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Morality and Decency Conference Speakers
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Newsletter Updates
November 20, 2008
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The U.S. Constitution is not a "living document" and should not be filtered through foreign law. That's the message U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had for a group of judges and lawyers in Houston this week. "I fear the courts' use of foreign law in interpreting the Constitution will continue at an accelerated pace," the 72-year-old jurist told the local chapter of the Federal Bar Association. Scalia called on judges to adhere to the constitutional authors' intent. He said the Founders of this country did not want us to emulate Europe. Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said Scalia is right to criticize his colleagues for relying on foreign law to justify their decisions. "If judges are just going to make stuff up, they should have the courage to admit it," he said. "If we're not vigilant as citizens to protect our law-making authority under the Constitution, the judiciary will increasingly take that authority from us and use it to create a society in their own image. "We must cry 'foul' whenever the court dabbles in its fondness for the use of foreign law to justify its own excesses." Wendy Long, legal counsel at the Judicial Confirmation Network, agreed. "The whole idea of America was that we were going to be a nation built on the consent of the governed," she told Family News in Focus. "That means we’re only governed by laws that a majority of us have assented to — that includes the Constitution."
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Mike Huckabee Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Wednesday he's not trying to settle old scores with his onetime GOP rival Mitt Romney, despite sharply criticizing the former Massachusetts governor in a book out earlier this week. Former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's book is critical of several Republicans. "I didn't dislike him," Huckabee told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview on The Situation Room. "It was a matter of [Romney] taking positions on issues that he had never taken before and at the same time, he was bashing people like me who had been consistent in our own views." Huckabee's book, released Tuesday, is critical of several Republicans he says are partly to blame for the party's across-the-board losses on Election Day, including Romney and Fred Thompson -- another former GOP presidential candidate. In the book, Huckabee specifically takes aim at Romney for shifting positions on key conservative issues shortly before he decided to run for the White House, saying his record was "anything but conservative until he changed the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for president." Huckabee says he's not settling scores
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| Three witnesses took the stand on the third day of testimony in a hearing where late-term abortionist George R. Tille  r is asking District Court Judge Clark Owens to dismiss 19 criminal charges against him based on "outrageous prosecutorial conduct." Investigator Tom Williams testified for the third straight day about his involvement in an investigation of Tiller that began under former Attorney General Phill Kline.
Williams was questioned about his interview with Dr. Ronald V. Erkin, a retired psychiatrist who reviewed ten abortion records that had been obtained by Kline through a subpoena with the permission of the Kansas Supreme Court.
Dr. Erkin told Williams that he believed that the diagnoses of mental health conditions used to justify the post-viability abortions were not irreversible conditions as required by law. However, he also told Williams that he believed that the definition of "irreversible" was a matter subject to debate.
In an affidavit supporting 30 criminal charges against Tiller, Williams referred to Dr. Erkin's opinion that Tiller's diagnoses were not substantial and irreversible conditions. Monnat tried to persuade the court that Williams engaged in deception and outrageous conduct when he did not include Erkin's statements about the debate over the definition of "irreversible.""Monnat seems to process everything through a faulty filter of paranoia, which leads him to find evil motives behind every action of those who were investigating Tiller," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. Read On |
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 Evil acts can be given an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding socialistic expressions such as spreading the wealth, income redistribution or caring for the less fortunate. Let's think about socialism. Imagine there's an elderly widow down the street from you. She has neither the strength to mow her lawn nor enough money to hire someone to do it. Here's my question to you that I'm almost afraid for the answer: Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the lady's lawn each week? If he failed to follow the government orders, would you approve of some kind of punishment ranging from house arrest and fines to imprisonment? I'm hoping that the average American would condemn such a government mandate because it would be a form of slavery, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another. Would there be the same condemnation if instead of the government forcing your neighbor to physically mow the widow's lawn, the government forced him to give the lady $40 of his weekly earnings? That way the widow could hire someone to mow her lawn. I'd say that there is little difference between the mandates. While the mandate's mechanism differs, it is nonetheless the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another. Evil Concealed By Money |
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Internet dating service eHarmony has officially agreed to begin matching homosexual couples,  beginning next year. The popular California-based service has been known for focusing on long-term relationships, especially marriage, which has been said to align with founder Clark Warren's early work with Focus on the Family's evangelical Christian base and perspective. Warren, a psychologist with a divinity degree, has had three of his 10 books on love and dating published by Focus on the Family. It was an appearance on James Dobson's radio program, in 2001, that triggered a response of 90,000 new referrals to the website, starting a climb of registered participants on the site from 4,000 to today's 20 million clients. As WND reported, the company originally said it was " based on the Christian principles of Focus on the Family author Dr. Neil Clark Warren." It stood firm on its decision to reject homosexuals from its profiling and matching services. Its entire compatibility system is based on research of married heterosexual couples. Reported by
Chelsea Schilling. |
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Distributing Harmful Material A 27-year-old woman has been arrested on charges of
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Sign A Rama Where the World goes for Signs 713-784-7891 www.SignARama.com |
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Opinions expressed in 'Perspectives' columns published by CentersForDecency.org are the sole responsibility of the article's author(s), or of the person(s) or organization(s) quoted therein, and do not necessarily represent those of the staff or management of, or advertisers who support the CfD. If you wish to contact CfD - call 713-266-2715 or write: 1415 South Voss Road, #110-393, Houston, Texas 77057. We also appreciate your Comments@CentersForDecency.Org. |
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Before Election Day, national media handwringers forged a wildly popular narrative: The right was, in the words of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, gripped by "insane rage." Outbreaks of incivility (some real, but mostly imagined) were proof positive of the extremist takeover of the Republican Party. The cluck-cluckers and tut-tutters shook with fear. But when the GOP took a beating on Nov. 4, no mass protests ensued; no nationwide boycotts erupted. Conservatives took their lumps and began the peaceful post-defeat process of self-flagellation, self-analysis and self-autopsy. In fact, in the wake of campaign 2008 there's only one angry mob gripped by "insane rage": left-wing same-sex marriage activists incensed at their defeat in California. Voters there approved Proposition 8, a traditional marriage initiative, by 52 percent to 48 percent. Instead of introspection and self-criticism, however, the sore losers who opposed Prop. 8 responded with threats, fists and blacklists. That's right. Activists have published on the Internet an "Anti-Gay Blacklist" of Prop. 8 donors.
distributing harmful material to a minor after a 14-year-old's parents found a topless photo of her on his cell phone. Victoria Ann Chacon, a former middle school teacher, allegedly met the boy at their church, where she was a Sunday school teacher. Authorities at Somerset Independent School District said they found no evidence of any inappropriate relationships with students; the 14-year-old attended school elsewhere. The boy's parents called police in March after finding racy letters in which Chacon professed her love. The boy initially refused to give a statement about the relationship, the arrest warrant says. Several months later, the parents found a cell phone with a topless photo of Chacon. The phone was owned by Chacon and the two had been calling on another, according to court documents. The woman was arrested Tuesday. Jail records had no attorney listed for her.