Signs and Wonders 02.13

Mainstream media blind spot: It's big news when tens of thousands of people gather publicly for rallies about one of America's most significant issues. But the mainstream-media coverage of the Jan. 21 West Coast Walk for Life in San Francisco and the Jan. 23 March for Life in Washington, D.C., was almost nonexistent. Though both events drew large crowds, neither event drew significant coverage from major media outlets. "The lack of media coverage is really shameful," said Teresa Tomeo, who provided television commentary for the EWTN Catholic network. "The sheer numbers alone-50,000 in San Francisco and 300,000 in Washington-should be reason enough for headlines and lead stories on the evening news." She's got a point: The numbers at the pro-life marches dwarfed the numbers at Occupy Wall Street events, yet those events got-and continue to get-daily national media coverage.

Free speech case appealed to Supreme Court: The Thomas More Law Center on Jan. 24 appealed the case of a Southern California teacher to the U.S. Supreme Court. Bradley Johnson, a high school math teacher in the Poway Unified School District near San Diego, had banners hanging in his classroom for 25 years with mottos such as "In God We Trust," "One Nation Under God" and "God Bless America." For the last 30 years, the school district has had a policy allowing teachers to use their classrooms for displays of personal belief-a policy other teachers at Johnson's school have taken advantage of by hanging up Tibetan prayer flags and posters of the Dalai Lama, Malcolm X, and Hindu sayings. In 2007, the school told Johnson to remove his banners, while the other displays remained. A federal district court in 2008 upheld Johnson's First Amendment rights, but a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision last year-then turned down a request for an en banc hearing by the full court.

The battle of New York: The New York State Senate has passed a bill to give some relief to the churches of New York City who currently rent facilities from the city's school system. But the bill still has to make it through the House and to the governor's office. The city's Department of Education gave churches their eviction notice in late December, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to rule on a 16-year-old viewpoint-discrimination case of a church in the Bronx that was kicked out of a public school. The city gave some 60-odd churches serving primarily poor neighborhoods until yesterday to find other facilities to call home. If the bill does not pass, New York City apparently would be the first major city nationwide to ban churches from meeting in public schools. But, given the publicity this case has received, if the secularists win here, others will no doubt try in other cities.

WORLD reporters Tiffany Owens and Emily Belz contributed to this report.