Daily Archives: April 4, 2012

Washington Post: “In Chambers: Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices” (University of Virginia Press), edited by Todd C. Peppers and Artemus Ward: They’ve been called “Courtiers of the Marble Palace” and “Sorcerers’ Apprentices.” But to the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, their law clerks are much more: sparring partners, workhorses and, often, extended family.

Claremont Institute: Yet it’s not as if Tocqueville was wrong, or insensitive to the full implications of his irony. It’s just that he was largely describing the culture and role of traditional common lawyers—the barristers and solicitors—a breed that has almost disappeared from the American political, if not legal, landscape. He describes the English or American lawyer (in contrast to his continental counterpart) who still has “a taste and respect for what is old,” and who wishes to rely “on the sense of his fathers.” Such a lawyer is timid, regular, and legal—a cautious interpreter of “an occult science” that looks backward rather than forward and relies on particulars rather than highly contested abstractions. But a funny thing happened to the American common lawyer, and that funny thing was the American law school (which came into its own a century after Tocqueville wrote). As legal training and apprenticeship gave way to legal education and schooling, wave after wave of progressive thinking washed over the expanding and newly confident law schools . . .

How Appealing links to several reports and an audio recording of the court hearing.

ChristianConcern.com: Prime Minister David Cameron told Christian leaders this week that he wants their biblical values to guide the nation, despite his strong support for same-sex ‘marriage’.

Christian Today: Compass Direct News is reporting that an 8-year-old boy died on Tuesday from injuries after suspected Islamic extremists threw a grenade into a Christian revival meeting near Kenya’s coastal town of Mombasa.

NY Daily News: Manhattan chef pocketed $1.6 million after restaurateur Edward Globokar turned his TriBeCa Mexican eatery into a makeshift house of worship where he prayed for God to heal gay workers.

AZ Republic: Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton’s aides and a group of attorneys are working to draft ordinances that could outlaw discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender residents.

Thomas More Society: The case, entitled St. John’s Episcopal Church v. Kenneth Scott, 2011 CA 508, presents crucial issues related to whether, and to what extent, Colorado trial courts may curtail, limit, and sanction citizens who display graphic signs whose contents are deemed “offensive” to others, causing emotional upset.

Washington Post: Legislation that would allow a range of benefits for same-sex domestic partners of federal employees gained a boost last week with the announcement of 20 new Senate co-sponsors and the endorsement of 35 organizations.

Miami Herald: The Florida Supreme Court elected Justice Ricky Polston to be the next Chief Justice of the state’s highest court.

WSOCTV.com: Watauga County commissioners weighed in Tuesday on the proposed state constitutional amendment defining marriage, voting 3-1 in support of the amendment

Carla Garrison at the Washington Times: North Carolina is the only remaining southern state that has not explicitly defined marriage in its constitution as a union between one man and one woman. Voters there will get the chance to vote on the definition of marriage in their May 8 primary.

LifeNews: The pro-life student group at Northern Kentucky University is a victim of pro-abortion activists vandalizing their display once again — after pro-abortion students and a professor were taken to court the first time.

Sun Herald: Mississippi lawmakers have passed a bill that would require any doctor performing abortions at an abortion clinic to be a board-certified OB-GYN with admitting privileges at a local hospital.

Casey Law Office: A Dallas district judge Monday upheld prayers posted on a personal website as protected free speech, not a conspiracy to harm, as an anti-religious activist claimed without any supporting evidence . . . The Alliance Defense Fund assisted with funding for the defense of free speech principles in the case.

Newsmax: Speaking out against religious extremism takes courage in today’s Egypt, especially when extremists make up an absolute majority in Parliament

The Telegraph: An Egyptian court on Wednesday sentenced a 17-year-old Christian boy to three years in jail for publishing cartoons on his Facebook page that mocked Islam and the Prophet Mohammad, actions that sparked sectarian violence.

Speak Up Movement Church: Recently, a positive trend has developed in case law under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. This positive trend recognizes and affirms important constitutionally protected freedoms for churches and para-church ministries, such as Christian schools or substance abuse programs. A group of recent, seemingly disparate cases illustrate this encouraging theme in the law.

News-Herald.com: Supporters of a measure that would allow gay marriage in Ohio were cleared by state officials Tuesday to continue their ballot effort to amend the state’s constitution.

WBIR.com: The Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is calling on Gov. Bill Haslam to veto the evolution bill, saying it would “subvert scientific principle to religious ideology.”

eMissourian.com:
Franklin County residents seem to support the county commissioners’ decision to have Christian prayers at the beginning of their weekly public meetings, but Presiding Commissioner John Griesheimer said Tuesday the county is still weighing its options.

Salisbury Post: The ACLU of North Carolina has asked the Rowan County Board of Commissioners to stop opening meetings with religion-specific prayers.

AP: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that the Justice Department will respond “appropriately” to a federal appellate judge in Texas who demanded a letter recognizing the authority of the federal courts to strike down laws passed by Congress.

Education News: The Center for Education Reform, a major advocate for structural change in the US education system, has released its thirteenth annual analysis of laws countrywide.

The Atlantic: For $8,000 it was easy for the author to justify selling her eggs the first time. The second time, too. Only then did they share the bad news.

LifeSiteNews: If Premier Dalton McGuinty pushes forward his controversial anti-bullying bill, known as Bill 13, without amendments to respect the “religious and conscience rights of many parents” Ontario will face years of expensive lawsuits, warn the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada in a new open letter to McGuinty.

LifeSiteNews: An attempt by Uruguay’s ruling coalition of socialist parties to legalize abortion on demand during the first twelve weeks of pregnancy has stalled in the nation’s Chamber of Deputies, after passing a Senate vote in late December.

LifeSiteNews: The leaders of a nationwide protest against the HHS mandate forcing religious employers to cover abortifacient drugs and other forms of birth control have said that the demonstrations drew about 63,000 people in 145 cities across America last month.

LifeNews: A Colorado state Senate committee postponed a pro-life bill that would make the state the next to follow more than two dozen others that put laws in place protecting pregnant women and unborn children who are victims of violent crimes.

Citizen Link: “The government should not be exiling free speech, it should be protecting it,” said lead counsel Nate Kellum. “It’s ridiculous to say that the only place where people can hand out Bibles is an area where there’s no one to hand Bibles to. The Constitution simply does not permit the board to relegate free speech to isolated regions where no one can receive the message.

Life News: In a desperate political move, opponents of informed consent legislation are hiding the truth about the use of ultrasounds to safeguard a woman’s health.

Citizen Link: “The Sixth Circuit ruling puts momentum on our side,” said Ward’s attorney, ADF’s Jeremy Tedesco — and it sets up a case with far-ranging ramifications. “The bottom line is whether Christians can maintain their Christian convictions and still be a part of the helping professions,” Tedesco told Citizen. “They were telling her ‘You either alter or violate your beliefs or we kick you out of the program.’ ”

LifeNews: While the impetus for the recall stems from leftwing opposition to Governor Scott Walker’s policies regarding collective bargaining and public employee benefits, there is much at stake for unborn children.

LifeNews: The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) currently has before it an unprecedented number of cases relating to abortion.

AP: Trying to unite divided Islamists behind him, the presidential hopeful of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has promised to give religious clerics power to review legislation to ensure it is in line with Islamic law . . .

AP: Egypt’s constitutional panel is meeting to try to resolve a crisis after liberals, Christians and others walked out . . .

Education News: The group, called StudentsFirstNY, is an arm of a national advocacy organization that Ms. Rhee founded in 2010.

NPR audio and article.

South Sider Magazine: Parsing the potential legal arguments in the recent controversy involving Hands On Originals and the Gay and Lesbian Services Organization (GLSO) is no easy task. At odds in this case are two fundamental concepts of American liberty: freedom of speech and free exercise of religion as delineated in the First Amendment vs. freedom from discrimination. The tension arising from pitting First Amendment notions against other important American values fuels this controversy and reflects a burgeoning conflict in the modern political climate.

Joel Oster appeared on Wallbuilders Live to discuss this. | MP3 audio 9:44 mins

Casey Mattox appeared on the the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss the issue. | MP3 audio 5:53 mins

Richard W. Fischer and Harvey Rosenblum at the Wall Street Journal (via Google): Since the early 1970s, the share of assets controlled by the five largest banking institutions in the U.S. has tripled to 52% from 17%. This has to change.

One News Now: “The ICC prosecutor decided that Palestine is not a state, and because it’s not a state, they can’t file charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court,” the attorney reports.

NC Register: The University of Dallas, for example, provides links on its politics department’s Web pages to 58 national or international lobby groups and think tanks offering internships, such as the American Conservative Union and the Alliance Defense Fund, and some targeting specific issues such as National Right to Life. As well, there are links to Republican members of Congress. Democratic politicians are named, but not linked.

One News Now: ADF litigation staff counsel Matt Sharp says the club was forced to file a lawsuit when Owasso Public School District officials told them the religious nature of their organization meant they could not promote it (see earlier story). [more quotes]

One News Now: (Listen to audio report) Attorney Dale Schowengerdt of Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) explains that a federal judge in the state ruled in 2010 that only part of DOMA is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define marriage and denies same-sex couples federal benefits enjoyed by traditional couples. But that essentially gutted the measure. “The court ruled that the definitional part of the law, the part that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, was unconstitutional,” he notes. “And so, yeah — that really is an extraordinary opinion, and it’s inconsistent with most courts that have looked at this issue. And so we think that it’ll be upheld, if not at the First Circuit, at the Supreme Court.”

Fox23.com: A lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund representing Owasso Kids for Christ released the following statement about the settlement: “A Christian organization should have the same right to publicize its voluntary meetings as other groups do,” said ADF Litigation Staff Counsel Matt Sharp. “The district has done the right thing in revising its unconstitutional policy. That will allow ‘Kids for Christ’ and other similar groups to have the same access to publicize their events to students that all other groups enjoy.”

Opposing Views: The conservative Alliance Defense Fund, which has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Johnson, claims that park board rules “banning literature distribution in Loring Park… violate the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.”

WorldNetDaily: “The government should not be exiling free speech, it should be protecting it,” said Nate Kellum, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is assisting Johnson. “It’s ridiculous to say that the only place where people can hand out Bibles is an area where there’s no one to hand Bibles to. The Constitution simply does not permit the board to relegate free speech to isolated regions where no one can receive the message. That’s not free speech at all. It’s pure censorship.” . . . ADF-allied attorney Stan Zahorsky is serving as local counsel in the case, Johnson v. Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.

Politico: he Senate’s chief referee has issued a key ruling against Majority Leader Harry Reid, POLITICO has learned — a move expected to bring unwanted election-year pressure on the Nevada Democrat to act on politically dicey budget bills.

Mike Shedlock at Townhall: Obama gets attacked by opponents, but the “reform” was written by hospital companies, doctors, and insurers and is an effective tax on the labor of young people and a massive transfer to the aforementioned groups who already receive a grossly disproportionate share of GDP already

Ken Connor at Townhall: . . . the questions posed by the Supreme Court during last week’s argument on the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a “Obamacare,” indicate that the court is pondering not just the future of health care in this country, but also the role of the federal government in the lives of its citizens.

CNN reports (includes video): The point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws and all of us have to respect it,” he said. “But it’s precisely because of that extraordinary power that the court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly-elected legislature, our Congress.”

Jennifer Roback Morse at Public Discourse: The primary business of the state is justice. Because children cannot be autonomous, adult society has an obligation in justice to provide institutional structures that protect their most basic interests.

NCPA Policy Digest: Canada’s center-right government called for the retirement age to be raised and for major public service cuts recently, in an austerity budget that aims to balance the books by 2016, says Yahoo! News.

NY Times: Republican lawmakers who have spent two years railing against President Obama’s health care law are beginning to devise alternatives so they can be ready if the Supreme Court forces the issue of the uninsured back into the center of political debate.

The Hill: With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Romney had 43 percent of the vote, with second-place finisher Rick Santorum taking 38 percent. Ron Paul came in third with 12 percent, followed by Newt Gingrich at 6 percent.

The Hill: With 75 percent of precincts reporting, Romney led with 48 percent of the vote. Chief rival Rick Santorum was next with 30 percent of the vote, while Newt Gingrich trailed with 11 percent and Ron Paul garnered 10 percent.

Anchorage Daily News: With more than 90 percent of the precincts reporting late Tuesday, 58 percent of voters had voted against Proposition 5 . . .