Daily Archives: November 28, 2011

The ADF Alliance Alert will not be published on Tuesday, November 29th.  Publication volume will also be reduced on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.

Texas court refuses to issue immediate order that would prevent recall election against mayor, two council members

EUobserver.com: China is looking to buy EU factories and railways instead of wobbly government bonds as prices fall amid the eurozone crisis. Minister of commerce Chen Deming articulated the strategy at a business congress in China on Monday (28 November).

The Christian Institute: A 17th century Oxford University college has flown the homosexual rainbow flag over one of its buildings, reportedly becoming the first Oxford college to do so.

The Christian Institute: Austin R. Nimocks, Senior Legal Counsel for the Alliance Defence Fund, said: “Some organizations claim that same-sex ‘marriage’ won’t open the door to polygamy and group marriage, but that’s what nearly happened in British Columbia. “Had marriage never been attacked there in the first place, it’s questionable whether this particular assault would have ever occurred.”

SMH.com.au: THE ALP’s Left faction is claiming the numbers to remove from the party’s policy platform a reference to the Marriage Act which defines the union as that between a man and a woman.

Trenton Monitor: But the term “assisting in an abortion” covers a wide range of moral, ethical and religious ground said Demetrios Stratis, a Fair Lawn attorney who is the local counsel. Any action that facilitates the abortion – from filling out forms, to being present at the procedure to holding a patient’s hand during the procedure – could be considered assisting, Stratis told the press. Matt Bowman, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of Christian lawyers and organizations that is representing the nurses, said that previously the hospital hired per-diem nurses or those who volunteered to assist with abortions to help perform them. [more quotes]

Erik Stanley at the Speak Up Movement Church Blog: The settlement is a great victory for the churches in Mission. The City of Mission had forgotten to respect the tax exemption given to churches and may have forgotten the reasons why churches have those exemptions in the first place. Churches are exempt for good reason.

USATODAY.com: James Madison, the “Father of our Constitution,” believed that America’s distinctive commitment to religious liberty “promised a lustre to our country.” And, for more than two centuries, we have been trying — sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing badly — to prove Madison right.

Federal courts have disagreed about how to enforce a law that requires people convicted of possessing child pornography to pay restitution to the victim, even if they didn’t know the victim. But the Supreme Court refused to take up the case Monday.

Fortune Management: While a still uncertain economy pushes more people into poverty, some law firms are decreasing the amount of hours they are devoting to pro bono work.

OneNewsNow.com: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas is taking an unusual stance and defending students’ rights to wear religious symbols at school.

The Washington Post: Dozens of Libyan imams and other religious leaders have demanded the country’s constitution be based on Islamic Shariah law and have also urged the transitional government to get weapons out of the hands of former rebels.

LifeSiteNews: The Federal government of Brazil, currently controlled by the pro-abortion Labor Party, is attempting to shut down Brazil’s largest Catholic television network in apparent retaliation for removing Labor Party hosts from its lineup.

LifeSiteNews.com: Mexico’s current front-runner in the 2012 presidential elections says that he is “personally” pro-life and opposes legalization of abortion in most cases, but adds that he is against criminal penalties for abortion as well.

Robert Schwarzwalder and Julia Kiewit at First Things: The Catholic Archdiocese for Military Service has said “no” to allowing priests in the Armed Forces perform homosexual “weddings,” now that the historic prohibition on homosexuals in the military has been lifted. And most recently, eighteen Catholic colleges and universities banded together and, through the Alliance Defense Fund, submitted comments to HHS citing a violation of religious freedom regarding the interim final rules on preventative services.

Battling Over Birth Control – NYTimes.com: It was distressing but came as no surprise that the new rules prompted protests from Roman Catholic bishops and other church leaders. What is surprising, and even more distressing, is that the White House is considering caving to their call for an expansive exemption that would cover employees of hospitals, universities, charitable organizations and other entities that are associated with religious organizations but serve the general public and benefit from public money.

BosNewsLife: A militant group seeking to enforce Sharia, or Islamic law, throughout Nigeria, has shot and killed two children of an ex-terrorist and “murderer” because he converted to Christianity, well-informed missionaries told BosNewsLife Wednesday, November 23.

LaTimes.com: Officials say an $80,000 Stonehenge-like worship center underscores a commitment to embrace all religions.

Fox News: A male registered nurse and Vietnam war Army medic has sued the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, saying he was fired for disobeying a Muslim supervisor’s order not to treat women wearing conservative Islamic dress.

Reuters: Churches, homes and the police headquarters in the small northeast Nigerian town of Geidam were set ablaze in a wave of night time gun and bomb attacks by a radical Islamist sect, the police said on Sunday.

LifeSiteNews.com: The tenacity of the Catholic Church on the issue is remarkable given the massive pressure directed at the institution on the matter.

LifeNews.com: The study, led by Lilit Khachatryan, included researchers from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the University of Pennsylvania. Khachatryan is from the Department of Public Health, American University of Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia; Robert Scharpfb is from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Sarah Kagan is from the School of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Washington Post: Bowman argued that requiring the nurses to get involved before and after an abortion violated their right to refuse based on their conscientious objections. “Federal and state law explicitly prohibits requiring nurses to assist in abortion against their moral and religious convictions,” Bowman said. “All these nurses are asking is that they not have to assist in any part of an abortion case.” . . . “The more regulations that exist to enforce federal law protecting conscience rights, the better,” Bowman said

NCPA Policy Digest: Because of the immense size of this baby boom generation, the number of senior citizens will more than double between now and 2050, from 40 million to 89 million.

The Washington Post: Just a little more than an hour after some House Democrats recently demanded an inquiry into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s ethics, Senate Republicans stepped up the pressure on Justice Elena Kagan to take herself out of the court’s decision on the health-care reform act.

LifeNews.com: Last week, Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood abortion business, sent a fundraising plea to the pro-abortion activists that support the organization. She complained the last year has been the “most difficult year in our history.”

OneNewsNow.com: ADF attorney Austin R. Nimocks tells OneNewsNow that America should pay attention to what is happening across the border. “Some organizations claim that [legalization of] same-sex ‘marriage’ won’t open the door to polygamy and group marriage, but that’s what nearly happened in British Columbia,” he warns.

Wisconsin State Journal: First it was the ACLU, then the unions. Now the Madison-based Freedom from Religion Foundation is joining the list of organizations speaking out against Madison Preparatory Academy.

Dan Balz at The Washington Post: The 2008 election was a reminder of the demographic forces that are changing America and potentially the political balance in the country. The most diverse electorate in the nation’s history added to the favorable winds that pushed President Obama to victory. He will need the assistance of those shifts even more in 2012 if he is to avoid defeat.

Thomas B. Edsall at NYTimes.com: For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

Allain, Jean, Acculturation Through the Middle Ages: The Islamic Law of Nations and its Place in the History of International Law (October 10, 2011). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1941775

Al Jazeera English: Kuwait’s cabinet has resigned after protesters and opposition deputies demanded that the prime minister step down over allegations of corruption, state-run television has reported.

Religion Clause: The protesters, claiming that the United Nations is spreading anti-Islamic activities in the Maldives, objected to Pillay’s speech before Parliament in which she said that the flogging of women found to have had sex outside marriage is “inhuman and degrading.”

Religion Clause: The London Telegraph and London Mail yesterday both reported on a lawsuit brought by a saleswoman– a Lebanese born Christian– who worked at Britain’s Heathrow Airport World Duty Free shop. She was fired after Muslim co-workers filed a complaint against her.

The Hill: Polls show likely voters are increasingly wary of America’s overseas wars after a decade of fighting, and that economic issues will dominate the 2012 presidential race. But where the candidates stand on several high-profile national security issues will play a role in the campaign

ADF Attorney Nate Kellum at Townhall: The bottom line: the HCC has Constitutional protection and a real opportunity here to bring joy into the lives of the patients at the cancer center, simply by lifting the ban on the “religious aspects” of Christmas.

ADF Attorney Steven Aden at Townhall: The pursuit of death affects people. It changes who they are and what they think and how they live. It does this because it is antithetical to life and to everything that protects and prolongs it.

NJ.com: The number of New Jersey residents receiving food stamps has doubled in the past four years and is at its highest level in more than a decade as the nation’s still sputtering economy continues to take its toll on the poorest residents of the Garden State, state and federal data show.

Eagle Forum Blog: A lot of Asians are not marrying later. They are not marrying at all. Almost a third of Japanese women in their early 30s are unmarried; probably half of those will always be.

But something is missing from this year’s message out of the Obama White House. It’s the mention of sin and the need for repentance.

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E. Sears at Townhall : So as we approach Thanksgiving, we must remember that we do so as a nation rich with history surrounding this holiday. And when we sit round our tables full of plenty, especially in these trying economic times, we ought to bow our heads and hearts to God as did colonial Americans and American statesmen gone before us. Truly, we are fortunate to live here, and not in some communist regime where our land is not our own. And surely we are blessed to have our daily bread…and some Turkey and dressing, too.

Bloomberg: And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

San Jose Mercury News: “(The case) has the potential to settle this question this country wants to know: Is it constitutional for Congress to define marriage as between a man and a woman?” said Dale Schowengerdt, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, another group defending DOMA. “It’s a race to the Supreme Court.”

Post Bulletin: “Our clients simply want to be able to walk through this event and exercise their right to expression,” said Jonathan Scruggs, an attorney for the Alliance. “The key factor here is that the city owns the park and operates the park and does not abdicate authority of it being a public place simply because they have given a permit to a private entity.”

Greeley Gazette: Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, told WND the move was alarming because “this would be the very first governmental and societal disapproval of a sincerely held religious belief, held by a majority of Americans, namely that homosexual behavior is immoral. “It’s the first time the federal government is writing into law a disapproval of that belief,” he said.

El Paso Times: Joel Oster is senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a group dedicated to ending any limits on churches’ political activities. He came from Kansas to defend the recall group. Oster argues that it’s not a violation of Texas law for corporations to help circulate recall petitions. He also says that if it is, then that law violates the First Amendment. “This case is about stopping an election,” Oster said, later adding, “This is absolutely a free-speech case. It’s nothing more than a free-speech case.”

Available here.

News from The Associated Press: The victory of an Islamist Party in Morocco’s parliamentary elections appears to be one more sign that religious-based parties are benefiting the most from the new freedoms brought by the Arab Spring.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Los Angeles v. Alameda Books Nos. 11-245, 11-379. Document related to that litigation, the 9th Circuit opinion, and a summary of the issues involved can be found at SCOTUS Blog here.

News from The Associated Press: China’s sovereign wealth fund wants to invest in improving neglected U.S. and European roads and other infrastructure to spur global growth, the fund’s chairman said in comments published Monday.

News from The Associated Press: More parents are opting out of school shots for their kids. In eight states now, more than 1 in 20 public school kindergartners aren’t getting all the vaccines required for attendance, an Associated Press analysis found.

News from The Associated Press: Since the lifting two months ago of a longstanding U.S. ban on gays serving openly in the military, U.S. Marines across the globe have adapted smoothly and embraced the change, says their top officer, Gen. James F. Amos, who previously had argued against repealing the ban during wartime.

CNN.com: Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, a 16-term Democrat, will announce Monday he does not intend to seek re-election in 2012, according to a statement from Frank’s office.

An eight-year-old Ohio boy who weighs more than 200 pounds was taken from his family last month and placed in foster care after social workers said his mother was not doing enough to control his weight, The Plain Dealer reported.

Douglas Laycock, Government-Sponsored religious Displays: Transparent Rationalizations and Expedient Post-Modernism, 61 Case Western Reserve Law Review 1211-1252 (2011).
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Government-sponsored+religious+displays%3A+transparent+rationalizations…-a0267333210

Daniel R. Suhr, The Religious Liberty of Judges, 20 Wm. & Mary Bill of Rts. J. 179 (2011), http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol20/iss1/6″