Daily Archives: January 11, 2012

Hindustan Times: Cases of Christians being attacked have more than doubled in the past three years in India with Karnataka and Orissa being the worst according to a report released by a Christian organisation on Wednesday. Maharashtra is among the ten worst states . . .

The Court says that the ministerial exception is not limited to the head of a church, but in fact does reach down to employees who qualify as “ministers” . . .

Forbes: No matter how you hold the lens of personal bias Millennials seem to be determined to divorce themselves from marriage.

Ceskapozice.cz (report contains graphic birthing images): Czech law unfairly denies coverage for homebirths, insurers don’t reimburse cost of hiring midwives, say women filing suit at ECtHR

The Washington Post: President Barack Obama said Wednesday he wants to reward companies that invest in America and eliminate tax breaks for companies that don’t, and he’s planning new tax proposals to do it.

Wichita Eagle: The American Civil Liberties Union is planning to question Kansas insurance providers about the impact of a new law restricting abortion coverage.

CBC News: A biotechnology company announced it has developed a machine to decode an individual’s DNA in a day for $1,000 US, a long-sought price goal for making the genome useful for medical care.

LifeSiteNews.com: A bill outlawing race- and gender-based abortions was introduced in the Florida state senate by State. Sen Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, on January 6th. Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, filed the same measure in the House of Representatives.

LifeNews.com: Pro-life activist Randall Terry, last year, launched a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. He did so to qualify as a federal candidate in order to air graphic abortion ads on television under a law requiring stations to air them.

BBC News (includes video): The head of Nigeria’s Christian Association says he is actively pursuing dialogue with his Muslim counterparts in an attempt to ease religious tensions.

Huffington Post: The Windy City Times reports that state representatives Greg Harris, Deb Mell, Kelly Cassidy, Ann Williams, Sara Feigenholtz and state senator Heather Steans have begun meeting with area LGBT and progressive groups to talk strategy for a bill that could be introduced as early as 2013.

The Advocate: The leaders of Maryland’s legislature seem to expect that lawmakers will pass marriage equality this year, but the Senate President warned today that passing the bill would trigger a backlash from voters who would then overturn them at the ballot box.

Freedom From Religion Foundation : The Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service over questionable campaign intervention activities at Jubilee Family Church in Oskaloosa, Iowa. | C-Span Video

Virginian-Pilot: The first day of the 2012 General Assembly session dawned early today as Virginia’s leaders and lawmakers gathered to seek full stomachs and spiritual guidance at the 40th annual Commonwealth Prayer Breakfast.

SeattlePI.com: Two Eastside Republican state senators, Sens. Steve Litzow and Cheryl Pflug, have declared their support for same-sex marriage even as GOP leaders argue that the Legislature should not take up the issue.

The Coloradan: Prayer may become part of the Larimer County commissioners’ weekly routine, although not as part of their official agenda. Commissioner Lew Gaiter III has launched what he plans to make a regular event preceding the commissioner’s Tuesday administrative matters meeting at the county courthouse

Seattlepi.com: That margin currently stands at 22-18, and the measure needs 25 votes to pass the Senate.

Catholic Culture: An eye-opening study by Nicholas Eberstadt shows that sex-selection abortion has begun to tip the demographic balance against girls—not just in India and China . . .

The Washington Post: You’ll recall that last year a D.C. rabbi, Shmuel Herzfeld, sued the city after it scheduled a special election for April 26 — the final day of Passover, a high Jewish holy day.

Religion Clause: His decision follows a report (full text) by Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway recommending against approval, in part because of the complexity of the Establishment Clause issues involved.

Fox News (includes video): State employees in California have two options: join the Service Employees International Union or refuse membership and still be required to pay non-member dues

News from The Associated Press: On Jacob Gingerich’s farm in western Kentucky, there is no phone or electricity for his family of 12 children. He even sees putting an orange safety triangle on their black horse-drawn buggy as a violation of the simple and pious life his Amish faith requires.

Reuters: The White House on Thursday refused to say whether lawyers at the U.S. Justice Department gave the green light to President Barack Obama’s controversial appointments to two agencies but experts said the department almost certainly did provide advice.

Bruce Ackerman at WSJ: Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, writing for all eight Republican members on the Judiciary Committee, has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to elaborate the Justice Department’s position on the key issues.

Globe Gazette: A decade of budget-cutting has left Iowa’s court system crippled, and another round of reductions would threaten the quality of justice delivered in the state, Chief Justice Mark S. Cady warned lawmakers on Wednesday.

News from The Associated Press: A man accused of plotting to attack Tampa, Fla.-area nightclubs and a sheriff’s office with bombs and guns also railed against Christians, Jews and Western living in videos he posted online.

AZ Daily Star: The TUSD Governing Board voted to dismantle the contentious Mexican American Studies program in an effort to avoid losing millions in state funding.

JPost: Clinton flatly denies US involvement “in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” calls Hormuz threats “provocative, dangerous.”

News from The Associated Press: More than 22 years after the fall of Communism, the Czech government agreed Wednesday to pay billions of dollars in compensation for property seized by the former totalitarian regime.

Christianity Today: To have so many candidates in the current campaign say faith is a significant part of their lives and has a major impact on how they think about politics and policies—this is unique.” So says Gary Scott Smith, professor of history at Grove City College in Pennsylvania.

NPR (includes audio): Americans’ religious liberties are under attack — or at least that’s what some conservatives say.

DelMarVa Now: A federal judge will hear oral arguments tomorrow in a lawsuit challenging the Sussex County Council’s recitation of a Protestant version of the Lord’s Prayer at the commencement of its meetings

Houston Chronicle blog: According to the teen’s lawyer, Stephan Casey, vice president of Texas Center for Defense of Life, the girl contacted a sidewalk pregnancy resource counselor who put her in contact via text message with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian civil liberties group. The Alliance Defense Fund then put her in contact with TCDL

Statistics : SCOTUSblog.

Christian Concern: All but one of the evangelical churches in Hungary have been decertified under the new Hungarian constitution, losing their official status, tax exemptions and freedom to run schools.

Seattle Times: As the Legislature prepares to take up a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, a gay-marriage opponent on Monday filed an initiative in an attempt to ensure the issue is brought before voters in November, should lawmakers approve it.

The Christian Institute: Writing in the online edition of Xtra Vancouver, Robin Perelle blasted parents with traditional beliefs saying “your outdated morals are no longer acceptable, and we will teach your kids the new norms”.

The Christian Institute: A contentious plan which would allow terminally ill people to undergo an assisted suicide is not without risk, its own chief architect has admitted.

The Washington Post: Activists launched a rare legal case Tuesday aimed at fostering gay rights in Malaysia by challenging a police ban on an anti-homophobia arts festival.

News from The Associated Press: She says the number of tax returns the agency decided needed additional screening for possible fraud exceeded 1 million, a 72 percent increase over 2010.

LifeSiteNews.com: A campaign waged by homosexuals in Spain to suppress a book about reparative therapy for homosexuality has backfired, generating media coverage that has drawn new attention to the formerly ignored work.

CBS Washington: The D.C. Council is considering legislation that would make it easier for gay and lesbian couples who marry in the nation’s capital to get divorced.

LifeSiteNews.com: he U.S. Supreme Court’s justices broadly expressed skepticism over a petition to relax broadcast decency standards in oral arguments heard today.

National Review Online: For some reason Romney can’t do that. Or at least it seems like he can’t. His authentic inauthenticity problem isn’t going away. And it’s sapping enthusiasm from the rank and file. The turnout in Iowa was disastrously low, barely higher than the turnout in 2008 — and if Ron Paul hadn’t brought thousands of non-Republicans to the caucus sites, it would have been decidedly lower than in 2008.

LifeSiteNews.com: In his first public statement since controversy broke last year, the Winnipeg Catholic school principal who was fired in November after promoting the 40 Days for Life campaign argues that he was used as a “scapegoat” by Church and school leaders to escape negative media attention.

LifeNews.com: Two pregnancy help centers will help defend South Dakota’s law that protects women from being coerced into an abortion. A federal court granted a motion, filed by Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney Harold Cassidy, that allows the two centers to intervene in defense of the law, which is under attack in Planned Parenthood v. Daugaard.

NY Times: A bomber on a motorcycle killed a scientist from Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment site and his bodyguard-driver on Wednesday during the morning commute in Tehran, Iranian media reported, in an assassination that could further elevate international tensions over the Iranian nuclear program and stoke the country’s growing anti-Western belligerence.

LifeNews: Pro-life,” on the other hand, specifically denotes a concrete principle: the sanctity of all human life, which entitles every human being to equal protection from fertilization onward.

LifeNews: A Mississippi woman has won a legal settlement related to a botched abortion done on her by abortion practitioner Joseph Booker, who worked at two different abortion facilities in the state years ago.

Adam J. MacLeod at Public Discourse: Aiding the deliberate destruction of human life has no place in the doctor’s job description.

CNSnews.com: Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) recently became the fifth Republican presidential hopeful to sign a pledge saying that life begins at conception and ends at natural death.

WWMT (AP): A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati is taking up the claim of three Michigan ministers that a federal hate crime law infringes on their First Amendment rights and should be declared unconstitutional.

News from The Associated Press: The World Economic Forum warned Wednesday that the financial crisis that has gripped the global economy for the past few years is fueling resentment that could lay the seeds for a rising tide of protectionism, nationalism and social unrest.

The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot regarding today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:

“The Supreme Court was right to conclude that the government cannot contradict a church’s determination of who can act as its ministers. This clearly goes to the heart of the original intent of the religion clauses of the First Amendment. ADF has been pleased to represent this church and school in the trial court since the 6th Circuit handed down its opinion, and we commend The Becket Fund for its excellent work representing them before the Supreme Court.”

www.adfmedia.org

One News Now: David Hacker of the Alliance Defense Fund describes the discrimination that the educator faces. “Despite a stellar academic record, this professor has found himself exiled from participating in the instruction of any department students simply because he holds views that some university officials don’t favor,” Hacker explains.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: A court watchdog group on Tuesday called on state Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin to resign in the wake of a corruption investigation, but legislative leaders remained mum on the issue.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: A court watchdog group on Tuesday called on state Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin to resign in the wake of a corruption investigation, but legislative leaders remained mum on the issue.

TPMDC: In its amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court Friday, the Justice Department cited no fewer than 10 times the 2005 Gonzalez v. Raich case, in which Scalia (and Justice Anthony Kennedy) broke with the court’s conservative wing to hand down what scholars viewed as one of the broadest declarations of federal power under the Commerce Clause: a 6-3 ruling decreeing that Congress may ban a medical-marijuana patient from growing cannabis for personal use in California where it’s legal.