Capitol Notebook

It is almost comical, if not so very sad, how the 9th United States Circuit Court of Appeals almost always gets their decisions wrong.  That court is, by far, the court with the most decisions overturned by the United States Supreme Court.  Their recent invasion of privacy decision was just their latest bad decision.
 
Adam Cohen in the August 25, 2010 edition of "Time" magazine reported that with the San Francisco-based appeals court's recent bad decision on privacy, "Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go.  This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements."

So now the people in the states under this scary court's jurisdiction  --  California and 8 other Western states  --  are susceptible to having the government monitor them anytime it well pleases, without them having to get a search warrant.  If this isn't something that both liberals and conservatives can unite against, there hardly will be anything to unite the two ends of the political spectrum.  read more »

We have just released a wonderful new tool that we have created that enables everyone to help us spread the word about our 2010 voter guides.

It is our new “Donate Your status” application, and it works with both Facebook and Twitter.

When you use either one of these services, it automatically allows you to “donate” a status update on behalf of our voter guides, one time each week between now and the coming elections.

You just click the appropriate service logo on our “Donate Your Status” page, and then give our application permission to post the message on your behalf.

That’s it!

Each week, your friends on these networks will see a message from you encouraging them to participate in our voter guide program.  And given the viral nature of Facebook and Twitter, it will help us reach out to hundreds of thousands of other potential pro-family activists, increasing our chances of success.  read more »

The voters in Alaska on Tuesday voted for Measure 2, a ballot proposal which would allow parental notication before their teen-age daughter has an abortion.  Alaska now joins 36 other states with a commonsense pro-life law and abortionists will now have to give parents of a minor girl 48 hours notice before performing an abortion on her.

There was a wide margin of victory for Measure 2 in Alaska.  Some 55.5% of Alaskan voters voted for the initiative whereas only 44.4% of voters voted against the measure.  In addition, the Sarah Palin-endorsed Senate candidate, Joe Miller, a West Point graduate and Gulf War I veteran, who ran in the Alaska Republican primary against Senator Lisa Murkowski and apparently has beaten her, credits his victory, in part, to the pro-life voters who voted for Measure 2.  read more »

How did your members of Congress vote on some of the most important issues we face today?

We have made it easier to answer that question with our new 2010 Congressional Scorecards, which are now available on our website.  Click here and download your copy today.

Our scorecards rate members of Congress on some of the most important issues that we face today:

issues that are important to our families and to the conservative movement.

Covered issues include:
 read more »

On Monday, federal judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. correctly ruled that the Obama administration is not obeying the 1996 law which outlawed the destruction of human embryonic stem cells. In March 2009, the president issued an executive order expanding federal funding of human embryo research.

Judge Lamberth ruled that the federal funding by the Obama administration for such research violated a 1996 law prohibiting federal money for research in which an embryo was destroyed. Today's "The Wall Street Journal" reported that opponents of Obama's federal funding for human embryonic stem cell destruction research said that such research "leads to the destruction of the embryo" which "is tantmount to taking a life, and have opposed such experiments on ethical grounds."

In the article, David Stevens, executive director of the Christian Medical Association is quoted as saying: "People forget that each one of us was an embryo, and if someone destroyed us for biological parts, we wouldn't be around today." He also was quoted by LifeNews.com saying, "This case highlights the harm that diverting federal funds away from proven effective research poses to those patients who are waiting for cures. We are grateful that the Court also recognizes the clarity of the law and the harm that funding illegal and unethical embryo-destroying research poses to ethical researchers."  read more »

For the first time in many years, five Democrats earned a 100% rating in the recently published Christian Coalition of America's Congressional Scorecard. One of the possible reasons for this is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a plethora of Democrat votes to play with whenever a key piece of legislation came up for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives and she did not need their votes.

One would prefer to think that these Democrats acted out of principle and would have voted the way they did even if one of the Speaker's key pieces of legislation would go down to defeat without their votes. The five Democrats who earned a 100% rating in the 2010 Congressional Scorecard this year are: Congressmen Bobby Bright, 2nd district, Alabama; Travis Childers,1st district, Mississippi; Gene Taylor, 4th district, Mississippi; Dan Boren, 2nd district, Oklahoma; and Lincoln Davis, 4th district, Tennessee. Whatever the reasons for their perfect voting record, Christian Coalition of America commends each of them.

What is also astounding is the fact that there were so many 100% scores and 0% scores in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives revealing a highly partisan Congress. For example, in the Senate, there were 34 Republicans (out of 40 Republicans) with 100% scores (no Democrat Senator earned a score of 100%) and there were 48 Democrats (out of 57 Democrats) who received scores of 0% (no Republican Senator received a score of 0%.)  read more »

Gallup has just reported its latest "generic ballot" numbers, (where potential voters are asked which party they intend to vote for in the next election).

The results are historic, with Republicans taking their biggest lead in the sixty year history of the Gallup poll.  read more »

Here is a list of some of the ways that you can help us promote distribution of Christian Coalition Voter Guides this fall.  (If you haven't already sign up up yourself, click here and visit our sign-up page)

Post a link on Facebook

More than 40% of Americans now have a Facebook account - and if you have one, it's a great way to let others know about our voter guides.  Click here and post a link to our voter guide sign-up page and help us spread the word on Facebook!

   read more »

We’re unveiling part 2 of our “2010 Online Outreach” program.  It’s a new way we’ve created for you to help us spread the word about voter guide distribution for the upcoming elections. 

It’s our new “Voter Guide Widget”, and makes it easy for you to allow others to sign up to help distribute Christian Coalition voter guides right from your own websites.

(Click here and download yours!)

You can customize the widget dimensions to suit your own site, get your custom code and then place it on any website that you control.  In fact, you can even place a widget within a blog entry, or any place where you can post html.

That’s it!  The widget does the rest by allowing your site’s visitors to sign up.  We will let them know when voter guides are ready.

So help us spread the word by downloading your own customized widget today!

Also, if you know anyone else who has a blog or other website they can place a widget on, send them a link to this page today and encourage them to do the same.

And be sure to share this page on Facebook or Twitter!  read more »

Here's another entry from the "Are you kidding?" department.

In late June a group of conservative high school students who were visiting the Lincoln Memorial were ordered by a security guard to STOP singing the national anthem.

Yes, really.

Again, this was at the Lincoln Memorial...on the National Mall...in our nation's capital.

The US Park Police admitted that the students were told that they were in violation of some federal law because it demands that the area remain "completely content neutral".  Content neutral?  Again, this was at the Lincoln Memorial...on the National Mall...in our nation's capital. 

If free speech is to be celbrated, allowed, or encouraged anywhere, one would expect it would be in what is probably the most high profile public space in our country.  But no.

“They told them to stop singing,” said Evan Gassman, a spokesman for the Young America’s Foundation. “I was taken aback. You wouldn’t expect a display of national patriotism to be censored."  ...

The incident occurred on June 25 as students were taking a monument tour of the nation’s capital. The decision to sing the national anthem at the memorial was a spur of the moment event, according to Shawn Balcomb, of Richmond Hill, GA.  read more »