Religion & Law

Elena Kagan Donated to Pro-Abortion Women?s Group With Ties to Emily?s List

Posted on May 13, 2010
LifeNews: Will Solicitor Elena Kagan objectively apply the Constitution or promote a pro-abortion agenda? It seems unlikely. Here?s why. Kagan has contributed financially to the National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF), an organization whose goal, in its own words, is 'to increase women?s access to?reproductive health services and block attempts to limit reproductive rights?and to give every woman access to?abortion services?...

Eugene Volokh: Kagan reports raise question of ?bisexual erasure?

Posted on May 13, 2010
Eugene Volokh writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: "As I understand it, the great majority of women who are not purely heterosexual are actually to some degree bisexual. For instance, Laumann et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality 311 (1994), reports that 3...

Titles of Nobility in America: ?Want a Supreme Court Seat? Going to Harvard or Yale Helps?

Posted on May 13, 2010
If nominee Elena Kagan is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the nine-member body will be made up entirely of judges educated at either Harvard Law School or Yale Law School . . . . Ronald Reagan . . . was the last President who did not attend Harvard or Yale ...

Growing Up, Kagan Tested Boundaries of Her Faith

Posted on May 13, 2010
NY Times: "Elena Kagan was a star pupil in her Hebrew school on the Upper West Side. So it was not too surprising after she turned 12 that she wanted to mark her coming of age with a bat mitzvah. The only problem was that the rabbi at her Orthodox synagogue, Shlomo Riskin, had never performed one ...

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Remedies Imposed In Muslim Charity?s Challenge To Terrorist Designation

Posted on May 13, 2010
Religion Clause Blog: "In KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development, Inc. v. Geithner, (ND OH, May 10, 2010), an Ohio federal district court issued an opinion on the appropriate remedy in a Muslim charity's challenge to the procedures used by the U...

Anonymous letter explaining cross theft sent to Desert Dispatch

Posted on May 13, 2010
He told a reporter that the person responsible for the theft wrote up the following explanation and statement regarding the removal of the cross. He asked that the Desert Dispatch to print the statement in its entirety . . .

Jeff Shafer: Stigma and dogma, revisited

Posted on May 13, 2010
ADF Attorney Jeff Shafer writing at speakupmovement.org/university: "Our educational institutions have made systemic the exclusion of outlooks that deviate from their shared rigid definition of acceptable rationality. As one prominent example, the Rawlsian ideal of 'public reason'?as ubiquitous in its dominance as encompassing in its prohibitions?forbids Christian and other religious presuppositions from participation in public discourse...

?A cowardly and criminal act?

Posted on May 13, 2010
California Catholic Daily: "'This is a cowardly and criminal act that dishonors heroes who have given their lives for our country,' said ADF senior counsel [Joseph Infranco] in a prepared statement. 'Those who deny our heritage and religious liberty will not succeed through vandalism under cover of darkness...

New Hawaii law shuns Obama birth document requests

Posted on May 13, 2010
AP: "Republican Gov. Linda Lingle signed into law Wednesday a bill allowing state government agencies not to respond to follow-up requests for information if they determine that the subsequent request is duplicative or substantially similar to a previous request...

Austin R. Nimocks: Potemkin democracy in the district

Posted on May 13, 2010
ADF Attorney Austin R. Nimocks writing in the Washington Times: "To vote or not to vote? That definitely is the question posed to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals when it comes to the legal definition of marriage within the District. But it's mind-boggling that anyone even had to ask this question when the right of the people to vote is so obviously beyond question...

AK: State high court justice steps away from abortion lawsuit

Posted on May 13, 2010
Anchorage Daily News: "Alaska Supreme Court Justice Morgan Christen is stepping down from hearing a lawsuit against a ballot initiative that would make doctors tell a teenage girl's parents before she could get an abortion . . . . The Alaska Family Council had sent out e-mail alerts Tuesday and Wednesday, urging its members to contact the state judicial conduct commission and complain that Christen had a conflict of interest and shouldn't be participating in the case ...

Maggie Gallagher: Can politics win a culture war?

Posted on May 13, 2010
Maggie Gallagher writes at Townhall: "Absent a political backlash, elites who gave us Roe v. Wade could now be moving on to a greater institutionalization of abortion, making aborting teen pregnancies public policy, for example, or forcing pro-life doctors and nurses into other professions...

Obama Threatens Veto of Obamacare as Cost Estimates Soar Above $1 Trillion

Posted on May 13, 2010
Newsmax: "House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the new CBO analysis 'provides ample cause for alarm,' according to a report on ABC News. 'This comes just weeks after the Obama administration itself released an analysis confirming that the new law actually increases Americans? healthcare costs,' Boehner said...

NBC Poll: Solid Shift to GOP Under Way

Posted on May 13, 2010
Newsmax: "The voters who said they were most interested in the November elections favor Republican control of Congress by a 20-point margin, with 56 percent backing the GOP and 36 percent backing Democrats."

Cal Thomas: What is the Law?

Posted on May 13, 2010
Cal Thomas writes at Jewish World Review: "What is the law? Is it a game played by insiders who went to Harvard (or Yale) law schools and the intellectual equivalent of theological debates over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Or is it something else, and if something else, what? The classical view of law is that it is meant to restrain lawbreakers...

N.Korean women up for sale in China

Posted on May 13, 2010
"Young female refugees from North Korea are increasingly becoming a commodity in China, where they are sold to farmers for up to 1,500 dollars a head, according to a Seoul campaigner. The human trafficking is far from new but has become more prevalent as prices soar amid a shortage of Chinese women in the countryside ...

Barack Obama plans to punish BP with tax hike as Gulf spill worsens

Posted on May 13, 2010
Times Online: "The measure, unveiled as BP began a new attempt to contain the ruptured well that has leaked millions of gallons of crude oil into America?s southern coastal waters, would put an extra $500 million (£340 million) over ten years into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which covers damage caused by such disasters...

Kagan Was ?Not Sympathetic? as Law Clerk to Gun-Rights Argument

Posted on May 13, 2010
Bloomberg: "Elena Kagan said as a U.S. Supreme Court law clerk in 1987 that she was ?not sympathetic? toward a man who contended that his constitutional rights were violated when he was convicted for carrying an unlicensed pistol . . . "

Can We Avoid Becoming Europe?

Posted on May 13, 2010
Conn Carroll writes at the Heritage Foundation Morning Bell: "The Treasury Department announced yesterday that the federal deficit for April soared to $82.69 billion, more than twice the $40 billion deficit that Wall Street economists had predicted. An April deficit is rare for the federal government (there has been a surplus in 43 out of the past 56 years) ...

Kagan article following the 1980 Reagan landslide republished: ?Fear and Loathing in Brooklyn?

Posted on May 13, 2010
Elena Kagan wrote in the Daily Princetonian: "Even after the returns came in, I found it hard to conceive of the victories of these anonymous but Moral Majority-backed opponents of Senators Church, McGovern, Bayh and Culver, these avengers of ?innocent life? and the B-1 Bomber, these beneficiaries of a general turn to the right and a profound disorganization on the left ...

John Smeaton: New U.K. Government spells dangers for both born and unborn

Posted on May 13, 2010
SPUC Director John Smeaton, writing at LifeSiteNews: "After 13 years of anti-life laws and policies being enacted by the Labour government, we face a renewal of such laws and policies under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. David Cameron has made clear that faith schools should not be free to teach that abortion is wrong...

Costa Rica: Bishop fined for urging faithful to vote according to Catholic teachings

Posted on May 13, 2010
Catholic News Agency: "Costa Rica?s Electoral Supreme Court has ordered Bishop Jose Francisco Ulloa to pay damages for encouraging the faithful to cast their votes in manner consistent with Catholic teachings. The bishop made his comments during a Mass on September 6, 2009, amidst the presidential campaign season and the debate over abortion and homosexual rights ...

The Science of a Happy Marriage

Posted on May 13, 2010
NY Times: "To find the answer, a growing body of research is focusing on the science of commitment. Scientists are studying everything from the biological factors that seem to influence marital stability to a person?s psychological response after flirting with a stranger...

The Federal Fat Police: Bill Would Require Government to Track Body Mass of American Children

Posted on May 13, 2010
CNSNews: "A bill introduced this month in Congress would put the federal and state governments in the business of tracking how fat, or skinny, American children are . . . The Healthy Choices Act--introduced by Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) . . . " | H.R...

MN: Pawlenty makes Supreme Court appt., names Chief Justice

Posted on May 13, 2010
Associated Press: "Gov. Tim Pawlenty named a sitting Supreme Court Justice to lead the state's high court and a fresh-faced newcomer to fill her spot on Thursday, deepening his imprint on Minnesota's judiciary. Associate Justice Lorie Gildea will become chief justice on June 30...

FL: Leon County commissioners broaden human rights ordinance to include ?LGBT community?

Posted on May 13, 2010
Tallahassee Democrat: "In a 5-2 vote, the Leon County Commission approved the controversial changes to the county?s current human-rights ordinance. The changes are designed to deter discrimination and include more protection for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community...

A new twist on D.C. sterility: 3,096 marriages in 2009; 2,094 same-sex ?marriages? in 2010

Posted on May 13, 2010
MyFoxDC: "The courts in D.C. processed only 3,096 applications for marriage licenses all last year. Since the first legal same-sex weddings in the District back on March 9, 2,094 couples have applied to get married in the nation's capitol."

Parkinson Signs KS Child Pornography Victims Law

Posted on May 13, 2010
"Victims of child pornography in kansas will be able to sue for up to $150,000 in damages under a new state law. Governor Mark Parkinson signed the legislation today . . . "

Libya, Thailand elected to Human Rights Council

Posted on May 13, 2010
ABC: "Libya and Thailand are among 14 countries elected as new members of the UN Human Rights Council in a vote that rights advocates have criticised as stripping the meaning from the body. Angola, Mauritania, Uganda, Maldives, Malaysia, Qatar, Moldova, Poland, Ecuador, Guatemala, Spain and Switzerland have also been elected by the General Assembly for three-year terms on the 47-nation council, which is based in Geneva...

C-FAM: Natural and un-natural law

Posted on May 13, 2010
Natural and Un-Natural Law Jakob Cornides, J.D., Legal Studies Series, Number Two (2010) "The monograph that follows . . . sets forth that clash between the ideals of 1948 and the counter-principles asserted by the generation of 1968. He exposes the shoddy thinking of those who seek to establish a right to abortion ? the ultimate exercise of raw, bloody power over the helpless and powerless...

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