Daily Archives: January 20, 2012

LifeSiteNews.com: When it comes to the voting booth, pro-life and pro-family voters are among the most passionately dedicated to their issues. Their zeal may be challenged by only one other group: Ron Paul enthusiasts. Although mainstream politics may look at both groups askance, the relationship between the two themselves is not so clear. At the center of the question, of course, is Ron Paul himself: is the Paul philosophy compatible with the voter who puts life and family first?

LifeSiteNews.com: Ontario’s Education Minister says she was “so grateful” to have the head of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association at her side as she announced the government’s controversial anti-bullying bill in November.

ACLJ Attorney David French at National Review Online: Even worse, at the same time that the mayor declared that “no neighborhood” in New York was “off-limits to God’s love and mercy,” he was enforcing a unique-in-the-nation policy that in fact declared New York City schools “off-limits” to private religious use that includes worship. My friend, the Alliance Defense Fund’s Jordan Lorence, explained the problem in yesterday’s New York Post:

LifeNews.com: So I run to the law books to see what an ‘undue burden’ is,” Scalia said. “What do you know, for 200 years, no burden was an undue burden. You could prohibit it. So I can’t use the law books.”

The Augusta Chronicle: Georgia’s “two-headed” appellate court system needs to be overhauled to create a less confusing set of courts with more clearly defined roles, a state Supreme Court justice told members of the Augusta Bar Association on Thursday evening.

Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy: The Shawano High School newspaper decided to run dueling student opinion pieces on whether same-sex couples should be able to adopt children; the student article that answered the question “no” said, among other things, quotes Leviticus 20:13 (“If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.”). The school district then publicly apologized for the column, as an “[o]ffensive article[] cultivating a negative environment of disrespect . . .

In evaluating the adequacy of alternative channels of communication when deciding an as-applied constitutional challenge to the State’s statute limiting the places where sexually-oriented businesses may operate, trial courts are not precluded from considering the existence of sites that are located outside of New Jersey but that are found within the relevant market area as defined by the parties’ experts.

The Hill: Most healthcare plans will be required to cover birth control without charging co-pays or deductibles starting Aug. 1, the Obama administration announced Friday.

CNN Money: For the first time ever, all 100 firms on Fortune’s Best Companies To Work For list this year have non-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation.

Edge Boston: “She sat down and looked at me, and her first question was, ’Are you a lesbian?’” Garatie said in a personal statement written that was published by the Dallas Voice. “Her second question to me was, ’Have you asked God into your heart? Have you been saved by Jesus Christ?’”

Dallas Observer: “Nurse at Center of Furor Over Homophobic Remarks Made to Marine Has Left Dallas VA”

Lincy Pandithurai, who allegedly told her, among other things, “The reason you are so upset is because you feel the darkness surrounding you, and you feel guilty about being a homosexual and living in sin. I’m going to prescribe you some anti-depressants, maybe they’ll help, but I’m not saying that you aren’t going to continue to want to kill yourself.”

Omaha.com: In the Legislature, State Sen. Beau McCoy’s Legislative Bill 912 would amend state law to prohibit local governments from creating new classes of residents protected from discrimination.

MetroWeekly: Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) announced today on Facebook that her campaign for U.S. Senate raised more than $1 million in the last three months of 2011.

Bloomberg: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a telephone call yesterday, told Obama “Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports,” according to details provided by Harper’s office. Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said relying less on the U.S. would help strengthen the country’s “financial security.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano at Townhall: The theory behind the income tax is that the government’s need for cash is so great, it can just take it from your employer after you earn it but before your employer pays you — before you even see the cash — and use it as it sees fit. This presumes that the federal government has a greater right to your income than you do. There really can be no rationale for income taxes without that belief.

Pensacola News Journal: State Sen. Greg Evers is backing a proposed law that would legalize prayer at special school events such as graduation. It’s an effort a lawyer who has battled school prayer in Santa Rosa County calls meaningless “political theater.”

Deseret News: The caucus is affiliated with Pray USA, an initiative of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation Inc., which seeks to “preserve the Judeo-Christian heritage of our nation and protect American religious liberty.”

See, e.g.: Supreme Court ruling confuses religious workers

The Christian Institute: Parliament’s biggest bar is “virtually a gay bar now”, a homosexual Labour MP has said.

News from The Associated Press: An aide to Iraq’s most prominent Shiite cleric is urging politicians on both sides of the country’s sectarian divide to end a government crisis, as fears of civil war rise a month after the U.S. military withdrawal.

AP: “Three men have been convicted of a hate crime in Britain for distributing brochures calling for the execution of gay people.”

Freedom from Religion Foundation: The Freedom From Religion Foundation this afternoon filed a formal complaint with the State of Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights, alleging “illegal discrimination based on religion” when a flower shop in Cranston refused, on the basis of religion, to fill an order to send a dozen roses to Jessica Ahlquist.

ADF files suit for censoring Christian club’s flier as too ‘religious’

Christian Concern: The Department of Health has announced plans to consult the public on whether a controversial IVF technique should be used to prevent some hereditary diseases from being transferred from women to their children. | Christian Concern: Government plans for three-parent babies

News from The Associated Press: The Supreme Court on Friday threw out electoral maps drawn by federal judges in Texas that favored minorities.

Maggie Gallagher at Townhall: Men and women really are different. Not only our bodies, but our brains react differently. Suppressing reality in the interests of ideology doesn’t help women — it just makes us all act in dumber and dumber ways.

Pat Buchanan at Townhall: Before some agent provocateur pushes us into war with Iran, Congress should debate the wisdom of authorizing President Obama, or anyone else, to take America into her fifth war in a generation in the Middle and Near East.

NCPA Policy Digest: USA Today reports that 21 states currently allow government workers to take advantage of an obscure perk known as “air time.” It allows public employees to essentially purchase credit for extra years of work that are applied toward their pension benefits.

ADF Attorney Steve Aden at Townhall : Last year, Planned Parenthood committed nearly 330,000 abortions, received almost $500,000,000 in taxpayer subsidies, and started a texting campaign so that girls as young as 14 can interact with the abortion provider and receive propaganda from the same. And that was just in the United States. The latest news is that Planned Parenthood is now thinking large, and hopes to bring their existing international abortion services up to par with what they’ve done in the U.S.

The Hill: Herman Cain will deliver the Tea Party Express response to President Obama’s State of the Union address.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys will be available for media interviews Sunday during the 2012 Students for Life of America National Conference. Media may attend by special arrangement or via live video feed.

ADF Attorneys Brett Harvey and Dave Cortman at the Washington Examiner: Therefore, the core question remains unanswered: Must the government force prayer-givers to avoid the name of Jesus (or other specific deity names) when they pray before legislative meetings? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said yes, but the rest of the country still says no. That conflict means the Supreme Court may yet weigh in on the question.

The New American: The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a U.S.-based conservative legal advocacy group, noted that Edholm’s recommendation comes at a time when home school families in Sweden are under severe assault. The ADF, in partnership with another U.S. group, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), has come to the legal aid of a Swedish home school family whose nine-year-old son was abducted by the Swedish government in 2009. According to an ADF press release, Swedish officials “seized the child because they believe home schooling is an inappropriate way to raise a child and insist the government should raise [him] instead, even though home-schooling was legal in Sweden at the time he was taken into custody.

Heritage Foundation Foundry Blog: An internal memorandum from the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) reveals that Justice Elena Kagan “substantially participated” in a health care case in San Francisco in which the Justice Department argued over the effect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). This raises grave new doubts about the appropriateness of Kagan’s participation as a justice in the Obamacare lawsuit scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court in March.

Urban Faith: Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) senior counsel Jordan Lorence told members of the media that New York City’s policy has been in place for 30-40 years, but that a 2002 federal injunction against The Bronx Household of Faith put other houses of worship at risk. (In that case, Bronx Household of Faith was represented by ADF.) “It’s not required for the school district to keep it. They can get rid of the policy,” he said. “The mayor can do that. The state legislature can do that.” “Of the largest 50 school districts in the country in terms of student population, only New York City has a policy banning worship services on the weekends or weeknights in the public schools,” said Lorence.

The district court granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the State of Washington from enforcing its limitation on contributions to political committees supporting the recall of a state or county official.

The Hill: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has postponed Tuesday’s scheduled vote on a controversial online piracy bill “in light of recent events,” he announced Friday.

The issue and relevant documents here.

Charles Hurt at Washington Times: There is growing consternation in Republican circles and among conservatives over why Republicans keep allowing the various Communist, leftist and otherwise anti-American TV networks to host GOP debates.

Politico (includes video): Gingrich called that story “false” — and delivered an extended denunciation of ABC and CNN for engaging Marianne Gingrich in the first place. “I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that,” Gingrich said. “Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary a significant question for a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.”