Daily Archives: November 8, 2011

Chicagotribune.com: Walker said Monday that the evergreen decorated with ornaments and adorned with a star in the center of Wisconsin’s Capitol Rotunda is a Christmas tree, not a holiday tree as it’s been called for the past 25 years.

LifeNews: Open records received by Operation Rescue from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment raise more questions than they answer about the recent revelation that documents containing critical evidence against Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri were shredded under the Sebelius Administration.

Baptist Press: The killing of 27 people — including at least 23 Christians — who were protesting the burning of a church building has removed any respect most Egyptians had for the transitional military government, according to Christian human rights activists and members of Egyptian churches in the country.

The Charlotte Observer: N.C. Baptists meeting today in Greensboro elected Charlotte pastor Mark Harris to be their new president and endorsed a proposed state constitutional amendment that would reinforce North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage.

BBC News: Families would have no legal right to stop dead relatives’ organs being used for transplant if the person has not opted out in advance, under a proposed Welsh law.

Yahoo! News: Its abortion rate — 1.3 million, or 73 per 100 births in 2009 — is the world’s highest. Backed by the Russian Orthodox Church, an influential anti-abortion lobby is driving a moral crusade to tighten legislation and shift public attitudes that are largely a legacy of the Soviet era.

Utah Pulse: Numbers from the Pew Research Center shows that 46% of Americans oppose gay marriage, while 45% support legalization. However, 85% of “staunch conservatives” and 72% of “Main Street Republicans” oppose gay marriage, while Democratic groups are all over the map.

Northwest Herald: Just to be clear, no speakeasies, dance halls or more-than-massage parlors have voiced interest in calling Johnsburg home. Despite this lack of interest, Johnsburg’s Village Board has taken the opportunity to freshen up its adult entertainment ordinance . . .

JPost: There need to be “three attempts to make him convert to Islam before they can kill him,” Parsons said. He cited Shari’a Islamic law as the basis for the threeattempts rule.

Jason Adkins StarTribune.com: It is not surprising to see the Star Tribune continue to beat the drum in opposition to the marriage protection amendment that will appear on the November 2012 ballot (“On gay marriage, state is out of step,” Oct. 1). What is troubling is the paper’s attack on the Catholic Church’s participation in the public debate

ADF Attorney Kevin Theriot at Speak Up Movement Church Blog: A recent column in USAToday titled “5 rules for faith and politics 2012” proposes rules the authors say would avoid both theocracy and hostility toward religion. But all they succeed in doing is marginalizing people of faith who have the audacity to think their most cherished beliefs about God and morality should affect all aspects of their lives – including how they vote

Scotsman.com: Church leaders have called on the police to investigate an event in Edinburgh where people will be given advice on “DIY” euthanasia.

Daily Mail Online: Britain has lost its ‘moral compass’ and should look to the conduct of the Armed Forces to instill proper standards of decency, the former head of the Army argues today.
A series of scandals that have rocked the country are evidence people in the UK are struggling to differentiate between right and wrong, warns General Lord Richard Dannatt.

The Christian Institute: The Christian owners of a Cornish B&B who were sued by a homosexual couple because of their policy of only allowing married couples to share double rooms are taking their case to the Court of Appeal today.

The Christian Institute: Media watchdog Ofcom is clamping down on radio broadcasters which flout rules meant to protect children from inappropriate music lyrics.

Daily Inter Lake: A land swap has been proposed to defuse the controversy over a statue of Jesus Christ atop Big Mountain. Congressman Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., is seeking public comment on draft legislation to exchange approximately 625 square feet of land between Whitefish Mountain Resort and the U.S. government.

How Appealing reports and links to the roll call.

The Guardian: Jonathan Sumption QC believes that UK judiciary is too closely involved in making decisions best left for parliament

LifeNews.com: A new Environics poll conducted for the pro-life group LifeCanada finds Canadians would rather kill the pain of patients rather than patients themselves, as they support palliative care and hospice over euthanasia.

ADF Allied Attorney Demetrios K. Stratis appears in the video.

Fox News: The popular Fox comedy “Glee” is set to air an episode Tuesday featuring two couples – the heterosexual Finn and Rachel and the homosexual Kurt and Blaine – losing their virginity. And even before it’s even hit the airwaves, the episode has sparked controversy.

ADF Attorney Steven Aden at Townhall: Last month, Planned Parenthood celebrated 95 years of providing “essential health care” for women throughout this country. But if you’re like most Americans, there’s a good chance you didn’t know the anniversary took place. For unlike the pro-abortion heydays of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, Planned Parenthood’s so-called “successes” are frequently being heralded with a whimper rather than a bang. The bottom line is that more and more Americans—especially young Americans—find the killing fields of Planned Parenthood abhorrent.

OneNewsNow.com: Wisconsin lawmakers are processing a bill that would expand charter schools in the state by creating an independent charter school program.

LifeSiteNews.com: Pro-life students at Simon Fraser University set up a display on campus depicting the horror of abortion without incident Monday morning, despite the university’s disapproval.

LifeSiteNews.com: The national movement to constitutionally define an unborn baby as a person is now gaining traction in Arkansas, and may appear on the November 2012 ballot.

The Times of India: Worried over the ” missing girls”, red cross societies in Haryana will train over 11,000 college students, preferably girls, as “save girl sainiks” to launch a campaign against female foeticide in the state known for a skewed gender ratio in the country.

CNN.com: is top teeth came in before his bottom teeth. That is how elders of the Kara tribe determined that a healthy baby boy needed to be killed. The child was “mingi” — cursed, according to their ancient superstitions.

LifeSiteNews.com: An initiative to constitutionally define personhood as beginning at the moment of conception, which has been the source of some contention in the pro-life movement, has now received the backing of the Family Research Council (FRC), one of the United States’ most influential pro-life and pro-family organizations.

Life News: “Some are concerned about that, but I frankly don’t think it’s a direct challenge to Roe,” Forsythe told Baptist Press. “A direct challenge to Roe would be a criminal prohibition on abortion. This is not a criminal prohibition on abortion.”

St. Petersburg Times: Personhood USA, the Colorado group behind the Mississippi ballot question, has been collecting petition signatures to bring a similar proposal to Florida. But Florida election laws already have dashed the hopes of the group to have the measure appear on a statewide ballot next year.

How Appealing links to reports and the ruling.

“When you single out who is and who is not protected from bullies, that misses the point,” Dys said on Tuesday’s MetroNews Talkline. “Laws and school rules like this should govern objective action and not subjective characteristics of the victim.”

Religion Clause: In Tunisia, Rachid Ghannouchi, head of the moderate Islamic Ennahda party that won 40% of the seats in Parliament in last month’s elections, says that the country’s new constitution will not make reference to Shariah or Islamic law.

Religion Clause: Another battle over government recognition of religion appears to be developing in connection with H.R. 2070, the World War II Memorial Prayer Act of 2011. The proposed law would add a plaque with Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day Prayer to the World War II Memorial in Washington.

GLAD reports on the IRS “action on decision” in O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner, 134 T.C. 34 (2010) (
T.C. Docket No. 6402-0)

Center for Reproductive Rights: Today, an international human rights body condemned Peru for violating the human rights of a young woman seeking legal abortion services in the country and ruled that the government must ease its restrictions on abortion.
In a groundbreaking decision issued in L.C. v. Peru . . .

Michael Foust at Baptist Press: After suffering disappointing losses in Colorado in 2008 and 2010, the pro-life community’s young personhood movement is on the verge of what would be a landmark victory in Mississippi to define all human life as beginning at conception.

The Republic: Federal attorneys in Pittsburgh have sued an anti-abortion protester, claiming she violated the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act by allegedly pushing two volunteers who were escorting a woman into a city clinic.

Rasmussen Reports™: There’s a lot of anger in America today, but voters seem to reserve a special place in hell for Congress and the large banks bailed out by the federal government.

News from The Associated Press: A British court has ruled that Roman Catholic priests are equivalent to employees, a decision that could pave the way for victims of sexual abuse to win damages from the church.

Chuck Norris at Townhall: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 110 children have autism spectrum disorders, which is strikingly more than just two decades ago. (ASDs are a group of developmental disabilities that can cause communication, behavioral and social challenges.) The National Autism Association calls the 644 percent increase of ASDs among U.S. children since the early 1990s “a tragic epidemic of autism.”

Christian Post: Belforti reached out to the Alliance Defense Fund, a religious freedom advocacy organization, for help. An ADF lawyer, Jordan L[o]rence, commented on the case: “We need to protect religious liberty and the right of conscience. And legalizing same-sex marriage creates these kinds of conflicts.” “[Protecting] these town clerks,” L[o]rence says, is akin to protecting religious freedom.

News from The Associated Press: The Vatican has entered into an unusual partnership with a small U.S. biotech company to promote using adult stem cells for treating disease, rather than focusing research on embryonic stem cells.

Susa Olasky at WORLD Magazine: Samuel B. Casey, an attorney with the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project, said the ordinance is the “result of a private political organization using the power of government to attack another organization based on that organization’s ideas and speech.” The Alliance Defense Fund and Texas Center for Defense of Life are also helping LifeCare with its suit.

Pacific Justice Institute: Opening legal briefs have been filed in the California Court of Appeal, arguing that San José school officials broke the law by refusing to even consider a parent’s request to change a controversial pro-gay celebration at her child’s middle school.

News from The Associated Press: An assistant dean at the University of Illinois College of Law inflated grades and entrance exam scores for several years for incoming students in data that was posted online, according to a report released Monday by the university.

News from The Associated Press: A transsexual woman and an openly gay man took seats in Poland’s newly elected parliament Tuesday, historic firsts that reflect profound social change in this traditionally Roman Catholic country.

Public Discourse: Four points in defense of human dignity. Adapted from an address delivered last night at the University of Pennsylvania.

CNSnews.com: A majority of Democrats—52 percent—say they seldom or never go to church, according to Gallup data published Monday.