Daily Archives: January 13, 2012

Personhood USA: Personhood Arkansas has resubmitted a state constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to life of all human beings

Seattlepi.com: Twenty-three members of the Washington State Senate, two short of a majority, on Friday introduced legislation that would make Washington the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage.

The Blog of Legal Times: A report released today by the Council for Court Excellence shows that the bulk of judges confirmed to the District of Columbia Superior Court come from government service, and also that the nominating process can be “unpredictable” once lawyers are recommended to the White House.

AZ Policy Blog: Another study has been released on the harms of divorce. This one from the University of Arizona shows that divorced men and women may die earlier than married individuals.

CJOnline.com: More than two dozen House members endorsed Friday a proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution that sponsors believe could trigger a ban on abortion in Kansas.

The Washington Post: Ward 5 council candidate Delano Hunter, who was backed by national same-sex marriage opponents in his 2010 campaign, is now touting his belief that the District should not overturn its new same-sex marriage law.

Personhood USA: lanned Parenthood filed an appeal on Monday, challenging a ruling from the Colorado Secretary of State Title Board in favor of Personhood Colorado. The 2-1 decision from the board allows a proposed state constitutional amendment, applying the right to life equally to human beings of every age, to proceed to petition.

Yesterday, the political advocacy group American Tradition Partnership, along with two other corporate plaintiffs, Champion Painting and the Montana Sports Shooting Association, have asked the Montana Supreme Court to not enforce its decision to uphold Montana’s law that bans corporations from independently spending money to support or oppose candidates for public office.

News from The Associated Press: A federal appeals court has cleared the way for the immediate enforcement of a new Texas abortion law while opponents challenge the measure in district court

AP: A federal judge has refused to add Texas Gov. Rick Perry and three other candidates to Virginia’s Republican presidential primary ballot.

LifeNews.com: The abortion business in Rockford, Illinois that has been closed down permanently after recently reopening following an agreement with the state after violations it engaged in that caused its closing temporarily late last year.

News from The Associated Press: Two pro-business advocacy groups on Friday filed the first legal challenge to President Barack Obama’s recent recess appointments, asking a federal judge to find them unconstitutional.

Duncan, Richard F., The Tea Party’s Constitution (January 13, 2012). Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1984699

CBS (includes video): A Ventura County Girl Scout is at the center of a national controversy after she released a video calling for a boycott of the group’s popular cookies over what she calls a “radical homosexual agenda”.

CNBC: Standard & Poor’s will cut the credit ratings of Italy, Spain and Portugal by two notches and downgrade France and Austria by one notch, a French newspaper said Friday, without citing its sources.

Bloomberg: Maria Woodbury has called hundreds of voters in Maine (STOME1) since March to talk about making same-sex marriage legal. Some hang up, others say they’re too busy. One man, who said he grew up as a Catholic, stuck out.

Christian Institute: An increasing number of women expecting multiple births are aborting one or more of their unborn babies.

The Christian Institute: The former head of the Scottish Conservative Party has told constituents he will not be supporting the redefinition of marriage. Edinburgh MSP David McLetchie . . .

Gazette.net: Gov. Martin O’Malley, in promoting same-sex marriage, wants to change the long-established meaning of marriage by promoting an illusion that gender and even biological relationships don’t really matter.

National Post: The Harper government is working quickly to change the law so that the marriages of the thousands of gay couples who travel to Canada to wed are legally recognized in this country. “We want to make it very clear that in our government’s view, these marriages should be valid,” a senior government official told Postmedia News on Friday.

Ashland Current: Ashland city councilors voted Tuesday night to end the practice of starting meetings with prayer, according to an audio recording posted on the City of Ashland’s website. The 9-2 vote . . .

LifeSiteNews.com: fter denying a pro-life group official club status in 2010, Carleton University’s student union is proposing a referendum to ban pro-life groups from the campus altogether.

LifeSiteNews.com: European Union officials are making their disapproval of Hungary’s recent constitutional changes felt by threatening to withhold financial support if it does not remove its new amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, according to one Hungarian source.

LifeSiteNews.com: The guidelines, published Monday in the Journal of School Health, were authored by the American Association of Health Education, the American School Health Association, the National Education Association – Health Information Network, the Society of State Leaders of Health and Physical Education, Advocates for Youth, Answer, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

Rasmussen Reports: The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 37% of Likely U.S. Voters rate the way Obama is dealing with the economy as good or excellent, his highest positives since July.

LifeNews.com: A new newspaper report that further investigates the actions of abortion practitioner Steven Chase Brigham finds a Democratic New York State attorney general refused to follow up on grisly discoveries investigators found.

NPR (includes audio): The number of twins born each year in the United States has more than doubled since 1980, federal health officials reported Wednesday.

ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss the battle over church access to school facilities in NYC. | MP3 audio 5:22 mins

ADF Attorney Kevin Theriot appeared on the Paul Edwards Show to discuss the ruling. | MP3 audio 11:35 mins

American Civil Liberties Union: The board of the Chesterfield County School District voted tonight to adopt a proposed settlement agreement that would put an end to the district’s pervasive practice of school-sponsored prayer, preaching and religious activities aimed at students.

LifeNews.com: NIH Director Francis Collins has approved four more human embryonic stem cell lines as eligible for federal taxpayer funding. The latest approval brings the total to 146.

NJ.com: U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez agreed yesterday to meet again with U.S. Magistrate Judge Patty Shwartz, a welcome sign that he may back down from his confrontation with the Obama administration over her nomination.

Steven Aden at Townhall: That’s a lot of money in today’s economy. And it’s there for the taking for CEO types whose consciences are not bothered by the fact that killing pre-born children, pushing sex-ed programs that brainwash preteens, and passing out contraceptives like it’s candy to kids who can’t spell “contraceptive” is all part of an average day on the job.

Pat Buchanan at Townhall: Aware it is unlikely he will ever be president, the 76-year-old soldiers on in the belief that this cause will one day triumph in a party where he was, not long ago, seen as an odd duck, but a party where today he speaks for a national constituency.

Religion Clause: According to a January 9 press release from the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, a California Superior Court judge has finalized a tentative opinion issued in November holding that the archdiocese is not liable for some $20 million in transfer taxes . . .

Religion Clause: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life yesterday released a new survey on what Mormons think about their place in American life. The report titled Mormons in America: Certain in Their Beliefs, Uncertain of Their Place in Society . . .

NECN: Attorneys representing the church said they were reviewing the decision for possible next steps. “The government should not be able to force a private Christian organization to use its property in a way that would violate its own religious beliefs,” Jim Campbell, an attorney representing the church, said in a statement Thursday. | Via Religion Clause Blog

Religion Clause: The document, according to al-Azhar head Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb, “preserves freedoms of worship, opinion, scientific research and art and creative expression.” In a nod to conservative Islamists, the document also provides that the arts must not “contradict religious sentiments and established social mores.”

OneNewsNow.com: Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) says the city expected the issue to just fade away, but instead, “it has triggered a huge backlash among the city council, among state legislators in Albany, as well as pastors and [lay] people,” he accounts.

Glenn T. Staunton at National Review: This was the stated criteria for inclusion in the study. But there are very few same-sex homes where both married parents are the adoptive parents. And confine that small number to only those in Massachusetts, and you could probably fit them in a mini van. As Greg Scott of the Alliance Defense Fund explains, that means Minnery was indeed correct about 99.9999 percent and Franken caught him on a snarky 0.00001 percent technicality that he turned into a laugh-line.

News from The Associated Press: A well-known Chinese dissident writer who has been frequently threatened with jail time says harassment has forced him to leave for the United States, possibly for good.

News from The Associated Press: An Australian man who received 75 lashes in Saudi Arabia after being convicted of blasphemy has returned home.

Christian Newswire: Personhood Florida received a major endorsement this week from Family Research Council’s (FRC) Tony Perkins. Similar to the Personhood Amendment recently on the ballot in Mississippi, the Florida Amendment bans all abortion.

News from The Associated Press: Sonja O’Brien heard from the hecklers as she collected signatures in a final push to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

The Hill: Rick Perry said Thursday it was “naïve” to think Democrats wouldn’t adopt criticism of Mitt Romney’s leadership at Bain Capital and defended taking campaign contributions from venture capital firms in an interview Thursday on the Laura Ingraham show.

The Hill: Passage of the resolution, offered by Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY), will not prevent the debt limit from increasing, as a similar resolution would have to pass the Senate, and the Senate is not expected to consider a disapproval resolution.

News from The Associated Press: Torn between reality and their political dreams, leading conservatives are defending Mitt Romney against attacks on his work in the private sector even as they search for a more palatable candidate amid a growing sense that his nomination may be certain.

News from The Associated Press: Thousands of mourners chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” on Friday during the funeral of a slain nuclear expert whom Iranian officials accuse the two nations of killing in a bomb blast this week as part of a secret operation to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

My Way News – AP: President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for greater power to shrink the federal government, and his first idea is merging six sprawling trade and commerce agencies whose overlapping programs can be baffling to businesses, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.

Michael Paulsen at Public Discourse: In a recent decision, the Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment provides additional and independent rights to religious organizations, beyond those to which non-religious groups are entitled.

NOM Blog: The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) today pledged an all-out effort to prevent same-sex marriage from becoming law in New Jersey, and said it would spend upward of $500,000 to support legislators who stood to preserve traditional marriage and hold those accountable who impose same-sex marriage in the state.

Judge says declining to open private, beachside place of worship for same-sex ceremonies violates state law