Daily Archives: December 3, 2012

Fox News (AP): A Protestant mob has stormed into the grounds of Belfast City Hall and clashed with police after the council’s Catholic majority voted to remove the British flag from the building for most of the year. More information …

William C. Duncan at National Review: In the wake of the Ninth Circuit’s decision striking down Proposition 8, Lambda Legal sued the State of Nevada alleging the state’s marriage amendment was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yesterday, the trial court issued a decision rejecting the claim and upholding Nevada’s law . . . The court’s holding on the question of whether same-sex marriage advocates are politically powerless is particularly interesting . . .

Just 25 miles from a North Carolina college that censored the phrase “Christmas trees” before reversing course last week, an elementary school has removed a sentence referring to “God” from a 1st-grader’s poem commemorating her grandfathers’ military service.

Mercator.net: You may know one of them, or even be one. They are divorced people, mainly women, who have taken on the care of their estranged spouse when he or she is facing serious illness or death. It is a surprising and, to some, a baffling development, but one that is significant enough for two researchers from the University of Missouri to look into. Alerted to their study by a recent feature article in The Australian (“The ex factor” by Kath Legge, November 3, 2012) MercatorNet asked Drs Teresa Cooney and Christine Proulx about their findings so far. Keep in mind as you read the interview that millions of baby boomers, who experienced record divorce rates in the wake of no-fault laws, are now ageing. Men in particular often end up alone and estranged from their children. A current spouse or partner (assuming there is one) friends or siblings may be unable or unwilling to commit themselves to a care-giving role. But for some “exes” their original marital commitment still means what it said.

Boston Globe: Emerson announced the plans Monday, just weeks after she won re-election to the southeastern Missouri district.

Christian Institute: The Christian B&B owner who was fined £3,600 for refusing to allow a gay couple to share a double room, will now appeal the court’s decision.

AP: One of the nation’s largest teachers unions is proposing a stringent exam teachers would have to pass before entering the profession, much like the bar exam for lawyers.

National Review embeds video of the debate.

Human Events: House Speaker John Boehner escalated a battle in the Senate this week to make rules more favorable to the Democrats in charge by issuing a threat to block all future bills passed under the new filibuster procedures. “Any bill that reaches a Republican-led House based on Senate Democrats’ heavy-handed power play would be dead on arrival,” said Boehner, Ohio Republican.

Gatestone Institute: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of 57 Muslim countries, is pressuring Western countries into making it an international crime to criticize Islam or Mohammed – all on the name of “religious tolerance.”

George Will at Human Events: In 2007, Keith John Sampson, a middle-aged student working his way through Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis as a janitor, was declared guilty of racial harassment. Without granting Sampson a hearing, the university administration — acting as prosecutor, judge and jury — convicted him of “openly reading [a] book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject.” “Openly.” “Related to.” Good grief.

Gary Bauer at Human Events: The fact is that Republicans have been pummeled in two straight presidential elections, and both those elections were decided on economic issues. In fact, every time in the last 20 years cutting Social Security and Medicare were major issues, the GOP has lost.

CNSNews: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is Catholic, indicated on Friday that she supports forcing St. Mary’s Medical Center, the oldest continuously operating hospital in her San Francisco-based congressional district, to provide health plans to its workers that cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs free of charge even though the Catholic faith says this Catholic hospital may not do so because these things are intrinsically immoral.

CNS (includes video): Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week that she has stood up for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and and Transgender rights all around the world.

Alliance Defending Freedom and Jubilee Campaign, together with several other concerned organizations, are formally requesting that the U.S. State Department designate the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram as a “foreign terrorist organization.

Reuters: Russian lawmakers are reworking a draft law introducing prison terms for religious offences after signs that Vladimir Putin is concerned it could undermine the delicate balance between the country’s many religions.

MPR (includes audio): Same-sex marriage supporters in Minnesota gathered on Saturday to talk about the best ways to translate their defeat of the marriage amendment into ways of advancing their other goals, including making same-sex marriage legal. But there was disagreement on when and how best to proceed.

Financial Times: It allowed the Muslim Brotherhood, eager to take advantage of its 80-year-old field organisation, to rush parliamentary elections. The outcome was a landslide victory for the Islamists, far beyond their real power base. The constitutional court, after review, dissolved this non-representative parliament.

Washington Post: Women would be prohibited from having abortions based on whether they want a boy or a girl under legislation proposed by a Utah lawmaker.

allAfrica: Parents have been called upon to draw closer to their girl-children and monitor their movements in order that the teenage girls especially, would not be influenced by ill advice from their peers to indulge in illegal abortion.

East Valley Tribune: The U.S. Supreme Court could decide this coming week whether to let Arizona argue that it can deny benefits to the domestic partners of its gay workers.

Lebovits, Gerald, Gewuerz, Drew and Hunker, Christopher, Winning the Moot Court Oral Argument: A Guide for Intra- and Intermural Moot Court Competitors (November 20, 2012). Capital University Law Review, Vol. 41, 2013. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2160641 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2160641

LifeSiteNews: Shelley Sella, a late term abortionist who is a former associate of the notorious Kansas abortionist George Tiller, has been accused by the New Mexico Medical Board of violating the standard of patient care and gross negligence for conducting an abortion of a 35 week pre-born baby outside a hospital on a woman whose medical history included a previous Caesearian delivery.

LifeSiteNews: Republican Senator Rand Paul says he wants to pass a Life at Conception Act to “end abortion on demand once and for all.”

LifeSiteNews: Kitty Holland, the Irish Times reporter who broke the story about the death of Savita Halappanavar that launched a global crusade against Ireland’s pro-life laws, has admitted that the story of Mrs. Halappanavar asking for an abortion may have been a little bit “muddled” in the retelling.

William Doino, Jr. at First Things: Some 200 million Christians—two-thirds of the entire population of the United States—are now suffering oppression, even to the point of death, on account of their faith. Yet, if you ask the average person about it, they probably wouldn’t know anything about Christianity’s modern martyrdom, much less know where and why it’s occurring.

Ross Douthat at NY Times: IN the eternally recurring debates about whether some rival great power will knock the United States off its global perch, there has always been one excellent reason to bet on a second American century: We have more babies than the competition.

LifeSiteNews: That means that if 2011 was an average adoption year, Planned Parenthood helped with one adoption for every 2,625 abortions they performed.

LifeSiteNews: “Politically correct nonsense,” is how Conservative MEP Marina Yannakoudakis described a report by the European Parliament’s gender equality committee, that called for banning of children’s books depicting the traditional family.

LifeNews: The nephew of Chen Guangcheng has been sentenced to 39 months in prison for supposedly injuring a Chinese government agent who raided his house in the aftermath of Chen’s escape to the United States.

C-FAM: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual (LGBT) rights continue to divide UN member states but LGBT groups are celebrating a minor victory at the United Nations General Assembly. Last Tuesday the GA adopted the term “gender identity” alongside “sexual orientation” for the first time in one of its resolutions.

Compass Direct: Christians in Syria say the particularly gruesome death of Father Fadi – his eyes had been gouged out – marks a turning point for them. Before, Christians were caught up in the war in the same way as Kurds, Druze, and all other ethnic groups. Also, a part of the Christian community in Syria has been actively supporting President Assad, thus being an actor in the civil war. But some Syrian Christians say a series of incidents recently points to a trend of violence against Christian civilians, including priests.

Washington Examiner: By a wide margin, 68 percent to 23 percent, Americans prefer stores with signs that say “Merry Christmas” during the Christmas holidays than the more generic and secular “Happy Holidays,” according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey.

The Republic (AP): Police in Portland say a maximum $1,000 reward has been offered for information leading to an arrest in the case of Italian marble religious statues damaged at a Catholic shrine and botanical garden.

LifeNews: The Senate is expected to vote on the pro-abortion CRPD treaty on Wednesday and pro-life groups are asking pro-life advocates to contact members of the Senate urging them to vote against it.

AFP on Google: Ten Christians had their throats slit and militants killed two police officers during attacks on churches and border posts in a fresh wave of violence in northern Nigeria, officials reported Sunday.

Matt Sharp appeared on the Bob Dutko Show to discuss this. | MP3 audio 5:13 mins

Telegraph: The couple have twice appealed to the PCT, which has refused them funding but has said it will review its policy, in the light of new age discrimination laws which mean healthcare should not be denied on grounds of age.

Atlanta J. Constitution: The Georgia branch of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Friday to block the state’s stricter abortion law from taking effect Jan. 1.
The law prohibits abortions after 20 weeks with exceptions for specific threats to the mother’s health.

Washington Post: Gay marriage advocacy groups say Maine’s new same-sex marriage law is going into effect Dec. 29.

Minneapolis Star Tribune: In a lawsuit filed this week, the Alliance Defending Freedom said an analysis of abortions paid for by the state’s Medicaid program found that barely one in four gave a reason of medical necessity, even though the state is permitted to use taxpayer funds only for therapeutic abortions.
Chuck Shreffler, a Minneapolis lawyer working with the alliance, said the state’s own reports show that Medicaid paid for more than 47,000 abortions between 1999 and 2011, and that medical reasons were cited in only 10,044 instances. “It looks like a significant number of these abortions are actually elective abortions,” he said, in spite of state law forbidding the use of public funds in such cases.

Crookston Times: Steven Aden, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, said the numbers cited in the lawsuit represent the “best assessment” the group could make based on the statistics available. He said a fuller picture of the “illegitimate public funding of elective abortions” will emerge as the case proceeds. Minnesota spends about $1.5 million annually on abortions for indigent women, the lawsuit says. “It’s a gross abuse of taxpayer dollars in the state of Minnesota and an unfortunate tragedy as well,” Aden said.

Education News: Why bring this up now, you might ask. Well, recent reports suggest that a new generation of Right-of-centre students are suffering a similar persecution. Such is the institutionalised and increasing hatred of Tory students at Oxford that last week a group of them demanded the same equal-rights protection as gays, disabled people and ethnic minorities. Conservative members of ,Corpus Christi College’s junior common room (JCR) claim they are “often actively isolated, personally attacked and made to feel unwelcome” because of their political views.

Religion Clause Blog: In Britain, Free Schools are alternative state-funded schools set up in response to local demands. Thefirst Free Schools opened in 2011. In January of this year, Britain’s Department for Education revised its funding agreement for Free Schools to prevent the teaching of creationism in science classes, allowing it to be taught only in religious education classes.

Religion Clause Blog: The full text of Egypt’s proposed new Constitution became available today in English from Egypt Independent

Religion Clause Blog: In Center for Inquiry v. Marion Circuit Court, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 170243 (SD IN, Nov. 30, 2012), an Indiana federal district court rejected constitutional challenges to Indiana’s marriage solemnization statute (IN Code 31-11-6-1).  Under the statute, clergy can obtain a license to solemnize marriages, but those certified as “Secular Celebrants” by the non-religious Center for Inquiry cannot.

Religion Clause Blog: In Louisiana Federation of Teachers v. State of Louisiana, (LA 19th Dist. Ct., Nov. 30, 2012), a Louisiana trial court held that the state’s voucher program unconstitutionally diverts to nonpublic schools or entities funds which the state constitution’s Minimum Foundation Program . . .

ABC: Fulton was one of the first women to attend West Point more than three decades ago, and she was a key player in the fight to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Last July, President Barack Obama appointed her to West Point’s Board of Visitors, making her the first openly gay or lesbian person to serve on it.

Derek Bekebred at Public Discourse: Students across the country have been pushing back against liberal dominance, but we cannot solve the problem on our own. We need the full support of our party and conservative allies . . . Instead of abandoning fundamental portions of the Republican platform, it’s time for the party to embrace a new one: outreach to America’s universities on social issues.

Religion Clause Blog: In Wagler v. West Boggs Sewer District, Inc., (IN App., Nov. 29, 2012), an Indiana appeals court refused to set aside consent judgments entered into by several members of an Old Order Amish community . . .

Bloomberg: The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider whether human genes can be patented, taking up an issue that has split the medical community and will shape the future of personalized health care and the biotechnology industry.

Katherine Connell at National Review: Julie F. Kay’s piece in Slate, “What the Irish Abortion Tragedy Means for the United States,” is the latest attempt to cast the death of a pregnant woman, Savita Halappanavar, in a Galway hospital as a cautionary tale for America. This is what would happen, the story goes, if Republicans succeeded in making abortion illegal except in cases where the mother’s life is threatened, as is the case in Ireland.

AP: Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi faced the prospect of widening civil disobedience on Monday as media and the tourism industry pondered measures to join a protest by judges against the Islamist leader.

Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review: In her book Unplanned, Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director in Texas, recounts how a mandate to get “revenue up” from Planned Parenthood highers-up played into her awakening about what she was a part of.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUS Blog: This the fourth and final article in the series explaining the constitutional controversy, now awaiting the Supreme Court’s attention, over same-sex marriage.  The Court is scheduled to take its first look at that issue at its private Conference this morning.  This article discusses the various options open to the Court for dealing with those cases.  As soon as the Court announces any actions on these cases, the blog will report that.  The three prior articles in this series can be foundhere, here, and here.

Christian Fighter Pilot: Michael Weinstein, the self-described “litigator and agitator” who has managed to have every one of his 5 lawsuits dismissed in the past few years, now finds himself on the receiving end of legal action: [A former Navy chaplain has filed a] defamation lawsuit against the militant anti-Christian activist Mikey Weinstein, who got served yesterday. Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt, PhD, just filed the new legal complaint in New Mexico State Court, citing multiple counts of defamation and malicious abuse of the legal process by Weinstein and his openly anti-Christian organization the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Inc.

NBC: This is where they are shouting on bullhorns again, outraged because they say the Muslim Brotherhood has stolen the revolution and is railroading though a constitution that could lock in Muslim Brotherhood rule for 50 years, bringing more Islamic law.

SCOTUS Blog reports.