Saturday, November 26, 2011
Friday, November 25, 2011
Thursday, November 24, 2011
U.S. Supreme Court Ignores Appeal On Crosses For Fallen Police
The AP reports that "[t]he Supreme Court won't hear an appeal of a ruling that 12-foot-high crosses along Utah highways in honor of dead state troopers violate the Constitution. The justices voted 8-1 Monday to reject an appeal from Utah and a state troopers' group that wanted the court to throw out the ruling and take a more permissive view of religious symbols on public land. Since 1998, the private Utah Highway Patrol Association has paid for and erected more than a dozen memorial crosses, most of them on state land. Texas-based American Atheists Inc. and three of its Utah members sued the state in 2005. The federal appeals court in Denver said the crosses were an unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity by the Utah state government. Justice Clarence Thomas issued a 19-page opinion dissenting from Monday's order. Thomas said the case offered the court the opportunity to clear up confusion over its approach to disputes over the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, the prohibition against governmental endorsement of religion."
Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent to the Supreme Court's denying certiorari in the highway memorial crosses case of Utah Highway Patrol Association v. American Atheists on October 31, 2011:
"[T]he [Supreme] Court rejects an opportunity to provide clarity to an Establishment Clause jurisprudence in shambles... Because our jurisprudence has confounded the lower courts and rendered the constitutionality of displays of religious imagery on government property anyone’s guess, I would grant certiorari... Even if the Court does not share my view that the Establishment Clause restrains only the Federal Government, and that, even if incorporated, the Clause only prohibits ‘actual legal coercion,’ the Court should be deeply troubled by what its Establishment Clause jurisprudence has wrought... [T]his Cour[t]...[has failed] to apply the correct standard — or at least a clear, workable standard — for adjudicating challenges to government action under the Establishment Clause. Government officials, not to mention everyday people who wish to celebrate or commemorate an occasion with a public display that contains religious elements, cannot afford to guess whether a federal court, applying our 'jurisprudence of minutiae,' (KENNEDY, J.), will conclude that a given display is sufficiently secular."Tweet
Catholic Services In Adoptions Ends In Illinois Due To Refusal To Adopt To Gay Couples
Calling off legal efforts aimed at keeping Catholic Charities of Illinois in the foster care business, three Roman Catholic dioceses have dropped their lawsuit against the state, agreeing to transfer more than 1,000 foster care children and staff to other agencies in their regions.Tweet
The decision by leaders in the dioceses of Joliet, Springfield and Belleville ends a historical partnership between Illinois and the charitable arm of the Catholic Church, which inspired the state to address child welfare in the first place and led to the creation of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
It was announced the same day America's Catholic bishops unveiled a new national religious liberty committee at their annual meeting in Baltimore, condemning government mandates that require the church to comply with laws that violate church teachings.
Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki said the decision to drop the lawsuit enabled the central Illinois diocese to redirect its energies toward serving the poor instead of a protracted legal battle.
"The silver lining of this decision is that our Catholic Charities going forward will be able to focus on being more Catholic and more charitable, while less dependent on government funding and less encumbered by intrusive state policies," Paprocki said.
Since March, state officials have been investigating whether religious agencies that receive public funds to license foster care parents were breaking anti-discrimination laws if they turned away openly gay parents.
In discussions after the civil union bill went into effect in June, representatives for Catholic Charities in Joliet, Springfield, Peoria, Rockford and Belleville told the state that accommodating prospective foster parents in civil unions would violate Catholic Church teaching that defines marriage between a man and a woman.
Pointing to a clause in the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act that they believe protects religious institutions that don't recognize civil unions, the agencies said they would refer those couples elsewhere and only license married couples and single parents living alone.
But lawyers for the Illinois attorney general said that exemption only shields religious clergy who don't want to officiate at civil unions. The policy of Catholic Charities violated state anti-discrimination laws that demanded couples in civil unions be treated the same as married couples, they said.
In July, the state declined to renew foster care and adoption contracts with Catholic Charities. A transition plan for more than 2,000 children began with a deadline of Nov. 30.
Ottawa-based Youth Service Bureau of Illinois Valley agreed to take all of Catholic Charities' cases in Rockford. In Peoria, a separate child welfare agency was formed to take all of Catholic Charities' cases and provide a seamless transition for children.
With a deadline looming and no judge willing to halt the transition process, the remaining three agencies decided to call it quits.
Remembering America's First Failed Socialist Experiment At Plymouth Plantation
Paul A. Rahe holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College. In view of his classic study of Republics Ancient and Modern, Professor Rahe is perhaps the foremost authority on the history of republics. He wrote the following on Thanksgiving:
On Thanksgiving, it is customary that Americans recall to mind the experience of the Pilgrim Fathers. This year, it is especially appropriate that we do so — as we pause, in the midst of an economic maelstrom, to count our remaining blessings and to reflect on the consequences of our election of a President and a Congress intent on “spread[ing] the wealth around.”
We have much to learn from the history of the Plymouth Plantation. For, in their first year in the New World, the Pilgrims conducted an experiment in social engineering akin to what is now contemplated; and, after an abortive attempt at cultivating the land in common, their leaders reflected on the results in a manner that Americans today should find instructive.
William Bradford, Governor of the Plymouth Colony, reports that, at that time, he and his advisers considered “how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery.” And “after much debate of things,” he then adds, they chose to abandon communal property, deciding that “they should set corn every man for his own particular” and assign “to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end.”
The results, he tells us, were gratifying in the extreme, “for it made all hands very industrious” and “much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Even “the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
Moreover, he observes, “the experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years . . . amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times . . . that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing.” In practice, America’s first socialist experiment “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”
In practice, “the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.”
Naturally enough, quarrels ensued. “If it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men,” Bradford notes, “yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And [it] would have been worse if they had been men of another condition” less given to the fear of God. “Let none object,” he concludes, that “this is men’s corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.”
The moral is perfectly clear. Self-interest cannot be expunged. Where there is private property and its possession and acquisition are protected and treated with respect, self-interest and jealousy can be deployed against laziness and the desire for that which is not one’s own, and there tends to be plenty as a consequence.
But where one takes from those who join talent with industry to provide for those lacking either or both, where the fruits of one man’s labor are appropriated to benefit another who is less productive, self-interest reinforces laziness, jealousy engenders covetousness, and these combine in a bitter stew to produce both conflict and dearth.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011
"Father Of The Constitution" James Madison's 1815 Thanksgiving Proclamation
President James Madison’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1815 was the last such proclamation issued until President Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamations during the Civil War:
The senate and House of Representatives of the United States have by a joint resolution signified their desire that a day may be recommended to be observed by the people of the United States with religious solemnity as a day of thanksgiving and of devout acknowledgments to Almighty God for His great goodness manifested in restoring to them the blessing of peace.
No people ought to feel greater obligations to celebrate the goodness of the Great Disposer of Events of the Destiny of Nations than the people of the United States. His kind providence originally conducted them to one of the best portions of the dwelling place allotted for the great family of the human race. He protected and cherished them under all the difficulties and trials to which they were exposed in their early days. Under His fostering care their habits, their sentiments, and their pursuits prepared them for a transition in due time to a state of independence and self-government. In the arduous struggle by which it was attained they were distinguished by multiplied tokens of His benign interposition. During the interval which succeeded He reared them into the strength and endowed them with the resources which have enabled them to assert their national rights, and to enhance their national character in another arduous conflict, which is now so happily terminated by a peace and reconciliation with those who have been our enemies. And to the same Divine Author of Every Good and Perfect Gift we are indebted for all those privileges and advantages, religious as well as civil, which are so richly enjoyed in this favored land.
It is for blessings such as these, and more especially for the restoration of the blessing of peace, that I now recommend that the second Thursday in April next be set apart as a day on which the people of every religious denomination may in their solemn assembles unite their hearts and their voices in a freewill offering to their Heavenly Benefactor of their homage of thanksgiving and of their songs of praise.
Given at the city of Washington on the 4th day of March, A.D. 1815, and of the
Independence of the United States the thirty-ninth.
JAMES MADISON
For all the Presidential Proclamations of Thanksgiving spanning from George Washington's in 1789 to James Madison's in 1815, visit http://www.pilgrimhall.org/ThanxProc1789.htmTweet
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Tony Rezko Sentenced To Decade In Prison
The Associated Press reports:
TweetA former top fundraiser for ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose trial exposed a culture of pay-to-play politics in Illinois, was sentenced Tuesday to serve seven more years in prison for corruption. Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a former Chicago real estate developer and fast-food entrepreneur, has been in custody for 3 1/2 years while awaiting sentencing. He was sentenced to a total of 10 1/2 [years] but will get credit for that time he has served.
His attorneys had asked U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve to set him free, arguing that he already has served more time than others who were convicted as part of the federal investigation of Blagojevich have or are expected to. Prosecutors had asked that Rezko receive a prison term of between 11 and 15 years. Rezko was convicted in 2008 of fraud, money laundering and plotting to squeeze $7 million in kickbacks from firms that wanted to do business with the state during Blagojevich's tenure. The governor was arrested six months later and convicted this year on charges that included trying to sell or trade an appointment to President Barack Obama's old Senate seat. He is set to be sentenced next month and is expected to get about 10 years.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Pepper Spraying At UC Davis Leads To Police Suspensions
The Wall Street Journal Law Blog reports that "The fallout from the pepperhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif spray at the University of California isn’t limited to the Occupy movement protestors. Now, the chief of the campus police and two police officers involved have been placed on administrative leave, CBS News reports." To read more visit http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/11/21/pepper-spraying-at-uc-davis-leads-to-police-suspensions/ Tweet
Rob Natelson: "Dr. Krugman’s Rants: Enough Is Enough!"
To read former University of Montana law professor Rob Natelson take on Paul Krugman visit http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2011/11/21/dr-krugmans-rants-enough-is-enough/ Tweet
Mother Of Thwarted NY Jihad Bomb Plotter: "My Son Was A Normal American Guy....Then He Became A Muslim And He Changed."
The New York Daily News reports:
The mother of homegrown terror suspect Jose Pimentel says she loves the city — and her son.“I want to apologize to the City of New York,” Carmen Sosa, 56, said Monday in the lobby of a Harlem apartment building.
“I love the city. I’ve been here since 1987 and I’m very disappointed with what my son was doing. I didn’t raise him that way.
“I feel very bad about the situation. I thank the police. They did what they’re supposed to do.”
Sosa said her son’s personality began to change after the then-teenager swapped salsa for Islam about five years ago.
“My son was a normal American guy,” she said. “He did what young people do. Then he became a Muslim and he changed.”...
Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney said there was nothing in Pimentel’s court file “speaking to anything about terrorism” — but the suspect’s mother was getting worried about his fascination with Islam.
When he started reading the Koran in 2001, Sosa wasn’t happy because she’s a Catholic, but she noted that “in beginning, he wasn’t a fanatic.”
“He prayed and went to the mosque,” she said.
Over time, he stopped writing and listening to salsa music and spent his days praying, reading and sleeping.
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CIA Agents Spying On Hezbollah And Iran Caught, Feared Dead
ABC reports:
In a significant failure for the United States in the Mideast, more than a dozen spies working for the CIA in Iran and Lebanon have been caught and the U.S. government fears they will be or have been executed, according to four current and former U.S. officials with connections to the intelligence community.TweetThe spies were paid informants recruited by the CIA for two distinct espionage rings targeting Iran and the Beirut-based Hezbollah organization, considered by the U.S. to be a terror group backed by Iran....
In Beirut, two Hezbollah double agents pretended to go to work for the CIA. Hezbollah then learned of the restaurant where multiple CIA officers were meeting with several agents, according to the four current and former officials briefed on the case. The CIA used the codeword "PIZZA" when discussing where to meet with the agents, according to U.S. officials. Two former officials describe the location as a Beirut Pizza Hut. A current US official denied that CIA officers met their agents at Pizza Hut.
From there, Hezbollah's internal security arm identified at least a dozen informants, and the identities of several CIA case officers.
Hezbollah then began to "roll up" much of the CIA's network against the terror group, the officials said.
One former senior intelligence official told ABC News that CIA officers ignored warnings that the operation could be compromised by using the same location for meetings with multiple assets.
"We were lazy and the CIA is now flying blind against Hezbollah," the former official said....
At about the same time that Hezbollah was identifying the CIA network in Lebanon, Iranian intelligence agents discovered a secret internet communication method used by CIA-paid assets in Iran.
The CIA has yet to determine precisely how many of its assets were compromised in Iran, but the number could be in the dozens, according to one current and one former U.S. intelligence official.
The exposure of the two spy networks was first announced in widely ignored televised statements by Iranian and Hezbollah leaders. U.S. officials tell ABC News that much of what was broadcast was, in fact, true....
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