AdvanceUSA Blog

Our Sacred Honor

AdvanceUSA — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:05:39 GMT

On July 4 Americans celebrate the bold document that declared their independence and explained the principles upon which their nation was founded. The Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." It proclaimed a new nation, one that would be founded on the "consent of the governed."

As you celebrate the Fourth of July this weekend, remember the brave men who ventured into dangerous and uncharted waters in "a skiff made of paper." More importantly, remember the principles they based their actions upon. Take a few minutes to read the Declaration so that you can appreciate our founding principles on Independence Day.

Read the Declaration of Independence here.

The fight for liberty and independence must go on. Even now, millions of unborn human beings are denied the sacred and inalienable "right to life." Much work remains to be done. But let us take courage from those men of long ago, and renew our commitment to appreciating, promoting, and defending the rights and principles contained in our founding document.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.

“Obama Makes Big Policy Promises to Gays”

AdvanceUSA — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:48:15 GMT

CitizenLink reports. Excerpt:

President Barack Obama opened the White House to hundreds of gay activists Monday, promising them that by the time he leaves office they would "have pretty good feelings" about his administration.

During an event to celebrate the 40th anniversary of what gay activists consider the launch of their political movement – several nights of violent riots in and around a New York gay bar – Obama rattled off several policies he plans to implement to please his homosexual constituency.

"I want you to know that I expect and hope to be judged not by words, not by promises I've made, but by the promises my administration keeps," he said. "We've been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over … you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration."

Among those promises the president is pursuing, he said: Overturning the federal Defense of Marriage Act, passing a law to mandate health-care and other benefits to homosexual domestic partners, repealing "don't ask, don't tell" and even "rescinding the discriminatory ban on entry to the United States based on HIV status."

OneNewsNow also reports.

What the Ricci Decision Says About Sotomayor’s Judicial Reasoning

AdvanceUSA — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:46:30 GMT

Besides the obvious reverse discrimination inherent in the Ricci case, many legal experts (including Supreme Court Justices) are troubled by the reasoning expressed by Judge Sonya Sotomayor and her fellow panel judges.

Here are links and excerpts from several journals and news sources on the subject:

National Review

The decision is a sharp rebuke for Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Pres. Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Justice David Souter when the Supreme Court convenes in October. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed a dissenting opinion that was joined by the Court’s three other reliable liberals (Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer), and thus administration spinners are already whirring about how the 5-4 majority purportedly shows that Sotomayor’s handling of the case was in the mainstream. That rhetorical sleight of hand, however, misstates both the facts and the nature of the complaint against Sotomayor.

The only consensus the nine justices found was that the handling of case by Sotomayor’s three-judge appeals-court panel was shoddy. Even the four dissenting justices agreed that the Second Circuit applied the wrong legal standard. The majority was less charitable, rehearsing the machinations by which the lower courts tried to bury the firefighters’ discrimination claims: While conceding evidence of intentional discrimination, a district judge disposed of the claims in an unpublished order, which Sotomayor’s panel then rubber-stamped in an unpublished summary order of its own. That maneuver prompted a withering protest from Second Circuit judge Jose Cabranes, a highly respected Clinton appointee, who was startled at his court’s cavalier treatment of such profound legal issues.

National Journal

What's more striking is that the court was unanimous in rejecting the Sotomayor panel's specific holding. Her holding was that New Haven's decision to spurn the test results must be upheld based solely on the fact that highly disproportionate numbers of blacks had done badly on the exam and might file a "disparate-impact" lawsuit -- regardless of whether the exam was valid or the lawsuit could succeed.

The Wall Street Journal

Because the Court's ruling was narrowly made on statutory grounds, it dodged the larger claim brought by the firefighters that New Haven violated their constitutional right to equal protection. Yet as Justice Antonin Scalia notes in his concurrence, the disparate impact standards "place a racial thumb on the scales, often requiring employers to evaluate the racial outcomes of their policies, and to make decisions based on (because of) those racial outcomes." Someone should ask Judge Sotomayor if that's her idea of equal protection under the law.

The Washington Times and Politico also report.

“Hate Crimes Bill Would Federalize Criminal Law, Revive Double Jeopardy”

AdvanceUSA — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:43:33 GMT

Robert Knight explains. Excerpt:

Among its many defects, the proposed federal hate crimes bill virtually ensures that some defendants will face double jeopardy, whatever the outcome of their cases. It all depends on the whims of the folks occupying the Attorney General’s office, who may want to score political points at a defendant’s expense.

The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 909) now before the Senate, establishes “thought crime,” violates equal protection by making some victims more important than others, elevates “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to be equivalent to civil rights categories like race, and greatly expands the federal role in criminal law.

In short, it’s a grab bag of ways to violate genuine constitutional rights while addressing a non-issue. There is no compelling evidence that bias-motivated crimes are not being handled properly and perpetrators punished.

Keep reading the full article here.

“Planned Parenthood Abortion Center Staffer: We Bend the Rules on Sexual Abuse”

AdvanceUSA — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:41:55 GMT

LifeNews reports.

“Our Laws, not Foreign Laws: Judges Must not Overreach and Negate our Independence”

AdvanceUSA — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:38:01 GMT

Senator Jeff Sessions explains how the citing of foreign law in American judicial rulings is a threat to American sovereignty and independence. This will be an important issue to discuss when Judge Sonia Sotomayor is examined by the Senate Judiciary Committee in during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

“House Health Care Bill Gets More Criticism for Taxpayer-Funded Abortion Coverage”

AdvanceUSA — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:36:43 GMT

LifeNews reports.

Congress and Obama Let Abstinence Funding Expire

AdvanceUSA — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:35:33 GMT

The Washington Times reports.

“Pro-Life Group Challenges Federal Order to Sell Morning After Pill to Minor Girls”

AdvanceUSA — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:34:16 GMT

LifeNews reports.

“McConnell Says Time Needed to Review New Sotomayor Material”

AdvanceUSA — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:52:24 GMT

Roll Call reports. Excerpt:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday said the Senate needs more time to review the record of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor after new material surfaced from her time with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

“Just a day or so ago, we discovered that there are 300 or so boxes of additional material that has just been discovered from her time working with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund,” McConnell said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

“The committee needs to have access to that material and time to work through it so we know all the facts before we vote on a person who is up for a lifetime job,” McConnell said.

Call both your senators today and urge them to slow down the important Sotomayor nomination process so that enough time can be given to fully examining her record and judicial philosophy. Also tell your senators that you want them to vote against liberal, activist judges who legislate from the bench while relying on their personal perspectives or “life stories” rather than upholding the plain meaning of the U.S. Constitution.

“Health Care Reform Bill Would Have Government Cover Abortions”

AdvanceUSA — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:48:01 GMT

LifeNews reports.

“Same-Sex 'Marriage' Loses Support Among Americans”

AdvanceUSA — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:42:52 GMT

OneNewsNow reports.

“New UNFPA Annual Report Prioritizes ‘Reproductive Health,’ Meaning Abortion”

AdvanceUSA — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:40:55 GMT

LifeNews reports. Excerpt:

While the Bush Administration withheld funding from UNFPA over the agency's support of China's population program, which includes forced abortions and sterilizations, the agency can look forward to a cash injection from the Obama administration in 2009. Earlier this year, the United States announced it would reinstate UNFPA funding and pledged $50 million dollars for 2009 – a figure that would put the US in the agency's top five donor countries alongside the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Norway.

How “Sotomayor's Selective Reading Reflects her Judicial Activism”

AdvanceUSA — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:37:18 GMT

Roger Clegg explains how Sonia Sotomayor’s reading of the Ricci case indicates her judicial activism. Excerpt:

The classic instance of judicial activism is making up a constitutional guarantee that is not actually in the Constitution, and using that to strike down a state law. But judicial activism can also involve ignoring a guarantee that in the Constitution to uphold a statute that violates it.

And this gives us reason to suppose that this distortion of the legal texts involved was driven by Sotomayor’s personal policy preferences, the definition of judicial activism. Her now well-publicized extrajudicial pronouncements in these areas suggest that she is deeply immersed in identity politics. In particular, she has been very aggressive in her support for affirmative action and other selection policies to ensure politically correct numbers.

The Washington Post reports that the Supreme Court today overturned the Ricci decision of the appellate court on which Sotomayor served. Excerpt:

…the appellate judges [including Sototmayo] have been criticized for producing a cursory opinion that failed to deal with "indisputably complex and far from well-settled" questions, in the words of another appeals court judge, Sotomayor mentor Jose Cabranes.

"This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal," Cabranes said, in a dissent from the full 2nd Circuit's decision not to hear the case.

“Study Finds Adult Stem Cells, Not Embryonic, Best Suited for Repairing Muscle”

AdvanceUSA — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:54:19 GMT

LifeNews reports.

“Adult Stem Cells May Cure the Ailing Heart in Congestive Heart Failure”

AdvanceUSA — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:50:17 GMT

The DC Examiner reports.

“Amniotic Fluids Bring [Adult] Stem Cell Boost”

AdvanceUSA — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:13:41 GMT

The Globe and Mail reports.

“Kevin Jennings -- Unsafe for America's Schools”

AdvanceUSA — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:12:30 GMT

Tony Perkins explains at Human Events. Excerpt:

Kevin Jennings has neither the temperament nor the ethical standards needed for public service. His history suggests a commitment to serving only one narrow part of the student population, not all students. He is unfit for the post to which he’s been assigned, and Secretary Duncan should withdraw his appointment at once.

Obama Administration Proposing “New Protections for Transgender [Cross Dressing] Federal Workers”

AdvanceUSA — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:02:04 GMT

The New York Times reports.

“Sotomayor's Ethical Oversight”

AdvanceUSA — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:00:48 GMT

The Washington Times editorial board explains.

What’s So Bad About Hate Crimes?

AdvanceUSA — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:59:13 GMT

The President of the Family Research Council submitted excellent testimony to a recent Senate committee held to discuss hate crimes legislation. Excerpt:

Hate crime laws force the court to guess the thoughts and beliefs which lie behind a crime, instead of looking at the crime itself, in order to prosecute and convict someone of a hate crime. Violent crimes are already punishable by law. "Hate crime" laws put the perpetrator's thoughts and beliefs on trial. Hate crime laws are tantamount to federally prosecuting "thought crimes." The Family Research Council believes that all crime should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and that every violent crime has some form of hate behind it. All around the country, crimes are being prosecuted in the state justice systems. American justice is being done. There is simply no need for a federal hate crimes law.

“FDA OKs Generic Version of Plan B Morning After Pill Drug, No Abortion Reduction”

AdvanceUSA — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:57:00 GMT

LifeNews reports.