Daily Archives: January 23, 2012

Reuters: Researchers found that women were about 14 times more likely to die during or after giving birth to a live baby than to die from complications of an abortion.

LifeNews.com: A new estimate published by the National Right to Life Committee indicates there have been an estimated 54,559,615 abortions since the Supreme Court handed down its 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision allowing virtually unlimited abortions.

Hertfordshire Mercury News : THE chief executive of a Hertfordshire charity supporting the elderly has defended current legal guidelines for helping seriously ill people to commit suicide.

Christian Concern: When an amendment aimed at giving women with unplanned pregnancies access to independent counselling was lost by 118 votes to 368 last year, things looked grim.

CNSnews.com: President Barack Obama says the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade is the chance to recognize the “fundamental constitutional right” to abortion and to “continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”

The Christian Institute: The number of weddings taking place in the Church of England has seen its biggest annual increase for a decade.

The Associated Press: A judge has ruled that Montana’s medical marijuana law doesn’t shield providers of the drug from federal prosecution, delivering a new blow to an industry reeling from a state and federal crackdown.

Politico: The Supreme Court on Monday denied a request for debate over whether Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from the health care reform case due to be argued in March.

San Antonio Express-News: U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks did not make a final ruling in a controversial sonogram case Friday but suggested his hands were tied and he would likely allow the law to stay in effect.

NYTimes.com: Gov. Sam Brownback created the Office of the Repealer to recommend the elimination of out-of-date, unreasonable and burdensome state laws that build up in any bureaucracy over time.

UPI.com: The U.S. Supreme Court last week passed up the chance to decide whether opening up a public meeting with a sectarian prayer, usually invoking the name of Jesus — a practice carried out in broad swaths of Red State America — is constitutional.

News from The Associated Press: More than 70 nominees to judgeships and senior federal agency positions are awaiting the next move from Republicans, who can use Senate rules to block votes on some or all of Obama’s picks.

The Washington Post: Washington’s Legislature has enough votes to legalize gay marriage with a statement from Democratic Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen Monday who said she will support the measure, becoming the 25th vote needed to pass the bill out of the Senate. The House already has enough support, and Gov. Chris Gregoire has endorsed the plan.

NJ.com: Gov. Chris Christie today nominated an openly gay African-American Republican mayor and a Korean-American assistant attorney general to the state’s highest court.

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster will be available for media interviews following a hearing Tuesday in which he will argue that a Texas appeals court should not grant El Paso Mayor John Cook’s request to stop a recall election against him and two city council members.

Religion Clause: In France, the Green Party candidate for President, Eva Joly, has created a controversy by proposing that Jews and Muslims should be given the right to take off work or school on their major holidays.

Religion Clause: The National Center for Science Education reported last week that so far this year, six separate anti-evolution bills have been introduced . . .

NYTimes.com: A treatment for eye diseases that is derived from human embryonic stem cells might have improved the vision of two patients, bolstering the beleaguered field, researchers reported Monday.

SCOTUS Blog reports.

Kaiser Health News: he United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is promising a legal challenge to federal rules the Obama administration reaffirmed Friday requiring health insurers to provide women with a range of preventive health services, including birth control, without charging a co-payment, co-insurance or deductible.

Statement by the President on Roe v. Wade Anniversary | The White House.

ChicagoTribune.com: Two women are suing the state of Michigan to try to overturn a state ban on adoption by unmarried couples.

“A lawsuit challenging the state’s law against gay marriage was revived Monday by the Minnesota Court of Appeals.”

Rick Santorum at Washington Times: Mr. Romney nominated 36 judges while governor, just nine of whom were Republicans. What he says of this record today is that the Massachusetts Governor’s Council had to confirm the nominees, and the members of the council were all Democrats. So his answer was to nominate persons palatable to Democrats.

Grace-Marie Turner at National Review Online: The Obama administration announced today it will wait for a year (coincidentally until after the elections) before requiring religious organizations to comply with an Obamacare mandate that they provide coverage for contraception — including controversial drugs that can abort an early pregnancy.

IrishCentral: The American Civil Liberties Union has insisted on the right of political candidates of all kinds to walk in the Dublin Ohio St.Patrick’s Day parade.

2012 Florida Republican Primary – Rasmussen Reports: Less than two weeks ago, Mitt Romney had a 22-point lead in Florida, but that’s ancient history in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

ADF Attorney Matt Bowman at the Christian Post: In one of the lesser-known manipulations of U.S. law to advance the pro-abortion agenda, the President’s Department of Justice has for several years been availing itself of a statute originally written to stop violence to instead seek massive fines and injunctions against peaceful pro-life advocates who offer alternatives to women on public sidewalks. But this politicization of the law in favor of abortion yielded a mixed record this week.

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E. Sears at Townhall: The roughly 53 million children aborted since 1973 equals about 17 percent of America’s current 312 million-plus population. Nearly one-fifth of us, simply taken out of the equation … the equation being our culture, our communities, our daily interactions, our myriad accomplishments as a people.

OneNewsNow.com: ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco says courts around the country have ruled such policies to be unconstitutional. “[Courts have ruled] that when the school district opens up a forum for outside groups to promote their events and activities to students and their parents, they have to grant equal access to religious organizations so they can promote their religious events and activities on equal terms,” the attorney explains.

Law Professor Michael Stokes Paulsen at Public Discourse: The Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade should not be accepted as law, in any sense. It should be resisted by legislatures and it should be refused enforcement by executive officials because it is not the law. It should be resisted by all citizens, with all the resources at their disposal, and perhaps even with resources not (yet) at their disposal. Anything less is holocaust denial.

OneNewsNow.com: “The university will allow political speakers to come on campus without having to [jump through] these hoops and go over these burdens. But for our client’s religious speech, he has to get insurance, pay money, [and] do all these difficult things,” Scruggs explains. [more . . . ]

The Tennessean: Rand Paul’s office claimed the senator set off the full body scanner and then refused a full pat down.

The Republic: As long as the course is objective, it’s constitutional, said David Cortman, a lawyer with Phoenix-based Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group that supports the Bible classes.
“I believe it’s an extremely important type of course to provide just because our culture is so saturated with biblical reference and biblical allusions,” Cortman said.

HeraldNet.com – Local news: Around the country, there are 39 other Family Policy Institutes like Washington’s. Each is independently run yet share one thing in common — an association with the Focus on the Family arm of the Alliance Defense Fund, Family Research Council and CitizenLink. Backholm made clear association is legally different than affiliation. “We are totally self-sustaining, self-funded and self-operating,” he said. “We get no funds for operation.” Yet the ties are strong. The Alliance Defense Fund planned to dispatch lawyers to Olympia last week to strategize with lawmakers opposed to legalizing same-sex marriage.

Michael A. Walsh at NYPOST.com: Friday’s ruling by the Department of Health and Human Services proved yet again that ObamaCare’s critics are right. It’s a breathtaking attack not only on the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom, but also on the separation of church and state.

News from The Associated Press: Overall, spending declined by some $6 billion, or nearly 8 percent, over the past year, according to the annual Grapevine study by the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University

AP on KTAR.com: The Arizona Republic says the suit was filed Thursday by the Alliance Defense Fund.

Anchorage Daily News: The main problem as the Alliance Defense Fund sees it is that private business owners could be forced to hire or do business with people whose sexual orientation doesn’t match their religious beliefs, said Holly Carmichael, a lawyer for the fund. “The ultimate concern with enacting something like that is that it infringes on religious freedoms,” Carmichael said. “There’s a huge constitutional concern here.” [more . . . ]

NCRegister.com: The theme of Students for Life’s Jan. 22 national conference, co-sponsored with the Alliance Defense Fund, at the North Bethesda Marriott in suburban Maryland, is “Envision … a World Without Abortion.” Two thousand young people have registered to attend the conference. See also: Generation Life (ADF mentioned)

Tucson Citizen – News from The Arizona Republic: “The fliers of Christian groups shouldn’t be banned while other groups can freely invite students to their meetings and activities,” said Jeremy Tedesco, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, in a statement. “That’s the position of numerous federal court rulings, and Dysart’s flier policies fit the mold of those that have been declared unconstitutional.” [more . . . ]

The Republic: Jonathan Scruggs, a Tennessee lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund who is representing WyWatch Family Action, also declined comment on the state’s claim that its new policy should end the legal action. The Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based Christian civil rights group, has litigated against same-sex marriage in California. The group also supported the recent unsuccessful push in Wyoming to change state law to specify that the state shouldn’t recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher at NYTimes.com: How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work: Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

News from The Associated Press: Life seemed to give Karla Zepeda a break when a woman came to her dusty neighborhood of cinderblock homes and dirt roads looking for babies to photograph in an anti-abortion ad campaign.

Phoenix New Times: Other school districts have been sued successfully for doing the same thing, notes Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defense Fund, which is providing legal services for the CEF along with the Center for Arizona Policy. He’s right: The Scottsdale Unified School District used to have such a policy, but a 2003 lawsuit brought with the help of the ADF reversed it.

Amy Ridenour’s National Center Blog: According to experts in tax law, Jarrett’s overt criticism of Republicans may have violated IRS rules that bar churches from engaging in partisan activism. Eric Stanley, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund (a critic of such laws), told the Daily Caller: “It is problematic under current regulations.”

Middle East Forum: Earlier I discussed how mosques, some of which breed radicalization and serve as terrorist bases, flourish in America, while churches are increasingly targeted and destroyed in the Muslim world, especially the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity. This pattern—religious appeasement of Muslim minorities in the West, religious hostility for Christian minorities under Islam—continues and manifests itself in other ways.

News from The Associated Press: The race to replace Rep. Gabrielle Giffords begins in earnest Monday as the Arizona congresswoman’s planned resignation sets up a free-for-all in a competitive district.

NBC Politics: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who just a few days ago seemed poised to capitalize on his New Hampshire primary victory to win South Carolina, failed to appeal to conservative, lower-income, and evangelical Christian voters in the state, which led to Saturday’s victory for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

CBS Atlanta 46 (includes video): A judge has ordered President Barack Obama to appear in court in Atlanta for a hearing on a complaint that says Obama isn’t a natural-born citizen and can’t be president.