Yahoo! News - Woman Sues Over N.C. Anti-Cohabitation LawTue Mar 29, 7:58 PM ET
WILMINGTON, N.C. - A former sheriff's dispatcher who quit her job after her boss found out she lived with her boyfriend is challenging North Carolina's law against cohabitation.
Debora Hobbs said she was told to get married, move out, or find another job after her boss found out about her living situation. The legal arm of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina filed the lawsuit Monday on her behalf.
The lawsuit seeks to abolish the nearly 200-year-old — and rarely enforced — law that prohibits unmarried, unrelated adults of the opposite sex from living together. North Carolina is one of seven states with such a law.
Convicted offenders face a fine and up to 60 days in jail.
"The government has no business meddling in the private relationships of consenting adults," said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the ACLU-NC Legal Foundation.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Conservative judge blasts Bush, Congress for role in Schiavo case
Yahoo! News - Conservative judge blasts Bush, Congress for role in Schiavo case: "Knight Ridder | Wed Mar 30, 7:42 PM ET | By Stephen Henderson, Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The latest rejection of the Terri Schiavo case by a federal court was accompanied by a stinging rebuke of Congress and President Bush from a seemingly unlikely source: Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., one of the most conservative jurists on the federal bench."
Birch authored opinions upholding Alabama's right to ban the sale of sex toys and Florida's ability to prohibit adoptions by gay couples. Both rulings drew the ire of liberal activists and the elation of traditional and social conservatives.
Yet, in Wednesday's 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to deny a rehearing to Schiavo's parents, Birch went out of his way to castigate Bush and congressional Republicans for acting "in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for governance of a free people - our Constitution."
Birch said he couldn't countenance Congress' attempt to "rob" federal courts of the discretion they're given in the Constitution. Noting that it had become popular among "some members of society, including some members of Congress," to denounce "activist judges," or those who substitute their personal opinions for constitutional imperatives, Birch said lawmakers embarked on their own form of unconstitutional activism.
"This is a judge who, through a political or policy lens, falls pretty squarely in the Scalia/Thomas camp," said law professor and constitutional expert David Garrow, referring to the two most conservative Supreme Court justices. "I think it's a sad commentary that there wasn't a voice like his present in the Congress, because he's saying what a Republican constitutional conservative should be saying." ...
WASHINGTON - The latest rejection of the Terri Schiavo case by a federal court was accompanied by a stinging rebuke of Congress and President Bush from a seemingly unlikely source: Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., one of the most conservative jurists on the federal bench."
Birch authored opinions upholding Alabama's right to ban the sale of sex toys and Florida's ability to prohibit adoptions by gay couples. Both rulings drew the ire of liberal activists and the elation of traditional and social conservatives.
Yet, in Wednesday's 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to deny a rehearing to Schiavo's parents, Birch went out of his way to castigate Bush and congressional Republicans for acting "in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for governance of a free people - our Constitution."
Birch said he couldn't countenance Congress' attempt to "rob" federal courts of the discretion they're given in the Constitution. Noting that it had become popular among "some members of society, including some members of Congress," to denounce "activist judges," or those who substitute their personal opinions for constitutional imperatives, Birch said lawmakers embarked on their own form of unconstitutional activism.
"This is a judge who, through a political or policy lens, falls pretty squarely in the Scalia/Thomas camp," said law professor and constitutional expert David Garrow, referring to the two most conservative Supreme Court justices. "I think it's a sad commentary that there wasn't a voice like his present in the Congress, because he's saying what a Republican constitutional conservative should be saying." ...
Not Intelligent, and Surely Not Science
Not Intelligent, and Surely Not Science: "March 30, 2005 | COMMENTARY
According to intelligent-design theory, life is too complex to have evolved by natural forces. Therefore life must have been created by a supernatural force — an intelligent designer. ID theorists argue that because such design can be inferred through the methods of science, IDT should be given equal time alongside evolutionary theory in public school science classes. Nine states have recently proposed legislation that would require just that.
The evolution-creation legal battle began in 1925 with the Scopes "monkey" trial, over the banning of the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. The controversy caused textbook publishers and state boards of education to cease teaching evolution — until the Soviets launched Sputnik in the late 1950s and the United States realized it was falling behind in the sciences.
Creationists responded by passing equal-time laws that required the teaching of both creationism and evolution, a strategy defeated in a 1968 Arkansas trial that found that such a law attempted to "establish religion" in a public school and was therefore unconstitutional. This led to new equal-time laws covering "creation science" and "evolution science." In 1987, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 7 to 2, said teaching creation science "impermissibly endorses religion by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind." ...
According to intelligent-design theory, life is too complex to have evolved by natural forces. Therefore life must have been created by a supernatural force — an intelligent designer. ID theorists argue that because such design can be inferred through the methods of science, IDT should be given equal time alongside evolutionary theory in public school science classes. Nine states have recently proposed legislation that would require just that.
The evolution-creation legal battle began in 1925 with the Scopes "monkey" trial, over the banning of the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. The controversy caused textbook publishers and state boards of education to cease teaching evolution — until the Soviets launched Sputnik in the late 1950s and the United States realized it was falling behind in the sciences.
Creationists responded by passing equal-time laws that required the teaching of both creationism and evolution, a strategy defeated in a 1968 Arkansas trial that found that such a law attempted to "establish religion" in a public school and was therefore unconstitutional. This led to new equal-time laws covering "creation science" and "evolution science." In 1987, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 7 to 2, said teaching creation science "impermissibly endorses religion by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind." ...
Colorado Court Bars Execution Because Jurors Consulted Bible [... vote 3-2 to overturn ... is God part of a jury of your peers?]
The New York Times > National > Colorado Court Bars Execution Because Jurors Consulted Bible: "By KIRK JOHNSON | Published: March 29, 2005
In a sharply divided ruling, Colorado's highest court on Monday upheld a lower court's decision throwing out the sentence of a man who was given the death penalty after jurors consulted the Bible in reaching a verdict. The Bible, the court said, constituted an improper outside influence and a reliance on what the court called a "higher authority."
"The judicial system works very hard to emphasize the rarified, solemn and sequestered nature of jury deliberations," the majority said in a 3-to-2 decision by a panel of the Colorado Supreme Court. "Jurors must deliberate in that atmosphere without the aid or distraction of extraneous texts."
...
In the decision on Monday, the dissenting judges said the majority had confused the internal codes of right and wrong that juries are expected to possess in such weighty moral matters with the outside influences that are always to be avoided, like newspaper articles or television programs about the case. The jurors consulted Bibles, the minority said, not to look for facts or alternative legal interpretations, but for wisdom.
In a sharply divided ruling, Colorado's highest court on Monday upheld a lower court's decision throwing out the sentence of a man who was given the death penalty after jurors consulted the Bible in reaching a verdict. The Bible, the court said, constituted an improper outside influence and a reliance on what the court called a "higher authority."
"The judicial system works very hard to emphasize the rarified, solemn and sequestered nature of jury deliberations," the majority said in a 3-to-2 decision by a panel of the Colorado Supreme Court. "Jurors must deliberate in that atmosphere without the aid or distraction of extraneous texts."
...
In the decision on Monday, the dissenting judges said the majority had confused the internal codes of right and wrong that juries are expected to possess in such weighty moral matters with the outside influences that are always to be avoided, like newspaper articles or television programs about the case. The jurors consulted Bibles, the minority said, not to look for facts or alternative legal interpretations, but for wisdom.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Moses Didn't Write The Constitution: Common law existed for 200 years with no Christianity
Moses Didn't Write The Constitution:
by Thom Hartmann"
Two main arguments are being put forward these days about state-sponsored displays of the Ten Commandments. The first is that they are the basis of Anglo-Saxon law, leading to ancient British law, leading to American law. The second is that sometimes the displays of them are purely decorative, part of a larger display of other legal and/or religious symbols (as is seen in the Supreme Court chamber itself).
The decorative/art argument is a reasonable one, and probably the one the Supreme Court will adopt with relation to the Texas display. ...
...
In a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, Jefferson addressed the question directly. "Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the Ten Commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England we may say they are not because they never were." Anybody who asserted that the Ten Commandments were the basis of American or British law was, Jefferson said, mistakenly believing a document put forth by Massachusetts and British Puritan zealots which was "a manifest forgery."
The reason was simple, Jefferson said. British common law, on which much American law was based, existed before Christianity had arrived in England. ... Just looking at the timeline of English history demonstrated it was impossible:
"But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it...."
...
In a January 24, 1814 letter to John Adams, Jefferson went through a detailed lawyer's brief to show that the entire idea that the laws of both England and the United States came from the Ten Commandments rests on a single man's mistranslation in 1658, often repeated, and totally false.
"It is not only the sacred volumes they [the churches] have thus interpolated, gutted, and falsified, but the works of others relating to them, and even the laws of the land," he wrote. "Our judges, too, have lent a ready hand to further these frauds, and have been willing to lay the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others; to extend the coercions of municipal law to the dogmas of their religion, by declaring that these [Ten Commandments] make a part of the law of the land." ...
by Thom Hartmann"
Two main arguments are being put forward these days about state-sponsored displays of the Ten Commandments. The first is that they are the basis of Anglo-Saxon law, leading to ancient British law, leading to American law. The second is that sometimes the displays of them are purely decorative, part of a larger display of other legal and/or religious symbols (as is seen in the Supreme Court chamber itself).
The decorative/art argument is a reasonable one, and probably the one the Supreme Court will adopt with relation to the Texas display. ...
...
In a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, Jefferson addressed the question directly. "Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the Ten Commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England we may say they are not because they never were." Anybody who asserted that the Ten Commandments were the basis of American or British law was, Jefferson said, mistakenly believing a document put forth by Massachusetts and British Puritan zealots which was "a manifest forgery."
The reason was simple, Jefferson said. British common law, on which much American law was based, existed before Christianity had arrived in England. ... Just looking at the timeline of English history demonstrated it was impossible:
"But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it...."
...
In a January 24, 1814 letter to John Adams, Jefferson went through a detailed lawyer's brief to show that the entire idea that the laws of both England and the United States came from the Ten Commandments rests on a single man's mistranslation in 1658, often repeated, and totally false.
"It is not only the sacred volumes they [the churches] have thus interpolated, gutted, and falsified, but the works of others relating to them, and even the laws of the land," he wrote. "Our judges, too, have lent a ready hand to further these frauds, and have been willing to lay the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others; to extend the coercions of municipal law to the dogmas of their religion, by declaring that these [Ten Commandments] make a part of the law of the land." ...
Thursday, March 03, 2005
House OKs Bill on Faith-Based Jobs: Can legally dsicriminate on religous grounds and still receive federal funding
Yahoo! News - House OKs Bill on Faith-Based JobsThu Mar 3, 7:55 AM ET | Top Stories - Los Angeles Times | By Justin Dickerson Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday approved a job-training bill that would allow faith-based organizations receiving federal funds to consider a person's religious beliefs in making employment decisions.
Under current law, religious groups that receive federal money for job-training programs must obey civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination in hiring or firing.
Passage of the bill, on a largely party-line vote of 224-200, came a day after President Bush (news - web sites) told a group of religious leaders that he would attempt to institute the faith-based employment policies through an executive order if Congress did not approve them this year.
In a statement Wednesday supporting the bill, the White House said, "Receipt of federal funds should not be conditioned on a faith-based organization's giving up a part of its religious identity and mission."
WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday approved a job-training bill that would allow faith-based organizations receiving federal funds to consider a person's religious beliefs in making employment decisions.
Under current law, religious groups that receive federal money for job-training programs must obey civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination in hiring or firing.
Passage of the bill, on a largely party-line vote of 224-200, came a day after President Bush (news - web sites) told a group of religious leaders that he would attempt to institute the faith-based employment policies through an executive order if Congress did not approve them this year.
In a statement Wednesday supporting the bill, the White House said, "Receipt of federal funds should not be conditioned on a faith-based organization's giving up a part of its religious identity and mission."
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