Daily Archives: September 22, 2011

NYTimes.com: According to a statement by the A.C.L.U., “Federal law entitles service members to separation pay if they have been involuntarily discharged from the military after completing at least six years of service. But in 1991, the Defense Department adopted an internal policy that automatically cuts a former service member’s separation pay in half if the service member is discharged because of ‘homosexuality.’”

KYTX CBS 19: A Fort Worth high school student says he was suspended from school for expressing his Christian beliefs in class. His teacher, however, saw it differently, labeling the student’s comments about homosexuality as bullying.

The Local: Sweden’s top legal official has given backing to the decision to reassign the integration ministry civil servant who compared Islam to totalitarian ideologies.

EuropeNews: Naming his dog Muhammad, and later announcing it during a public meeting, was not meant to be disparaging to Muslims, San Juan Capistrano Councilman Derek Reeve said Tuesday. In offering the first explanation of why he chose the name, Reeve said it was a decision made by his family in an exercise of free speech after teaching his children that in some parts of the world they could be sentenced to death for doing so.

The Christian Institute: Christmas has disappeared from a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD and been replaced by “winter holidays”.

LifeNews.com: The Conservative Party government in Canada has renewed taxpayer funding for the international affiliate of the Planned Parenthood abortion business, which is the largest in the world.

A federal judge ordered the city of Issaquah on Thursday to allow a local small construction company owner to freely hand out Christian literature in public areas at this year’s annual Salmon Days Festival held October 1 and 2. Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit last month . . .

LifeNews.com: Democrats in the U.S. Senate have introduced new legislation to permanently ban the pro-life Mexico City Policy, which prevents the federal government from funding international groups that promote and perform abortions.

Joe Mirabella at The Huffington Post: Former Eastern Iowa KCRG news anchor Liz Mathis announced she will run as a Democrat for the open Iowa seat recently vacated by Democrat Swati Dandekar, who will serve in Governor Branstad’s administration. This is great news for those fighting to preserve marriage equality in Iowa.

The Rev. Michael Rodriguez was transferred to a new parish because his stance on morality and the upcoming recall election “raised serious issues regarding whether his participation could be attributed to the Diocese of El Paso”and his parish,El Paso Catholic Bishop Armando X. Ochoa said. Since 2010, Rodriguez had publicly condemned homosexuality . . .

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: The Mildura and District Branch of the Australian Labor Party has thrown its support behind the push for same-sex marriage in Australia, saying they intend to push this agenda at the party’s National Conference in November. Secretary Ali Cupper said that despite the region being the safest federal conservative seat in the country, there was no reason to assume there would not be support for the idea.

A Christian GP “crossed the line” when he asked a patient if he had considered faith in Jesus, the General Medical Council (GMC) has heard.

Reuters: Tunisia’s new political order will show that Islam and democracy can co-exist just as they have in Turkey, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday.

KMBC Kansas City: The complaint specifically alleges that Ratigan, while an employee of the diocese, created child porn involving the plaintiff in the case and many others. When the diocese became aware of Ratigan’s photographs, the diocese and Finn failed to report Ratigan to the police. Instead, they “aided and abetted” Ratigan over a six-month period by covering up his conduct, duplicating and distributing the images he created and collaborating to destroy evidence, the suit alleges.

BBC News (includes video): Doctors at Moorfields Eye hospital in London have been given the go-ahead to carry out Europe’s first clinical trial using human embryonic stem cell.

How Appealing links to relevant information.

Forbes: I’ve written extensively about the looming fiscal disaster that is CLASS, Obamacare’s new entitlement for long-term care for retirees. Now, according to an official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Obama administration may be shutting the program down.

Dennis Prager at National Review Online: What is disconcerting about Brooks’s piece is that nowhere in what is an important column does he mention the reason for this disturbing trend: namely, secularism. The intellectual class and the Left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.

Yahoo! News: U.S. diplomats walked out of the U.N. General Assembly Thursday as Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a fiercely anti-American speech, attacking the U.S. as an “arrogant power” ruled by greed.

OneNewsNow.com: The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) welcomes the Obama administration’s release of the Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, and the Commission is urging the U.S. government to increase action to promote freedom of religion or belief. Burma, Eritrea, China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan are eight “countries of particular concern,” but USCIRF spokesperson Elizabeth Cassidy says her group thinks the list is incomplete . . .

OneNewsNow.com: “The plain fact of the matter is that we’ve never had a business relationship with PayPal — they’re not our pal,” he tells OneNewsNow. “And I don’t think there will be [a relationship] in the future, given what they’ve said and how they’ve taken sides with the group that’s trying to force business away from PayPal.”

Mirror of Justice carries the details.

LifeSiteNews.com: The Catholic Diocese of Bathurst, New Brunswick has removed an elderly priest from active ministry after he caused a storm of controversy by denouncing homosexuality, cohabitation, and abortion in an August homily.

Bill Saunders at LifeNews.com: In August, Vice President Joseph Biden delivered remarks in China stating that he was not “second-guessing” China’s one-child policy: “Your policy has been one which I fully understand—I’m not second-guessing—of one child per family.”[1] While Biden and the White House later tried to backpedal from those comments, actions taken by the Obama administration actually lend taxpayer support to it, through U.S. contributions to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which is complicit in China’s coercive one-child policy.

LifeNews.com: Last weekend, a militant group of more than 300 pro-abortion activists attacked a much smaller group of pro-life demonstrators, who had gathered to pray peacefully in front of a hospital in Paris where abortions are done.

LifeNews.com: The county government in Memphis has given the Planned Parenthood abortion business a second chance to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funding that pro-life advocates thought would be revoked.

The Washington Post: D.C. public and public charter schools, which annually test student progress in reading and math, will also measure what they know about human sexuality, contraception and drug use starting this spring.

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E. Sears at Townhall : Consider the words of Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, in “After the Ball,” a manifesto in which they wrote: “[Regarding those] who feel compelled to adhere rigidly to an authoritarian belief structure (i.e. an orthodox religion), that condemns homosexuality…our primary objective…is to cow and silence them.” Does not Kirk and Hunter’s approach toward those with whom they disagree smack of the same intolerance on display in China?

Gerard Nadal at LifeNews.com: As the new National Director for Medical Students for Life of America, I have as my first priority the goal of establishing a chapter of MSFLA in every medical school in the United States.

LifeNews.com: Two abortion practitioners in California have lost their medical licenses — with one facing revocation and another facing suspension for problems ranging from alcohol abuse to criminal felony convictions that made them untrustworthy as physicians.

World Bulletin: Kazakhstan’s parliament has voted in favor of a controversial law to ban prayer rooms in all state buildings.

Peter Wehner at EPPC: Asked open-ended questions about right and wrong, moral dilemmas and the meaning of life, what we find is “young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don’t have the categories or vocabulary to do so.” What Smith and his team found is an atmosphere of “extreme moral individualism—of relativism and nonjudgmentalism.”

Religion Clause: In San Diego, each member of city council is allocated $25,000 each year to use to support events in his or her district. Sign On San Diego on Tuesday reported that again this year, Council President Tony Young is allocating a portion of his funds to support a gospel music festival known as Praise Fest . . .

Geoffrey Surtees at ACLJ: Does a federal court have the constitutional authority to order the removal of the Ten Commandments merely because an ACLU member finds their public display demeaning? These questions raise the issue of what’s called “offended observer” standing — an issue at stake in our pending Supreme Court petition in ACLU v. DeWeese.

News from The Associated Press: Kenza Drider’s posters for the French presidential race are ready to go, months before the official campaign begins. There she is, the “freedom candidate,” pictured standing in front of a line of police – a forbidden veil hiding her face.

News from The Associated Press: “We are witnessing a growing indifference to religion in society,” he said at a formal welcoming ceremony at the German president’s Bellevue palace. He called religion a foundation for a successful society and said its values were essential for freedom.

NCPA Policy Digest: Government employees in Galveston, Brazoria and Matagorda counties have controlled their private retirement plan for 30 years, called the Alternate Plan. They opted out of Social Security before Congress changed the law in 1983 to prevent others from withdrawing.

Debra J. Saunders at Townhall: Ware may pay homage to “aspects of the federal judicial system that foster public confidence in the fairness and integrity of the process.” But fairness? Integrity? Ware treated the recordings as spoils that rightfully belong to the victor. Then he issued a ruling that found he was right to do so. In the cause of transparency. Otherwise known as hubris.

ADF Attorney Brett Harvey at Speak Up Movement Church Blog: In a series of short blogs I will explore some of the troubling aspects of the decision in Joyner v. Forsyth County, NC decided on July 29, 2011.

Religion Clause: The Freedom from Religion Foundation announced yesterday two separate complaints to school officials about religious activities.

ADF Attorney Daniel Blomberg appeared on KFUO with Roland Lettner to discuss the threat to religious freedom that DADT poses. | MP3 audio 20:41 mins

ADF Attorney Austin R. Nimocks appeared on Wallbuilders Live in late July to discuss the ADF marriage survey. | MP3 audio 11:58 mins

LifeNews.com: In Ohio, a lawsuit in which Planned Parenthood was recently found to have violated an Ohio informed consent law has been “resolved and dismissed,” according to the Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney who filed the suit. ADF-allied attorney Brian Hurley represents the parents of a girl who, at age 14, was brought to a Planned Parenthood clinic for an abortion by the 22-year-old soccer coach who impregnated her.

Cleveland-Marshall College of Law: In the November 2010 elections, three sitting Iowa Supreme Court justices were ousted as a result of the court’s unanimous ruling in Varnum v. Brien. The Varnum decision struck down, on equal protection grounds, a state statute limiting marriage rights to a union between a man and a woman. The conference seeks to examine the effect the ouster may have on judicial independence as well as its effect on future efforts to challenge, in state courts, laws that prohibit marriage for same-sex couples and to advance other civil rights for LGBT persons through state court litigation

ADF Attorney David Cortman at Human Events: But no matter how the ACLU plays this one, it’s indefensible for a simple reason: it does not violate the First Amendment protected rights of anyone to block sexual sites in school. And make no mistake, the sites that would be accessible if the filters were removed are rife with what can only be considered pornography.

LJWorld.com: Cromwell expects significant opposition to the proposal. In April, about 50 people attended a meeting to express concerns about the gender identity proposal. Representatives from the Alliance Defense Fund, Concerned Women for America, and the Kansas Family Policy Council attended the meeting. Attempts on Wednesday to reach a local organizer of that meeting were unsuccessful. But Cromwell said he had received multiple emails from individuals who objected to the proposal on religious and moral grounds.

The New American: The ADF immediately contacted the township and informed officials that they would take the case to court if Racaniello was not permitted to put the cross anywhere he wanted on his own property. ADF lawyer Jonathan Scruggs declared, “We believe this is private property, and therefore he has a right to engage in this expression. We believe that either [of the two crosses] is protected by the First Amendment. | ADF information page

Jordan Lorence at Speak Up Movement University Blog: Last week, the University of Wisconsin paid almost $500,000 to the Alliance Defense Fund for violating the First Amendment rights of Badger Catholic, the Catholic student organization on campus. ADF has litigated a number of cases against the University of Wisconsin over the years challenging the unconstitutional abuses inflicted on students and student groups by its mandatory student fee system.

News from The Associated Press: Republicans say the plan shifts more power to the federal government and have questioned whether Duncan has the authority to offer such waivers.

Washington Examiner: As Republican lawmakers begin to dig into the White House’s cozy relationship with a startup wireless company and the wealthy Democratic donor who owns it, a new character has appeared on the story’s edges: liberal superdonor, conservative bete noire and controversial investor George Soros.

The Iona Institute : The Scottish Government does not deserve the support of Scotland’s 800,000 Catholics because of its proposal to permit same-sex marriage, a leading bishop has said. The Bishop of Paisley, Philip Tartaglia (pictured), responding to a proposal of the Scottish Government to change the definition of marriage.

In record-setting numbers, young adults struggling to find work are shunning long-distance moves to live with Mom and Dad, delaying marriage and buying fewer homes, often raising kids out of wedlock. They suffer from the highest unemployment since World War II and risk living in poverty more than others – nearly 1 in 5.

Personhood USA: Early next week, the Mexico Supreme Court is slated to hear and decide the constitutionality of two Personhood amendments. They are expected to deliver a verdict by Wednesday.

Personhood USA: Mississippi’s top attorney has endorsed the Mississippi Personhood Amendment and announced his intention to defend the measure in court.