Daily Archives: February 10, 2012

PR Newswire – sacbee.com: “In Roe, the courts said that abortion was a privacy right. In this health care dictate, the Obama administration announces plans to invade the privacy of women by requiring insurance companies to inquire about their private choices and offer free drugs. And the administration announces that insurance companies will take on this burden at no cost to anyone.

Christian Concern: Street Preacher Mike Overd was today (10 Feb) cleared by Taunton Magistrates’ Court of a ‘Hate Crime’ for preaching against homosexual conduct.

AP: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested Friday that her predecessors on the high court mistimed the milestone 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide.

Becket Fund: Doesn’t solve anything–numerous religious organizations still forced to violate their conscience

LifeSiteNews.com: The President of the Missouri Lutheran Synod added his voice to the growing chorus of religious leaders from across denominational lines who are objecting to the HHS mandate requiring employers to cover sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plans.

Joseph Berger at the NYTimes.com: Although Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York has been leading the national fight against requiring Roman Catholic hospitals, universities and charities to cover birth control in their health insurance plans for employees and students, some Catholic institutions in his own diocese and others throughout New York State have for 10 years been complying with state law mandating precisely that coverage.

Catholic Health Association : The following statement is being released by Sr. Carol Keehan, DC, president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA) . . .

LifeNews.com: In response to criticism of its recent regulation requiring coverage of FDA-approved birth control drugs and devices, the White House today announced a purported “compromise” under which insurance plans will be required to provide the coverage in all plans, without charging anything additional for it.

AlbertMohler.com: President Obama walked into the White House Press Room today and attempted to pull a political rabbit out of a hat.

USCCB: “While there may be an openness to respond to some of our concerns, we reserve judgment on the details until we have them,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of USCCB.

LifeNews: Catholic Bishops Respond to Obama’s Revised HHS Mandate

The Moscow Times: St. Petersburg lawmakers on Wednesday approved at the crucial second reading a bill introducing fines for advocating gay and lesbian relationships in front of children and promoting pedophilia.

The Providence Journal: Crimes that stem from the victim’s gender identity would be considered hate crimes under legislation winning support in the Rhode Island General Assembly.

News from The Associated Press: Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein last threatened to use his veto in September to block a plan to legalize abortion.

News from The Associated Press.

News from The Associated Press: A federal appeals court has denied a request to reconsider a lawsuit challenging a Texas law that requires doctors to perform a sonogram before an abortion.

WorldNetDaily: Texas pastors who listened to GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Rick Santorum talk about the life and liberty goals of his campaign before ending the meeting gathered around him, placed their hands on his shoulders and prayed for God’s direction in his work.

BBC News: A High Court ruling that a Devon town council acted unlawfully by allowing prayers to be said before meetings has sparked a mixed reaction.

News from The Associated Press: Rick Santorum stirs his ever-growing crowds when he promises to right a country awash in “immoral debt” and to replace an administration he argues has “callousness toward life and family and faith.”

News from The Associated Press: All of a sudden, abortion, contraception and gay marriage are at the center of American political discourse, with the struggling – though improving – economy pushed to the background.

The Obama administration’s rule change doesn’t change anything.

News from The Associated Press: President Barack Obama declared Friday he’s found a solution to a birth-control uproar that will protect religious liberty but also ensure that women have access to free contraception, as he rushed to defuse an election-year issue that threatened to overtake his administration.

BBC New (includes video): Authorities in China have launched a big security operation to try to end a wave of unrest caused by Tibetan campaigners.

HughHewitt.com Blog: It is a beautiful place with a unique “Great Books” curriculum, and it is a thoroughly tradition Roman Catholic institution. Which mens, of course, that the Thomas Aquinas College is now in direct conflict with the demands made by our anti-Catholic president. St. Thomas Aquinas’ president, Michael McClean was quoted in yesterday’s Ventura Star . . .

ADF Attorney Austin R. Nimocks appeared on several shows to discuss the ruling. | KKSF Newstalk 910 AM San Francisco with Rosie Allen – MP3 audio 9:13 |  Talk 107.3 FM Baton Rouge with Matt Kennedy  - MP3 audio 5:03 mins | WMUZ 103.5 FM, The Light the Bob Dutko Show - MP3 audio 8:53 mins.

ADF Attorney Dale Schowengerdt appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss the ruling. | MP3 audio 5:16 mins

LifeSiteNews.com: he plan, touted as a concession to freedom of religion and conscience, was immediately denounced by pro-life Rep. Chris Smith. “The so-called new policy is the discredited old policy, dressed up to look like something else,. said Smith. .It remains a serious violation of religious freedom. Only the most naï or gullible would accept this as a change in policy.”

FACT SHEET: Women’s Preventive Services and Religious Institutions | The White House.

WVEC.com Norfolk – Hampton Roads: On Thursday, the ACLU of Virginia faxed a letter to the School saying the policy is unconstitutionally vague and discriminates based on sex.

KRQE.com: The ACLU of New Mexico filed a lawsuit against Bloomfield over the Ten Commandments monument on display on the lawn of city hall. | ACLU press release and complaint

LifeNews.com: The revised Obama mandate will make religious groups contract with insurers to offer birth control and the potentially abortion-causing drugs to women at no cost.

OneNewsNow.com: “That the government should have the right to take children away from their families simply for the act of home education — that is without due process, without any real evidence gathering — that is almost a military state power,” he contends.

Inside Higher Ed: But a lawyer at the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian group working to defend religious freedom in colleges, said Forese’s bill is necessary and that discrimination against Christian academics is real.
“This type of legislation is sorely needed,” said ADF senior counsel David Cortman in an e-mail message to Inside Higher Ed. “When you compare the lopsided number of liberal professors to those who are conservative, there certainly is a crisis of one-sided views being taught to the next generation. Public universities are no longer the marketplace of ideas, but rather have become storefronts of indoctrination.”

Jason Mattera at Human Events: Such a ruling adheres to an “extreme version of the establishment clause and separation of church and state,” Jordan Lorence, a senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, the legal firm representing the local churches, told HUMAN EVENTS. “It’s hard for the bureaucrats and judges to grasp the difference between government sponsored religion and government accommodating everybody to use an empty building.”

WorldNetDaily: ADF Litigation Counsel Catherine Foster said, “Americans deserve to know if their hard-earned tax money is being funneled to groups that are misusing it.”

NPR: A 23-page memo from the Susan B. Anthony List and the Alliance Defense Fund outlines what those groups’ leaders say are a series of funding irregularities uncovered in various state and federal audits of Planned Parenthood affiliates.

God Discussion (includes video): Austin R. Nimocks, a lawyer who argues against same-sex marriage for the Alliance Defense Fund, noted that while some polls showed increasing support for gay marriage, voters had never approved it at the polls.”

The Hill: In her letter, Blackburn specifically cites the Alliance Defense Fund report as justifying further action.

Education News: During a talk at Florida State University, Vice President Joe Biden admitted that government intervention and federal loans that provide subsidies for students to attend college have greatly contributed to the increase in college tuition.

Maggie Gallagher at Townhall: Obama gravely miscalculated. He thought the new Health and Human Services regulations would become a battle over contraception — politically speaking, a battle he could win. As a Protestant, he forgot the structure of Catholicism is essentially clannish

Ross Douthat at NYTimes.com: In a recent post, he argues that forcing Catholic institutions to purchase contraception is totally fine because 98 percent of Catholics have used birth control, the issue is “a matter of conscience only for a tiny number of men in the formal hierarchy of the Catholic church,” and the federal government only needs to respect the liberties of private institutions and communities “in areas where there’s substantial, highly-charged controversy,” not in areas where only very small minorities differ from the consensus (i.e. enlightened) view.

Asia News: Muslims in the area of el-Amerya, with the complicity of police and state authorities, set fire to Christian homes and shops, and forced several families to leave the country, under the threat of further violence.

Today, the political advocacy group American Tradition Partnership, along with two other corporate plaintiffs, Champion Painting and the Montana Shooting Sports Association, have asked Justice Anthony Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court to put on hold and then the Supreme Court to reverse a decision by the Montana Supreme Court, which upheld its law prohibiting corporate independent expenditures despite the decision in Citizens United v. FEC which held such bans unconstitutional.

NCRegister.com: The worldwide Catholic network asks the court to stop federal rule that requires it to pay for ‘immoral services.’ | Becket Fund press release and legal docs

Education News: The often-charged debate about the origin of life pitting the science community against doctrinal conservatives is not just a U.S. phenomenon but one the Muslim world is increasingly engaged in, a visiting professor said Thursday evening at Trinity University.

NCPA Policy Digest: Below are the main drivers behind the push for such legislation . . .

Wall Street Journal (access via Google): ”This ruling by the Obama Administration is the most transparently anti-Catholic action by the federal government since the Blaine Amendment was proposed in 1875,” said Mr. Land this week on his national weekly radio show.

WSJ.com: Stories involving a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew typically end with a punch line. We wish that were the case here, but what brings us together is no laughing matter: the threat now posed by government policy to that basic human freedom, religious liberty.

The Hill: The threat came from the attorneys general of Nebraska, Texas and South Carolina.

The Hill: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wasted no time in blocking Republicans’ first attempt at offering legislation in the Senate to repeal the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rule . . .

The Hill: A green evangelical group won’t bow to conservative anti-abortion-rights leaders or Republicans who are pressuring them to stop casting support for new EPA pollution rules as a “pro-life” position.

Fox News: A Virginia school district is considering banning cross-dressing by students, out of what one board member called concerns for the safety of “several” male students who wear dresses and wigs to school.

ABC News (includes video): But what the White House will likely announce later today is that the relationship between the religious employer and the insurance company will not need to have any component involving contraception. The insurance company will reach out on its own to the women employees.

TheAge.com.au: An Australian gay couple have had their six-year-old son taken from them by child protection authorities in Los Angeles while the FBI and Queensland police investigate allegations that they are members of an international paedophile ring.

A recent European Court of Human Rights ruling increases the pressure on Sweden to return a 10-year-old boy to his parents after the government abducted him from his parents nearly three years ago for being home-schooled.