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Judges greet arguments against Texas abortion law with skepticism
AUSTIN, Texas — Lawyers for Texas and abortion providers appeared before a federal appeals court Thursday to argue the fate of a 2017 state law — struck down by a U.S. judge in Austin — that bans the most common type of second-trimester abortion unless doctors first use an extra procedure to ensure fetal demise. However, on a court where Republican-appointed judges hold a 12-5 advantage, the vast majority of skeptical questions and pushback was reserved for the lawyer representing abortion providers who challenged the law as unconstitutional. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will release ...
Austin American-Statesman
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Philadelphia's retired archbishop says Biden should be denied Communion over his abortion stance
PHILADELPHIA — Former Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput said late last week that President-elect Joe Biden should be banned from receiving Communion because of his support for abortion rights, fueling an ongoing debate among Catholic leaders in the United States over how to relate to the nation’s second Catholic president. Chaput, who led Philadelphia’s diocese from 2011 until this year, said Biden “is not in full communion with the Catholic Church,” and criticized bishops who have spoken out in favor of letting Biden receive Holy Communion. He made the argument in a column headlined “Mr....
The Philadelphia Inquirer
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NBA getting rid of marijuana testing for this season
NEW YORK — When the pandemic hit in March, the NBA stopped testing for drugs completely. The league brought back performance enhancing drug testing at the bubble, but did not test for marijuana. The league and union announced Friday that the drug policy would continue through this season, which starts again in just 18 days. “Due to the unusual circumstances in conjunction with the pandemic, we have agreed with the NBPA to suspend random testing for marijuana for the 2020-21 season and focus our random testing program on performance-enhancing products and drugs of abuse,” the league said in a s...
New York Daily News
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Cynthia M. Allen: Biden policies threaten Catholic teachings. Texas priest was right to call it out
Parishioners of St. Andrews Catholic Church in Fort Worth, Texas, know that the Rev. Jim Gigliotti does not water down Catholic teaching for the sake of his flock’s comfort. He doesn’t mince words when explaining it, either.So it should have surprised exactly no one when he admonished faculty at his parish’s affiliated school for posting messages that extolled the apparent election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the institution’s Facebook page.“You are not to celebrate the fact that this pro-abortionist is close to being elected president,” he declared during a weekday mass for faculty and ...
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
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Detroit archbishop to lead national Catholic group on Joe Biden and abortion
DETROIT — The head of the Catholic Church in Detroit has been chosen to lead a new national group that seeks to guide how Catholics should respond to President-elect Joe Biden and the contentious issue of abortion.Archbishop Allen Vigneron, who leads the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, was named this week the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), on the last day of their annual fall meeting.Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, who named Vigneron, struck a conservative tone in his remarks in emphasizing abortion and by saying Biden supports policies that “atta...
Detroit Free Press
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Mets second baseman Robinson Cano tests positive for steroid, will be suspended 162 games
NEW YORK — Robinson Cano’s legacy was at stake, and he blew it.The Mets second baseman tested positive for stanozolol and will be suspended for the entire 2021 season, Major League Baseball announced on Wednesday.Stanozolol is a steroid and a violation of MLB’s performance-enhancing drug policy. This is the second time in Cano’s career that he’s run afoul of the policy; he was suspended 80 games in 2018 for testing positive for a diuretic. (Diuretics are banned under the PED rules because they can often mask PED use.)The 162-game ban is the automatic length of a suspension for a second positiv...
New York Daily News
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Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith wins second term, beating GOP challenger Jason Lewis
MINNEAPOLIS — Democrat Tina Smith, appointed nearly three years ago as Al Franken’s successor in the U.S. Senate, won her first full term from voters Tuesday and defeated Republican challenger Jason Lewis in a race that could help decide the balance of power in Washington.A former Planned Parenthood executive and lieutenant governor, Smith won a special election in 2018 to serve out Franken’s term.Lewis, a former congressman running as a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, worked for years as a conservative radio talk show host with a large following. But he lost his U.S. House seat in 201...
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
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The aftermath for a society preoccupied with COVID-19 death: Post-traumatic stress, or growth?
The doctors told Bernice Stein-O’Neill that COVID-19 took her husband, John O’Neill, from her on April 8.But after 44 years together, there are things you know about a person that never show up in any medical test.“He had the COVID in the nursing home, but John really died of a broken heart because of loneliness,” said Stein-O’Neill, 75, retired from working 35 years in accounts receivable at Kraft Foods. “Me being quarantined from seeing him was horrible for him. It made him give up the will to live.”O’Neill, 88, a retired salesman, was a victim of the new American way to die — ravaged by a v...
The Philadelphia Inquirer
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Will Bunch: Trump's politicized Supreme Court has lost legitimacy. 2021's Dems, do something!
We’ve just seen one of the worst weeks in the 230-year-plus history of the U.S. Supreme Court. And that is really saying something, when you think about its other low points including the 1857 Dred Scott ruling, which held Black people as inferior and denied them U.S. citizenship, or 1896’s Plessy v. Ferguson that allowed segregation, or the high court’s more recent jags that have prized corporate citizenship and eroded voting rights.And yet it is becoming increasingly difficult to have faith in the Supreme Court’s independence — and, thus, its legitimacy — after a day that should be known as ...
The Philadelphia Inquirer
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Editorial: Recuse yourself: As a Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett now has a higher duty to the nation
Making a mockery of an invented principle that just four years ago led them to stonewall an eminently qualified Supreme Court nominee for the better part of an election year, Senate Republicans have confirmed Amy Coney Barrett in exactly one month, about half the time it took to confirm any other sitting member of the high court.This secures a lifetime appointment for a conservative jurist who has left little doubt she will vote to invalidate the Affordable Care Act and give states more latitude to limit abortion rights. Outraged voters must register their anger at the polls.Speaking of the po...
New York Daily News