Category Archives: Featured

“Society should protect and strengthen marriage, not undermine it. That’s the belief of the people of France. This redefinition of marriage has been pushed through at great speed without their support. Millions have taken to the streets in protest, but the government has not responded by listening to the people. Instead, it has sought to silence them with police brutality.”

AP: A federal judge granted a request Friday to temporarily block enforcement of a new Arkansas law that bans most abortions 12 weeks into a pregnancy. | Edwards v. Beck, No. 4:13-cv-00224-SWW (E.D. Ark.)

The Hill: Only two Democrats sided with Republicans in the party-line 229-195 vote — Jim Matheson (Utah) and Mike McIntyre (N.C.). All Republicans voted in favor of repeal.

SCOTUS Blog has posted its most recent Petitions to Watch here.

Buzz Feed: In a short letter dated May 2, a Navy official told Autumn Sandeen, a veteran and transgender activist: “Per your request the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) has been updated to show your gender as female effective April 12, 2013.”

Josh Israel at Think Progress: The Losing Arguments Of Anti-LGBT ‘Alliance Defending Freedom’

ADF testimony in Minnesota, Colorado, and Washington all failed to sway legislators. Asked whether ADF believes its tact has been effective or swayed any lawmakers’ votes, legal counsel Jim Campbell told ThinkProgress: “First Amendment-protected freedoms are vital to the continued flourishing of our constitutional republic. They should not be ignored by state legislators who vote to redefine marriage. The failure to respect freedoms long-enshrined in our Constitution will lead to needless litigation. Sadly, even when those rights are eventually vindicated in court, the legal process will take a significant toll on innocent citizens who are simply trying to live in accordance with their conscience. Alliance Defending Freedom will be at the forefront of defending those Americans.”

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing a Washington florist sued by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a countersuit against him Thursday.

Zenit: The archbishop said the decision “also renders senseless the very idea of President Obama’s National Fatherhood Initiative, in that a bill now becomes law in Minnesota that effectively claims that a mother and a father together are superfluous and can be replaced by two men or two women.”

Todd Starnes at Fox News: IRS Told Pro-Life Group Not to Picket Planned Parenthood

Washington Examiner: IRS officials refused to grant tax exempt status to two pro-life organizations because of their position on the abortion issue, according to a non-profit law firm, which said that one group was pressured not to protest a pro-choice organization that endorsed President Obama during the last election.

CNSNews: While the first reported instances of extra IRS scrutiny for conservative groups began in Cincinnati in March of 2010, the attacks began to pick up steam on a national level soon after Soros-funded groups began firing off letters to the IRS in October of that year – following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.

Politico: The 2-1 decision Thursday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (posted here) found that the presidential recess appointment power is limited to breaks between sessions of Congress, not breaks within sessions or other adjournments during which the Senate might meet in pro forma sessions. The reasoning mirrors that in a ruling of the D.C. Circuit Court in January.

NY Times: The command was read at 10 consecutive roll calls. Each of the city’s 34,000 officers, in theory, got the message: For “simply exposing their breasts in public,” women are guilty of no crime

Life News: The Lt. Governor of Texas is today demanding an investigation of an abortion practitioner who is considered the second Kermit Gosnell.

Life News: Due to legal issues raised by the former clinic workers, Operation Rescue contacted attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom, which handled many of the women’s legal concerns. Once the women quit their jobs, finances became an issue. Newman contacted Abby Johnson, whose new organization And Then There Were None, which offers support to former abortion clinic workers. She agreed to help the women with some financial assistance.

CNN: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew requested – and has accepted – the resignation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service in the wake of its handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status, President Barack Obama said Wednesday.

NPR: “The tentacles of this type of approach to abortion are all over the country,” says Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. “He is not an outlier. You just have to do a Google search and you’ll find in the last several months many other examples” of rogue abortion providers, she said.

James Bovard at Wall Street Journal: As David Burnham noted in “A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power” (1990), “In almost every administration since the IRS’s inception the information and power of the tax agency have been mobilized for explicitly political purposes.”

YouTube: In this Two-Minute Warning John Stonestreet interviews Ryan Anderson from the Heritage Foundation on the topic of same-sex marriage.

LifeNews: Abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell has given up his right to appeal the verdict that found him guilty on three of the four first-degree murder charges he faced.

Disabled children attending faith-based schools who qualify for aid under a federal program will now be eligible to receive tuition aid in the wake of an Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuit against the Montana Office of Public Instruction.

Jonathan Adler reports on the ruling at the Volokh Conspiracy: The relevant legislation applies only to those who have a “well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A). There is a difference between the persecution of a discrete group and the prosecution of those who violate a generally applicable law.

AP: An elderly Swiss woman who would rather end her life now than decline further in health found sympathy Tuesday from the European Court of Human Rights, which called on the Swiss to clarify their laws on so-called passive assisted suicide. | Gross v. Switzerland, 67810/10

Mercury News (AP): California education officials took the first step this week toward complying with a law that requires public schools to include prominent gay people and gay rights’ milestones in the curriculum, adopting a set of classroom material guidelines that prohibit “pejorative descriptions” based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

AP: The Minnesota Senate voted Monday to make gay marriage legal, the last legislative step before Gov. Mark Dayton’s promised signature will make the state the 12th in the U.S. to do so.

LifeNews: The jury in the murder trial of abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell returned a verdict and found him guilty on three of the four first-degree murder charges he faced.

Erik Stanley at Speak Up Movement: But what should be reported is that the targeting by the IRS goes even deeper than what is just reported. Because the IRS has been targeting churches since the passage of the Johnson Amendment in 1954. There is no difference between what the IRS has been caught doing with conservative groups and what the IRS has done to churches for the last 59 years. Both are intimidation.

Matt Bowman appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to provide an update. | MP3 audio 5:13 mins

FoxNews: An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative groups went beyond targeting “Tea Party” and “patriot” groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas.

LifeNews: The Vermont state legislature approved a measure to make the state the third to legalize assisted suicide, following Oregon and Washington.

Wisconsin Gazette: Openly gay U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan’s husband has received an ID issued only to the spouses of federal lawmakers. It is the first time the House has recognized the same-sex husband of a member with the House Spouse …

Bradley Abramson at Townhall: In fact, it can mean anything one wants it to mean. And a constitution that can mean anything is a constitution that means nothing—a mere 17 years after it supposedly meant something.

AP:The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

May 2013, Volume 39, Issue 5 of the Journal of Medical Ethics can be accessed here.

The mandate forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs and devices, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties. Currently, the administration is losing in court nationwide with 19 out of 25 court rulings going against the mandate.

Star Tribune: The state Senate plans to consider the bill Monday and leaders expect it to pass there too. Gov. Mark Dayton has pledged to sign it into law.

All Americans, including job creators and providers, should be free to live according to their faith rather than be forced into violating their own consciences. That’s no different for Geneva College, a Christian-run college that simply wants to abide by the very faith it espouses and teaches. T

Washington Times: The U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday that beginning with the 2014-2015 federal student aid form, the Department will — for the first time — collect income “from a dependent student’s legal parents regardless of the parents’ marital status or gender, if those parents live together.”

Education Week: A federal appeals court on Thursday reinstated a Michigan law that bars school districts from deducting teachers’ union dues for their employees. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled 2-1 that the state’s Act 53, a 2012 measure that by its own terms was meant as “a check on union power,” likely does not violate the free speech or equal protection rights of teachers’ unions.

USA Today (includes video): Castro, facing rape and kidnapping charges, could be charged with murder in the deaths of one victim’s unborn children.

Norbert Blum at WorldCrunch: In a society designed around individual liberty, has marriage become little more than a temporary link-up of working people choosing to spend some free time together? And the kids?

One day after receiving a letter from Alliance Defending Freedom, a North Dakota high school and its district agreed to allow a student’s pro-life poster that was part of a class assignment to be placed back on the walls of the school.

Liberty Institute: Today, Hardin County District Court Judge Steven Thomas entered an order granting the Kountze Cheerleaders a victory in the seven-month-long case over the permissibility of displaying run-through banners with Bible messages at Kountze ISD sporting events.

LifeSiteNews: Last weekend a number of major French cities held new rallies against same-sex ‘marriage’ that, despite the Spring vacation, attracted many thousands of participants. Organizers of “La Manif pour tous” (Demonstration for all) claim 35,000 demonstrators in Paris, 20,000 in Lyons, 20,000 in Rennes, and thousands more in Lille, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Dijon and many smaller towns . . . Rumours suggest that the Court will announce it’s decision supporting the legislation on May 16th – the International Day against Homophobia.

AP: A federal judge, asked by the government on Tuesday to freeze his plan giving teenage girls broader access to morning-after birth control, instead seized the chance to accuse health officials of taking steps that would end up hurting poor people and improve their chances of prevailing in a protracted legal fight with reproductive rights advocates.

Pioneer Press: Minnesota might be poised to become the 12th state in the nation to legalize gay marriage, as House leaders prepare for a floor vote Thursday, May 9.

Miami Herald: Minnesota appears poised to legalize gay marriage, as the Democratic speaker of the state House said Tuesday that a gay marriage bill endorsed by the governor and likely to pass in the state Senate also now has enough backing in his chamber.

USA Today: The Senate’s 12-9 vote sends the bill to Democratic Gov. Jack Markell, who supports the measure and planned to sign it later in the day. It would go into effect July 1.

Des Moines Area Community College has agreed to no longer enforce its policy of limiting its approved student speech zone to a table in the student center. It has also agreed to no longer require students to get permission to distribute fliers 10 school days in advance.

Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter Friday to all Vermont legislators to explain the negative consequences of a bill that would allow doctor-prescribed death.

Joe LaRue went on radio to discuss the situation: Pentagon backtracks on evangelization comments, investigation launched. | The Vicki McKenna Show —– MP3 audio 14:20 mins | WAVA Radio with Don Kroah —– MP3 audio 13:25 mins | The Zeb Bell Show —– MP3 audio 13:04 mins

Kellie Fiedorek at Townhall: Yes, anyone is capable of loving a child, and many heroic single parents admirably love and care for their children; however, few people advocate to incentivize permanently excluding moms or dads from a child’s life.

Ashley McGuire at Public Discourse: How appropriate that Justice Alito brought up cellphones in the recent Supreme Court hearings on the marriage cases. Because these days it seems like it is easier to get out of a marriage than it is to get out of a cellphone contract.

t the government’s own request, a federal appellate court Friday dismissed the Obama administration’s appeal of an order that stopped the president from enforcing his abortion pill mandate against a Bible publisher. The administration’s retreat marks the first total appellate victory on a preliminary injunction in any abortion pill mandate case.

A Maine church’s ordeal in court may lead to a modification in state law that will help end inequities between how churches and non-church charities are treated in property taxation matters.

Des Moines Register: Married same-sex couples have the same rights as married heterosexuals to have both parents listed on the birth certificates of their newborn children, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled this morning. Justices ruled 6-0 . . . | Gartner v. Iowa Dept. of Public Health

Anchorage Daily News: The Alaska Supreme Court Friday unanimously upheld a lower court decision that a voter initiative banning all abortions could not appear on the Alaska ballot because it was unconstitutional. | Desjarlais v. Alaska

Alliance Defending Freedom filed a Freedom of Information Act request Wednesday for records related to a Pentagon statement issued Tuesday that indicated members of the military could be subject to court martial for “religious proselytization.”

The Mexican Supreme Court did not allow pro-abortion ideologues to reopen a settled issue–that half of the states of Mexico can continue to declare in their state constitutions that life must be protected from the moment of conception.

Wisconsin Family Action sent a letter to Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) Friday inviting him to  clarify what he believes regarding the best interest of children.

ABC: Rhode Island is joining nine other states and the District of Columbia in allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry.

Todd Starnes at Townhall: Religious liberty groups have grave concerns after they learned the Pentagon is vetting its guide on religious tolerance with a group that compared Christian evangelism to “rape” and advocated that military personnel who proselytize should be court martialed.

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: “Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense…Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis…”.

LifeSiteNews: Mexico’s Supreme Court has declared that the state of Queretaro’s pro-life constitutional amendment is “invalid” because lawmakers did not receive the approval of a sufficient number of state municipal governments before announcing its promulgation.

Robert McNamara and Paul Sherman at the National Law Journal: As if the facts of these cases weren’t provocative enough, the challenges to California’s law are complicated by the fact that the plaintiffs, practicing psychologists who are licensed in California, simply engage in “talk therapy” with their patients. As a result, these cases raise an important, unresolved constitutional question: Is the kind of one-on-one counseling and advice at issue in talk therapy “free speech” protected by the First Amendment?

AL.com: A national observance of the National Day of Prayer will be streamed live Thursday from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. CST from the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

HSLDA: Roger Kiska, the Alliance Defending Freedom’s senior legal counsel in Europe, was outraged by the court’s action. “It is beyond belief that a modern civilized country could allow such injustice to continue,” he said. “There is no evidence in the record that justifies the continued separation of this family. We will continue to fight for this family and on behalf of the principle that the European Convention condemns such acts.”

USA Today: Asked at a town-hall-style meeting Monday in Wisconsin about the issue, Ryan said he would “vote differently these days” and still opposes gay marriage. In 1999, the congressman voted in favor of banning same-sex couples in the District of Columbia from adopting.

USA Today: San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone chairs the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. Here are his views on the subject in response to questions from USA TODAY . . .

Hadley Arkes at Weekly Standard: With the scandal over Kermit Gosnell, this seems precisely the moment for pro-life congressmen to return to the Born-Alive Act and hold hearings: They could take evidence now about the volume of these killings, and they could restore the civil penalties that were dropped from the bill. After all, not a single Democrat, in either House, finally voted against that bill. The Democrats agreed that it was wrong to kill a child who survived an abortion, and so they should be faced with the question of how wrong they thought it was: Would it merit at least the kind of penalty that comes with a moving violation in traffic?

Buzz Feed: The federal government plans to start counting income from both parents in a same-sex couple when making federal student aid decisions beginning in 2014, the Department of Education announced Monday, a change that could result in students of same-sex couples receiving less federal aid.

Washington Post: This comes from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is out with a poll Tuesday morning looking at how much Americans know about the health-care overhaul—before a deluge of public outreach, set to begin this summer, kicks off.

AP: The government is moving the morning-after pill over the counter but only those 15 and older can buy it – an attempt to find middle ground just days before a court-imposed deadline to lift all age restrictions on the emergency contraceptive.

Houston Chronicle: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has issued an opinion stating that local governments and school districts that offer marriage benefits to same-sex partners are violating the state constitution.

Sports Illustrated: I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay. I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, “I’m different.” If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.

BBC: A Sinn Fein motion calling on the Northern Ireland Executive to legislate to allow for same sex marriage has been defeated in the assembly by 53 votes to 42.