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In an
in-depth interview for “60 Minutes” Clarence Thomas recounts that the reason
his nomination received such vitriolic opposition was his strong pro-life stance on
abortion. The interview will air this Sunday night on CBS at 7:00pm
Eastern. Justice Thomas is also promoting his new autobiographical book
entitled “My Grandfather’s Son.”
CitizenLink reports:
The clock is running out on federal abstinence funding. If
grants to the states are not renewed by Sunday, abstinence-based sex education
will be a rare commodity in public schools.
A letter
to members of Congress by the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA)
thanks Congress for extending abstinence funding even for three short months
but urges a much longer
reauthorization to ensure that these effective programs continue.
LifeNews excerpt:
An attorney for a woman victimized by an abortion is
appealing the decision of the New
Jersey Supreme Court, which determined that an
abortion practitioner didn't mislead her. Rosa Acuna says she was incorrectly
told by abortion practitioner Sheldon Turkish that she was not aborting a human
life when she had an abortion in 1996.
The case
could eventually come before the U.S. Supreme Court.
 The New York Times reports that the Bureau of Prisons has announced it will reconsider its policy regarding the approval of religious texts in the nations’ prisons and will immediately restore the confiscated books back to prisons (except for books deemed obviously to incite violence) until the policy can be reevaluated.
Rather than having a government agency determining what acceptable religious texts are, a sensible alternative would be to have the Bureau of Prisons prohibit any text which is deemed to incite violent or illegal activity. In this way the government would not be seen as “establishing” a particular religion but would be merely enforcing a sensible measure to prevent violence and terrorist recruitment in our nation’s prisons. Religion would no longer be the issue.
Fox News article excerpt:
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, caused a stir at a Senate hearing Wednesday when he said
he believes homosexual activity is immoral and should not be condoned by the
military.
It’s amazing that uproar ensues
from simply saying homosexual behavior is immoral.
The United States Senate voted this morning on an amendment to the Defense bill that would make hate (thought) crimes based on “perceived or actual sexual orientation or gender identity” a federal matter. Unfortunately the amendment passed by a vote of 60 - 39. Fortunately, there appear to be sufficient votes to sustain the veto the president has promised. To see how your senators voted see the vote chart below.
For more information on hate crimes click here or check the other blog posts in the hate crimes category.
Senate Cloture Vote on the Kennedy Amendment (S.A. 3035) adding federal hate crimes language to a war funding bill (60 votes needed to pass - PASSED)
September 27, 2007
Full Results | News Story
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Yeas |
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Nays |
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PRES |
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NV |
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Republican |
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9 |
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39 |
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— |
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1 |
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Democratic |
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50 |
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— |
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— |
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Independent |
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1 |
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— |
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TOTALS |
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60 |
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39 |
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1 |
 AdvanceUSA is happy to report that the efforts to protect marriage in Oregon have seen success. Earlier this year the Oregon legislature passed two laws which overturn the 2004 voter-approved state marriage amendment. These laws, among other things, would award marriage benefits to same-sex couples. The group Restore America announced Wednesday that they have collected 63,000 signatures, approximately 7,500 more than needed, to halt the enforcement of the laws and allow them to be overturned by a vote of the people next year.
Below is the Restore America press release announcing the signature collection success:
 Startling new developments have arisen regarding the hate (thought) crimes bill. Today Sen. Harry Reid offered hate crimes legislation as an amendment to the Defense Department reauthorization bill. Because of the method he used to offer this amendment, it could be voted on as early as Wednesday but certainly by Thursday.
Please make every effort to call both your senators today and urge them to vote "No" on Senate Amendment 3035 (i.e. "hate crimes amendment") to the Department of Defense reauthorization bill!
Hate crimes laws are unjust, constitutionally questionable, and a subtle, yet very real, threat to religious freedom. For more information on hate (thought) crimes legislation check the AdvanceUSA home page or the hate crimes category at AdvanceUSA Blog.
To protect equal justice under the law and religious freedom, please call your senators today!
LifeNews article excerpt:
A New Jersey
court will hold an initial hearing on Monday on a lawsuit pro-life advocates have filed to stop a bill that would make taxpayers
fund embryonic stem cell research. They are challenging the bill Gov. Jon
Corzine signed asking voters to approve borrowing $450 million to fund grants
over the next 10 years. The lawsuit says the bill fails to disclose that
the money will also pay for human cloning.
For the
rest of the story click here.
 Many supporters of human cloning would have us believe that it is totally harmless. This New York Times pieces reveals that cloning scientists are having a hard time recruiting women to donate their eggs because of the dangers and discomforts of egg harvesting procedures. This has resulted in the increased demand for human/animal hybrid embryos (called chimeras) in order to make up for the lack of human eggs. When human life begins to be looked upon as a commodity for the use of others, such unethical procedures will be increasingly in demand.
The
Bluefield Daily Telegraph reports on the encouraging
story of Dixie Sisk who after years of agonizing cancer treatment for her
multiple myeloma finally resorted to adult stem cell therapy. Unlike
embryonic stem cell research (which requires the destruction of human embryos
and has not met with clinical success in medical treatments) adult stem cell
research is ethical and has frequently shown real-world results.
Excerpt:
Dixie Sisk was almost 70 when she
became a new woman.
After fighting cancer for 11 years, enduring 89 radiation
treatments and surviving repeated rounds of chemotherapy, the Mercer County
mother and grandmother decided it was time to try a controversial, cutting-edge
treatment that could give her a chance at living cancer-free.
Doctors were skeptical of her chance for success, but Sisk
agreed to a stem cell transplant in hopes of seeing her grandchildren grow up.
“I’ve got two grandsons, a 6-year-old and a 14-year-old.
When I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, all the doctors said they could
give me was a band-aid. A band-aid doesn’t cover much,” she said.
Her cells were harvested from her own body, so Sisk never
had to wait for a match or worry whether federal guidelines would allow
research on the line of cells she needed.
For more
exciting stories of adult stem cell successes check the AdvanceUSA adult stem cell page.
AdvanceUSA
has learned that Jennifer W. Elrod, one of President Bush’s nominees for the 5th
Circuit Court of Appeals, has been recommended by the Senate Judiciary
Committee on a voice vote. Now two 5th Circuit Nominees
(Leslie Southwick and Jennifer Elrod) await confirmation by the Senate and
given the Senate’s dismal record on confirming judges (only 3 Circuit Court
nominees this year) immediate action should be taken.
The
following is an excerpt from Roll Call (subscription):
“Republicans are salivating over a fight with Democrats on
judicial nominations, which they view as an ideal vehicle to charge the
majority party with ‘obstructionism’ and rally their conservative base heading
into the 2008 election year.”
AdvanceUSA
has obtained an email by the radical liberal group Americans United for the
Separation of Church and State (AU) calling on charter schools to cease
religious activity. Apparently the AU would rather protect the total
“separation of church and state” which cannot be found in the Constitution,
rather than the First Amendment which can be found in the Constitution. Here
is a press release from AU.
Below is
the text of the AU email:
September 19, 2007
Americans United Calls on Washington,
D.C., Charter School
to Cease Religious Activities
School-Sponsored Religion At Washington Latin
School Violates
Constitution, Says Church-State Watchdog Group
A Washington,
D.C., charter school that
conducts graduations and other school gatherings in a church sanctuary and
whose headmaster leads students in prayer is running afoul of the First
Amendment, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Americans United has warned that school-sponsored
religious activities at Washington
Latin School
violate the principle of church-state separation and urged officials to cease
conducting school gatherings in church settings and leading students in prayer.
Deutsche Welle
reports:
Cardiologists at Düsseldorf University
Hospital said they have been
the first in the world to use [adult] stem cell therapy to save a patient who
suffered from a severe heart attack.
CitizenLink reports:
The Protecting Children from Indecent Programming Act that
was introduced in the U.S.
House Tuesday would make it clear that fleeting expletives should not be
allowed on radio and TV stations. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled
in June that Congress really didn't mean for such expletives to be considered
indecent, and reversed fines levied by the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC).
Rep. Charles "Chip" Pickering, R-Miss., said he
introduced the bill to set the record straight.
From the Philadelphia
Inquirer:
Refusing to allow gay couples to hold civil unions in a
boardwalk pavilion has cost a Methodist church group in Monmouth County
its state tax exemption for the property.
The state Department of Environmental Protection on Monday
stripped the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association of a property tax exemption
for the boardwalk pavilion…
Tax
exempt status today, ____________ tomorrow.
UPDATE: Maggie Gallagher covers the story
in a piece called “Can
New Jersey punish Methodists for marriage?” at TownHall.
From the NIH
website:
National
Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today that it will begin implementing
President Bush's Executive Order to explore methods to expand the number of
approved pluripotent stem cell lines "without creating a human embryo for
research purposes or destroying, discarding, or subjecting to harm a human
embryo or fetus."
AdvanceUSA applauds the pursuit of
cures and treatments from ethical and effective adult stem cells which have
shown much better results than the unethical and uncontrollable kind derived
from destroyed human embryos.
AdvanceUSA
Blog recently
reported on the move by federal prisons to ban all non-approved religious
texts from prison libraries. AdvanceUSA has learned that RSC Chairman Jeb
Hensarling (R-TX), VAT Chairman Joe Pitts (R-PA), and Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL)
have sent a letter to Mr. Harley Lappin, the Director of the Federal Bureau of
Prisons, to ask that an inquiry be made into this possible breach of the free
exercise of religion.
Click
here to view the letter. An RSC press release relating to this
incident can
be found here.
Sen.
Gordon Smith (R-OR) today tried to offer his hate
crimes bill as an amendment to the Department of Defense (DOD)
reauthorization bill. Fortunately, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was on hand to
object to the unanimous consent motion required to consider the amendment
“pending.” After this objection Sen. Kennedy (D-MA) stormed onto the
Senate floor vowing to get the hate crimes bill onto the DOD bill and said the
hate crimes bill related to military funding because it sought to combat
“domestic terrorism” supposedly aimed at homosexuals. Here is an excerpt
from Sen. Kennedy’s remarks:
I have every intention, with Senator Smith, at some time
of offering the hate crimes legislation. I know the question comes up why are
we offering hate crime legislation on a defense authorization bill? Well, the
answer is very simple. the defense authorization bill is dealing with the
challenges of terrorism and the hate crimes issue, to try and get a handle on
the problems of hate crimes, we're talking about domestic terrorism, domestic
terrorism.
Apparently
Sen. Kennedy thinks those who oppose the federal prosecution of suspected
thoughts and beliefs, who seek to uphold “equal justice under law,” and who
oppose granting special legal privileges to sexual preference, are terrorists
akin to Al-Quaida and the Taliban.
A doctor
who specializes in spinal cord injuries has come out in support of Missouri’s “Cures
Without Cloning” ballot initiative to fully ban human cloning in the
state’s constitution. Excerpt:
Those
who allege human cloning is necessary in the pursuit of these cures and
treatments are providing false hope.
The
Cures Without Cloning initiative would only prohibit research involving human
cloning - nothing more, nothing less. There are plenty of promising research
methods, including many forms of stem-cell research, that do not involve human
cloning.
For more
information on this important pro-life cause in Missouri check the Cures Without Cloning website
or the AdvanceUSA human cloning page.
It’s
finally happened. A judge in New
York State
has ruled that out-of-state “gay” marriages must be
recognized for purposes of receiving state benefits. Activist judges
continue to show a ready willingness to force same-sex marriage on the people
of this nation with or without their consent. The case for a federal
marriage amendment grows even stronger.
A federal
court in California
recently ruled on the propriety of jurors
consulting scripture when conducting death penalty deliberations.
Fortunately the death penalty verdict was not overturned because of one of the jurors
quoting scripture during deliberations, but the court’s evident animosity to
the scriptures shows the influence of secularism in our legal system.
In its unanimous decision, the New Jersey court ruled that, contrary to
what the woman’s lawyer had argued, her doctor had “no legal duty” to tell her
that her six-to-eight-week-old embryo was “a complete, separate, unique and
irreplaceable human being.”
Source: New
York Times article
The
Jurist provides helpful
commentary and resources on this story.
The New
York Times reports that prison chaplains
are being forced to remove thousands of religious books from prison libraries
out of a fear of extremist texts inciting people to terrorism. Excerpt:
“It’s swatting a fly with a
sledgehammer,” said Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, a Christian
group. “There’s no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books
that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece
of literature that presents extremism.”
The Heritage Foundation has just released an
embarrassing report (for opponents of school choice) that shows 37% of
Representatives and 45% of Senators send their children to private schools. Excerpt:
Based on the survey results, if
all of the Members who exercised school choice for their own children had
supported school choice in policy, every major legislative effort in recent
years to give parents school choice would have passed. Congress should support
policies that give all families the opportunity to choose the best school
options for their children.
As
CitizenLink reports, there is a bill before the California
legislature
that would force same-sex marriage upon its citizens even after a
sizeable majority supported a state-wide marriage initiative in 2000.
Unfortunately the legalization of “gay” marriage is not the only issue facing
Californians. Other bills before the legislature would:
“teach public school children age 5 and older to be
accepting of homosexuality, cross-dressing and bisexuality; end local oversight
of school discrimination policies;…and allow HIV-positive men to donate sperm,
with no guarantee that the child conceived in the process would be HIV-free.”
Source: CitizenLink
As
frequent readers at AdvanceUSA can attest it’s hard to keep up all the exciting
developments in ethical adult stem cell research. Here’s a couple
more:
1.
Several sports teams in Australia
are considering storing
their players’ adult stem cells as an insurance policy against lengthy or
debilitating
injuries. Below is an excerpt from the AFP news
story:
Stem cells would be taken from bone marrow in the player's
spine in a half-hour procedure under a local anaesthetic and then grown in a
laboratory for six weeks.
Then they would be stored in a cell bank, ready to be
transplanted should injury occur.
Stem cells are cells that can develop into various types
of body tissues and are a major focus of current medical research, potentially
revolutionising transplants and other areas of surgery.
The hope is that cells taken from the patient's own body
would not face rejection by the immune system, which can happen with
transplants from other people.
2. David
Traub’s cardiologist was extremely skeptical of David traveling to Bangkok to receive heart
injections of his own adult stem cells, and the specialist even warned him that
he might not survive. But this “doubting Thomas” is now a true believer
in the
benefits of adult stem cell treatment. The following is an excerpt
from the Trans World News article:
David's therapy consisted of having about half a pint of
his own blood removed in Bangkok's prestigious Bangkok Heart Hospital.
This blood was flown to Theravitae's laboratory where the therapeutic stem
cells were isolated and multiplied many times before being injected directly into
the heart muscle via a small incision in the chest wall.
Not only did David survive the trip half way around the
world but he returned home to find, "The peaks were higher and the
valley's not as deep."
He still has problems due to an enlarged heart from
cardiomyopathy but he is happy to wait a while longer knowing that his heart
now has a richer blood supply compared with before stem cell treatment, so it
is working normally rather than struggling.
For more
information on adult stem cell successes check the AdvanceUSA adult stem cell page.
Last
night the U.S. Senate voted on 3 amendments to the State, Foreign Operations,
and Related Programs Appropriations Act relating to the Mexico City Policy
and the Kemp-Kasten amendment.
The Kemp-Kasten
Amendment prevents funding from going to international organizations which
support or participate in a program of coercive abortion or involuntary
sterilization. The Mexico City Policy, first enacted by Ronald
Reagan and later reinstituted by George W. Bush, prohibits USAID (foreign aid)
money from going to any organizations that promote or perform elective abortions.
A
Brownback amendment (Kemp-Kasten, S.A. 2707) to prevent tax-payer funds from
supporting overseas organization which support coercive abortions (like China’s brutal
one-child policy) passed. Unfortunately, (unless the President’s promised
veto is sustained) tax-payer funds can now be given to international organizations
which promote or provide elective abortions because the Boxer amendment (S.A. 2719) passed and another Brownback
amendment (S.A.
2708) was defeated. To see how your senators voted on these important
pro-life amendments check the Congress Vote Watch
page or the vote charts below. Fortunately President Bush has promised
to veto the underlying bill if it overturns the Mexico City Policy.
UPDATE: Amanda
Carpenter at TownHall.com offers further insight on the recent
Senate votes to allow overseas abortion funding with tax-payer dollars.
For more
information on important pro-life riders click
here.
On
September 5 hearings were held in the House Education and Labor Committee on
ENDA. The hearings were rather one-sided as 6 witnesses and 3
Representatives supported the bill, one witness merely expressed concerns with
the legislation, and only one witness opposed ENDA. For transcripts of
witness’s testimony from the hearings click here.
For more information on this dangerous assult on religious freedom and simple fairness check our ENDA blurb on the AdvanceUSA home page.
As a Christian woman I could no longer support the Girl Scouts. It is not the organization that I or my mother enjoyed. It is so far off its original course that it barely resembles the program that Juliette Lowe founded. Girls of today still need a scouting group that teaches character development with a definite moral compass. The American Heritage Girls provides that opportunity to our nation's daughters.
 So says Patti Garibay of AHG. In 1995 after several parents in Ohio became disappointed with the increasing secularism of local scout groups they decided to start their own. American Heritage Girls exists to build “women of integrity through service to God, family, community and country.” Today AHG has scout troops in 36 states around the country.
The AHG Oath:
"I promise to love God,
Cherish my family,
Honor my country,
and Serve in my community."
For more information visit their newly upgraded website.
AdvanceUSA
attended a press conference yesterday on Capitol Hill to show support for the
embattled nomination of Judge Leslie Southwick for the 5th Circuit
Court of Appeals. Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Orin Hatch (R-UT) led
the event which was well attended by conservative activists, concerned
citizens, and members of the media.
UPDATE: Click here to view a video clip of the press conference. Sen.
Specter kicks off the press conference advocating the speedy approval of Judge
Southwick with many concerned citizen-activists gathered in support.
This story
is from the Alliance Defense Fund:
“a parent [was] barred from reading the Bible in her
child’s classroom as part of a school assignment where parents were invited to
read their child’s favorite book. The
child, a kindergarten student, asked his mother to read from the Bible as part
of a Social Studies assignment that had no content restrictions. On May 31, a federal district court sided
with the school, and the case is now on appeal.”
And
“the teacher permitted another parent to discuss the
Jewish religious holidays of Passover and Hanukkah with the class. In place of the Bible, Wesley’s teacher
suggested that Mrs. Busch read a book “about witches and Halloween” to the
class.”
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