Daily Archives: January 27, 2012

KTAR.com: Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andrew Hurwitz was subjected to only a few light questions Thursday as the Senate Judiciary Committee considered his nomination to a seat on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

NJ.com: Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay rights group Garden State Equality, said a public vote on the issue would not really reflect the will of the people.
“A referendum reflects which side can corrupt the political system with more money,” he said.

Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D.: Should Marriage Licenses be Renewable?: What if you had the option to renew your marriage license every five years?

NBC San Diego: Assembly Member Mary Hayashi (D-Hayward) introduced a bill Thursday to create the first lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender specialty license plate for California.

David French at National Review Online: I argued the case at the trial-court level (and cough lost cough) when I was at the Alliance Defense Fund and was on the appellate briefs, but the credit and congratulations go to Julea Ward, my former ADF colleagues, and my friend ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco, who argued the case at the Sixth Circuit. Well done, Jeremy.

The Daily Star: Fears of new violence hung over Muslims at Friday prayers in the Nigerian city of Kano after Islamists who killed at least 185 people there a week ago threatened to strike again.

ABC News: A parishioner at the Disciple Fellowship Christian Church in East St. Louis, Ill., claims the spirit moved another worshiper so much during service that she caused others to tumble over backwards into her, causing injuries. Now she’s suing the church for damages.

LaTimes.com: The California Supreme Court, faced with a possible ballot measure to scrap newly drawn election districts, decided Friday to leave the boundaries in place for this year’s state Senate races.

San Francisco Examiner: Abortion-rights supporters want a North Dakota district judge to block a law that they say would ban the use of drugs to cause abortions.

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion reports and links to the audio.

ChicagoTribune.com: The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana’s top lawyer said Thursday that a bill pending that would allow schools to teach creationism in science classes clearly violates the U.S. Constitution and invites legal challenges.

National Catholic Reporter: A week after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told individuals and institutions who oppose contraception “to hell with you,” as one bishop put it, members of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy were mobilizing their followers to fight.

How Appealing reports and links to the ruling.

The Washington Post: Catherine “Katie” Curran O’Malley said Friday that she regrets characterizing opponents of the Maryland same-sex marriage bill that failed last year as “cowards.”

LifeNews.com: “Pro-life students shouldn’t have to get a permission slip to share their beliefs on campus,” said ADF Legal Counsel David Hacker. “Making free speech the exception rather than the norm and then corralling it to a limited area is unconstitutional and contrary to the ‘marketplace of ideas’ that a university is supposed to be. We appreciate the college’s efforts in working with us to revise its policies and rectify this problem.”

WSJ.com: It’s More Common Than Adultery and Potentially As Toxic, So Why Is It So Hard to Stop Nagging?

Turtle Bay and Beyond: A recent oped advocating for US ratification prompted ParentalRights.org president Michael Farris to warn of renewed calls for President Obama to move to ratify before November.

The Christian Institute: The Government is set to stop men who are married to multiple women from claiming extra benefits payments. Last year it emerged that the number of polygamous relationships among British Muslims is increasing.

CNET News: Hawaii’s legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.

NationalJournal.com: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich rode a strong performance and crowd enthusiasm at a debate in South Carolina to victory in that state’s primary, but the crowds at two debates in Florida this week haven’t been as wild for Gingrich.

LifeSiteNews.com: The petition was begun in response to a new initiative by French socialists, who are promising voters to institute homosexual “marriage” if they are chosen in the upcoming presidential elections.

LifeSiteNews.com: rotesters demonstrating against abortions being carried out in Barcelona-area Catholic hospitals were attacked by an angry mob pro-abortion counter-demonstrators, some of whom reportedly threw rocks and trash, as well as obscene insults.

LifeNews.com: A state Senate committee has approved pro-life bills on abortion and ultrasound that would help reduce abortions in the state. They are expected to be approved in the Senate but the state House defeated similar bills last year.

Louisiana Federation for Children: The Louisiana Federation for Children today praised newly-released results of a recent parental satisfaction survey showing overwhelmingly high satisfaction rates from parents with children participating in the New Orleans voucher program.

LifeNews.com: he new study repeats the same discredited practice of simply comparing nationally reported maternal mortality rates with Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported deaths associated with abortion. Sounds reasonable, until you learn that there is no accurate or formal mechanism for reporting abortion-related deaths.

Telegraph: We don’t call for censorship – at least I don’t. So, why in this day and age must every reference to faith in God be censored from the public square?” In a letter to the airline’s chief executive and president, she said: “The Alaska Airlines tradition should be looked upon as an all-American, hopeful, encouraging gesture. Please don’t discontinue the cards.”

InfoWars carries the video.

Pat Buchanan at Townhall: We’re not going to get into the business of dictating (Russia’s) path (to democracy). … We’re just going to support what we like to call ‘universal values’ — not American values, not Western values, universal values.” But what, exactly, are these “universal values”? And who are we to impose them on other nations? Did Divine Providence assign us this mission? Who do we Americans think we are?

NYTimes.com: ut Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.

Daily Report: The White House and Georgia’s U.S. senators may agree that Atlanta lawyers Jill A. Pryor and Mark H. Cohen should be federal judges—but they apparently differ on which lawyer should fill an opening at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and which one should serve on Atlanta’s U.S. District Court.

PennLive.com: But some of political Pennsylvania got angry about that wait when they learned today that two members of that court majority – Chief Justice Ronald Castille and Justice Max Baer – have since left for a Pennsylvania Bar Association conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Rasmussen Reports™: Most voters agree with President Obama’s proposal in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night that wealthy Americans pay at least 30% of their income in federal taxes. But 30% seems to be about as far as they want to go.

Religion Clause: ince 2010, the U.S. State Department has produced a series of online videos labeled Conversations with America.

LifeNews.com: Occupy protestors disrupted one pro-life prayer event in the nation’s capital this past weekend, but they also aggressively disrupted a pro-life event in Providence, Rhode Island to the point that it couldn’t be completed.

Pastor Bill Devlin appeared WHCR 90.3FM. | MP3 audio 23:04 mins

ADF Attorney David Hacker appeared on the Victoria Taft Show to discuss the situation at Chemeketa Community College in Oregon. | MP3 audio 5:20 mins

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled Friday in favor of Julea Ward, an Eastern Michigan University graduate student represented by Alliance Defense Fund attorneys who was expelled from a counseling program for her beliefs. In a strongly worded opinion, the court reversed a district court decision in favor of the university and sent the case back for trial, saying “a reasonable jury could conclude that Ward’s professors ejected her from the counseling program because of hostility toward her speech and faith….”

ADF Attorney Roger Kiska on the Hugh Hewitt Show. | MP3 audio 5:50 mins

ADF Attorney Roger Kiska appeared on the Zeb Bell Show. | MP3 audio 17:10 mins

ADF Attorney Austin R. Nimocks, Pastor Ken Hutcherson, Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute, and Washington Catholic Archbishop J. Peter Sartain on King 5 News.

Austin R. Nimocks of the Alliance Defense Fund, Christopher Plante of the National Organization for Marriage, and Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute testify before a Washington State Senate Panel on the purpose of marriage. (January 23, 2012)

Detroit Free Press | freep.com (includes video): Ward’s lawyers at the Alliance Defense Fund, a faith-based legal group, hailed the decision. “Public universities shouldn’t force students to violate their religious beliefs to get a degree,” said the Alliance’s Jeremy Tedesco. “The court rightly understood this and ruled appropriately. Rather than allow Julea to refer a potential client to another qualified counselor — a common, professional practice to best serve clients — EMU attacked and questioned Julea’s religious beliefs and ultimately expelled her from the program because of them.” | The ruling.

OneNewsNow.com: Alliance Defense Fund attorney Joel Oster was back in court this week to take on the cited law. “The appeals court in Texas heard our case about whether or not a church can speak out on local political matters. The case went really well,” he accounts. “The argument was well presented, and the court, I believe, understands that even a church has free-speech rights and has a right to petition their government for the redress of grievances.”

ADF Attorney Casey Mattox at the American Thinker: he forced sterilization of those whom society has rejected because of their race, economic standing, or mental condition rightfully brings to mind Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger.

News from The Associated Press: Forget the so-called liberal media. Right now Newt Gingrich’s most ardent critics are conservative pundits and columnists, many of whom have launched aggressive campaigns to discredit him and trip up his run for the Republican nomination.

The AP reports.

News from The Associated Press: The Dutch Cabinet moved a step closer Friday to banning the burqa, making good on an election promise that is largely symbolic but has broad public support.

News from The Associated Press: Why do Mitt Romney and other wealthy investors pay lower taxes on the income they make from investments than they would if they earned their millions from wages?

News from The Associated Press: South Korea allowed members of a private group to accompany aid to North Korea for the first time Friday since leader Kim Jong Il died last month.

Religion Clause: In Islamic Center of North Fulton, Inc. v. City of Alpharetta, Georgia, (ND GA, Jan. 25, 2012), a Georgia federal district court dismissed RLUIPA and federal constitutional challenges to Alpharetta’s refusal to give zoning approval to the Islamic Center’s replacement of its present worship structure with 2 buildings– a mosque and a smaller communing hall.

Religion Clause: On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives adopted House Resolution 535 by a unanimous vote of 193-0. The Resolution (full text) provides in part . . .

Religion Clause: A trial court in Arizona’s Maricopa County yesterday rejected state constitutional challenges to the state’s “empowerment scholarship” program that makes school vouchers available to students with special needs so they can attend private or parochial schools.

News from The Associated Press: Newly empowered Islamist leaders stood up for Arab democracy Friday, saying extremists need to be brought into the fold and chiding the West for objectifying women and income inequalities.

News from The Associated Press: Nigeria’s Supreme Court says it has fired five governors who overstayed their tenures.

News from The Associated Press: President Barack Obama says colleges and universities must be held accountable for the rising cost of higher education.

Catholic Culture: Bishop Joseph McFadden of Harrisburg has attracted criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and others for comparing the monolithic nature of the public education system to the education systems of 20th-century totalitarian regimes.

2011 GDP: 1.7%: That’s the final, pathetic growth number for 2011.

Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker: Yet at least one idea Perry embraced was, and is, very good indeed. It involves the Supreme Court. The Governor may be a little shaky about the Court’s names and numbers, but he knows what to do about it.

Washington Examiner: Iranian courts have sentenced two bloggers to death for “spreading corruption,” and government security forces have arrested four other journalists, in the lead-up to the nation’s March elections.