Significant Differences Emerging Between McCain and Obama in Prospective Judicial Nominees (NY Times)

It is looking more and more likely that either Barack Obama or John McCain will be the next President of the United States.  They will leave a lasting legacy in the form of their judicial appointments. The New York Times today posted a good analysis of how they may decide who interprets the law.  Thanks to Greg Hamilton of the Northwest Religious Liberty Association for alerting us to this story. Admin.

Read the full article online at http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=169472&f=77&single=1

WASHINGTON – The presidential election, lawyers and scholars agree, will offer voters a choice between two sharply different visions for the ideological shape of the nation’s federal courts.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, has already asserted that if elected he would reinforce the conservative judicial counterrevolution that began with President Ronald Reagan by naming candidates for the bench with a reliable conservative outlook.

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has been less explicit about how he would use the authority to nominate judicial candidates, but he would be able to – and fellow Democrats certainly expect him to – reverse or even undo the current conservative dominance of the courts.

Both have been resolute soldiers in their parties’ political wars over judicial nominations during the last several years. While Mr. McCain has supported President Bush’s judicial nominees, including John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States and Samuel A. Alito Jr. as an associate Supreme Court justice, Mr. Obama opposed those nominations and favored Democratic filibusters to block many Republican nominees deemed too conservative.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who remains in the Democratic race, has similarly opposed many of Mr. Bush’s judicial nominees and also voted against the confirmations of Judges Alito and Roberts.

. . .

Read the full article online at http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=169472&f=77&single=1

Belarus: ‘We are reclaiming our history as a land of religious freedom’ (ChristianToday.com)

Read the full version, which includes a fascinating review of the history of religious liberty in Belarus, online at http://www.christiantoday.com/articledir/print.htm?id=19015

Belarus has been renowned [for its] freedom of conscience for centuries. This is why
religious freedom, which the current state authorities have been trying to restrict for the past decade, remains a key concern for Belarusian citizens.

In the largest campaign of its kind since current President Aleksandr Lukashenko came to power in 1994, between April 2007 and February 2008 over 50,000 people signed a petition asking the Constitutional Court and other state organs to change the restrictive 2002 Religion Law.

…

Campaigners against the Religion Law affirm that the rights to life, free speech and freedom of belief are inalienable, “because we have them from birth, they are given to us by God and not the government. Since the government does not give us these rights, they do not have the right to take them away.”

The Law’s opponents also stress that they are defending the rights of all Belarusian citizens, as it “violates the rights of all people, even atheists.”

Even though it is more than five years since the Law came into force in 2002, Belarusian Christians have not stopped seeking its review. When the Law was under consideration, there were protest demonstrations and numerous appeals against its adoption due to the numerous problems it was bound to create in the religious sphere.

Then, once the Law was adopted, the Baptist Union and the Full Gospel Association did not re-register until the very last moment, insisting upon amendments to some of its more odious provisions. While this protest did not succeed, it at least became possible in practice to re-register a number of churches unable to manage the minimum 20 founders. The recent petition marks a new stage in the battle to change the Law.

In multi-confessional Belarus – where Christmas and Easter are officially celebrated twice, according to both Eastern and Western Christian calendars – moves to restrict religious freedom and allot the Orthodox Church the de facto status of state church are inevitably causing resentment. Most people find such a policy perplexing, as they are accustomed to believing that they belong to a multi-confessional nation.

The historical experience of Belarus also shows that religious freedom elevates our nation, whereas religious un-freedom leads to the darkest and most tragic consequences.
…

The sixteenth century has been called Belarus’ Golden Age, not just thanks to progress in the cultural and economic spheres, but also due to religious freedom. Attempts to stop the Protestant faith from spreading ended in fiasco. In 1563 the nobility, headed by the Grand Duchy’s leading Protestant, Mikalai Radzivil the Black, succeeded in obtaining a decree under which, “not only subjects of the Roman Church should be elected to all positions and the government, but to the same degree men of noble class, of the Christian faith, each according to his merits.” Not long afterwards the overwhelming majority of seats in the Grand Duchy’s Senate were occupied by Protestant Christians.

The country became renowned across Europe as “a place of shelter for heretics” where anyone could freely profess their faith, even those who denied mainstream Christian doctrines. Faced with the possibility of being thrown into jail or burnt at the stake for dissent from the prevailing faith in their homelands, French, Italians, Czechs and others began to move to the Grand Duchy. In 1557, for example, Duchess Catherine Willoughby of Suffolk and her husband Richard Bertie came to seek asylum in the Grand Duchy due to their Protestant beliefs, by invitation of Mikalai Radzivil the Black.

…
After the fall of the Russian Empire, freedom of conscience could only be realised outside the Soviet Union – including western Belarus, which was then part of Poland. Within the Soviet Union, militant atheism led to the destruction of almost every church on the territory of eastern Belarus by 1939. The difference between the two halves of our country, in separate states for just 20 years, can still be felt to this day. The Holocaust devastated the historic Jewish population of our country, and aspects of their religious freedom are limited by the current state authorities.

Despite being formally guaranteed by the Soviet Constitution, there could be no talk of freedom of conscience under communism. Similar guarantees in the 1994 Constitution are ignored today – but the present government is proving as unsuccessful as the Communist Party was in removing freedom of conscience from the hearts of Belarusians.

The current policy of the Belarusian Government, sadly, is to create a kind of mixture of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire. In this the authorities give the appearance but not the reality of granting privileges to the Orthodox Church, while restricting religious freedom for all – including Orthodox Christians. These efforts are being met with opposition, however, particularly from Protestant churches.

The most repressive religious law in Europe continues to be in force in our nation. However, inspired by our long history of freedom of conscience, attempts to get the Law overturned carry on. Belarusians continue to work and hope for the day that our country will reclaim its heritage as a land of religious freedom.

Read the full version online at http://www.christiantoday.com/articledir/print.htm?id=19015

Does Constitution apply to enemy combatant on U.S. soil? (AP)

In the War Against Terror, it may be difficult to determine who the enemy is.  Does the Constitution apply to a U.S. resident held on U.S. soil?

WASHINGTON (AP) — If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply.

But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.

Al-Marri’s capture six years ago might be the Bush administration’s biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al Qaeda sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gases and plotting a cyberattack.

To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president’s wartime powers, one that goes beyond warrantless wiretapping or monitoring banking transactions. Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a citizen and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely.

(Read more at http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/24/enemy.combatant.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories)

Barack Obama’s judicial nominees (Baltimore Sun)

James Oliphant of the Baltimore Sun blogged about Barack Obama’s judicial nominees. http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/05/printer-obama_on_judges.html

Here is some of what Obama has said on the topic:

What you’re looking for is somebody who is going to apply the law where it’s clear. Now there’s gonna be those five percent of cases or one percent of cases where the law isn’t clear. And the judge has to then bring in his or her own perspectives, his ethics, his or her moral bearings.
And In those circumstance what I do want is a judge who is sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless, those who can’t have access to political power and as a consequence can’t protect themselves from being being dealt with sometimes unfairly, that the courts become a refuge for justice. That’s been its historic role. That was its role in Brown v Board of Education.

We’ve got to make sure civil rights are protected. We have got to make sure civil liberties are protected. Because oftentimes there are pressures that are placed on politicians to want to set civil liberties aside, especially at times when we’ve had terrorist attacks. Making sure we maintain our separation of powers so we dont have a president who is taking over more and more power.

McCain to make religious freedom a key foreign policy issue (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain vowed in a speech on Wednesday to make freedom of religion a key foreign policy issue if he is elected to the White House in November.

“There is no right more fundamental to a free society than the free practice of religion,” he said at Oakland University in the state of Michigan.

“Behind walls of prisons and persecuted before our very eyes in places like China, Iran, Burma, Sudan, North Korea and Saudi Arabia are tens of thousands of people whose only crime is to worship God in their own way.”

He added: “Whether in bilateral negotiations, or in various multinational organizations to which America belongs, I will make respect for the basic principle of religious freedom a priority in international relations.”

According to McCain, no society “that denies religious freedom can ever rightly claim to be good in some other way. And no person can ever be true to any faith that believes in the dignity of all human life if they do not act out of concern for those whose dignity is assailed because of their faith.”

McCain Says He Would Put Conservatives on Supreme Court (Washington Post)

When you cast your vote in November, you’re not only voting for the President and the administration, you are voting for his or her nominations for Supreme Court justices who could impact constitutional interpretation for decades to come.  Thanks to Greg Hamilton of the Northwest Religious Liberty Association for alerting us to this news story.  Admin

 

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 7, 2008; Page A09

 

Armageddon is not an Exit Strategy (Israel e News)

Attorney MIkey (Michael) Weinstein discusses proselytism in the military.

Read the full article at http://www.israelenews.com/view.asp?ID=1886

Read the full article at http://www.israelenews.com/view.asp?ID=1886