The European Court of Human Rights upheld a previous ruling that a blanket ban on inmates being able to vote was unlawful.
However, the court signalled that the UK government could decide which prisoners should be enfranchised, meaning serious offenders such as murderers and rapists could be excluded.
Judges may even be handed discretion to decide which criminals are allowed the vote.
The Government now has six months to comply with the ruling or face a raft of challenges and huge legal costs.
The decision will spark fury among MPs who voted overwhelmingly last year to not lift the 140 year blanket ban.
The case, now eight years old, has been at the centre of a deepening row in the UK over the influence of European judges on domestic law.
Ministers and MPs have insisted the decision on whether prisoners in a country can vote is a political one not a matter for the European court.
Last February, MPs backed a motion opposing the European judgment by a 234 to 22.
The vote was not binding but the Government has used it as evidence that Parliament’s wish is to maintain the ban.
Prisoners overwhelmingly vote for parties that are left-of-center, like the Democrats.
Finally, someone revealed to me what the secret pro-life project is all about. It’s a project of Canadian pro-lifers. They are planning a pro-life speaking and debating tour of Canada starting on the west coast in Vancouver and ending at the capital city of Ottawa.
Basically, they are retracing the steps of a group of pro-abortion activists who traveled that same route in 1970 while trying to shift public opinion towards legalized abortion. Eighteen years after “The Abortion Caravan” completed their journey, abortion was made legal in Canada, through all nine months of pregnancy, and full funded by taxpayers – even pro-life taxpayers. Three million unborn children were killed after the law was changed. Additionally, pro-life doctors and nurses have been forced to perform abortions against their consciences – or lose their jobs.
Here’s what the pro-lifers intend to do:
On May 29, a team of young people who are survivors—all born at a time when their peers were being killed—will be re-tracing the steps of the 1970 Caravan. This New Abortion Caravan will also use vivid imagery. However, instead of focusing on a woman’s “choice,” this team from the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR) will use abortion imagery to force the Canadian public to consider what is being chosen.
The pre-born are Canada’s invisible children. It is time to make them, and their plight, visible to a public largely unaware of their fate.
The New Abortion Caravan will do that in such a way that in every community the Caravan passes through, the public will be confronted by the reality of “choice.”
They then describe some of the things they intend to do, with pictures.
And more:
In each city, the media will inevitably be compelled to cover the abortion issue once again as the New Abortion Caravan passes through. The presence of the dismembered pre-born victims will force Canadians and the media to recognize their plight. The historical resonance of the New Abortion Caravan confronting the injustices brought about by the original Abortion Caravan will force people to re-examine their conceptions about abortion.
[…]Besides its visual outreach, The New Abortion Caravan will stop in towns and cities and hold presentations and debates about abortion to answer the questions of the public and educate Canadians on this life and death issue.
After crossing the country to Toronto, the New Abortion Caravan will end in Ottawa, where politicians and the public will be forced to face the shattered bodies of Canadian children they have failed so badly.
Here’s an example of one of the events they have planned:
This is the video from his appearance at Saddleback Church (Rick Warren) that got such a big response. Saddleback is a pretty ordinary church, which lots of people with different levels of knowledge. How did Bill explain the Kalam argument to so many different ordinary people?
Watch and see!
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
You can also find a more technical version of the lecture here. This version is based on a research paper published in an astrophysics journal, and was delivered to an audience of students and faculty, including atheist physicist Victor Stenger and prominent atheist philosopher Michael Tooley, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Craig has previously debated Stenger and Tooley. And they both asked him questions in the Q&A of this lecture.
