Daily Archives: September 15, 2011

Speak Up Movement Church Blog: In a remarkable 2-1 split decision, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which presides over the four states of the Carolina’s and the Virginias) invalidated the policy of Forsyth County, NC that allowed prayers to be offered before meetings of the County Council. The court acknowledged that the county policy was “neutral and proactively inclusive.” However, it was struck down because the court found that the references to Jesus in the prayers offered by private citizens were too “frequent.”

Jeremy Tedesco at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: See You At The Pole (SYATP) is an annual, global, student-organized and student-led event where public school students gather around the flagpole at their schools to pray for their schools, friends, teachers, government, and nation. SYATP will occur this year on September 28.

The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty commends the action of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) and Personnel Subcommittee Chairman Joe Wilson (R-SC) for their September 12 letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

The News Tribune: A letter sent to Washington school districts asking them to accommodate Muslim students’ needs and offering a classroom lesson on sacred Islamic times of year has sparked controversy in Pierce County.

Sacramento Bee: The FBI said Thursday a lecture at the bureau’s training academy that was critical of Islam has been discontinued. The bureau employee who gave the lecture contended, among other things, that the more devout a Muslim is, the more likely he is to be violent.

Catholic Culture: Father Frank Pavone told reporters that he will seek incardination in another diocese following Bishop Patrick Zurek’s decision to end the priest’s ministry outside his diocese

The Blog of Legal Times: One nominee, Jesse Furman, the deputy chief appellate attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, faced tough questions during his confirmation hearing. Republican senators asked about opinion columns he wrote in college, which he disavowed, and a brief he wrote in private practice about the use of public school facilities by religious students. Furman said he would follow precedent in establishment-clause cases if confirmed.

Barbara Coombs Lee at the Huffington Post: When legislators convened in Helena in January 2011, they considered two bills related to aid in dying. One would nullify the Court’s ruling and repeal the end-of-life freedom people had come to appreciate. The other itemized the steps to evaluate a request and provided civil and regulatory immunity for following them. Neither bill passed a committee or reached the governor’s desk.

Assyrian International New Agency: The rapid rise of Germany’s homegrown Islamist movement is sparking fears that it will soon turn Germany into the next European focal point of Islamic terrorism. Two recently failed plots by German Islamists to launch chemical attacks have only heightened those concerns.

Poynter.: Edward Schumacher-Matos responds to a listener’s complaint by acknowledging that it doesn’t make sense to label obstetricians who perform abortions as “abortion doctors,” as a recent story did.

Richmond Times-Dispatch: The state Board of Health Thursday approved regulations that will effectively regulate Virginia’s 21 abortion clinics as hospital surgical centers.

Christian Newswire: A judge dismissed the case against a homeschool family in southern Spain that was facing a possible order to send their son back to school. “This is an important victory for the González family and homeschoolers in Spain,” said Michael Donnelly, Director of International Relations at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).

The Irish Times: embers of the Council of Europe’s committee of ministers from 47 member states are meeting this week to examine the Government’s measures to implement the court’s ruling. All court judgments are binding on the member state.

Breitbart Big Government: In 2010, Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved Prop C, which negated key parts of ObamaCare. Ordinarily, only a legislature can appropriate funds, even if the funds are from the federal government. Stay tuned.

EuropeNews.dk (Google Translation): In the southwest of the country is a Christian from a Muslim background kidnapped and beheaded. As the information service Compass Direct reports, Juma Nuradin Kamil was on 21 August was abducted allegedly by supporters of the radical Islamic group Al Shabaab.

The Hill: Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) said a push in the North Carolina state legislature to add an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the state constitution has prompted him to co-sponsor federal legislation to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

LifeNews.com: A new CNN national poll of Americans finds results that are almost identical to a Gallup survey earlier this year, and it shows 62% of Americans want all or most abortions made illegal.

Christian Newswire: The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) announces the imminent start of informational pickets in the vicinities of Catholic facilities and activities in the Diocese of Amarillo, TX. The purpose of these demonstrations will be to urge parishioners to respectfully ask Bishop Patrick Zurek to allow Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests For Life, to resume full-time anti-abortion ministry. Picketers will represent a coalition of anti-abortion organizations.

East Rutherford Catholic church’s gay music director to quit over priest’s sermon – NorthJersey.com: A gay Catholic church musician on Wednesday said he will voluntarily leave his post in two weeks because his pastor allegedly created a hostile work environment after preaching against homosexuality.

WLS 890AM: In an attempt to combat Michigan’s childhood obesity epidemic, Gov. Rick Snyder announced Wednesday that the state would begin tracking kids’ body mass index through the Michigan Care Improvement Registry. Although the policy would be one of the most extensive government anti-childhood obesity efforts, pediatricians were divided over whether it would have the desired impact.

News from The Associated Press: Britain has amended a law to make it tougher for ordinary citizens or activist groups to get arrest warrants against suspected war criminals or torturers – a move that angered some human rights lawyers and activists.

The Washington Post: If World War II-era warbler Kate Smith sang today, her anthem could be “Gods Bless America.”
That’s one of the key findings in newly released research that reveals America’s drift from clearly defined religious denominations to faiths cut to fit personal preferences.

The Washington Post: Advocates for District autonomy and for abortion rights won a partial victory Wednesday when the Senate released a draft D.C. spending bill that does not include a ban on the city using its taxpayer money to fund abortions for low-income women.

The Associated Press: For years, Muslims by the hundreds, dodging foot and vehicle traffic, have unfurled rugs on northern Paris sidewalks and put their foreheads to the ground outside two mosques for Friday prayers — for the simple reason that there’s not enough space inside.

LifeSiteNews.com: The deep veneration for parents and the elderly that has been a traditional mark of Chinese culture is rapidly deteriorating after decades of anti-life population control measures in the Communist state, reveal a series of recent surveys.

LifeSiteNews.com: As Ontario’s debt load continues to grow unabated, the Minister of Health in Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government says they are still considering funding the controversial in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure with taxpayer dollars through the provincial health plan.

LifeSiteNews.com: Ontario’s Liberal government will not back down from imposing its homosexualist equity and inclusive education (EIE) strategy on Ontario’s schools, insists Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne, who oversaw the controversial policy’s development.

LifeSiteNews.com: “When a man has sex with a woman he is consenting to being a father,” said black pastor Walter Hoye, President of the Issues4Life Foundation, in a press release Wednesday. “We want to emphasize the biblical requirement and vital need for men to be involved as providers and protectors when life happens.”

LifeSiteNews.com: Chilean president Sebastian Piñera has declared his intention to veto legislation to legalize “therapeutic abortion” that is currently advancing in the Chilean Senate, according to the leader of Piñera’s party.

Chuck Colson at LifeSiteNews.com: I want you to guess which prominent American public figure said the following: “I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’” He added that what makes a law “just” is that it “squares with the moral law or the law of God,” conversely “unjust” laws are those that are “out of harmony with the moral law.”

LifeNews.com: Yesterday, the Missouri Senate disappointed pro-life advocates when it passed the Missouri Science Innovation & Reinvestment Act (MOSIRA) without adequate pro-life protections.

LifeNews.com: Newly-proposed legislation in Congress would restore federal funding for abstinence education as the Obama administration continues to discriminate against grants to programs that promote abstinence over sex education.

The Religion Clause has this post that links to reports and a backgrounder on the exemption. The Freedom from Religion Foundation has posted this press release. | Complaint: Freedom from Religion Foundation v. Geithner

FRC: Family Research Council (FRC) today praised the passage of the “Weldon Patent Ban” as part of the “America Invents Act” (formerly called the Patent Reform Act) to prevent patenting of human embryos

A Florida couple will receive $4.5 million after winning a wrongful birth lawsuit claiming their son, born with no arms and one leg, should have become a victim of abortion. They complained the doctor in the case should have detected the physical disabilities before birth and suggested an abortion

Times Of India: The European Union, Japan and the United States are already providing $30 billion a year to help poorer nations combat global warming and this Green Climate Fund will be channeling $100 billion a year by 2020.

OneNewsNow.com: “That case will be filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in the next few weeks,” the attorney tells OneNewsNow, “and I believe later this year, before the end of December, we’ll have a word from the high court about taking these cases. And I’m sure that the … court will schedule arguments in the early part of 2012, and by the end of June we will have a ruling on the constitutionality of ObamaCare.”

Rod Dreher at The American Conservative: [T]his phenomenon underlines a key aspect of the change taking place in America’s schools. The public schools are not going to be replaced by a single alternative system; new forms of education are going to appear.
A truly forward thinking community would try to accelerate this process, offering vouchers and other incentives to parents and community groups who are willing to create the schools of the future. Ultimately, parents should have the option to spend education money on whatever program they believe will best serve their children.

OneNewsNow.com: “It’s simply reprehensible that the ACLU and Yale Law School are more concerned about faring their own agenda that exposes children to harm than they are about protecting those children,” Cortman laments. “Certainly, removing porn filters does nothing to end bullying.”

The Monitor – Kansas City Metro Edition: “The ACLU’s ‘Don’t Filter Me Initiative’ would be better named the ‘Public School Porn Initiative,’ says David Cortman, Senior Counsel for ADF. “The ACLU is pushing its radical sexual agenda for children by intimidating school districts with a long string of scare tactics disguised as a concern over censorship. School districts shouldn’t be bullied into exposing students to sexually explicit materials. Our children come first.”

Baptist Press: The research, sponsored by the Alliance Defense Fund, followed a related study conducted by LifeWay Research in October 2010 that found Protestant pastors also largely believe candidates for public office should not be endorsed from the pulpit. | Also on PR Web

Religion Clause: In Kennedy v. St. Joseph’s Ministries, (4th Cir., Sept. 14, 2011), in a 2-1 decision the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the religious organization exemption in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (42 USC 20003-1(a)) applies to religious harassment and retaliation claims, not just to claims of religious discrimination in hiring and discharge.

Roy S. Gutterman at Huffington Post:
Despite its serious free speech implications, this case has flown under the radar for months even though Deferio is backed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a national organization which defends the religious and free speech rights of evangelical Christians engaged in public discourse. Deferio, of Syracuse, has been involved in legal challenges and disputes in Chicago, Elmira, N.Y. and Oneonta, N.Y. . . . Jonathan Scruggs, an ADF lawyer, described the policy as “burdensome” and was not satisfied with the state’s revocation of the policy, which he said was not a policy but “a promise.” “We don’t just challenge SUNY Albany’s policy but also SUNY’s policy,” Scruggs told the court. |

Dakota Voice: But this unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression needs to come to an end, and the Alliance Defense Fund is working to make that happen with their Pulpit Initiative, and any pastor can join. (Links to ADF video on YouTube)

News from The Associated Press: Australian passports will now have three gender options – male, female and indeterminate – under new guidelines to remove discrimination against transgender and intersex people, the government said Thursday.

Teresa Collett at theUniversity Faculty for Life: The woman challenging the Idaho abortion laws says she brought her lawsuit after a district attorney tried to prosecute her for a self-induce abortion. The charges were dismissed, but form the basis for her claim that she fears injury from the enforcement of the Idaho laws. I have blogged previously about her claims related to the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Act here and here, but did not discuss her claim that a law prohibiting self-induced abortion is unconstitutional. This second claim raises several interesting policy and legal issues.

Peterson and Nadler at WSJ.com: These vast contributions to the coffers of state and local governments, though pitched as a jobs bill, are in reality the latest in a series of bailouts for debt-ridden state and local governments.

WSJ.com: In the early 1990s, he spent four years in jail for writing and recording “Massacre,” a poem about the killing of democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Recently he was warned that he faced going back to jail for the upcoming publication abroad of two books: a memoir of his imprisonment and “God Is Red.” In July, Mr. Liao slipped out of China and took refuge in Germany. “God Is Red” consists of informal profiles of Christians in the cities of Beijing, Chengdu and Dali and in remote areas of the southwestern province of Yunnan.

The Hill: Cheney also criticized Paul for his view that the United States should not interfere with countries like Iran as they sought nuclear weapons. “Well, I don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. I don’t want Pakistan to have them. I don’t want any of them to have them,” Paul said. “But I also understand it. And also to put it into perspective, if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, why are they more dangerous to us than the Soviet system was when they had 30,000? And we were able to live with that.” Paul went on to denounce Cheney’s critique as “dangerous.” | Related: Ron Paul reminding voters about real conservatism even in foreign policy? Wilsonianism and the GOP

Thomas Sowell at National Review Online: Ninety years ago — in 1921 — federal income-tax policies reached an absurdity that many people today seem to want to repeat. Those who believe in high taxes on “the rich” got their way. The tax rate on people in the top income bracket was 73 percent in 1921. On the other hand, the rich also got their way: They didn’t actually pay those taxes.

Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund sent letters to every public school superintendent in Tennessee Tuesday, urging them to ignore assertions by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee that religious expression is essentially prohibited in public schools.

News from The Associated Press: The Palestinians will ask the Security Council next week to accept them as a full member of the United Nations, the Palestinian foreign minister said Thursday, a move that would defy Washington’s threat to veto the statehood bid.

The Hill: A House subcommittee voted to require technology that would prevent security scanners from capturing images of passengers’ bodies.

William Carroll at Public Discourse: On the basis of hasty scientific judgment, the Inquisition insisted that the Bible be interpreted in a way that confirmed this conclusion. The Inquisition did not subordinate science to the Bible; rather, it subordinated the interpretation of the Bible to a scientific view that eventually would be shown false . . . Views about science and religion, for example, which see them as fundamentally incompatible, appear to be almost self-evidently true so that anyone who challenges this truth is summarily dismissed. Such smug dismissal of what is seen as obviously false is reminiscent of the Inquisition’s insistence that Galileo affirm that the earth does not move. | Related: ADF-allied attorney rebukes Colorado professor, a high priest of Darwin, with Galileo primer

ADF Attorney Jeffrey A. Shafer will be participating in this Regent University Law Review Symposium.

Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News: The future independent Palestinian state will not include a Jewish minority, a top Palestinian official told USA Today on Wednesday, adding that it was in the best interest of both peoples to “be separated.”

PR Newswire – sacbee.com: The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) today filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Supreme Court defending the ability of government authorities to outlaw public indecency, whether in person or on broadcast TV.

Telegraph: Hardline Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned on Wednesday there would be “harsh and grave consequences” if the Palestinians persist with their plan to seek UN membership as a state.

The Washington Post: “Rick Perry’s a more overt, less subtle guy than George W. Bush, and he is going to be more overt in his policy statements and his statements about his faith,” said Richard Land, a longtime leader of the Southern Baptist Convention who has spoken with Perry about his faith. “He talks about his faith in terms that evangelicals will find completely identifiable.”

Telegraph: China has called for major strategic concessions from Europe before agreeing to rescue the eurozone, chilling hopes for immediate purchases of Italian bonds.

NYTimes.com: Sensing trouble, the Obama campaign and Democratic Party leaders have mobilized to solidify the president’s standing with Jewish voters. The Democratic National Committee has established a Jewish outreach program. The campaign is singling out Jewish groups, donors and other supporters with calls and e-mails to counter the Republican narrative that Mr. Obama is hostile to Israel.

Xtra Canada’s Gay and Lesbian News: Conservative radio host Kari Simpson has filed a police complaint against Out in Schools, an anti-homophobia program, alleging there are “serious and possibly criminal activities involved with this program.”