Daily Archives: October 5, 2011

AFP: Hundreds of Christian Copts protested outside the state television building on Tuesday after a church was burned in the southern Aswan district and demanded that the governor be sacked, the channel reported.

AINA.org: On Monday, October 3, Muslims surrounded St. Mary’s Church in the Upper Egyptian village of Elmadmar, Tema district, Sohag province, in an effort to demolish it.

Sacramento Bee: Equality California had previously said it would try to reverse Proposition 8 during next year’s presidential election, saying high turnout among young voters could boost its chances of success.

ABC News: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is telling abortion rights advocates that Republicans want to roll back women’s health gains 50 years.

Telegraph: Mr Cameron said: “We’re consulting on legalising gay marriage. To anyone who has reservations, I say: Yes, it’s about equality, but it’s also about something else: commitment. Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other. “So I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.”

Boston.com: A House committee voted Wednesday to eliminate some $50 million that President Barack Obama requested for the U.N. organization that helps women and children in developing countries with reproductive health and family planning, a reflection of growing Republican anger with both the world body and its work in China.

Christian Post:
Megachurch preacher and bestselling author Joel Osteen, pressed by CNN’s Piers Morgan on his views regarding homosexuality, said Tuesday during an interview that his stance on the issue is grounded in the Bible, which he said will still present homosexuality as sin, even 200 years from now.

The Blog of Legal Times: The FTC has proposed five changes to rules implementing the law. Among them: updating the definition of “personal information” to include geolocation information and certain types of persistent identifiers, such as tracking cookies; streamlining and clarifying the direct notice that operators must give parents before collecting children’s personal information; adding new methods to obtain verifiable parental consent; and eliminating the “email plus” method of parental consent, which allows operators to obtain consent through an email to the parent, coupled with an additional confirmation.

WCTI 12: “The proximity to the school has zero relevance,” Paul Albert said. “There is no Constitutional right for schoolchildren not to be exposed to the message on this sign. Furthermore, kids across the country are already being exposed to what homosexuality is, according to the state. This sign just tells what the church’s position is on the matter.”

And make no mistake: every political question is, at root, a moral issue. That, of course, is the underlying reason for every legal effort to silence and sabotage the participation of churches and pastors in the political process . . .

An American Marine has won a relatively landmark case in a military court, which ruled that it was permissible for him to wear some parts of his Marine uniform in a homosexual porn movie.

News from The Associated Press: A decision by Ohio officials to remove all pork products from prison menus in response to a lawsuit by Muslim inmates is not sitting well with the state’s pork producers and processors.

News from The Associated Press: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (AN’-toh-nihn skuh-LEE’-uh) says the quality of federal judges has suffered because there are too many of them.

POLITICO.com: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is turning up the heat on Eric Holder, demanding the attorney general “come forward and at least admit” he knew about “Fast and Furious” long before he told Congress he learned about the gun program.

LifeNews.com: The state of Kansas filed a 144-page legal document yesterday defending a new state law that prevents state taxpayer dollars from financing the Planned Parenthood abortion business via family planning programs.

Fox News: Prosecutors have reopened hundreds of dormant investigations of former Nazi death camp guards and others who might now be charged under a new precedent set by the conviction of retired U.S. autoworker John Demjanjuk, The Associated Press has learned.

Scientists reported Wednesday that for the first time they used cloning techniques to coax human eggs to generate embryonic stem cells containing the genes of specific patients.

Glenn T. Stanton at Baptist Press: Their data indicates that people with cohabiting experience who marry have a 50 to 80 percent higher likelihood of divorcing than married couples who never cohabited. A Canadian sociologist explains . . .

Chicago Sun-Times: Chicago is altering the route, size and starting time of its annual Gay Pride Parade to curb public drinking and accommodate crowds that topped 800,000 last year.

KSDK.com: Two women say they were the victims of discrimination after they were asked to leave St. Louis’ Four Seasons Hotel for kissing.

Michael Walter Fitzgerald, whom President Obama nominated in July to the bench, is the fourth out federal judicial nominee chosen by the White House.

“The state board that regulates political spending in Minnesota finalized new reporting guidelines Tuesday for private donations to ballot measure campaigns, a decision with implications for next year’s statewide vote on a gay marriage amendment.”

NewsObserver.com: An online legal services company is suing the N.C. State Bar over a long-simmering standoff that highlights the uneasy relationship between private-practice lawyers and inexpensive, do-it-yourself online help for simple law problems. The lawsuit by LegalZoom.com, filed in Wake County Superior Court, asks that a judge declare that the company is entitled to sell standard legal forms on its website and that it be allowed to register in this state to sell prepaid legal services.

USATODAY.com: As the Supreme Court raised the curtain on its new term Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts heralded the 25th anniversary of the justice who has become a showman of the bench, Antonin Scalia.

William J. Bennett at CNN.com: For the first time in history, women are better educated, more ambitious and arguably more successful than men.

LifeSiteNews.com: But the unlikely victory of a solidly pro-life candidate in the state’s 12th District in last month’s special election has some pro-family advocates saying that the tide may be turning.
Republican Keiko Orrall defeated Democratic candidate Roger Brunelle, Jr. in a special election held September 21st, claiming a seat in the state legislature that has been occupied by a Democrat for 30 consecutive years.

Wesley J. Smith at Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog: Penn bioethicist Art Caplan and I have had some vocal disagreements over the years, but we tend to think very similarly about organ transplant issues. Now Art and four other bioethicists have an opinion column in The Lancet calling for a boycott of Chinese scientists over its barbaric human organ market. From “Time For a Boycott of Chinese Science and Medicine Pertaining to Organ Transplantation” . . .

Wesley J. Smith at Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog: Legalized assisted suicide costs us the presence of good people, who had they been given emotional support to help them not commit suicide in their time of health extremis, would be so glad to be alive.

A Reluctant Sinner Blog: The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano has published a scathing opinion piece today (5 October), which questions the real motives behind the BBC’s desire to replace the ancient dating abbreviations “BC” (Before Christ) and “AD” (Anno Domini) with the more secular “BCE” (Before Common Era) and “CE” (Common Era).

Rebecca Taylor at LifeNews.com: One of the most asked about and difficult ethical issues for Catholic parents to deal with is the issue with vaccination. Many vaccines are created with cell lines that originated from an aborted fetus.

Sonia Arrison at The Volokh Conspiracy: Could class conflict or even warfare break out over life-extension technologies? It is true that technology is rarely adopted by everyone at the same time, and when life-extending science hits the market, it will almost certainly be used by the wealthy first. In the early stages of the technology’s rollout, disparities in life expectancy between people within developed countries will surely grow, as will the difference in life expectancy between developed and developing countries.

Nina Totenberg at NPR (includes audio): The United States Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a major case testing the rights of teachers in religious schools. At rock bottom, the issue is who is a minister and when, if ever, that individual is exempt from the nation’s civil rights laws.

Shirley and Megan Phelps-Roper brought this First Amendment challenge to a Manchester, Missouri ordinance that regulates protests near funerals.

Religious Clause Blog: Catholic Register reported that on Monday Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, with 100 religious leaders present, opened formal consultations on creation by Canada of an Office of Religious Freedom.

Jason Adkins at StarTribune.com: But what animates the Star Tribune and other purveyors of a false secularism is a politically correct rewriting of the First Amendment, in which the newfangled concept of “freedom of worship” is substituted in place of “religious freedom” — a move that seeks to “protect the public” by enclosing religious people and their evangelical witness within their own walls. Our state and our nation cannot afford this naked public square.

The Hill: New polls in three states show that Herman Cain is leading the Republican field, reinforcing evidence that the former businessman’s campaign has gained serious traction in the GOP race.

Mike Adams at Townhall: Alexander Solzhenitsyn once observed that what was taken from the East by force is now being relinquished by the West voluntarily. It is tough not to think of what Solzhenitsyn said nearly a quarter of a century ago as one observes recent developments at Vanderbilt University.

Religion Clause: In Child Evangelism Fellowship of Minnesota v. Minneapolis Special School District No. 1, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 113380 (D MN, Sept. 30, 2011), a Minnesota federal district court refused to issue a preliminary injunction to require school officials to include the Good News Club in the school district’s formal After-School Youth Enrichment Program that includes school publicity, busing and snacks for participants.

Religion Clause:: The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was scheduled to go out of business last week. 22 USC Sec. 6436 originally provided that USCIRF “shall terminate on September 30, 2011.” A reauthorization bill, HR 2867, passed the House on Sept. 15 and is now pending in the Senate.

Fox News: Following Tuesday’s hearing, Jeremy Tedesco, an attorney for the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, said he believes the Appeals Court will overturn the ruling because it violated Ward’s First Amendment rights. “Ultimately, the university has a really tough battle here,” Tedesco told FoxNews.com. “The bottom line to us is that this is very clear violation of her First Amendment rights in a couple of different contexts.”

David Ingram at National Law Journal: The price of hiring former U.S. solicitor general Paul Clement to defend the federal ban on recognizing same-sex marriage could go as high as $1.5 million, according to a new modification of Clement’s contract with the U.S. House of Representatives.

Jacques Berlinerblau at the Washington Post: The Alliance Defense Fund has been training pastors to preach politics from the pulpit in violation of the IRS’s 501 (c) (3) provision. And they have filmed the proceedings. And sent the evidence to the IRS. And the IRS has done nothing (as best we can tell). Leading me to wonder if tax cheats ought just make a little video chronicling their crimes and send it to the IRS in a preemptive, innoculating sort of a gesture. [more . . . ]

Detroit Free Press: Instead, Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defense Fund told the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, EMU escalated the situation and ended up kicking Ward, then a graduate student, out of its counseling program.

James Castle at Kansan.com: In response, Schowengerdt argued that “such a radical definition” of marriage should not be implemented just because new relationship and family types exist. Comparing same-sex marriage to polygamy, Schowengerdt sought to redirect the audience’s focus to the purpose of marriage — to act as a stabilizer for heterosexual parents and their biological children — and he asks listeners to question whether recognition of same-sex marriage would promote an “ideal” parenting structure.

Christian Post: She went to her supervisor and said, ‘I may not be the right person for this particular client,” her attorney, Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defense Fund, told The Christian Post.

Ypsilanti Courier – Heritage Newspapers: Jeremy Tedesco represents Ward on behalf of the Alliance Defense Fund, a national legal organization founded to “defend our First Liberty — religious freedom.” . . . “(Ward) didn’t ask for anything that anyone else hadn’t asked for,” Tedesco said . . .

ProLifeBlogs: “They didn’t even contact the Executive Council,” said Michael Norton, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), who was contacted by three members of the council last week. “The sovereign state of New Hampshire made a decision it believes is in the best interests of the citizens, and that decision has simply been run roughshod over by the Obama administration.”

LifeNews.com: In preparation for the November 18 deadline, House Republicans and Senate Democrats have prepared dramatically different appropriations bills when it comes to the issue of abortion.

Michael W. McConnell at WSJ.com: The Supreme Court weighs whether the feds can decide which church employees are clergy and which aren’t.

Bloomberg: U.S. employers announced the most job cuts in more than two years in September, led by planned reductions at Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and in the military.