Hurricane Odile, which slammed into Mexico’s Baja California as a major Category 4 hurricane, is opening the door for criminals and looters to ransack villages devastated by the storm.
Officials say that 135 people have been injured from the storm, and no one has been killed, but the major problem has been power outages and looting from stores left unprotected in the wake of evacuations.
Police say that looters have appeared to focus on electronic and higher end stores, stealing televisions, stereo equipment and other high event devices. Grocery stores have also been cleaned out with everything taken from Coca-Cola to potato chips to pancake mix.
Over 240,000 residents of the region are without power after most of the utility poles in the region were snapped off by the storm. The Federal Electricity Commission says that 92 percent of the people living in Baja California are without power.
Officials say that without power, it will be very hard to control the looting of vacated homes and businesses.
A Maryland community college is again facing a lawsuit for rejecting a student due to his Christian faith.
The American Center for Law and Justice has filed suit against Community College of Baltimore County on behalf of Dustin Buxton after they denied him permission to enter their radiation therapy program.
Buxton had cited his faith during his interview as an applicant.
“During that interview in 2013, Dustin was asked by the CCBC interview panel, ‘What do you base your morals on?’ Dustin replied, ‘My faith,’” ACLJ attorney Michelle Terry outlined in a report this week. “His faith was not mentioned again, yet, in a written review of his interview, the program director, Adrienne Dougherty, stated that Dustin had lost points because ‘[Dustin] also brought up religion a great deal during the interview. Yes, this is a field that involves death and dying; but religion cannot be brought up in the clinic by therapist or students.’”
The ACLJ had filed suit against the same school for denying Brandon Jenkins entry into the same program because of his Christian beliefs.
Maine officials have backed down in the case involving a mother who was fighting to have a DNR lifted for her child after the story gained national media exposure.
The state has been fighting against the mother of Aleah Peaslee, who was six months old when her father shook her to the point that she suffered brain damage and was hospitalized in a coma.
After Aleah was removed from life support and placed in her mother’s arms with doctors expecting her to die. Instead, Aleah rallied and eventually came out of the coma.
Her mother Virginia Trask asked for the Do Not Resuscitate order placed on her daughter when she was in the coma be lifted since she was now recovering from her injuries. The state jumped in to keep it in place saying the child still had brain damage.
After major media outlets picked up on the story, the Maine Health and Human Services Department released a statement saying that if a court upholds the order they sought to keep the DNR in place, they would not enforce it.
Observers say that the case will likely be dismissed because of the Department’s new position and the governor’s opposition to their involvement.
The Obama administration has decided even in light of the Hobby Lobby ruling from the Supreme Court to continue their action to force nuns to pay for abortion causing drugs.
The administration filed a “supplemental brief for the government” Monday in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in their lawsuit with the Little Sisters of the Poor. The order sued to not be forced to pay for abortion causing drugs because it violates the Christian faith.
“This Court should proceed with oral argument in these cases,” the administration wrote in the brief. “Because of the injunctions issued in these cases, the women employed by the plaintiffs have been and continue to be denied access to contraceptive coverage.”
The Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, which is overseeing the case for the Little Sisters, told the Christian Post they were disappointed that the government is going to continue to target the nuns.
“We’re disappointed that the government still insists on picking religious winner and losers and exempting church while telling the Little Sisters of the Poor they’re not religious enough,” Adele Keim said.
A Pennsylvania woman will spend the next 18 months behind bars after being convicted of illegally giving her daughter abortion pills.
Jennifer Whalen of Washingtonville, 39, pleaded guilty last month to purchasing the drugs from an online site based in Europe. The woman’s 16-year-old daughter became pregnant in 2012 and didn’t want to keep the baby so the two found the drugs online.
The plot was exposed after the daughter experienced abdominal cramping and bleeding. She was rushed to Geisinger Medical Center where the doctors found an “incomplete abortion and urinary tract infaction.”
The case took over a year to bring charges because of the unique situation. Whalen was initially charged with unlawfully dispensing medicine, endangering the welfare of a child, simple assault and medical consultation. She had been free on bond prior to sentencing but will serve the prison term and community service upon release.
Diane Gramley of the American Family Association noted that Pennsylvania has a “safe haven” law where they could have left the baby at the hospital without any reprisal from the state.
“This baby did not have to die,” Gramley said.
A Maine mother is fighting the state to stop them from letting her baby die.
Six-month-old Aleah Peaslee was shaken so badly by her father Kevin that she initially went into a coma from a severe brain injury. While in the coma, doctors said the baby had little chance of survival and the family agreed to a do not resuscitate order.
The baby was taken off a ventilator and placed in her mother’s arms with everyone expecting her to pass into glory.
Instead, the baby kept breathing and improving in the arms of her 18-year-old mother, Virginia. Days later, the baby came out of the coma. Virginia asked for the DNR to be lifted for her child and the hospital refused saying that the baby still had brain damage. Then the government stepped in.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services kept going to court until they found a judge that would give them the power to keep the DNR in place. They claimed “neither parent can be counted on to be physically or emotionally available to make the necessary informed decision when needed.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom is standing up with the mother.
“The state is effectively arguing that this mom isn’t fit to make medical decisions for her child simply because she wants the child to live,” ADF Senior Counsel Steven Aden said. “No one has declared this mother an unfit parent, yet the government wants to take her place. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court should reaffirm Mainers’ interest in life, parental rights, and the integrity of the medical profession by reversing the lower court and restoring this mom’s full rights to make medical decisions on her daughter’s behalf.”
Maine’s Governor Paul LePage has said he will defend the life of the baby even if he has to defy the state’s Supreme Court.
Most everyone knows that I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, the era of “free love” which was a nice-sounding euphemism for rampant sexual immorality. “Make love, not war” was a corny saying, but it produced a radical culture of “peace keeping” hippies who advocated nothing more than “drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll.” Everyone wanted to go along to get along, and anyone who brought attention to any of the moral “standards” that most of us grew up with was frowned upon. We were known as the “anti-establishment,” “anti-war,” “anti-government,” and anti-justabouteverything generation. We were the “counter culture” generation, and the new way was considered “revolutionary.”
We wanted to be “free” – whatever that meant. We wanted freedom from our parent’s rules (read: safeguards) and we wanted to be free of the oppression of the laws of the land which included prohibition of illegal drugs. We didn’t want anyone telling us about sin either. We grew up with that, and wanted to do our own thing without anybody judging us. We wanted freedom from any religious boundaries whatsoever. Little did we know that immorality had its own paybacks in loss of family life, children’s well-being, our own health and a host of other physical and psychological troubles that led to the decay of a once prosperous society based on Judeo-Christian principles. Continue reading →
A Federal judge has ruled that because a majority of abortion clinic providers refused to make changes to their clinics as required by a Texas law and thus would have to close, the law is unconstitutional.
District Judge Lee Yeakel, who had previously ruled against the law in a case that was quickly overturned by an appeals court, said that requiring clinics to widen doors so paramedics could bring in a stretcher for a woman in distress is “too costly for abortion clinic owners” and therefore puts an undue burden on women wanting to kill their baby via abortion.
“The court concludes that the act’s [House Bill 2] ambulatory surgical center requirement, combined with the already-in-effect admitting privileges requirement, creates a brutally effective system of abortion regulation that reduces accesses to abortion clinics, thereby creating a statewide burden for a substantial number of Texas women,” Yeakel wrote.
The clinics had a year to bring their clinics up to the new standards but some abortion providers just refused to make the changes. That did not matter to the judge.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the state will appeal the decision.
The state of California is forcing all faith-based employers to pay for abortions.
The California Department of Managed Health Care told insurance companies in the state all abortions must be covered. Michelle Rouillard, director of DMHC, said that “abortion is a basic health care service.”
Rouillard asserts that the California constitution prohibits health plans from “discriminating against women who choose” to kill their babies via abortion.
The directive is seen as a state agent acting to penalize two Roman Catholic/Jesuit universities that said they would no longer pay for abortions in health care plans but would not stop employees from obtaining it from third parties.
The Alliance Defending Freedom and the Life Legal Defense Foundation sent rebuttal letters on Friday saying the state’s mandate is a violation of federal law. The letter says that DMHC’s action is violation of the Weldon Amendment.
A new study published in the Journal of Medical Ethics shows that the number of foreigners traveling to Switzerland to kill themselves has doubled in a four year period.
According to the study, 172 foreigners traveled to the country to end their lives in 2012 compared to 2009’s total of 86. Citizens of Germany and Great Britain make up the majority, over two-thirds of the total.
Switzerland has very liberal assisted suicide laws. The only requirement is that whoever assists in the death has no direct interest in the ending of the life, such as being in the victim’s will.
The rise of foreigners entering the country to end their lives raised enough concern among residents that in 2011 a ban on the practice was placed on the ballot but voted down.
People from 31 nations came to Switzerland to die. The median age of the victims was 69.
France and Italy saw large rises in the number of citizens who traveled to Switzerland to die.
