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Ninth Circuit Rules Against Military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' By Pete Winn CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer May 21, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - The future of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was cast into doubt on Wednesday. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Calif., ruled that it is no longer enough for the military to state the policy -- which says that "homosexuality is incompatible with military service" -- when it discharges members of the armed services it discovers to be homosexuals. In a split decision, a three-judge panel ruled that the U.S. Air Force will have...

Talk about a civics lesson: A high-school senior has raised questions about political bias in a popular textbook on U.S. government, and legal scholars and top scientists say the teen's criticism is well-founded. They say "American Government" by conservatives James Wilson and John Dilulio presents a skewed view of topics from global warming to separation of church and state. The publisher now says it will review the book, as will the College Board, which oversees college-level Advanced Placement courses used in high schools. Student Matthew LaClair of Kearny, N.J., recently brought his concerns to the attention of the Center for...

WASHINGTON — Talk about a civics lesson: A high-school senior has raised questions about political bias in a popular textbook on U.S. government, and legal scholars and top scientists say the teen's criticism is well-founded. They say "American Government" by conservatives James Wilson and John Dilulio presents a skewed view of topics from global warming to separation of church and state. The publisher now says it will review the book, as will the College Board, which oversees college-level Advanced Placement courses used in high schools.

As odd is it might seem, the next to last day of 2003 may someday be seen as a fateful moment for the traditional family. That is the when the United States Drug Enforcement Agency busted a pair of methamphetamine dealers in Philadelphia. In a remarkable example of the corrosive force liberalism exerts on our society, the arrest of these drug dealers led to an opinion issued July 31 by U.S. District Judge Marvin Katz that -- if sustained by the Supreme Court -- could erase the special status marriage and the traditional family enjoy in American law. (snip) The...

Man On Trial For Sex With Dog TACOMA, Wash. - Jury selection began this week in Tacoma for the trial of the first person charged in Washington under a new law that made bestiality a felony. Twenty-six-year-old Michael Patrick McPhail is accused of having sex last October with his family's dog, a pit bull named Sarah. He has pleaded innocent to animal cruelty. If convicted he could be sentence to a year in jail. The bestiality law took effect in June. It was passed by the Washington Legislature because of the death of a man who had sex with a...

The resignation of Randall Tobias, the chief of the Bush administration's foreign aid programs, for "personal reasons" following the revelation that he had engaged the services of two escort-service workers has provided rich grist for amusement on the punditry circuit. There was indeed plenty of material for humor in the situation, from Tobias's strong stand in favor of abstinence teaching in AIDS prevention programs to his "I didn't inhale"-style assertion that he never had sex with the women. But the predictable laughs have obscured a much larger issue than hypocrisy in the ranks of social conservatives. The reason Tobias's call-girl...

HOUSTON -- Tyron Garner, one of two men whose 1998 arrests led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down bans on sodomy, has died, according to a spokesman for the legal firm that represented him. Garner, 39, died early Monday at a Houston hospital, said Mark Roy, a spokesman for Lambda Legal in New York City. Garner had been suffering from meningitis and had been in his brother's care for the past six months. "Over the last few months, he lost the use of his legs from meningitis," Roy told The Associated Press. Garner and John Lawrence were...

1967 TYRONE GARNER 2006 Defendant in landmark sodomy ruling was not motivated by politics The key civil liberties victory for gays was 'fight against all odds' Tyrone Garner, whose arrest in violation of Texas sodomy laws led to a challenge before the Supreme Court and an eventual victory that struck down such statutes across the country, died after a lengthy illness, friends said Wednesday. He was 39. Garner, who died Monday of meningitis in a Houston-area hospital, was openly gay but not politically active when he chose to fight his arrest in court, said his lawyer, Mitchell Katine. "He was...

Professor Robert P. George is pacing around a Princeton auditorium before 200-plus undergraduates, preparing to wage an intellectual shock-and-awe campaign against illogical thinking. “Some politicians say that they’re ‘personally opposed’ to abortion, yet ‘pro-choice,’” says the 48-year-old professor of constitutional law and moral philosophy. “But we must ask: Is this a position that can survive the test of logical coherence? After all, if abortion is wrong, surely it is wrong because it is the unjust taking of the life of a developing human being.” He pauses to let that sink in and then launches another question: “And if one believes...

Raleigh, N.C. -- A state judge has ruled that North Carolina's 201-year-old law barring unmarried couples from living together is unconstitutional. The American Civil Liberties Union sued last year to overturn the rarely enforced law on behalf of a former sheriff's dispatcher who says she had to quit her job because she wouldn't marry her live-in boyfriend. Deborah Hobbs, 40, says her boss, Sheriff Carson Smith of Pender County, near Wilmington, told her to get married, move out or find another job after he found out she and her boyfriend had been living together for three years. The couple did...

One issue posed by the normalization of homosexuality, which Lawrence largely accomplishes–the only step remains is the creation of a constitutional right to homosexual marriage–is whether as a society we want a significant increase in the number of homosexuals. Other arguments are largely beside the point. Homosexuals argue that allowing them all the rights of heterosexuals, including the right to marry, is simply a question of justice, of the equal protection of the laws. That argument leaves out of the account the effects of normalization on individuals and on society. It would have force only if there were no serious...

SAN FRANCISCO – A suburban San Diego teenager who was barred from wearing a T-shirt with anti-gay rhetoric to class lost a bid to have his high school's dress code suspended Thursday after a federal appeals court ruled the school could restrict what students wear to prevent disruptions. The ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals addressed only the narrow issue of whether the dress code should be unenforced pending the outcome of the student's lawsuit. A majority of judges said, however, that Tyler Chase Harper was unlikely to prevail on claims that the Poway Unified...

Could Same-Sex Marriage Lead to Legalized Polygamy? By Debra Saunders When social conservatives argue that legalizing same-sex marriage could lead to legalized polygamy, same-sex marriage advocates either laugh or sneer. It's a scare tactic, they say. It'll never happen. Last year, however, as Canada legalized same-sex marriage, Prime Minister Paul Martin commissioned a $150,000 study to debunk the polygamy argument. Big mistake: The study confirmed the scare tactic by recommending that Canada repeal its anti-polygamy law. It also suggested that a legal challenge to Canada's anti-polygamy laws would succeed. "Why criminalize behavior?" asked Martha Bailey, one of the study's three...

 THE HEARINGS on John Roberts's and Sam Alito's nominations to the Supreme Court featured a Latin phrase most people hear only in connection with Supreme Court confirmations: stare decisis. Stare decisis is the legal doctrine holding that in general, an issue once decided should stay decided, and not be revisited. This exchange between Judge Alito and Senator Arlen Specter, near the beginning of Alito's testimony, was one of many similar colloquies:  SPECTER: In Casey, the joint opinion said, quote, "People have ordered their thinking and lives around Roe. To eliminate the issue of reliance would be detrimental."  Now, that states,...

Check out the Organization for Christian Polygamy (WARNING! HIGH STRANGENESS LEVEL!) They advertise themselves as “Continuing the Reformation.” Gee whiz, I guess so, although I know a lot of Reformed-type guys who might dispute their claim. I have a feeling this is an inevitable outcome of the interpret-it-yourself-with-no-recourse-to-tradition approach to scripture that can be found on the outermost wacko fringes of Evangelical theology. They seem to go to great lengths to make themselves sound mainstream: "Polygamy is in the Bible. Polygamy is found throughout history. These facts prove that marriage's definition includes plural marriage. Polygyny is a far older traditional...

Legal challenge: Salt Lake City lawyer Brian Barnard says the ban is unconstitutional By Pamela Manson The Salt Lake Tribune Salt Lake Tribune Until 1963, interracial marriages were illegal in Utah. Residents who suffered chronic epileptic seizures and were not sterilized also were barred from marrying in the state. And, until 1993, anyone who had syphilis, gonorrhea or HIV could not make that walk down the aisle. Now, in 2005, three Utahns who want to unite as husband, wife and wife say their preferred form of marriage also should be allowed. They are asking the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of...

WASHINGTON – Was the U.S. Supreme Court fooled by a make-believe sodomy case in Lawrence v. Texas – one manufactured by homosexual activists to entrap police and ensnare the judicial system in a conspiracy to change the law of the land? That is the compelling verdict of a new book, "Sex Appealed: Was the U.S. Supreme Court Fooled?" by Judge Janice Law. It was in the Houston courthouse where Law presided as judge that she first heard rumors that the key figures in what became the landmark Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court case actually invited arrest in a pre-arranged setup...

(This is another in a continuing series of reports on the impact on later cases of the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in June 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas, creating new rights to sexual privacy for homosexuals.) The Kansas Supreme Court has taken the Supreme Court's expansion of gay rights in one field of constitutional law -- privacy -- and applied it to another -- equality. It thus suggests added arguments for greater protection against discrimination against homosexuals. The state court's unanimous decision Friday in Kansas v. Limon (docket 85,898) can be found here. While the Supreme Court was weighing the...

Did Miers Allow Armed Forces to Flout Law? by Elaine Donnelly Posted Oct 14, 2005 There is no reason to doubt the integrity of Harriet Miers, a person whom President Bush trusts and has nominated to the Supreme Court. There is reason for concern, however, about her actions as White House counsel on legal matters affecting the military. Miers does not have a judicial paper trail, but to the greatest extent possible the Senate should consider her record as the President’s chief legal adviser. The Office of White House Counsel sits at the intersection of law, politics and policy. Given...

References to foreign law in Supreme Court opinions have become controversial.... True, the references have increased somewhat, but they remain rare, and no one suggests that the court has directly based any of its interpretations of the Constitution on foreign authority. As the issue was framed recently in a debate between Justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia, it comes down to this: The former says that if a judge abroad has dealt with a similar problem, "Why don't I read what he says if it's similar enough? Maybe I'll learn something." Yet the latter would exclude such material as wholly...