ADF Alliance Alert » UK: “Gay concern bans mum and dad in classroom”

re: "The Daily Telegraph reports: /TEACHERS are being urged to stop using terms such as husband and wife when addressing students or families... /The terms boyfriend, girlfriend and spouse are also on the banned list - to be replaced by the generic “partner” - in changes sought by the gay lobby... /Schools are coming under pressure to provide lessons ... and stack their libraries with books and videos covering their issues. . ."...

ADF Alliance Alert » Child Abuse in the Name of Protecting Children: The Texas Polygamy raid

re: from April 23, 2008, "David Bernstein has this post on the Volokh Conspiracy questioning Texas’ methods in prosecuting FLDS members and seizing hundreds of children. Numerous comments are posted below the post..."...

CitizenLink: Most Doctors in Italy Refuse to Perform Abortions

re: "Nearly 70 percent of gynecologists in Italy have refused to perform abortions based on moral grounds, according to the Health Ministry, which has resulted in a 3 percent drop in abortions. /Abortion was legalized in Italy in 1978. The Vatican’s involvement has allowed doctors to refuse to participate based on conscientious objections. /“Gynecologists in Italy are privileged to have the right to follow their consciences,” said Dawn Vargo, associate bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family Action. “This should be a model for other countries to pass laws that protect health-care professionals' rights of conscience.”..."...

ADF Alliance Alert » 7th Circuit: Illinois school must allow “Be Happy, Not Gay” T-shirt

re: "CHICAGO — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit reversed a lower court’s ruling against an Illinois student Wednesday, saying the district court must order a Naperville high school to suspend its ban on a T-shirt that reads “Be Happy, Not Gay” while the student’s lawsuit proceeds. School officials prohibited student Alex Nuxoll, who is represented by Alliance Defense Fund attorneys, from wearing the clothing. /“Christian students shouldn’t be discriminated against for expressing their beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel Nate Kellum. “Public school officials cannot censor a message expressing one viewpoint on homosexual behavior and then at the same time allow messages that express another viewpoint. The court’s ruling is a victory for all students seeking to protect their First Amendment rights on a school campus.” /...[snip]... / ADF attorneys appealed to the 7th Circuit after the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, refused to stop school officials from silencing Nuxoll while the lawsuit proceeds (www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=4349). ADF attorneys had originally filed the lawsuit on behalf of another student, Heidi Zamecnik. /In its opinion, the 7th Circuit stated that “people do not have a legal right to prevent criticism of their beliefs or for that matter their way of life.” The court also said the school district does not appear to be justified in suppressing Nuxoll’s message on the grounds it might provoke “incidents of harassment.” /“It is highly speculative that allowing the plaintiff to wear a T-shirt that says ‘Be Happy, Not Gay’ would have even a slight tendency to provoke such incidents, or for that matter to poison the educational atmosphere,” the court wrote..."...

Jacques Coeur: Merchant Prince of the Middle Ages by Albert Boardman Kerr at Questia Online Library

re: "Read the complete book Jacques Coeur: Merchant Prince of the Middle Ages by becoming a questia.com member. Choose a membership plan to an academic-level library with more than 67,000 full-text books, 1.5 million articles, an entire reference set with a dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus plus a collection of digital tools to organize your information..."...

More than 5,000 free books available at http://www.questia.com/publicdomainindex.

The Window in the Garden Wall--A C.S. Lewis Blog: Childhood's End

re: "Dear Joy, / As far as I can remember you were non-committal about Childhood's End*: I suppose you were afraid that you might raise my expectations too high and lead to disappointment. If that was your aim, it has succeeded, for I came to it expecting nothing in particular and have been thoroughly bowled over. It is quite out of range of the common space-and-time writers; away up near Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus and Well's First Men in the Moon..."...

The Divorce Industrial Complex

re: "Americans are generally aware that our Divorce Culture is a documented tragedy, but most seem to think that the availability of so-called "no fault" divorce is just a permanent reality. Few Americans seem to understand that marriage is being undermined by what can be called a "Divorce Industrial Complex" that includes lawyers, counselors, court personnel, and various others. /In other words, divorce is something of a market reality in America, and millions of persons are involved in this business. As a matter of fact, the income of these persons -- and the future of the divorce "market" -- depends on numerical growth in the number of divorces that occur each year. /Stephen Baskerville, Assistant Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College is the author of an excellent analysis of this problem, giving special attention to the fact that our current divorce laws -- and what he calls the "divorce industry" tears apart families and discriminates against fathers. / In his new book, Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family, Baskerville reveals the divorce industry for what it is -- and for what it means to this nation and its families..."...

What's Different This Passover? No Margarine - WSJ.com

re: from April 18, 2008, by Ann Zimmerman, "...A shortage of special kosher-for-Passover margarine is causing dismay in Jewish households across the nation as family cooks discover they can't make many of their traditional Passover meals without it. /Particularly irksome is the absence of kosher-for-Passover stick margarine, an essential ingredient in baking for the weeklong holiday starting at sundown Saturday. / ...[snip]... / Some stores in the New York area have been rationing kosher-for-Passover margarine, letting customers buy only a single package. Others are using it as a marketing tool, selling only to those who agree to buy a certain amount of other items too. / ...[snip].../ Margarine is crucial to kosher cooking because the dietary rules don't allow mixing meat and milk products, such as butter, at a meal. Margarine, made of vegetable oil, can be eaten with either meat or milk, and it can be kosher if rabbis oversee production to be sure no dairy products touch the machinery. /That's not good enough for Passover, though. Stricter kosher rules for the holiday forbid corn and legumes such as soy. So Passover margarine is made only from cottonseed oil or palm oil./But it's a once-a-year product, and a hassle to make. Machinery needs to be broken down and cleaned before the margarine is made, to prevent contamination with non-kosher food. /Further discouraging production is a shortage of cottonseed oil that has driven its price way up. Some U.S. farmers deserted cotton to plant corn last year when ethanol production sent corn's price higher, industry officials say..."...

hat tip: The Shining City

Inside Scoop on Shout to the Lord & American Idol (Josh Harris)

re: "...A Christian woman named Beverly posted what I thought was a helpful inside perspective from Fox. It helped me to see that, for Christians who work at Fox, having the song played was a triumph. It's easy for me to be cynical as I watch and forget that there are believers working at this network who are looking for any chance to shine the light of the gospel. She goes on to share that positive feedback from Christians would be helpful. Thanks for taking the time to post, Beverly. // start Beverly's comment //I work on one of the "sister shows" of American Idol...so picture an office, with all of the producers, crew, etc. gathered in watching the live feed at our CBS offices, then this song comes on...an office filled with a few Christians....atheists and agnostic Jews. You could hear a pin drop....it was awesome.....the power that came through....nothing had to be said...no debates....just people being touched more than they realized...producers, writers...crew that had never darkened a church door in their lives, or their only experience with Christians was a negative one. You don't always see the workings of us Christians that are behind the scenes...you don't know how much prayer went into getting a song with that message on a, let us not forget, a SECULAR show. So, from someone behind the scenes, the best thing you can do is write to the producer of Am. Idol and simply state how much you appreciate the diversity they showed in having an very inspirational song in their program. Period. No criticizing. This will go farther than you realize. Also, pray, pray, pray for us Christians that have chosen Hollywood as our vocation, career and our mission field."...

Free People Are Happy People by Arthur C. Brooks, City Journal Spring 2008

re: "The earliest American definition of liberty—stated frequently by the Founding Fathers—is about constraints on personal actions: if I don’t hurt anybody else, I should be free to pursue my own will. As Thomas Jefferson put it in his first inaugural address, “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Despite more recent attempts to expand our understanding of freedom to include claims on one another or on government—FDR’s 1941 State of the Union speech, for example, which mentioned “freedom from want”—about two-thirds of Americans still define freedom in terms of doing what they want, being able to make their own choices, or having liberty in speech and religion. / Understanding freedom is a matter of no small importance. The Founders believed that it was one of at least three fundamental rights from God, along with life and the pursuit of happiness. These three rights are interrelated: not only does liberty, of course, depend on life, but the pursuit of happiness depends on liberty. In fact, evidence shows that freedom and happiness are strongly linked. But what kind of freedom makes Americans happiest? And what can government best do to promote freedom and help us pursue happiness, as is our inalienable right?..."...

A Human Person, Actually by Peter Lawler, City Journal 18 April 2008

re: "In their bold new book, Embryo, philosophers Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen defend the proposition that the embryo—the organism that comes into being as the result of fertilization, the union of sperm with oocyte—is in fact a human being. And that means that an embryo has “absolute rights.” An embryo should never be used as a means to pursue someone else’s ends, however laudable or life-saving, they say. Certainly, embryos shouldn’t be killed to assist frustrated parents attempting in vitro fertilization (IVF), or even to further pathbreaking medical research. The authors stop well short of recommending all of the potential changes in law that would necessarily follow from their argument. All they ask is that scientific research that involves the killing of embryos be outlawed—or, at the very least, that it be denied public funding, and that future IVF procedures be practiced in such a way that they do not produce surplus embryos that are ultimately discarded. The authors oppose what they see as brutality motivated in part by good intentions—brutality they hope to correct with moral reasoning based in scientific knowledge. Open-minded readers should find their case powerful..."...

No Left Turns: Just In Time for Earth Day

re: Steven Hayward: "Earth Day (also Lenin’s birthday--coincidence???) is Tuesday, and you may have noticed a little bit of attention in the news media on global warming and all things green. Just in time, I’ve done a 7-minute video update to my film from last year, An Inconvenient Truth--or Convenient Fiction?, that answers the all important question: Which shrank most last fall--the arctic ice cap, or my waistline? (Hint: I’ve got some calorie offsets I’m willing to sell to Al Gore.)..."...

Anglican Mainstream » Sermon: Why we must Stand Firm

re: "By Matt Kennedy for StandFirminFaith /...Homosexual behavior is considered so offensive to God that those who engage in it and do not repent will not enter his kingdom. Well, you might say, what about the other sins listed here, slander, greed, thievery, drunkenness, why do we focus exclusively on homosexuality? Trust me. I’d rather focus on anything else. The reason we focus on this particular sin is because it is the one sin that the Episcopal Church has presumed to bless. If the Episcopal Church would’ve passed a resolution blessing thievery or drunkenness or greed, then our response would have to be the very same. If, before every robbery, a thief were given the invitation to attend his or her local Episcopal parish to receive a rite of blessing for holy thievery, or before every drink an alcoholic might receive the rite of Holy Inebriation from his resident Episcopal priest, then you can bet that our focus would shift because sin, whether sexual or otherwise, is deadly to body and soul..."...

Cinnamon Stillwell: Hunger on the Rise Worldwide; Biofuels to Blame

re: "As I noted in a recent column on the perils of ethanol and other biofuels, using food for fuel is wrought with difficulties. One of them is hunger, which is on the rise throughout the Third World, largely due to biofuel production. As a result, discontent is brewing, food riots and hoarding are becoming the norm, and governments are finding themselves facing an increasingly hostile and hungry populace. / An International Herald Tribune article (linked at Drudge) spells out the looming disaster in startling detail..."...

ADF Alliance Alert » Cal. Catholic bishops to support marriage and parental notification initiatives

re: "The Tidings reports: /California bishops will endorse parental notification and marriage protection initiatives for the November state ballot if the proposed measures qualify, said California Catholic Conference officials this week after the bishops’ spring teleconference April 14 . . . /If the two initiatives gain placement on the ballot, it’s expected the bishops will issue a statement of support in early summer. The CCC will then be instructed to provide educational materials on the initiatives for distribution..."...

Baptist Press - Calif. marriage amend. close to goal

re: from April 17, "SACRAMENTO, Calif. (BP)--An effort in California to place a constitutional marriage amendment on the November ballot appears to be close to its goal, although officials say they need approximately 50,000 more signatures in the next two to three days to reach it. / ProtectMarriage.com representatives say they are just short of their goal of 1.1 million signatures, although they're still counting. California residents who have signed petitions need to mail them -– overnight if possible... The group needs to turn in the petitions by April 21..."...

Brandywine Books: Gathering to Pray

re: from a talk by Dr. Howard Hendricks, "...There's a church in our area that has a fantastic group of young people. I love them like crazy. They went to the elders of their church and asked, "Can we open the church on Wednesday mornings to pray?"/ "Well, we'll have to take that under consideration." So, after four or five meetings (typical elders), they finally decided, "No, we can't do that. We don't have anyone who's willing to open the church and take the responsibility." Even some legal aspects to it, which I'm still trying to find out what they are. / So, the kids go down the street to a restaurant operated by a pagan and say to the proprietor, "Could we meet on Wednesday mornings about 6:00 in your restaurant? Promise you we'll take good care of it, won't tear it apart." /This guy is so blown away that he says, "What do you want it for?" / They said, "We want to come and pray." / He said, "What?" / "Pray."/ "Would you include me?" /"Sure." /"You got it, and furthermore, I'll provide coffee and doughnuts for you."..."...

The Volokh Conspiracy - - Right to Choose Which Photographs You Create

re: "...The premise of the argument I've made is that the government may not force you to create speech that you don't want to create, whether that's an article, a press release, a photograph, or a painting. You can be a racist, anti-same-sex-marriage, a devout Catholic who doesn't want to create works celebrating a marriage of divorced people, an orthodox Jew who doesn't want to create works celebrating a marriage of Jews and non-Jews, or whatever else. It doesn't matter..."

ADF Alliance Alert » Eugene Volokh: The Breadth of the New Mexico Human Rights Commission’s Rationale in Elane Photography

re: more on The New Mexico Human Rights Commission punishment of a photographer for declining to participate in a same-sex commitment ceremony...

Teenage Skeptic Takes on Climate Scientists : NPR

re: "If you're a scientist trying to convince people they are making the world warmer, Kristen Byrnes is your worst nightmare. She's articulate, intelligent, she has a Web site, and one day her people will be running the world. Her people, meaning 16-year-olds. /Kristen's Web site, 'Ponder the Maunder,' has made her a celebrity among climate skeptics. After she posted a critique of Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, her Web site got so many hits the family's internet service provider sent them a warning. /Her story may dismay mainstream scientists, but plenty of people are friendly to her ideas."...

Kristin Hansen on Crisis-Pregnancy Centers on National Review Online

re: "NARAL's disinformation campaign doesn't seem to have worked in Maryland..."...

Houston company ordered to stop selling fake licenses | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

re: R. G. Ratcliffe reports: "AUSTIN — The state has halted a Houston business from selling fake driver's licenses to immigrants that Attorney General Greg Abbott said gives "a false appearance of legitimacy on those who are in the United States illegally." /Abbott said 129th District Judge Grant Dorfman had issued a restraining order against Centro de Identificaciones and its owners: Guillermo R. Robles and Hernan C. Trujillo. Abbott said the driver's license sales violated the Texas Deceptive Trades Practices Act. /Each of the licenses sold for $225, Abbott said. He promised to obtain restitution for anyone harmed by the sales. / But Abbott declined to say whether his office would ask about the legal resident status of anyone applying for the restitution or whether his office would report anyone in the country illegally to federal immigration authorities. /"That's a different legal issue," Abbott said./ ...[snip]... / Abbott said people who bought the licenses were led to believe they were an international license that would allow them to drive in the United States and buy and sell vehicles..."...

Making Business a Crime - WSJ.com

re: Harvey Silverglate: "...In the case of Bear, the feds have a particular incentive to indict. Doing so would shift attention away from the government's role in the current economic crisis and provide a satisfactory scapegoat. Such scapegoating is one of the few areas of American political life where bipartisanship is all the rage. The Democratically controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Senate Finance Committee both indicated interest in holding hearings, and the Senate Banking Committee held widely publicized hearings on April 3. /That the feds can even contemplate making a criminal case out of a beleaguered CEO's attempts to restore investor and client confidence may seem absurd. But such a theory of prosecution is not too far from what the feds increasingly have been doing since the mid-1980s to all segments of the business community – all without bothering to get Congress or various administrative agencies to enact statutes and regulations specifying what conduct will henceforth be deemed criminal. /These creative theories rarely get tested in the courts, because federal criminal sentences are so draconian that the overwhelming majority of defendants – including those who have committed no crime – enter into plea bargains. Thus, the federal prosecutor's ability to indict the proverbial ham sandwich readily leads to guilty findings without appellate review. Even those cases that make it to an appellate court often get affirmed by a judiciary that is increasingly complicit in the DOJ's law-as-silly-putty approach..."...

The Corner: That Awful Economy

re: "Comparing Labor Market Data in 1996 and 2008..." Has table showing that today's "bad" economy charts out better than the "healthy" economy touted by Clinton in 1996.

The Corner: Jamiel's Law

re: "Michelle is on the case of Jamiel Shaw Jr., yet another black American teenager murdered by yet another illegal-alien gang member who'd been released from jail without anyone ever checking his immigration status. Now the family of the church-going high-school football star (including his mother, an Army sergeant serving in Iraq at the time of his murder) are calling on Los Angeles to repeal Special Order 40, which prevents police from checking immigration status..."...

ADF Alliance Alert » ADF to appeal N.M. commission’s ruling against Christian photographer

re: "...“The government cannot make people choose between their faith and their livelihood,” said Lorence. “Could the government force a vegetarian videographer to create a commercial for the new butcher shop in town? American business owners do not surrender their constitutional rights at the marketplace gate.”..."...

ADF Alliance Alert » NM: Photographers Denied the Freedom To Choose What They Photograph

re: "On the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh comments on this case..."... (includes links to updates)

Alliance Alert: Expert: “We’re brainwashing our children” about global warming

re: "The USA Today Weather Guys Blog reports: //William Gray, the well-known Colorado State University hurricane forecaster, routinely uses the annual National Hurricane Conference as a platform to bash global warming. In a statement to Florida Today, Gray argued that the scientific consensus on global warming is bogus — and “a mild form of McCarthyism has developed toward those scientists who do not agree” that mankind is in danger. /“We are also brainwashing our children on the warming topic. We have no better example than Al Gore’s alarmists and inaccurate movie which is being shown in our schools and being hawked by warming activists with little or no meteorological-climate background,” Gray wrote . . ."...

Planet Gore on National Review Online: Dim Bulbs

re: "The Washington Post still can’t bring itself to address openly the reality vs. the rhetoric of greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, they obsess with serially nasty editorials complaining about our lack of European-style promises, all of which consistently ignore how the U.S. has led the world in growing the economy while reducing the rate of growth of emissions. /Sunday’s story went with the following: //
Even developed countries are not cutting greenhouse gases as fast as they had anticipated. //
The obvious implication is that, unlike the U.S., these countries are actually cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Actually, not one developed country is cutting emissions at all since making the Kyoto promise a decade ago. The U.S. approach — in practice — has proven far superior to Europe’s “cap” approach, Japan’s various efforts, Canada’s…"...

Absolut apologizes for Mexican vodka ad - Los Angeles Times

re: "MEXICO CITY -- The Absolut vodka company apologized Saturday for an ad campaign depicting the southwestern U.S. as part of Mexico amid angry calls for a boycott by U.S. consumers. /The campaign, which promotes ideal scenarios under the slogan "In an Absolut World," showed a 1830s-era map when Mexico included California, Texas and other southwestern states. Mexico still resents losing that territory in the 1848 Mexican-American War and the fight for Texas independence. / [snip] / Absolut said the ad was designed for a Mexican audience and intended to recall "a time which the population of Mexico might feel was more ideal." /"As a global company, we recognize that people in different parts of the world may lend different perspectives or interpret our ads in a different way than was intended in that market, and for that we apologize." / Vin & Sprit, Absolut's Sweden-based parent company, will be acquired by French spirit maker Pernod Ricard SA under a deal reached last week."

hat tip: The Corner

Clintons made more than $109 million since 2000 - Los Angeles Times

re: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton reported more than $109 million in gross income since 2000, the Clinton presidential campaign announced this afternoon. /Of that amount, the Clintons have more than $57 million in after-tax earnings and paid more than $33 million in federal taxes, the campaign said. It released tax returns from 2000 to 2006 and highlights for 2007."..."...

A Two-Tier Alliance

re: "AS THE 26 leaders of the NATO Alliance gather in Bucharest this week for the organization's 59th summit, there will be simmering tensions between the United States and what Donald Rumsfeld memorably described in 2003 as "Old Europe." As the Bucharest meeting will show, the traditional rifts between Germany and France and America on some of the biggest foreign policy questions of the day is still firmly in place. The notion that Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy are ushering in a new era of transatlantic cooperation, with Europe and the United States walking hand in hand solving the world's problems is a romanticized fiction that bears little relation to reality. /It is true that the venomous anti-Americanism of Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac has been replaced by a softer and subtler message, and the rhetoric coming from the Chancellery and the Elysee Palace is less openly hostile, but the harsh fact remains that France and Germany's foreign and domestic policies are largely unchanged. The United States and the Franco-German axis are still worlds apart on the war on terror, Iraq, Russia, the Middle East Peace process, global warming, trade, economic policy, and social and religious outlook. Public opinion in both countries is still overwhelmingly anti-American, a long-term trend that will almost certainly outlast the Bush administration. Only on the issue of Iran has there been a significant shift in policy in the case of France..."...

Va. judge sides with breakaway Episcopal parishes - - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

re: "A Fairfax circuit judge has awarded a favorable judgment to a group of 11 Anglican churches that were taken to court last fall after breaking away from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia in late 2006. /In an 83-page opinion released late last night, Judge Randy Bellows ruled that Virginia's Civil War-era “division statute” granting property to departing congregations applies to the Northern Virginia congregations, which are now part of the Nigerian-administered Convocation of Anglicans in North America..."...

hat tip: Alliance Alert

Baptist Press - CULTURE DIGEST

re: "...AFA ENDS FORD BOYCOTT -- The American Family Association has ended its two-year boycott of Ford Motor Company, saying its supporters are free to purchase Ford vehicles again after the company met the conditions of an agreement to stop supporting homosexual causes..."...

What's Next for Newsmagazines? - WSJ.com

re: "The weekly newsmagazines have been declared dinosaurs as far back as the late 1980s. But now that 111 employees at Washington Post Co.'s Newsweek have taken buyouts, including many longtime editors, it's clear that their cultures are finally being blown up and reinvented. And some say that's not such a bad thing..."...

HarperCollins Turns Page in Publishing

re: "Marking a radical departure from traditional book-publishing practices, HarperCollins Publishers says it will launch a new book imprint that won't accept returns from retailers and will pay little or no advances to authors. /To be headed by veteran publishing executive Robert S. Miller, the imprint also likely won't pay for more desirable display space in the front of bookstores, a common practice. Instead, the as-yet-unnamed unit will share its profit with writers and focus much of its sales efforts on the Internet, where a growing portion of book sales are shifting. /The new venture is aimed at improving the economics..."...

hat tip: roger l. simon, via Frank Wilson