Friday, April 9, 2010

Atheist Still Trying to Get “Under God” Out of Pledge Of Allegiance

By Chelsea Schilling
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

At least 40 members of Congress and more than 80,000 Americans are urging a federal appeals court to uphold the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance, including the phrase "under God," according to a constitutional law group.

The American Center for Law and Justice, or ACLJ, filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit today. According to the group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is appealing a lower-court decision that the pledge shouldn't be removed from New Hampshire schools because it embraces patriotism, not religion.

"There is absolutely no legal reason to strike the words 'under God' from the pledge and reject this time-honored tradition," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the ACLJ, which filed an amicus brief in the initial case in federal district court. "Once again this is nothing more than another futile attempt to rewrite history – a legal challenge that has no merit and should be rejected by the appeals court."

The ACLJ filed the amicus brief on behalf of 42 members of Congress: Sens. Sam Brownback and James Inhofe and 40 members of the U.S. House of Representatives: Reps. Robert Aderholt, Todd Akin, Rodney Alexander, Gresham Barrett, Roscoe Bartlett, Rob Bishop, Marsha Blackburn, Roy Blunt, Ken Calvert, Tom Cole, John Abney Culberson, Mario Diaz-Balart, Jeff Flake, Randy Forbes, Trent Franks, Scott Garrett, Phil Gingrey, Jeb Hensarling, Wally Herger, Peter Hoekstra, Walter Jones, Steve King, Jack Kingston, John Kline, Frank Lucas, John McHugh, Donald Manzullo, Jim Marshall, Gary Miller, Jeff Miller, Sue Wilkins Myrick, Mike Pence, Joseph Pitts, Pete Sessions, John Shadegg, John Shimkus, Mark Souder, John Sullivan, Lee Terry and Joe Wilson.

More than 80,000 Americans have signed on to the ACLJ's Committee to Protect "Under God" – including parents of children who attend public schools and wish to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in its entirety.

click to read full article from World Net Daily

Yemen: Child Bride Dies of Internal Bleeding 3 Days After Marriage

click to read original article from CNN

(CNN) -- A 12-year-old Yemeni bride died of internal bleeding following intercourse three days after she was married off to an older man, the United Nations Children's Fund said.

The girl was married to a man at least twice her age, said Sigrid Kaag, UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Her death is "a painful reminder of the risks girls face when they are married too soon," Kaag said Thursday.

Amal Basha, chairwoman of the Sisters Arab Forum for Human Rights, a Yemeni human rights group, identified the girl Friday as Elham Mahdi.

"Elham was married on March 29th and died three days later" and lived in Yemen's Hajjah province, Basha said.

The death is the latest in a series of child marriage cases in Yemen, where the minimum age to tie the knot is still under debate.

In September, a 12-year-old Yemeni girl forced into marriage died during childbirth. Her baby also died, according to the Seyaj Organization for the Protection of Children.

Fawziya Ammodi was in labor for three days before she died of severe bleeding, said Ahmed al-Qureshi, president of the organization.

"Although the cause of her death was lack of medical care, the real case was the lack of education in Yemen and the fact that child marriages keep happening," al-Qureshi said.

Child brides are common in Yemen, where the United Nations estimates that one in three girls are married before age 18. Most are married off to older men with more than one wife, according to a study by Sanaa University.

For the girl's parents, marriage means the daughters are no longer a financial or moral burden. Most times, parents get a promise from the husband to wait until the girl is older to consummate the marriage.

"Early marriage places girls at increased risk of dropping out of school, being exposed to violence, abuse and exploitation, and even losing their lives from pregnancy, childbirth and other complications," UNICEF said.

The issue of Yemeni child brides made headlines in 2008 when 10-year-old Nujood Ali was pulled out of school and married. Her husband beat and raped her within weeks of the ceremony.

To escape, Nujood hailed a taxi -- the first time in her life -- to get to the central courthouse where she sat on a bench and demanded to see a judge.

After a well-publicized trial, she was granted a divorce.

Russia to put Freeze on Adoptions After U.S woman Returns Adopted Son

Click To Read Full Article From Fox News

MOSCOW  -- A top Russian official demanded that all child adoptions by U.S. families be frozen Friday after a woman from Tennessee shipped her 7-year-old adopted Russian grandson on a one-way flight back to Moscow all alone.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the actions by the grandmother, Nancy Hansen of Shelbyville, "the last straw" in a string of U.S. adoptions gone wrong, including three in which Russian children had died in the United States. The cases have prompted outrage in Russia, where foreign adoption failures are reported with gusto.

The Russian education ministry immediately suspended the license of the group involved in the adoption -- the World Association for Children and Parents, a Renton, Washington-based agency -- for the duration of an investigation. In Tennessee, authorities were investigating the adoptive mother, Torry Hansen.

Any possible freeze could affect hundreds of American families. Last year, nearly 1,600 Russian children were adopted in the United States.

The boy, Artyom Savelyev, arrived unaccompanied in Moscow on a United Airlines flight on Thursday from Washington. Social workers sent him to a Moscow hospital on Friday for a health checkup and criticized his adoptive mother for abandoning him.

The Kremlin children's rights office said the boy was carrying a letter from his adoptive mother saying she was returning him due to severe psychological problems.

"This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues," the letter said. "I was lied to and misled by the Russian Orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues. ...

"After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends, and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child."

The boy was adopted last September from the town of Partizansk in Russia's Far East.

Nancy Hansen, the grandmother, told The Associated Press that she and the boy flew to Washington and she put the child on the plane with the note from her daughter. She vehemently rejected assertions of child abandonment by Russian authorities, saying he was watched over by a United Airlines stewardess and the family paid a man $200 to pick the boy up at the Moscow airport and take him to the Russian Education and Science Ministry.

Speaking from the home in Shelbyville that she shares with her daughter, Nancy Hansen said a social worker checked on the boy in January and reported to Russian authorities that there were no problems. But after that, the grandmother said incidents of hitting, kicking, spitting began to escalate, along with threats.

"He drew a picture of our house burning down and he'll tell anybody that he's going to burn our house down with us in it," she told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "It got to be where you feared for your safety. It was terrible."

Nancy Hansen said she and her daughter, a single mother, went to Russia together to adopt the boy, and she believes information about his behavioral problems was withheld from her daughter.

"The Russian orphanage officials completed lied to her because they wanted to get rid of him," Nancy Hansen said.

She also said the boy was very skinny when they picked him up, and he told them he had been beaten with a broom handle at the orphanage.

Russian state television on Friday showed the child in a yellow jacket holding the hands of two chaperones as he left a police precinct and entered a van bound for a Moscow medical clinic.

The U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, said he was "deeply shocked by the news" and "very angry that any family would act so callously toward a child that they had legally adopted."

Anna Orlova, a spokeswoman for Kremlin's Children Rights Commissioner, told The Associated Press that she visited the boy on Friday and he told her that his mother was "bad," "did not love him," and used to pull his hair.

Russian officials said he turned up at the door of the Russian Education and Science Ministry on Thursday afternoon accompanied by a Russian man who handed over the boy and his documents, then left, officials said. The child holds a Russian passport with a U.S. visa that expired April 4, Russian officials said.

Rob Johnson, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, said the agency is looking into Friday's allegations, although it does not handle international adoptions.

Bedford County Sheriff Randall Boyce also said Torry Hansen is under investigation although no charges have been filed. Officers were expected to interview her Friday afternoon.

Lavrov said his ministry would recommend that the U.S. and Russia hammer out an agreement before any new adoptions are allowed.

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JMC Ministries Response

So if you don’t like the child you adopted then you just put a “Return To Sender” sign on them and put them on a plane back to their home countries? 

Unbelievable!

When you adopt a child or even have a child of your own, you don’t know what kind of personality, health problems etc this child is going to have or even if they may have mental problems. This is the risk you take bringing a child into this world. We are human and humans are not perfect! If this woman wants a perfect child she will never find one.

Obviously if this child has mental problems as this woman is saying the little boy has. Putting him on a plane back to Russia by himself and abandoning him definitely is not going to help matters.

Now Russia is trying to put a stop on all adoptions outside of the country because of this one woman's choice. And thousands of little boys and girls will continue to live in orphanages and foster homes because of this one woman who didn’t want this little boy because she claims he has mental problems.

What if Jesus would do that to us? What if he would look at us and say, well you are too messed up to be in my family and you won’t be living with me in heaven. I’m sending you back where you came from.

How horrible would that be? But Jesus didn’t say that he said, “come just as you are” He died on the cross for the remission of our sins because we cannot be perfect enough for God in our own power with out the mercy and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

Only through the blood of Jesus and you asking him for forgiveness of your sins and allowing him to come into your heart that we are made perfect in his sight.

Maybe this woman needs to remember that Jesus didn’t throw us away because we weren’t perfect and loved us anyway and never left us or abandoned us.