Scrolling around...October 5th, 2012

Morocco denies entry to Dutch "abortion ship"
Morocco blocked a Dutch "abortion ship" from entering one of its harbours on Thursday during a campaign group's first attempt to visit to a Muslim country to raise awareness about safe methods of abortion...

Your right to resell your own stuff is in peril
Tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court’s busy agenda this fall is a little-known case that could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother’s antique furniture to your iPhone 4.
At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products...
...That’s being challenged now for products that are made abroad and if the Supreme Court upholds an appellate court ruling it would mean that the copyright holders of anything you own that has been made in China, Japan or Europe, for example, would have to give you permission to sell it...

Canada: Will “choice” trump even gendercide?
A new page in Canada’s abortion debate will force pro-choice politicians to decide just how non-negotiable their position is...

NAACP Official: Obama Campaign Staffer Threatened Me
...Lowery says he doesn’t personally support the president because he’s not addressing issues important to the black community. He said he was explaining that to Raymond when the Obama campaign official told him, “You know what? I know everything about you.”...

Jesus’ Ex-Wife-Another much-hyped Gnostic “gospel” fails to upend Christianity
Jesus had a wife! It’s the Gospel of Judas all over again. An exotic Gnostic document claimed to date from the fourth century,* written in Coptic, containing something startling about Jesus, and shrouded in secrecy until its sudden and dramatic unveiling. Next comes the derecho of media publicity, the carefully timed television documentary, the speculation that this means the end of Christianity as we know it, and then, with the finality of a soufflé collapsing as the oven door opens, the revelation that the document isn’t, or may well not be, exactly what its promoters say it is...

Obama Admin Sues to Force Arizona Fund Planned Parenthood
The Obama administration is using the state of Arizona and claiming that its new law revoking taxpayer funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business runs afoul of federal laws...

Wesley J. Smith: Can Muslim Doctors Refuse to Treat the Opposite Sex?
...The provocative question of medical conscience is an inescapable consequence of multiculturalism. But the reality of our profound moral differences doesn’t mean that we don’t have the duty to establish enforceable ethical norms to govern the practice of medicine and associated disciplines, as we also strive to protect people from doing that with which they profoundly disagree. It won’t be easy. These issues cut to the core of culture and personal beliefs, which is why medical conscience rights will be an emotional bioethical flashpoint for many years to come...

How Many American Catholics Should Receive Communion?
Placing particular emphasis on the gay marriage issue, John J. Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, maintained in a pastoral letter here that Catholics who cannot assent to the Church’s teachings on marriage and the family “must in all honesty and humility refrain from receiving Holy Communion until they can do so with integrity.” Many reacted to the letter as if it were unprecedented, but I do not believe it is...

Christian women and children airlifted to South Sudan
Barnabas Fund is airlifting Christians from Sudan amid tensions following the South's secession last year.
The organisation, which supports persecuted Christians worldwide, has so far flown around 500 Christians to South Sudan as part of a major operation to rescue 2,000 women and children trapped in the North...

Poll: PCUSA Members Increasingly Favoring Same-Sex Marriage
According to a recently released survey, support for same-sex marriage among Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) members and pastors has considerably increased since 2005...

Archbishop Tutu: Please, Apologize to the Jews
The website of the Free Gaza Movement, a sponsor of the Gaza Flotilla, lists some impressive celebrity endorsements.  One of the most impressive names on the list is that of Desmond Tutu, revered throughout the world for his courageous stand against South Africa’s apartheid government and for his leadership of initiatives like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which did so much to heal the wounds apartheid left behind.
But there was something the Free Gaza Movement didn’t tell the archbishop: its co-founder and board chair is a Jew-hater named Greta Berlin who uses the organization as a platform form which to spread the ugliest anti-Semitic legends and, literally, Nazi propaganda and lies...

USDA diversity training session asked people to chant, "our forefathers were illegal immigrants"
...Conservative group Judicial Watch made the claim this week as it released a handful of documents pertaining to the program -- and alleged that the sessions held by the Department of Agriculture ended up enforcing political views more than promoting tolerance.
"Instead of being diversity-oriented or tolerance-oriented, it's more about adopting a mindset," said Lisette Garcia, a senior investigator with the group. "It seemed to go so far as to encourage illegal immigration."...