Category Archives: Featured

A federal court in Washington state ruled Wednesday that the state board of pharmacy cannot force pharmacists to stock drugs that risk taking human life if the pharmacists have a religious, moral, or ethical objection.

Boston.com: U.S. Sen. Scott Brown is urging top defense officials to let women serve in front line combat, saying barring women from those units could make it harder for them to rise up the military ranks.

Baptist Press: The ACLJ statement said simply, “We are hearing reports from our contacts in Iran that the execution orders for Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani may have been issued.”

LifeNews: A Judge Daniel Green in the Cole County Circuit Court ruled Monday evening that the MOSIRA (Missouri Science Innovation and Reinvestment Act) that allows for embryonic stem cell research and human cloning funding is unconstitutional.

LifeNews: “Having looked at the current proposal, I believe there is no need to direct by statute that further invasive ultrasound procedures be done,” McDonnell said in the statement, adding that “mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state.”

Volokh Conspiracy: The law is now being challenged, in Zastrow v. Bullock (D. Mont. filed Feb. 21, 2012). One possible obstacle to the lawsuit is that it’s not clear whether the law is at all being enforced, and, in the absence of a credible threat of enforcement, the lawsuit might be dismissed on standing grounds.

ADF: No court should presume to redefine marriage or undercut the democratic process

CNN (includes video): “I know this is a very emotional issue and a very divisive issue in my state,” Christie said in an interview to air on Piers Morgan Tonight Tuesday. “The only way we have to amend our constitution in New Jersey – which is by referendum – let’s put it on the ballot and let’s let the people decide.

Reuters: A Maryland Senate committee approved a gay marriage bill on Tuesday, sending the issue to the full Senate and moving Maryland closer to becoming the eighth state to legalize same-sex nuptials.

NY Times: Marriage has lost its luster in Lorain, Ohio. Sixty-three percent of all births to women under 30 in Lorain County occur outside marriage, according to Child Trends, a research center in Washington.

Boston.com (AP): “Generally speaking, we think the 9th Circuit as a whole deserves the chance to basically fix this because the decision is such an outlier, it’s really not representative of what the 9th Circuit’s thinking on this issue has been,” Pugno said.

Federal lawsuit challenges Obama administration’s latest attack on religious freedom

William McGurn at the Wall Street Journal: It’s arguably the most glaring double standard in American life today. It helps explain why candidates with social views that are fairly conventional among ordinary Americans—the citizens of 31 states including California have rejected same-sex marriage when put to a vote—find themselves depicted as extreme.

AP: The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from grandparents in Alabama who wanted a court order to visit with their grandchildren.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Louisiana College Saturday against the Obama administration. The lawsuit challenges the administration’s unconstitutional mandate that religious employers provide abortifacients, sterilization, and contraception at no cost to employees regardless of religious or moral objections.

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Gregory S. Baylor will join Geneva College President Ken Smith Tuesday at a press conference to announce a new federal lawsuit against the Obama administration’s unconstitutional mandate that religious employers provide abortifacients, sterilization, and contraception to employees regardless of religious or moral objections.

Gazette.net: The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee is scheduled to vote on the House version of the bill at noon Tuesday, said Sen. Brian Frosh (D-Dist. 19) of Bethesda, who chairs the the committee. The bill is expected to get a favorable committee report, and could go to the Senate floor as early as Wednesday, Frosh said.

The Washington Post: It ain’t over until God says that it is over,” Thomas said. “It took one woman to take prayer out of schools. There are too many weak-knee Christians. This is bigger than same-sex marriage. It is about changing society.”

AL.com: Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker took aim Friday at U.S. abortion law, using a DeKalb County case to call for states to reject the concept of “viability” of a fetus and give legal rights to the unborn. | Hamilton v. Scott

The video and a report are available at CBS website. (direct YouTube link)

James Taranto at WSJ.com: Social issues have come to the fore on the GOP side in two of the past six presidential elections—in 1988 (prison furloughs, the Pledge of Allegiance, the ACLU) and 2004 (same-sex marriage). “Those are the only two elections since Reagan where the Republican Party has won a popular majority,” Mr. Bell says. “It isn’t coincidental.”

Washington Times: His veto came Friday, a day after the state Assembly passed the bill. The Senate approved it Monday.

NationalJournal.com: Obama likely will be the last Democrat to win party’s presidential nomination without backing same-sex marriage.

Jurist: US Attorney General Eric Holder [DOJ profile] sent a letter [text] Friday to Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) [official profile] stating that the Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] has decided that denying same-sex couples military and veterans benefits violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment [text]

Washington Times: Mr. O’Malley, a Democrat, joined House Democratic leaders on Friday night to celebrate the chamber’s 72-67 passage of the bill, which received one more than the necessary 71 votes.

My Way News (AP): A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.

Baltimore Sun: The House of Delegates is expected to be back in session at 4:30 p.m., when the final debate and vote is expected.

LifeSiteNews.com: In what’s sure to come down as a devastating blow to parental freedom, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously rejected this morning the pleas of a Christian family to have their child exempted from the Quebec government’s mandatory ethics and religious culture course. | Christian Legal Fellowship press release here.

Politico: Assembly spokesman Tom Hester says the bill was delivered to Christie’s office by the Assembly clerk’s office Friday morning, a day after the chamber approved it 42-33. The Senate passed the gay marriage proposal on Monday.

An Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney asked a federal court Thursday to order the Obama administration to produce records it was required to disclose more than 100 days ago in a lawsuit over its illegal funding of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.

The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defense Fund Chief Solicitor Gary McCaleb regarding today’s 6-3 Arizona House Judiciary Committee vote to pass HB 2625 (the “strike everything” amendment) out of committee:

Care2.com: Dubbed Referendum 74, the question put before voters will be the text of the bill which they must then approve for the law to go into effect. More on ballot procedure via The Washington Office of the Secretary of State’s blog . . .

Father Raymond J. de Souza at the National Post: The spiritual outlook of the contraceptive culture fundamentally separates present enjoyment from future responsibility. It is any wonder that such societies loot the future to pay for present benefits?

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys have won a court order that allows churches to continue meeting for worship services in New York City public schools for the time being.

9News.com (includes video, Brian Raum appears in it): This particular legislation has been used as a springboard to same-sex marriage in virtually every place that it’s been instituted,” Brian Raum, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, said, “either through the court system or legislatively.”

AP: The Oklahoma Senate has overwhelmingly approved an anti-abortion “personhood” bill that declares life begins at conception.

Huffington Post: Newly appointed Democratic National Convention chairman Antonio Villaraigosa on Wednesday seemed to signal support for same-sex marriage being part of the 2012 Democratic Party platform.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed suit against the Dixon R-1 School District Tuesday on behalf of a student who had her pro-life posters torn down by school officials.

Persecution.org: “A mob of nearly 20,000 radical Muslims, mainly Salafis, attempted this evening to break into and torch the Church of St. Mary and St. Abram in the village of Meet Bashar,in Zagazig, Sharqia province,” the Assyrian International News Agency reports.

The Washington Post: Lawmakers expect a very close vote by Friday on the bill sponsored by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D). It will take 71 votes to pass in the 141-member House.

Politico: House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi supports a pro-gay marriage plank in the 2012 Democratic platform, her spokesman Drew Hammill confirms to POLITICO. Pelosi’s office endorsed a push the Freedom to Marry campaign’s platform push to the publication MetroWeekly . . .

Reihan Salam at National Review Online: But the notion that opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in bigotry is now so firmly entrenched that Santorum will have an extremely difficult time overcoming it . . . Santorum has said that his campaign is about freedom. Yet he hasn’t been able to explain that his opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in a concern for equal freedom in a manner that non-conservatives find sufficiently compelling.

The Volokh Conspiracy: The case is Vejdeland v. Sweden (Feb. 9, 2012) . . . In December 2004 the applicants [who are adults] … went to an upper secondary school (gymnasieskola) and distributed approximately a hundred leaflets by leaving them in or on the pupils’ lockers. The episode ended when the school’s principal intervened and made them leave the premises . . .

LifeNews.com: The new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for insurance coverage including birth control and abortion-inducing drugs is so offensive more than 50 members of Congress will speak out against it today.

The Hill: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that he’ll let the Senate vote on a proposal to reverse the White House’s controversial birth-control mandate.

The Washington Post: The GOP-controlled House of Delegates gave final approval Tuesday to bills that require women to undergo an ultrasound before an abortion and that state human life begins at conception.

The Des Moines Register (includes video): More than 100 people stood in 20-degree weather outside a south Des Moines church Sunday to support the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

LifeNews.com: The U.S. Senate may vote this afternoon on an amendment that would stop the mandate President Barack Obama put in place to force religious groups to pay for insurance coverage that includes birth control and abortion-causing drugs.

James Kalbe at The Catholic World Report: We live not in a Catholic society but one in which the view of freedom expressed by the Planned Parenthood court is generally accepted by social authorities. In that view, freedom is freedom to choose what to treat as real and meaningful. The ideal is to let our choices determine what makes sense for us, rather than let what makes sense determine our choices. Human will and not truth is at the center . . . So we are faced with two opposing understandings of freedom, one that views freedom as the unfolding of individual creativity and one that views it as reaching for something greater and better than we are. Which is right?

LifeSiteNews.com: A Christian couple who were fined £3,600 for refusing to allow two homosexual men to share a bed in their guesthouse, lost their appeal of the conviction in a ruling handed down by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales on February 10.

LifeNews.com: The Family Policy Institute of Washington has analyzed the bill, which should be a concern to pro-life voters.

LifeNews.com: “HB 1 recognizes that human life begins at conception and also declares that unborn children and their parents have protectable legal interests,” Marshall said in an email to LifeNews

The Volokh Conspiracy: So held the Hawaii Supreme Court, in Hamilton ex rel. Lethem v. Lethem (Haw. Feb. 7, 2012), interpreting the Hawaii Constitution, though in reasoning that could be seen as applicable to the federal Constitution and to other state constitutions . . .

Seattle Times Newspaper: With Gov. Chris Gregoire’s signature on Monday, Washington joins six other states and the District of Columbia in allowing same-sex couples to marry.

LifeNews.com: After significant Sturm und Drang resulting from a Friday announcement by President Barack Obama that he would revise his original mandate forcing religious employers to pay for insurance coverage including birth control and abortion-inducing drugs, the Obama administration has implemented the original mandat

In his broadcast today, Rush Limbaugh spent a great deal of time today reviewing this article by Hillsdale College Professor Paul A. Rahe: American Catholicism’s Pact With the Devil.  Rush has posted a transcript of his discussion.  Rahe writes: “There is, I would suggest, a connection between the heretical doctrine propagated by Cardinal Bernadin in the Gannon Lecture and the difficulties that the American Church now faces. Those who seek to create heaven on earth and who, to this end, subvert the liberty of others and embrace the administrative entitlements state will sooner or later become its victims.”

ADF, allies file brief with Supreme Court to challenge unconstitutional requirement

“No one should be threatened with arrest for exercising his constitutionally protected free speech rights. The court was right to recognize that the city used an unconstitutional policy to stifle religious speech in a public park. We are pleased that the policy is now on hold and that the court has determined that we are likely to succeed in this case.”

The Associated Press: The Senate’s 24-16 vote sends the bill to the Assembly, which is expected to pass it on Thursday.

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence will be available for media interviews immediately following a hearing Tuesday on whether a federal court should issue an order to stop the eviction of worship services from New York City’s public schools.

The Christian Institute: Government minister, Eric Pickles, has vowed to overturn a judge’s ban on formal council prayers – within a week if possible. The backlash follows a “ludicrous” case brought by the National Secular Society against a small Devonshire town council.

Elizabeth Marquardt at The Atlantic: Today we are witnessing an equal opportunity run on deliberately conceiving motherless children. Men, alone or in pairs, can buy eggs and rent wombs, too

“The Obama administration’s rule change doesn’t change anything. The so-called ‘accommodation’ still forces people of faith to violate their religious beliefs and core values. The issue is whether the government will respect our God-given first freedom, religious liberty. If it does not, Christians will resist, and ADF will defend them.”

The Christian Institute: The saying of prayers as a ‘formal’ part of local council meetings has been ruled unlawful by the High Court today in an extraordinary judgment. The judge, Mr Justice Ouseley, said there is no law that gives councils the power to do so. But critics hit back, saying the ruling also means a council has no power to formally start its meetings with the national anthem.

Charter school teachers fear IRS rules change: A little-noticed proposed change in Internal Revenue Service regulations could have devastating effects for charter school teachers by making them ineligible for state retirement plans, and they could stand to lose much of the money that they already have accrued.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 . . .

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.