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Albuquerque, N.M., Dec 18, 2009 / 04:12 am (CNA).- Attorneys for a small photography company charged with violating anti-discrimination laws for declining to photograph a same-sex “commitment ceremony” are planning to appeal a New Mexico judge’s decision to uphold the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission’s ruling against them.The Albuquerque company, Elane Photography, is co-owned by Elaine Huguenin and her husband Jon. They are being represented by attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).In 2006 a woman named Vanessa Willock asked them to photograph a “commitment ceremony” that she and another woman wanted to hold in Taos, N.M. State law does...

Thursday December 17, 2009 Appeal to be Filed in Case of Photographer Fined for "Discrimination" ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., December 17, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) will appeal a New Mexico judge's decision to uphold a ruling by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission against an Albuquerque photography company. The commission ruled that the company, run by a young Christian husband and wife, was guilty of "sexual orientation" discrimination under state antidiscrimination laws for declining to photograph a same-sex "commitment ceremony."   "Christians in the marketplace should not be subject to predatory legal attacks for simply...

A father has been hit with an unusual restraining order: Keep his daughter away from any religion that is not Jewish. After the girl's parents split up, the father went to a Catholic church and had the girl baptized, CBS station WBBM-TV reports. Joseph Reyes, 35, had his daughter baptized and sent his ex-wife a picture of the ceremony. Rebecca Reyes says she only learned of her daughter's Baptism when Joseph sent her the picture, and that he sent it out of malice. Joseph Reyes denies this. "I sent it because Rebecca asked me for pictures," he said. Rebecca Reyes...

A Vermont judge rules Lisa Miller must turn over her daughter to her former lesbian partner. Superior Judge William Cohen ruled last week that Lisa Miller, a former lesbian who is now a Christian, must hand her daughter, Isabelle, over to her former partner, Janet Jenkins by Jan. 1. Miller conceived Isabella through artificial insemination while she was in a civil union with Jenkins. About a year later, Miller left homosexuality. Jenkins sued for custody, even though she has no biological tie to the child. Miller admits she made mistakes, like signing a custody agreement while still in the relationship...

Over the past few weeks, a number of local columnists (such as my colleague, David Rosman, and the editor of the Columbia Tribune, Hank Waters) have posted columns defending or praising the administration’s decision to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four others in a New York civilian court while trying the remaining terrorists by the military tribunal structured by Congress and the Supreme Court for that very purpose. The only area in which I find agreement is that it can be done.

A convicted sex offender has been charged with beating and sexually assaulting a elderly woman as she gave him a tour of a rural Kandiyohi County church last month. According to charges filed Monday, Lindon Roy Knutson, 61, left the 73-year-old victim bloodied on the ground outside the Crow River Church on the afternoon of Nov. 24. Knutson has been convicted of a string of sexual assaults dating back to 1973 and has spent much of the past three decades in prison. In Wisconsin, he was committed as a habitual sex offender, most recently at a mental health institution in...

We very carefully use the word “camp” rather than prison or prisoner of war camp. This is because of an ongoing and profound ambiguity not only in U.S. government perceptions of how to define those held there, but also due to uncertainties in international law, particularly with regard to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Were the U.S. facility at Guantanamo a prison, then its residents would be criminals. If it were a POW camp, then they would be enemy soldiers being held under the rules of war. It has never really been decided which these men are, and therefore their...

Federal Bench: Yet another judicial nominee seeks to impose the "empathy" standard on the courts. He thinks judges should base rulings on a plaintiff's status, legislate from the bench and amend the Constitution. Indiana federal judge David Hamilton stands poised to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to assume a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals serving Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. He's a former fundraiser for Acorn and a former leader of the Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. He is also another in a series of activist judges who believe the U.S. Constitution is not...

Judiciary: The nominee for a California federal district court is an ACLU activist and another advocate for the empathy standard of jurisprudence. He also has a problem with "America the Beautiful." The nomination of Edward Chen is the latest in a series of nominations of people who have no particular fondness for the traditions of law and justice. These nominees see racism everywhere, and believe the courts should be used as instruments of social justice and not to discern the intent of the Founding Fathers who wrote the U.S. Constitution. They believe their "life experience" should be the final arbiter...

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President Obama has gone out of his way to "diversify" the federal bench with his spate of nominations of various minorities chief of which was his successful seating of the "wise Latina,' Sonia Sotomayor, on the Supreme Court. Obama's nominees* for 10 district court openings include four African-Americans, three Asian-Americans, one Latino and four women. One of those nominees, San Francisco U.S. Magistrate Judge Edward Chen, received a favorable vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington today. So what sort of judge is Edward Chen? Well, for one, the left-wing American Bar Association rated Chen a "well qualified" nominee...

The Federal Courts Are Committing Treason to the Constitution per Chief Justice John Marshall. The federal courts and judges are committing treason to the Constitution by not taking jurisdiction and getting to the merits in the various cases before them regarding the Article II eligibility clause question for Obama. It is worth keeping in mind the words of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall when he wrote in Cohens v. Virginia 19 US 264 (1821): "It is most true that this Court will not take jurisdiction if it should not: but it is equally true, that it must take...

Under the Senate Judiciary Committee as run by Patrick Leahy, even plans on which the two parties have previously agreed to collaborate disintegrate into partisanship. Witness his effort to expand the federal judiciary now that President Obama can pick the new judges. The original version of the Federal Judgeship Act, proposed in March 2008 and co-sponsored by Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, was supposed to give both parties a say in the composition of an expanded federal judiciary. Then the election results would determine which party's President got to nominate the judges. The idea was to pass a plan and then...

Democrats aren't satisfied with the one-party state in which they control Congress and the White House and can politicize the Justice Department and take over the banking and automotive industries. Now liberal Democrats are pushing a court-packing scheme as well. A subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on the proposed Federal Judgeship Act of 2009 (S. 1653), which would create positions for 63 new federal judges - 51 in federal district courts and 12 in appeals courts. This proposal is nothing less than a sneaky equivalent of what President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried with his...

Besides for the fact that liberal justices always make the wrong decision, are usually against the foundations of the United States Constitution, do not believe in the Constitution as our Founders wrote it, believe in putting race above the law, and believe in skipping the Constitutional authority of legislation belonging to the United States Congress, there is one more reason to oppose liberal justices. Montana! Montana?

Judge Andrew Napolitano explains how politicians perverts the commerce clause to rob individuals of their liberty and grow government.

The death of Senator Edward Kennedy from a malignant brain tumor superimposes somber intimations of mortality onto a frequently frivolous political scene. It puts us in mind us of what Wordsworth called the "fallings from us, vanishings" that ultimately reconcile us to our own mortality. As a young man Senator Kennedy became, as he is today, the pillar of a large extended family. We extend our sympathies to his family upon his death. Senator Kennedy became the lion of the Senate and of American liberalism. For better or worse, his legislative accomplishments have done much to shape the United States...

Philadelphia's court system will face a "virtual shutdown" if the cash-strapped city does not get state approval for a sales tax increase and changes to how it makes its pension payments. That's according to Mayor Michael Nutter and court officials at a news conference Wednesday. Philadelphia is facing a $1.4 billion five-year budget deficit. The city has asked the state to approve a temporary sales tax increase in Philadelphia and allow changes to how the city makes its pension payments. Without those changes, Nutter says nearly 1,000 police officers and 200 firefighters would be cut. District Attorney Lynne Abraham says...

"Islamic lands that were occupied by the enemies will once again become Islamic...We proclaim that we will conquer Rome, like Constantinople was conquered once, and as it will be conquered again." - Ali Al-Faqir, the Jordanian Minister for Religious Endowment Britain, birthplace of parliamentary democracy, has fallen to Islam. Oxford, once home to the likes of C.S. Lewis, now houses a giant Eastern Islamic Studies Center. If this were the only Islamic addition to Oxford, the mood would be less somber, but when Oxford citizens are forced to awake every morning to the Muslim call to prayer with the full...

One conversation was between Gotti and his father in 1998 John Gotti Jr. won the right Tuesday to play edited versions of prison conversations at his upcoming trial that his defense contends show that the mob scion had rejected the gangster life. However he lost bids to delay his upcoming murder conspiracy trial and limit the prosecution's evidence. This is the fourth time Gotti Jr. is being tried on allegations that he still ran his late father's Gambino crime family years after allegedly relinquishing "the life." Some of these prison conversations have been played previously at trial. One conversation...

Early in June The New York Times was all aghast that overwhelming debt from medical bills will cause “nearly two out of three bankruptcies” in the US. Since then the White House has also used the statistic as a way to sell Obamacare policies and frighten voters into accepting a nationalized healthcare system. But is it true? Are medical bills the culprit of more than 60% of American bankruptcies? The stark claim that medical debt is the scourge of citizens everywhere comes from a study published in The American Journal of Medicine. Its findings are certainly alarming with an outrageous...

A German court has convicted a former army officer of 10 counts of murder in what could be one of the last trials of Nazi-era crimes. Josef Scheungraber was found guilty of giving the order to kill 10 Italians in 1944. Munich's state court found 90-year-old Josef Scheungraber guilty of giving the order to kill 10 Italian civilians in the central Italian town of Falzano di Cortona in 1944. The court also convicted Scheungraber of attempted murder, and acquitted him of four murder counts. He was sentenced to life in prison. The verdict is subject to appeal, but it was...

Lawyer says defendant did not inform counsel until the day of trial that he would represent himselfHaving dismissed one of Atlanta's pre-eminent defense attorneys in order to defend himself on charges of aiding and abetting terrorists, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee on Thursday spent hours cross-examining his convicted co-defendant, eliciting testimony that seemed to bolster prosecutors' charges. Sadequee's wide-ranging cross-examination of former Georgia Tech student Syed Haris Ahmed -- convicted after a June bench trial before U.S. District Judge William S. Duffey Jr. in Atlanta of conspiracy to aid and abet terrorists -- did little to refute prosecutors' contentions that the two...

Most Californians know a budget crisis besets our state. But they are only now learning a state bureaucracy in San Francisco, the Administrative Office of the Courts, plans to close every county courthouse on the third Wednesday of each month. ---------- In 2003-04 the Administrative Office of the Courts had 490 employees. Today it has mushroomed to more than 900 employees, a third of them paid more than $100,000. Recently the Administrative Office of the Courts and Judicial Council spent $82,000 on dinners, San Francisco Hilton Hotel suites (including the Presidential Suite), and a professional "facilitator" at a conference called...

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" -- Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" (engraved on pedestal of Statue of Liberty) Foreign litigants suing American companies for torts committed abroad hope the golden door swings open into American courtrooms, even when the conduct and events underlying their claims occurred in far-off lands and have no effect on U.S. citizens. With increased frequency, American companies conducting operations abroad face lawsuits in American courts by...

Conservative cartoonist and my childhood chum Chris Muir (Day by Day Cartoon) hit two nerves in three panels today. Also, he is in the middle of his annual fund raising drive, so if you have some spare change in your PayPal account, toss him a few quid. The private Obama bashing cartoons and drawings of the girls - for donors only - are worth the price.

In a historic judgement, the Delhi High Court on Thursday decriminalized homosexuality by reading down section 377 of the Indian Gay activists celebrate the high court ruling decriminalizing gay sex, in New Delhi. (AFP Photo) More Pictures Penal Code. ( Watch ) The Section 377 of the IPC as far as it criminalizes gay sex among consenting adults is violation of fundamental rights, said the high court. However, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalizes homosexuality, will continue for non-consensual and non-vaginal sex. Full text of Delhi HC judgment (PDF) Any kind of discrimination is anti-thesis of right...

A Logan County judge ruled last week that the state Department of Environmental Protection should grant Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. the permits it needs to develop gas wells in the 3,300-acre Chief Logan State Park. Story by Dan Page Email | Bio | Other Stories by A Logan County judge ruled last week that the state Department of Environmental Protection should grant Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. the permits it needs to develop gas wells in the 3,300-acre Chief Logan State Park. Let's give a rousing cheer for Logan County Circuit Judge Roger L. Perry, whose opinion protects the...

A judiciary official says tribunals will process hundreds of 'rioters' and 'thugs' caught in security sweeps during the unrest after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected president. Reporting from Tehran -- Iran's judiciary will set up a special court to try protesters arrested in the surge of civil unrest since the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a judiciary official said on state television, as the government continues its crackdown aimed at crushing its greatest domestic challenge in 30 years.

Poll: Should Guantanamo Bay detainees be tried in U.S. criminal courts?" A Daily PollWhat will President of Iran Ahmadinijad do if he gets a nuclear weapon? A Weekly Poll

Father Timothy Mockaitis knows full well that hearing confessions is one of the most important things about being a priest. This week begins the Year of the Priest, 150 years after the death of St. John Vianney, who was known to spend hours on end in the confessional. But the seal of the confessional — the absolute confidentiality of the sacrament — was driven home to Father Mockaitis when a confession he heard of a murder suspect was surreptitiously tape-recorded. A legal battle ensued, with a court declaring that the recording had been done illegally. The tape has never been...

If you've spent any time at all on Internet message boards or in college debate class you'll have seen the rafters vibrate with righteous condemnation against the "slippery slope argument." It is claimed that a worst case, ultimate extrapolation of a thing is a bad argument because it isn't necessarily a truism. Supporters of the Second Amendment, for instance, are scolded by liberals when the supporter says that any new gun law is "one more step to banning guns." The gun restricter says that the gun supporter is employing a "slippery slope" argument and that it is idiotic to claim...

Authorities in San Francisco who called the beliefs of the Catholic Church "hateful," "callous," and an "insult," – and urged members to disobey them – have been given the go-ahead by a panel of judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to express such hate because it serves a "secular" purpose. "It is not a stretch to compare the San Francisco Board's actions to that of the Nazi Germany policy of 'Gleichschaltung:' vilifying Jews as an auxiliary to and laying the groundwork for more repressive policies, including the final solution of extermination," said Richard Thompson, the president and...

Veterans In Politics Talk Show Introduces CEO for CC Court Edward Friedland and Laura Jessee LIVE on www.AllTalkRadio.net June 6: Laura Jessee Lightyear Wireless Representative: Edward A. Friedland Clark County Court Executive Officer: "Veterans In Politics" is a weekly radio show produced by the Veterans In Politics International and hosted by Steve Sanson and co-hosted by Ronda Baldwin Kennedy. The "Veterans In Politics" show is live every Saturday 2:05 PM Pacific Time you can call in and speak to the guest or/and hosts at (702) 309-6690.

Remarks of U.S. Senator Barack Obama on the nomination of Justice Janice Rogers Brown June 08, 2005 Remarks as Delivered The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois. Mr. OBAMA. I thank the Chair. I rise today to speak on the nomination of California Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Now, let me begin by saying that the last thing I would like to be spending my time on right now is talking about judges. I am sure that is true for many in this Chamber. I know that I certainly do not hear about filibusters...

John Schiffeler, a 68-year-old retired university instructor on ancient China, was walking his dog on a popular beach south of Carmel earlier this month. And, though he didn't know it, he was about to learn something disconcerting about the higher costs of modern life. Schiffeler recalls that the north end of Monastery Beach was almost deserted, except for himself, his 4-year-old German shepherd, Ares, and a couple. He asked the couple if they would mind if he let Ares off his 30-foot retractable leash. They said no problem. And Schiffeler broke the law: Dogs are supposed to be on a...

Friday, May 29, 2009 LOS ANGELES - Phil Spector was sentenced Friday to 19 years to life in prison for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, who was shot through the mouth in the music producer's home six years ago. Spector, 69, looked straight forward and showed no emotion as Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler ordered a term of 15 years to life for second-degree murder plus four years for personal use of a gun.

1991 - On the 27th of November, Sotomayor was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York vacated by John M. Walker, Jr.

PRESIDENT Obama is attacking a red herring when he defends his decision to send the worst terrorists at Guantanamo to United States prisons by saying the likelihood of escape from secure federal facilities is very low. Of course it is. No rope ladder or prison laundry truck is likely to do the trick. But when it comes to federal judges, we can't be so sure. The reason we sent the terrorists to Guantanamo in the first place, rather than bring them onto US soil, was never really connected to worries that they might escape. The Bush administration feared, quite correctly,...

A man who fatally stabbed a convenience store clerk during a robbery 23 years ago apologized repeatedly to her relatives and to his mother before he was executed Tuesday. "I know I hurt you very bad," Michael Lynn Riley said to his victim's relatives, including her two daughters and husband. "I want you to know I'm sorry." Brandy Oaks said she accepted Riley's apology and was pleased to hear it. She was 4 when her mother, Wynona Harris, was killed. "This is a difficult day and there are no winners on either side," Oaks said. "Her spirit will live on...

Video"Out of Order", a 2000 Chronicle (WCVB-TV) program, highlights the injustice faced by men and fathers due to the MGL 209a-type restraining orders in Massachusetts. Interviews of The Fatherhood Coalition leader Mark Charalambous, Harry Stewart, Dennis Watts and others.

SNIPPET: "Does terrorism work, meaning, does it achieve its perpetrators' objectives?" SNIPPET: "In the long term, however, Islamists will likely recognize the limits of violence and increasingly pursue their repugnant goals through legitimate ways. Radical Islam's best chance to defeat us lies not in bombings and beheadings but in classrooms, law courts, computer games, television studios, and electoral campaigns. We are on notice."

Last June, the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, at least in the home for self-defense.  Here’s our own Bob Levy, who masterminded the Heller litigation, talking about that decision: While the Court’s ruling was a watershed in constitutional interpretation, it technically applied only to D.C., striking down the District’s draconian gun ban but not having a direct effect in the rest of the country.Well, today the Ninth Circuit (the federal appellate court covering most Western states) ruled that the Second Amendment restricts the power of state...

Second Amendment Incorporated by Ninth Circuit Panel, in Nordyke v. King. For those who count such things, the unanimous panel consists of a Reagan appointee (Judge O'Scannlain, who wrote), a Carter appointee (Judge Alarcon), and a Clinton appointee (Judge Gould). The panel avoids the late 19th-century cases United States v. Cruikshank (1876) and Presser v. Illinois (1886) by reading them as simply foreclosing the direct application of the Second Amendment to the states, or the application of the Second Amendment to the states via the Privileges or Immunities Clause. The panel instead follows the Supreme Court's "selective incorporation" cases under...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - "but as a matter of law, it's more like the aftermath of a bank robbery gone bad."</p> <p>"Whether a U.S. citizen is taken hostage at a downtown bank branch or on the high seas, federal authorities can claim the authority to capture suspects and prosecute them in U.S. courts."</p>

April 07, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Fiction and FactionIowa judges have imposed gay marriage on a state that voted against it. By Andrew C. McCarthy Faction is the eternal condition of mankind. “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed,� wrote James Madison in Federalist No. 10. “As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves.� A...

Reuters reported this week that the European Union is saying a summit with Israel, planned for the coming months, is probably called off. With the Czech Republic currently holding the EU presidency, its foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg told a Czech newspaper that the EU is “not happy with some of the steps of the Israeli government, namely construction works close to Jerusalem but also access to Gaza, which is today very limited.” He added that “The new Israeli government has not raised much excitement either.”

JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq. Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh. Obama has nominated Koh -- until last week the dean of Yale Law School -- to be the State Department's legal adviser. In that job, Koh would forge a wide range of international agreements on issues from trade to arms control, and help represent our...

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi Ministry of Interior’s (MoI) new Internal Security Forces Court system is helping build trust in the Iraqi Police and the MOI. The Internal Security Forces Penal Code and the Procedural Law of the Internal Security Forces were both passed by the Iraqi Parliament last year and signed into law in April 2008. The two laws established a court system for the MoI. “If there is justice, the right is then returned to whom it belongs, the people” said Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Abdul Kadhim Jodha, chief judge of the Cassation Court, which reviews all cases. The MoI...

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.