: Announcing it’s “not her lucky day,” a federal judge in Washington, D.C., has told an eligibility attorney he has dismissed her case demanding information from the Social Security Administration regarding President Obama’s Social Security number, sought because of suspicions it may be fraudulent.

The American Muslim (TAM): Yet another research report has been released that paints a different picture of the American Muslim community than the negative view spread by Islamophobes. A 132 page survey report “Muslim Americans: Faith, Freedom, and the Future” was just released by Gallup.

Public Discourse: Presidential candidates in the 2012 election must be prepared to protect the interests of parents and children nationwide by rolling back the progressive education agenda and returning to the states their constitutional power to make decisions about education.

LoHud.com: A melee broke out Tuesday afternoon at Playland Amusement Park when Muslim visitors became angry that the park was enforcing its ban on headgear by prohibiting the women from wearing their traditional head coverings on some rides.

Stith, Richard T., Anti-Choice: When Having a Choice Dminishes Family Solidarity (August 18, 2011). International Journal of the Jurisprudence of the Family, Forthcoming; Valparaiso University Legal Studies Research Paper No. 11-12. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1911917