Daily Archives: September 9, 2011

Robert Knight at the Washington Times: The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, has sent letters to eight school districts, including Prince William, advising them that they have every right to keep the filters. But Prince William has caved, at least for now.

Democrat and Chronicle: The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian organization, has represented the town pro bono.

LifeSiteNews.com: Anne Marie eventually came to believe that nursing was where she belonged, especially in the field of women’s health. “To be a nurse is to care incredibly for other people, to care deeply for them, to care for what is best for them. You use your heart and you use your hands. That’s it, at its core,” says Anne-Marie in a video of her story, prepared by the Alliance Defense Fund. {more}

Science Daily: Fathers who actively engage in raising their children can help make their offspring smarter and better behaved, according to new research from Concordia University . . .
Published in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science | Fathers’ influence on children’s cognitive and behavioural functioning: A longitudinal study of Canadian families.
Pougnet, Erin; Serbin, Lisa A.; Stack, Dale M.; Schwartzman, Alex E.
Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, Vol 43(3), Jul 2011, 173-182. doi: 10.1037/a0023948

Reuters: Some later marched to the opposite bank of the Nile in Giza. Demonstrators used hammers, large iron bars and police barricades to tear down the wall, erected this month by Egyptian authorities after daily protests over the killing of five Egyptian border guards in Sinai. Protesters scaled the embassy building, removed the Israeli flag for the second time in less than a month and burned it.

CBC News: The Islamic Supreme Council of Canada is urging Muslims to speak out against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recent remarks about their religion.

CSMonitor.com: The average 16-year-old worked 40 percent fewer hours in 2010 than 2007. But for workers older than 62, hours have increased.

American Civil Liberties Union: Today Pulaski County officials paid more than $230,000 to the ACLU of Kentucky for legal fees incurred by the civil rights organization in challenging the County’s posting of three separate Ten Commandments displays in its courthouse.

Bluegrass Policy Blog: : Folks in Tennessee are not happy with the restrictive way they set up approval authority for their charter schools. Right now, the only approval authority is the local school board in each district. This new Commercial Appeal (Memphis) article says that is stifling the creation of more of these dynamic, and successful, public schools. Basically, local school boards often act to preserve their business as usual turf instead of doing what is best for students.

Pulaski sends check to ACLU in commandments case | The Courier-Journal | courier-journal.com: Sharp said McCreary County has not yet sent a payment and that the ACLU plans to hold both counties equally liable for the full amount, which Sharp estimated at just over $463,000.

Catholic Culture: A German court has ruled that Catholic institutions can dismiss employees who violate Church teachings regarding marriage–as long as all employees are treated equally.

Catholic Culture: A young Pakistani Christian was kidnapped an killed as he made a pilgrimage to a Marian shrine in the Punjab province.

VirtueOnline: The big news this week comes from Ireland. A Church of Ireland cleric’s civil partnership could lead to the all-island church splitting along north-south lines, one of its most influential evangelical members has warned. Dermot O’Callaghan, who is seen as the leading evangelical layman in the Church of Ireland, stressed that no one in the church wants a split, but also said that the implications of the Rev. Tom Gordon’s gay partnership could be “fundamental”.

AINA: Christians in the Upper Egyptian village of Elmarinab in Edfu, Aswan province, have been forbidden to leave their homes or buy food until they remove the dome of St. George’s Church, which was rebuilt in its previous location. Village Muslims, backed by Muslim Salafists from neighboring villages, have threatened to demolish the church on Friday September 9 after prayers and use it as a mosque.

The Washington Post: A new report says cohabitation has replaced divorce as the biggest source of instability for American families. Brad Wilcox, the report’s author, chatted about why this is.

Boston.com: A Shariah court in northern Nigeria has ordered that two men have their right hands amputated for stealing a farmer’s bull.

The Washington Post: An amendment to Oklahoma’s constitution that bans state judges from considering Islamic law will face its next legal hurdle on Monday (Sept. 12) when a federal appeals court considers its constitutionality.

CARPE DIEM: Whether Social Security technically meets the technical definition of being a Ponzi scheme is less important than the fact that the current system has become a Pyramid scheme as the population ages

SCO News: The Bishops’ Conference of Scotland has questioned the validity of the Scottish Government’s public consultation on marriage between homosexuals.

TimesFreePress.com: BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee’s inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender business owners in a push for supplier diversity is generating fire and brimstone from a conservative Christian advocacy group headed by former state Sen. David Fowler.

Katie PavichWant to Win the Youth Vote, Talk About Social Security – Page 1 – Katie Pavlich – Townhall Conservative: Well Mr. Romney, Social Security may be working, but it’s working on the backs of young people who are being lied to and scammed out of hundreds of dollars every two weeks when they get their paycheck.

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster will be available for media interviews Monday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit following his oral argument at a hearing concerning the right of the Greece Town Board to open public meetings with prayers offered by invited clergy

The eventuality of euthanasia as the ‘final solution’ for the damaged offspring of the Boomers to be ‘rid of’ the ‘ME’ generation is real and near at hand.

Can there be any doubt?: fighting abortion also means fighting for marriage, and against the culture of “anything goes” sexual promiscuity that has lead to the deaths of millions of our children. We need to build a culture of life.

LifeSiteNews.com: A member of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government is calling for a ban on marriages at Christian churches if they refuse to also perform same-sex unions.

LifeSiteNews.com: s Mexico moves towards the regulation of in vitro fertilization, Mexico’s secretary of health has declared his opposition to permitting the freezing of embryos, a practice that results in the production and, ultimately, the destruction of thousands of human lives every year.

LifeSiteNews.com: For the third time, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) has issued a cease and desist order to Gentilly Medical Clinic for Women in New Orleans, Louisiana. The clinic has been found to have health code violations and inadequate nursing care that has created a danger to the public.

NYTimes.com: Molly Blooms, a Victorian-accented Irish bar in Sunnyside, Queens, recently raffled off a free same-sex wedding reception, with a three-hour open bar, a D.J., a photographer and a horse-drawn gilded carriage to deliver the winning couple to the festivities. The bar’s owner thought the idea would be good for business and for the largely working-class and immigrant neighborhood. But some in the community disagreed. Neighbors said they would boycott the bar.

LifeSiteNews.com: While surveying the landscape for inroads to push the homosexual agenda into Poland, American embassy officials under the Obama administration complained that the Catholic Church teaching is a major source of “homophobia” in the heavily Catholic country, according to private cables recently published by Wikileaks.

LifeSiteNews.com: The founder of the national Life Chain, which is set to take place October 2nd, is urging Protestant pastors to confront the “spirit of child aversion” that was created by the embrace of contraception.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday a Birmingham-area woman can sue over the death of her unborn baby in a car wreck in 2007 even though the fetus couldn’t have lived outside the womb, a decision that expands the rights of people to sue over the death of the unborn.

LifeNews.com: A diplomatic cable recently published by the controversial website Wikileaks confirms the depth of support by the U.S. government for population control initiatives in the Philippines over the past 40 years, including support for the highly contested Reproductive Health (RH) Bill currently under consideration in the Philippine legislature.

LifeNews.com: On Wednesday night, the Missouri Senate Jobs, Economic Development and Local Government Committee voted “do pass” on two bills that pro-life advocates are concerned will lead to taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research.

John Aman at Crosswalk: Dominionism, Carter explains, is a term “never used outside liberal blogs and websites. No reputable scholars use the term for it is a meaningless neologism that Diamond concocted for her dissertation.”

Jack Hunter at The Daily Caller: What Rand Paul describes is far closer to what his father believes than what most of today’s Republican hawks believe. It is also closer to Reagan’s actual foreign policy. Despite these examples, it would still be absurd to claim that Ron Paul’s foreign policy views are identical to Ronald Reagan’s. But it is far more absurd for Paul’s foreign policy critics to continue claiming Reagan’s legacy as their own.

Religion Clause: Indiana University’s Center for Evaluation and Education Policy last week released a report evaluating three Indiana school choice provisions: Choice Scholarships, School Expenditure Deductions, and the School Scholarship Tax Credit. The 20-page report, School Choice Issues in Indiana: Sifting through the Rhetoric . . .

Religion Clause: According to ENI News yesterday, in Hungary municipal governments are increasingly turning state-owned schools over to churches to operate.

The Washington Post: With a cross on his lapel, it’s easy to spot a military chaplain in uniform. But the same might not be true if the chaplain’s badge displays a prayer wheel, a crescent moon or tiny Torah scrolls. And when the sole, newly commissioned Hindu chaplain starts wearing her symbol — which is still in the design stage — how many will recognize it as the sign of a chaplain?

Thomas S. Kidd at USATODAY.com: The next time you walk into church, or your synagogue or mosque, say a little thanks to God for our founding principles. There’s a lot for which to be grateful, after all, and the freedom to worship is among our greatest blessings. But a new report by Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life has revealed a disturbing pattern . . .

The Cornell Law School Federalist Society: The Cornell Federalist Society will be hosting Jordan Lorence, Lead counsel in Bronx Household of Faith v. Board of Education of New York, to discuss the case and its ramifications on Constitutional issues.

Spero News: The IACHR concluded Chile’s courts impermissibly violated the American Convention on Human Rights by denying Atala custody because of her “sexual orientation.” The commission’s non-binding decision is now before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has authority under the American Convention on Human Rights to issue binding rulings. On Sept. 8, the Alliance Defense Fund submitted a carefully-researched amicus legal brief to the Court detailing four fundamental flaws in the IACHR’s findings. [ADF brief quoted]

OneNewsNow.com: “Tax exemptions for churches are vitally important, because it doesn’t make sense to penalize organizations that help serve the community and that don’t exist for profit. That’s certainly true with this church,” Stanley argues. “The taxing authorities in this case determined that the facilities were not integral to a religious purpose of the church, but the government is ill equipped to determine what is and what isn’t a legitimate religious use.”

We hold that, on the record before us, the District’s use of the rented church space was neither impermissibly coercive nor an endorsement of religion on the part of the District.

Robyn Hagan Cain at Findlaw: If the Supreme Court hears Adar and decides that state officials need not afford full faith and credit to other state’s documents, then same-sex marriage proponents continue with the status quo, wait a few years, and bring a Perry-type case when the Court is staffed with more marriage-equality-minded judges. If the Court hears Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and finds that there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage, it could be years before a same-sex marriage challenge has another chance.

New guidelines for same-sex parenting and custody | Keen News Service: In several of these cases, notably Miller v. Jenkins, attorneys from conservative legal organizations such as Liberty Counsel and the Alliance Defense Fund have represented the biological mothers. “They are making an industry of it,” Bonauto noted of the groups. | GLAD: Standards for LGBT Families

LifeNews.com: New research from a organization that has spent considerable time unpacking new statistics showing the abortion rate in New York City is twice the national average shows Manhattan may have the highest abortion rate of any city in the U.S.
The Chiaroscuro Foundation . . .

Christopher G. Adamo at WEBCommentary: The underlying theory is this: If a majority of Americans can agree to the premise that the economy is in dire straits and pull the appropriate levers at the ballot box on that basis alone, then the nation’s governance will surely shift decidedly right as a result, and those problems will certainly be addressed in a worthy manner at that point. But, once again, history and reality must be ignored in order for this fanciful construction of the upcoming election cycle to bear any pretext of credibility.

Bert Brandenburg ChicagoTribune.com: These days, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is looking a lot like Congress: fractious, dysfunctional and awash in special-interest cash. The Wisconsin story has important implications for courts in the Midwest and around the country.

Feisal Abdul Rauf at WSJ.com: News host Bill O’Reilly was right when he insisted that Abders Behring Breivik, who committed mass murders in Norway in July, is not a Christian. Even though Breivik referred to himself often as a Christian, Mr. O’Reilly noted, no one who slaughters innocents can be a follower of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.

TheHill.com: With both the economy and his reelection hopes teetering, President Obama on Thursday proposed a $447 billion jobs bill that he and his aides said will immediately put people back to work.

AP: Misty Umphries, a mother who waits at the stop with her children, says she had to explain to her 4-year-old the meaning of “topless.”

AP: Zimbabwe’s top Anglican bishop said Friday a breakaway church leader close to the country’s president is intensifying a campaign to seize church properties that include missions, schools and priests’ homes.

NCPA Policy Digest: One of the broad challenges to the new health insurance mandate is rebuffed by Fourth Circuit, finding it a premature attempt to block a federal tax provision. Federal courts have no jurisdiction to hear such a challenge, the 2-1 ruling said.

LifeNews.com: A new study from England finds unborn children have the capacity to differentiate touch from pain in the womb and they are able to do so as early as 28-35 weeks into pregnancy. Other studies have shown unborn children can experience pain much earlier. Conducted by researchers at the University College London, the study found unborn children can feel pain around the 35th week of pregnancy.

WSJ: The U.S. Senate, in an unusual procedure, cleared the way Thursday for the U.S. to lift its borrowing authority by $500 billion to $15.19 trillion, enough to keep the support federal government borrowing through late January or early February.