Daily Archives: November 9, 2011

MinnLawyer Blog: The American Bar Association has gone on record in support of the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, the law that denies federal benefits for same sex couples married in states that allow for gay marriages.

The Republic: Gay Marriage supporters in Maine have surpassed their goal for petitions to be used if they decide to press forward with another referendum next year.

LifeNews.com: The U.S. Senate is expected to vote soon on four key abortion issues of interest to pro-life advocates and they affect whether taxpayer dollars will pay for abortions and go to pro-abortion groups.

Irishhealth.com: At the time, she explained that her partner was 11 years younger than her, so would be able to care for their daughter throughout her childhood. However, she has since split up with him and is now a single mother in her 60s.

Examiner.com (photo of Jeffrey A. Shafer): According to the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) a federal court ruled Tuesday that the state of New York violated the First Amendment when it rejected a pro-adoption group’s application to sponsor a “Choose Life” specialty license plate as part of a state program. Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed the lawsuit on behalf of The Children First Foundation in 2004.

LifeNews.com: Special Rapporteur Anand Grover has been using his position to redefine the “right to health” as including access to abortion. His argument is two fold

The Guardian: The P.E.I. government doesn’t plan to change its policy on abortion despite calls for access to abortion services in the province from a newly formed lobby group.

Bay Windows: The executive director of the driving force behind New Hampshire’s same-sex marriage law announced Wednesday, Nov. 2 she is resigning due to insufficient funding drawn partly through the group’s national organization.

WMAL 105.9 FM/AM 630s: Maryland’s governor is racheting up his efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. Democrat Martin O’ Malley has joined a newly-launched bipartisan effort to appeal to moderate and independent voters in the fight for same-sex marriage rights.

The Washington Post: Most coverage of Tuesday’s night’s recall of state Senate President Russell Pearce (R) in Mesa, Arizona has focused on the fact that Russell authored the state’s controversial immigration legislation.

LifeNews.com: A Kansas judge ordered some of the 107 charges filed against Planned Parenthood for engaging in illegal abortions and covering up those cases thanks to the destruction of records that took place during the Sebelius administration.

Yahoo! News: German and French officials have discussed plans for a radical overhaul of the European Union that would involve establishing a more integrated and potentially smaller euro zone, EU sources say.

Daily Mail Online: The newest Supreme Court judge yesterday accused the European Court of Human Rights of riding roughshod over democracy. Jonathan Sumption QC said the Strasbourg human rights judges had tried through their rulings to set down ‘a template for most aspects of human life.’

Ocala.com: Two years after a former Marion Technical Institute instructor sued the School Board for violating his religious freedom, the two sides have reached an agreement and will forego a federal court showdown.

AUL: Americans United for Life President and CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest said Wednesday that the “long and noble legal precedent for the personhood of unborn children did not suffer harm by the defeat of the ballot initiative in Mississippi. This measure would not have led to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, but had a symbolic appeal for pro-life Americans. It was not drafted in such a way that it would conflict with Roe.”

WSJ: Energized by the resounding defeat of a Mississippi ballot initiative that would have criminalized abortion and some forms of birth control, abortion-rights groups have gone on the 2012 offensive.

The News-Herald: Gov. John Kasich recently signed into state law House Bill 63, which revises the process of judicial bypass under Ohio’s Parental Consent for Abortion statute.

CBC.ca: On Prince Edward Island, a group of women is advocating for something other Canadian women take for granted. PEI is the only province where legal abortions are not performed.

NPR: The first birth control clinic in the United States opened in 1916. It was operated by Margaret Sanger, who started the clinic after becoming outraged that she couldn’t give her patients — poor women in the tenements on New York City’s Lower East Side — information about contraceptive options.

LifeNews.com: For the next two days (November 9-11) the Vatican is hosting an international conference on adult stem cell research titled ‘Adult Stem Cells: Science and the Future of Man and Culture.’

The Christian Institute: The Christian owners of a Cornish B&B should be recognised as having the same human rights as the homosexual couple who sued them over their double bed policy, the Court of Appeal has heard.

The Christian Institute: The judgment in the appeal case of B&B owners, Peter and Hazelmary Bull, has been reserved – meaning a ruling is not expected to be given for several weeks.

The Sean Hannity Show: Senator Rand Paul exclusively has JUST told Sean that not only are Democrats rejecting offers put on the table, but now they won’t even continue to negotiate and have “walked away from the table…refusing to talk to the Republicans.”
Paul warns the American people that this is all about Obama’s reelection, and the taxpayers livelihood is of no concern to Obama and the Democrats.

LifeSiteNews.com: The president of Ghana is leading the charge as several African countries are making their stand against Britain’s threat that they either legalize homosexual acts or be excluded from financial aid.

LifeSiteNews.com: The court, which is the nation’s highest authority on constitutional matters, voted 9-1 on Nov. 3rd against the suit challenging the constitutionality of Chile’s Civil Code, which recognizes marriage as the union of “a man and a woman.”

LifeSiteNews.com: “No Catholic facility or property, including but not limited to parishes, missions, chapels, meeting halls, Catholic educational, health, or charitable institutions or benevolent orders, or any place dedicated, consecrated, or used for Catholic worship may be used for the solemnization or consecration of same-sex marriages,” the decree states.

LifeNews.com: A Michigan judge has responded to a lawsuit the state attorney general filed seeking the closure of two abortion centers in the state by issuing a ruling saying they must be shut down while he examines the issues further.

WSJ.com: Biyan Zhou wanted to major in engineering. Her mother and her academic adviser also wanted her to major in it, given the apparent career opportunities for engineers in a tough job market. But during her sophomore year at Carnegie Mellon University, Ms. Zhou switched her major from electrical and computer engineering to a double major in psychology and policy management.

Florida Independent (includes FFRF letter): “In a letter to state legislators, the co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation warn policy-makers that a new school prayer bill is “patently unconstitutional . . . Last week, a state education committee amended Senate Bill 98 . . . ”

KSTU (includes video and link to ACLU documents): The ACLU sent out a letter to Utah school superintendants after a report of a high school girl who was allegedly told to leave after bringing a female date.

Liberty Counsel: Today Liberty Counsel filed its Reply Memorandum of Law in Support of its Motion to Dismiss a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Virginia against the Giles County School Board, after Narrows High School posted a display on law with eleven equal-size frames, one of which includes the Ten Commandments.

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E. Sears at Townhall: The Obama administration’s obsession with appointing a wide range of “czars” flies in the face of this construct and is dangerous to our form of government.

MyFoxNY.com: “Pro-adoption organizations have the right to a specialty license plate on the same terms as any other organization, and the court’s decision affirms that,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Jeff Shafer. “The state is not authorized to censor The Children First Foundation for its life-affirming viewpoint, but it has gotten away with doing so for 10 years now since the application was first submitted.”

Second Union News: (translated from Portuguese by Google) To counter what some pro-abortion groups that practice anti-life must be approved in Brazil because of international agreements that the woman’s right to propose Dr. Piero Tozzi of the Alliance Defense Fund in the U.S., offered a lecture at the Second Congress Life for Justice and Human Life International in Sao Paulo this weekend, which ensured that there is no international law requiring the approval of abortion and that this is not a “right” reproductive.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Democrats and Republicans took one victory each in races for two openings on state appellate courts.

MiamiHerald.com: The cost to house a captive at Guantánamo Bay is $800,000 per year, far in excess of other federal or state lockups.

Christian News: The Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit on behalf of 12 nurses who work for the federally funded facility. “The hospital passed a policy and put one of the nurses who did abortions in a supervisory position and started forcing nurses to assist in abortions out of the blue,” said legal counsel Matt Bowman. “It’s in complete violation of federal and state law – that says you can’t force people to assist abortions.”

The Tennessean: The Cheatham County school district has filed a response to the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, after the group maintained that a Sycamore High School teacher had the constitutional right to participate at the recent Fields of Faith event.

Christian Newswire: This evening the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project (LOLP), along with its co-counsel, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), filed its motion to intervene, as of right or permissively, to defend the constitutionality of the North Carolina’s “Woman’s Right to Know Act,” only one provision of which is currently enjoined, requiring abortionist’s to give women needed information, and also show and explain “real time” ultrasound images of a mother’s child before the mother may give her fully “informed consent” electing to abort her pregnancy . . .

Religion Clause: Klingenschmitt insisted he had a right to pray “in Jesus name” whenever he led prayers

A federal court ruled Tuesday that the state of New York violated the First Amendment when it rejected a pro-adoption group’s application to sponsor a “Choose Life” specialty license plate as part of a state program.

Education News » Deflating the Higher Education Bubble: Most of this debt is the result of skyrocketing education costs. Since 1985, the CPI (Consumer Price Index) has increased by 115%, while the college education inflation rate is 498%.

Religion Clause: Following up on a complaint last week by Americans United, the Arkansas Department of Human Services says it will change its inspection checklist for pre-kindergarten schools funded under the Arkansas Better Chance (ABC) program to assure compliance with church-state restrictions.

Religion Clause: Yesterday’s Irish Examiner reports that a judge in Britain’s High Court of Justice has ruled that the nature of the relationship between a priest and the Catholic Church is one that can give rise to vicarious liability of the diocesan bishop for sexual abuse committed by the priest. In JGE v. English Province of Our Lady of Charity, (High Ct. QB Div, Nov. 8, 2011), Mr. Justice MacDuff wrote . . .

News from The Associated Press: Washington voters have approved a plan to privatize liquor sales, siding with Costco in the costliest initiative campaign in state history.

News from The Associated Press: Text books in Pakistani schools foster prejudice and intolerance of Hindus and other religious minorities, while most teachers view non-Muslims as “enemies of Islam,” according to a study by a U.S. government commission released Wednesday.

News from The Associated Press: Voters in dozens of cities and towns across Georgia have struck down long-standing rules against Sunday alcohol sales, leaving just two other states in the nation with similar bans intact.

News from The Associated Press: White House officials are praising the defeat of an anti-abortion proposal in Mississippi that would have defined life as beginning at conception.

News from The Associated Press: A new left-wing party in Poland has demanded the removal of a crucifix that hangs in parliament, a move seen by many citizens as a provocative challenge to a cherished symbol in the mainly Catholic country.

News from The Associated Press: A court sentenced 31 Hindus to life imprisonment Wednesday for killing dozens of Muslims by setting a building on fire during one of India’s worst rounds of communal violence nine years ago.

Dorothy Rabinowitz at WSJ.com: Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls—from near zero to the third slot in several polls—should come as no surprise to people who have been watching the Republican debates, now drawing television viewers as never before. The former speaker has stood out at these forums, the debater whose audiences seem to hang on his words and on a flow of thought rich in substance, a world apart from the usual that the political season brings.

WSJ.com: In Italy, as in Greece, Spain and Portugal and eventually France, the welfare-entitlement state has hit a wall. Successive governments on the Continent, right and left, have financed generous entitlements with high taxes and towering piles of debt.

The Hill: Justice Stephen Breyer questioned what a democratic society would look like if people believed the government was tracking them for days at a time.

Middle East Forum: Amid all the debate as to what lies in store for Libya, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Islamism will be the dominant political force in the country. Indeed, this trend should already have been clear in the treatment of David Gerbi, a Libyan Jew residing in Italy who returned to his ancestral homeland in the summer to fight alongside the rebels against Gaddafi. Yet when he tried to rebuild and reopen the abandoned and desolate synagogue in Tripoli, he faced death threats, intimidation and protests, such that he was eventually deported. The National Transitional Council (NTC) dismissed this matter as one of no importance . . .

The Washington Post: Ohioans voted Tuesday to repeal a Republican-backed law that restricted collective bargaining for public workers, while Mississippi voters blocked an amendment that would have defined a fertilized egg as a person.

PilotOnline.com: Virginia Republicans early Wednesday claimed victory in their quest to take the state Senate – if not with an outright majority, with a 20-20 split that gives the Republican lieutenant governor, Bill Bolling, the tie-breaking vote.

HSLDA: Local and state education officials have threatened to take the Dudek family’s children to school by brute force, according to a letter to parents Jürgen and Rosemarie Dudek obtained by HSLDA. The letter from Hesse Regional School Office Director Anita Hoffman says that among the remedies the state may use against the family is to “take custody of the children from the parents” or to “transport the children to school by force.”

Rose Marie Belforti has won re-election as town clerk in the Finger Lakes community of Ledyard, a result which drew praise from traditional marriage advocates.

ADF, Jubilee Campaign file motion to intervene in defense of state law being attacked by ACLU, Planned Parenthood

LifeNews: With 1559 of 1876 precincts counted, the amendment failed by a 58 to 42 percentage point margin.

Abortion is the greatest injustice of our day . . .

Voters in Ohio have approved a ballot measure intended to keep government from requiring Ohioans to participate in any health care system.

Republicans had hoped for a 25-25 tie and the potential to move forward on now-gridlocked priorities, such as a move to begin the process to ban same-sex marriage in Iowa.