UK child support

John sends this UK story, which says that mothers receive less than half of what fathers pay in "child support", when it is collected by the Child Support Agency. The rest is pocketed by govt bureaucrats. (None of it goes to the children.) This is why govt bureaucrats are usually in favor of keeping the payments high.

Playing mind games on a date

Online dating news:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Manhattan fertility specialist has been sued by two women who say he broke their hearts after meeting them through an online dating site on which he pretended to be single.

In their lawsuits the two women, Tiffany Wang and Jing Huang, accused Dr. Khaled Zeitoun, 46, of pretending to be single and using mind games to entice them into sexual relationships with tales of past lives.

According to court papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court and made public this week, Zeitoun is married with three children. Wang said she met him in March 2001 through a Web site on which he said he was single and had never married.

"Zeitoun claimed he and Wang had been married to each other in previous lives," Wang's lawsuit said, adding that the doctor told her he had mistreated her in that life and "searched for her in this lifetime to correct his past mistakes."

Wang says that in May 2002, he asked her to marry him but only proposed "to see the look of joy on her face."

In a separate suit filed earlier this year, Huang said she met the reproductive endocrinologist in October 2003 through an online dating service. He fed her a similar line about being single and having been married to her in a previous life.

I am all in favor of people telling the truth, but if New York passes a law against telling silly romantic lies or playing mind games on a date, then a lot of people could end up in court. I have never heard of a couple that did not play mind games.

Louisiana: wet and wild

The Louisiana Sierra Club starts its web page with this:

The Delta Chapter is the Sierra Club in the State of Louisiana. We advance the cause of protecting Louisiana's environment in a variety of ways, including lobbying the state legislature in Baton Rouge, sponsoring a Mercury Public Education Campaign, raising public awareness about climate change, and working to keep the Atchafalaya Basin, America's greatest river swamp, wet and wild.

A friend of mine went to Mardi Gras, and he came back grinning about how "wet and wild" it was. I got the link from this NRO column.

Katrina graphics

The NY Times has excellent Katrina graphics.

Egg Donor Has Parental Rights

John sends this Ohio story:

AKRON, Ohio (AP) - A woman who sold her eggs has parental rights to the resulting triplets, an Ohio appeals court said in the latest twist to a three-state custody battle.

The court ordered a new custody hearing in Ohio for the now-22-month-old boys, overturning a Summit County judge's decision against parental rights for Jennifer Michelle Rice of Arlington, Texas.

It also contradicted a Pennsylvania court, which in January awarded primary custody to the surrogate mother, a rarity in such cases, and weekend visitation to the father.

As John points out, 2 women got parental rights while the father just got weekend visitation!

Mothers responsible for child maltreatment

Here is a govt report on child maltreatment in 2001. The biggest problem, with 47% of households, is where there is a mother and no father.

Why we shouldn't aid Katrina's victims too much

A Slate column by economist Steven E. Landsburg:

First came the hurricane, then came the torrent. We're awash in accusations that the government has done too little to help Katrina's victims. Is it impertinent to ask how much would be enough? What's the right amount of federal assistance for disaster victims? ...

Let me offer myself as a case in point. I travel to San Francisco once or twice a year, and every single time I visit, I resolve someday to move there. I think my resolve has been substantially weakened in the past several days. Having seen how ineffective disaster relief can be, I am suddenly disinclined to live someplace where I might need to rely on it. And that's a good thing.

So those are two reasons we might want to rethink the policy of giving federal assistance to disaster victims. It encourages people to live in dangerous places, and it denies people the opportunity to accept higher risks in exchange for lower housing costs.

He's right, as usual. I lived near the epicenter of the 1989 7.1 earthquake in Santa Cruz. We had a disaster, but more disaster relief would not have been beneficial.

Arnold to veto same-sex marriage

The San Diego paper says:

SACRAMENTO ? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Wednesday he will veto a bill that would have made California the first state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage through legislative action. ...

"Clearly he's pandering to an extreme right wing, which was not how he got elected," said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, one of the bill's sponsors. "He got elected with record numbers of lesbian and gay voters who had not previously voted for a Republican, and he sold us out."

No, he is not pandering. Signing the bill would have been political suicide. He has bet his political career on taking some issues directly to people, because the California legislative process is broken. The California voters just passed an initiative against same-sex marriage initiative just 5 years ago, and the current bill is unconstitutionally in conflict with it. If the governor were to so blatantly thwart the will of the people and the California constitution now, then he'd look pretty silly trying to sell his initiatives in November.

Broken courts

A Phyllis Schlafly column says:

Gallant Americans are risking life and limb in Iraq to defend Home and Country. But they never dreamed they might lose their children, too.

When Army National Guard Spc. Joe McNeilly of Grand Ledge, Michigan came home after 15 months in Iraq, he found that a family court "referee" had taken away his joint custody of his 10-year-old son and given full custody and control to the boy's mother.

For five years, McNeilly had had a 50-50 no-problem custody arrangement with his ex-girlfriend Holly Erb. When called up to go to Iraq, he gave her temporary full custody while he was overseas.

While he was gone, Erb persuaded a family court to make her full custody permanent. When McNeilly protested, he was told that his year-long absence constituted abandonment and produced custody "points" against him.

Another column honors William Rehnquist. He was too much of a judicial supremacist for my tastes, but now is not the time to complain about it.

California ballot propositions

The news media is constantly attacking the upcoming California ballot propositions, but the first 5 or 6 look pretty good to me.

Prop. 73 requires parental notification for a minor's abortion. Prop. 74 says teachers have to work more than 2 years to get tenure. Prop. 75 says govt employee unions need consent for political action. Prop. 76 limits govt spending.

John Russell has just filed for a Shared Parenting Ballot Initiative. It looks good to me, as all the studies show that shared parenting is best for the kids and the parents.

Equal pay for equal work

A Warren Farrell column says:

Nothing disturbs working women more than the statistics often mentioned on Labor Day showing that they are paid only 76 cents to men's dollar for the same work. If that were the whole story, it should disturb all of us; like many men, I have two daughters and a wife in the work force. ...

After years of research, I discovered 25 differences in the work-life choices of men and women. All 25 lead to men earning more money, but to women having better lives. ...

I want my daughters to know that people who work 44 hours a week make, on average, more than twice the pay of someone working 34 hours a week. And that pharmacists now earn almost as much as doctors. But only by abandoning our focus on discrimination against women can we discover these opportunities for women.

You can get info about his new excellent book on his web site.

I recently talked to a couple who were firmly convinced that men get favored treatment in the workplace. The man is a computer programmer and his wife is a nurse. Neither of them had ever observed a woman getting less pay or some other unfavorable treatment on the job just because she was a woman. And yet they still somehow thought that men have some big advantage.

I've never seen any job discrimination against women either. I've seen women who were hired or promoted above their level of competence, but none who suffered some unfair sex discrimination.

Intolerant Santa Cruz

Laughing Bobby writes:

I just came across your blog while surfing, and thought I'd drop you a quick line to let you know that I was not only grateful to find some reasonable reading amidst the crazed Internet seas, but that I must also commend you for your courage in upholding your decidely conservative values, seeing as you are from Santa Cruz. I have recently moved to the area from the East coast, and have never encountered such a bizarre community of radical left-wing know-it-alls.

It is generally not worth it in Santa Cruz to speak your mind if you are not toe-stepping to the liberal agenda. A Bush-Cheney sticker on your car will get it smashed, slashed, or keyed.

It is arguably, rather ironically, the singularly most intolerant place in the country. They preach values that are seriously inconsistent with their behavior. Nonetheless, keep up the good work!

Thanks. I agree that Santa Cruz is a singularly intolerant place. You are an outcast if you are not a dope-smoking vegan Bush-hater.

Emergency price-gouging

People complain about price-gouging in an emergency situation, and many states have laws against it, but such gouging does often serves a useful purpose.

Suppose that a gas station in Lousiana has a few thousand gallons of gasoline, and no hope of re-supply anytime soon. The owner has already paid for that gasoline, and some would argue that he should only sell it at the price he paid plus a standard markup.

If he sells the gasoline cheaply, then it will probably be bought by hoarders, and then police and emergency vehicles may not be able to get gasoline at all. If he charges a market rate, then he will ensure that the gasoline will be available to those who really need it.

This is the usual argument that price controls cause shortages. People accept the argument because they don't like shortages. The odd thing is that they are willing to have price-control induced shortages during emergencies. It seems to me that it is during emergencies that shortages are the most troublesome.

Duped dad's right to sue is upheld

New Jersey news:

A man who found out 30 years after his youngest child's birth that he was not the father had the right to sue the biological father for nearly $110,000, the cost of raising the child, an appeals court ruled yesterday. ...

In 1996, just before the son was to be wed, his mother, identified in the decision as B.E.C, told him who his real father was because she wanted him to know his biological father had two children with muscular dystrophy.

Three years later, she told her ex-husband, who has said he was dumfounded and shocked.

I think that paternity fraud should be a criminal offense. It is bad enough that the wife commits adultery, gets pregnant with another man's child, and deceives the husband and the child, but this woman went to court to force the man to pay child support for a child that was not his. No woman could do that by accident or with any positive motive. She should be in jail.

TeenScreen - The Law Suits Begin

Evelyn Pringle writes:

The scheme concocted by the pharmaceutical industry and pushed forward by the Bush administration to screen the entire nation's public school population for mental illness and treat them with controversial drugs was already setting off alarms among parents all across the country. But in the state of Indiana, the alarm just got louder.

Tax payers had better get out their check books because school taxes are about to go up as the law suits against school boards start mounting over the TeenScreen depression survey being administered to children in the school.

The first notice of intent to sue was filed this month in Indiana by Michael and Teresa Rhoades who were outraged when they learned their daughter had been given a psychological test at school without their consent.

In December 2004, their daughter came home from school and said she had been diagnosed with an obsessive compulsive and social anxiety disorder after taking the TeenScreen survey.

Teresa Rhoades always viewed her daughter as a happy normal teenager. ?I was absolutely outraged that my daughter was told she had these two conditions based off a computer test,? said Rhoades.

More evidence that the schools have too much money. They should not be doing stuff like this.

Physician father could do nothing

A reader forwards a message with a sad story about a teenaged boy who was put on ritalin and other drugs, became a juvenile delinquent, and is in a mess. His parents were divorced, and his mother had custody. His father was a physician, and the writer wonders why the father didn't do a better job of overseeing his son's medical prescriptions.

If the case was the typical mother custody divorce case, the father would have been stripped of all authority and decision-making. Even tho he was a physician, he would not have been permitted to make any medical decisions. That is the bias of the family court. It forces kids to be raised without fathers, and there is overwhelming evidence that many of our social ills result from single-mother-headed households.

Kids barred from college

UK college news:

"The admissions executive is in discussions around whether we should introduction a minimum age of 17 for undergraduates," confirmed Ruth Collier, a spokesperson for admissions to Oxford. "We have been pushed to consider it, not because of concerns about whether it is psychologically healthy for children to study here, but because of child protection laws which have come into play this year for the first time." ...

Children can no longer live in student accommodation, because the university could not carry out a criminal record check on every other undergraduate sharing the same premises.

These child protection laws have gone too far.

Picky college girls

College girls can be picky about the men they date. A Cornell senior named Heather Grantham writes:

Unfortunately, in my experience, when something seems too good to be true, it pretty much always is. On our first date, Jackpot didn't tip. At all. From there, the disappointments just kept coming. Not long after, I was appalled to learn that Jackpot had made it into his late 20s without ever going down on a woman. That's right; this grown-ass man had never performed oral sex. He even dug his hole a little deeper by pronouncing the act "something you resort to when you can't please your woman in other ways."

Now, I hate to use poor Jackpot as the example for today's lesson, but guys, this is just utterly unacceptable. ...
At this point, I had a nasty little dilemma. I could stop answering his calls, but then I'd be seeing no one. I mean, which is worse: bad sex or no sex at all?

The article is funny (and off-putting). She suggests that Jackpot was a black man by using an assortment of racial stereotypes, but does not explicitly say so.

School kids can use F-word 5 times

Here is a new UK school policy:

"Within each lesson the teacher will initially tolerate (although not condone) the use of the f-word (or derivatives) five times and these will be tallied on the board so all students can see the running score," he wrote in the letter

"Over this number the class will be spoken to by the teacher at the end of the lesson."
Parents called the rule 'wholly irresponsible and ludicrous'. ...

The 1,130-pupil school, which was criticised as 'not effective' by Ofsted inspectors last November, also plans to send 'praise postcards' to the parents of children who do not swear and who turn up on time for lessons.

Headmaster Alan Large said he had received no complaints about the policy. "The reality is that the fword is part of these young adults' everyday language," he said.

"As a temporary policy we are giving them a bit of leeway, but want them to think about the way they talk and how they might do better."

I wonder what else they are tolerating, but not condoning.

This Michigan story has more on the soldier who lost his son while fighting in Iraq:

In a recommendation, court referee Louis Belzer expressed concern over e-mail correspondences between the McNeilly and his son during his time in Iraq.

Belzer said the e-mails display a much different relationship than a typical parent-child relationship, and more as a "counterpart to share his military adventure."

Belzer wrote, "I also question the nature of some of the correspondence relating to how to kill people in multiple ways and then indicating that 'next time someone touches you and leaves bruises on you, I'll be ready.' "

Belzer said McNeilly seemed more of the disposition to be a friend and buddy rather than a parent.

These are absurd reasons for taking a son away from his dad and denying the dad his fundamental rights. Louis Belzer should never be allowed to testify in family court again.

Coffee has benefits

UK science news:

A study has found that coffee contributes more antioxidants - which have been linked with fighting heart disease and cancer - to the diet than cranberries, apples or tomatoes.

"Americans get more of their antioxidants from coffee than any other dietary source. Nothing else comes close," said Professor Vinson, whose study was described at the weekend to the American Chemical Society in Washington. ...

The pros and cons of coffee

BENEFITS
Can increase alertness and improve short-term recall.
May reduce the risk of cirrhosis of the liver among heavy drinkers.
May postpone muscle fatigue.
Contains caffeine-related compounds (theophylline) that can alleviate the symptoms of asthma in some cases.

RISKS
Increases blood pressure among people who already suffer from high blood pressure.
Causes insomnia, anxiety, and irritability.
May worsen symptoms of PMS in some women.
Can reduce fertility in women trying to conceive.
Can cause heartburn and indigestion.

Another risk is that coffee is very addicting.

Horrible zombies

The movie The Ghost Breakers (1940) has this scene:

Larry (Bob Hope): You live here?
Geoff: Yes.
Larry: Maybe you know what a zombie is.
Geoff: When a person dies and is buried, it seems there's certain voodoo priests who have the power to bring him back to life.
Mary: That's horrible.
Geoff: It's worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes, walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring.
Larry: You mean like Democrats?

Watch the movie clip here.

Man forced to have sex

South African news:

Johannesburg: The hunt is on for three women who ambushed a 30-year-old man and forced him to have sex with them at gunpoint. ...

Nothnagel said that on Saturday night the man was walking through Roodepoort when the women pulled up next to him in their maroon BMW.

They asked him for directions to the Savoy Hotel and he got into the car to show them the way.

At the hotel the women persuaded him to join them for a drink, before asking him for directions to yet another hotel.

While on the road to the Station Hotel the women suddenly changed direction and drove to a dark and empty field near the Durban Deep mine.

"One woman produced a firearm and held the man at gunpoint," Nothnagel said.

"The women got undressed and all three took turns to have intercourse with him."

Africa. 3 women. Gun. Maroon BMW. Dangerous combination.

Straw man has a gun

I was just watching The Wizard of Oz (1939), and I just noticed that the Straw Man is carrying a pistol when they are looking to steal the wicked witch's broomstick. I guess he got it at the land of Oz somehow.

Inequality Taboo

Joe sends this Charles Murray article:

The women with careers were four-and-a-half times more likely than men to say they preferred to work fewer than 40 hours per week. The men placed greater importance on ?being successful in my line of work? and ?inventing or creating something that will have an impact,? while the women found greater value in ?having strong friendships,? ?living close to parents and relatives,? and ?having a meaningful spiritual life.? ...

I have omitted perhaps the most obvious reason why men and women differ at the highest levels of accomplishment: men take more risks, are more competitive, and are more aggressive than women.

He calls it the Inequality Taboo.

Update: Steve Sailer comments. He has other articles here.

Egg donors and surrogate moms

Virginia Postrel says:

When a woman of my advanced age, or, say, Elizabeth Edwards', has a baby, chances are very, very high that she used another woman's egg--especially if the baby is her first. Unlike adopting a child or using a surrogate, however, using an egg donor means you get pregnant and bear the child yourself. And that means you can pretend no donor was involved, which is exactly what a lot of people do.

There are probably a million moms in the USA who are lying to their kid about who the dad is. Now it seems that there are maybe 200,000 who are lying about who the genetic mother is!

When you hear about a 40-year-old woman going to a fertility clinics, she is probably buying eggs from another woman. Most people don't even know that it is legal to pay big bucks for a human egg.

Breastapo strikes

Sally Satel writes:

he Breastapo are at it again, trying to dictate what American women should and shouldn't do with their breasts. ...
"They're making women sick," Kim Gandy of NOW weighed in. "Women will risk a lifetime of grave complications from faulty breast implants because the Bush administration and their appointees value short-term profits over women's long-term health." ...

Study after study confirms silicone implants do not cause disease. It is now 13 years since FDA Commissioner David Kessler imposed a voluntary moratorium on silicone implants, motivated by case reports that they caused connective tissue diseases (e.g., lupus, scleroderma). ...

Throughout the 1990s, litigation against the silicone-implant industry flourished in the absence of any scientific proof that women were made ill by implants. Dow Corning Corporation, once the biggest implant maker, filed for bankruptcy in 1995 to pay $3.2 billion to settle about 440,000 women's claims. ... No rigorously designed study showed any evidence of disease.

Still, the feminist health groups keep pumping out misinformation.

I guess some anti-science feminists don't want women to control their own bodies.

Actress Tara Reid says, "I mean, everyone does it. I don't know why I'm the one who gets so much attention?" She says that she is looking for Mr. Right.

Men cleverer than women

UK research news:

Academics in the UK claim their research shows that men are more intelligent than women.

A study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology says that men are on average five points ahead on IQ tests.

Paul Irwing and Professor Richard Lynn claim the difference grows when the highest IQ levels are considered.

Their research was based on IQ tests given to 80,000 people and a further study of 20,000 students.

'Widening gap'

Dr Irwing, a senior lecturer in organisational psychology at Manchester University, told the Today programme on BBC Radio Four the study showed that, up to the age of 14, there was no difference between the IQs of boys and girls.

"But beyond that age and into adulthood there is a difference of five points, which is small but it can have important implications," he said.

"This is against a background of women dramatically overtaking men in educational attainment and making very rapid advances in terms of occupational achievement."

The academics used a test which is said to measure "general cognitive ability" - spatial and verbal ability.

As intelligence scores among the study group rose, the academics say they found a widening gap between the sexes.

There were twice as many men with IQ scores of 125, for example, a level said to correspond with people getting first-class degrees.

At scores of 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.

Hmmm, this will offend some folks. In the USA, we have more girls in college than boys, but maybe they're majoring in easier subjects.

Physician discipline for fat lecture

NH news:

ROCHESTER, N.H. -- The New Hampshire attorney general is investigating a Rochester doctor because a patient complained that he bluntly told her she needed to lose weight.

Dr. Terry Bennett said that he's outraged by what he calls a baseless complaint. A patient was apparently insulted when Bennett told her that she was obese and could only get healthier by losing weight.

"It's an epidemic in the United States, and it's croaking us," Bennett said.

Bennett said that it's a lecture he gives to many of his overweight patients. ...

Bennett said that the Attorney General's Office tried to get him to settle the matter by agreeing to attend a medical education course, which he refused.

Ever been annoyed by a physician who lectures you about diet or exercise or smoking or whatever? I had no idea that you could just file a written complaint, and the state attorney general would try to send the physician to a re-education camp!

Another article says:

Dr. Terry Bennett, who practices in Rochester, said he has "an obesity lecture for women" that is a stark litany designed to get the attention of obese female patients.

He said he tells obese women they most likely will outlive an obese spouse and will have a difficult time establishing a new relationship because studies show most males are completely negative to obese women.

Maybe there should be separate listings for physicians with attitude, and physicians without.

California judges perceive no reason

The California supreme court has issued some new supremacist opinions promoting the gay agenda. The legislature has passed some radical new domestic partnership laws, but the new rulings go beyond them.

In one ruling, the court says (pdf opinion):

We perceive no reason why both parents of a child cannot be women. ...

The circumstance that Elisa has no genetic connection to the twins does not necessarily mean that she did not hold out the twins as her "natural" children under section 7611.

This is just being stubbornly closed-minded. There are reasons based on biology, law, culture, social science, and religion, and there are 1000s of years of history in which all civilized societies reached the opposite conclusion. For some judges to say that they "perceive no reason" is only to display willful ignorance.

I also think that it is a little strange that the court and the news media are concealing the last names of the lesbians. If they are really just regular parents, then why not disclose the names as they do in regular divorce cases? And if the kids are being harmed by having such kooky lesbian pseudo-parents, then shouldn't the court consider that when it gives its blessing to the arrangement?

Feminists are very confused

Wash. Times article:

Combine that with assorted readings and film clips shining a positive light on self-centered, lesbian, anti-male existence, and you might see the feminist movement for what it really is: Anything but harmless.
Most despicable in my view is the movement claim to represent all women equally. My professor could not get her mind around anyone disagreeing with her. Her open-mindedness simply did not extend to someone with pro-family convictions.
The Women's Awareness Coalition at my school certainly does raise awareness -- the question is: of what? Trying to explain to a feminist that feminism furthers a leftist agenda, not the rights of all women, is something I think I'll have earned a minor in if I survive the second half of my college career.
After the mentoring lunch, a ninth-grader wrote to me, "I learned that most feminists are very confused." I couldn't have put it better myself.

A college girl named Miss Danielle Sturgis has discovered academic feminism.

Best interests of the child

I've been looking into the so-called "best interests of the child" standard for making family court decisions. It is commonly used in statutes and court opinions. Sometimes the phrase uses "interests" in the singular and sometimes in the plural. Technically, these would mean different things, but no one distinguishes them, so I won't either. I'll just call it BIOTC.

John writes:

BIOTC did not come out of the blue. It was a legal "term of art" that dated back at least 200 years to Blackstone, who said parents are presumed to act in their child's best interest.

IOW, BIOTC is just another way of expressing the principle (which also dates to Blackstone) that parents have a fundamental right to the care, custody, and companionship of their children, and to direct their child's upbringing, education and religious training.

BIOTC is not a separate principle, it is part and parcel of parental rights (a natural right or substantive due process concept) recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in a string of cases from Meyer (1923) and Pierce (1925) through Parham (1979), Santosky (1982) and Troxel (2000).

IOW, the BIOTC is whatever the parents say it is.

Of course, a presumption can be overcome with a proper showing. Even a fundamental right can be overcome in extreme cases where a parent is found to be unfit. But unless and until a parent is found (after due process) to be unfit, a parent has the right to determine the best interest of his or her child.

But family courts today seem to mean something different. They use BIOTC to mean the opinion of putative experts who may know nothing about the wishes of the parents. But the phrase is just a smokescreen. The interests of the child are never defined, and there is certainly no analysis of what would be best. I cannot find any example of where any court actually ruled based on some legitimate BIOTC analysis. Either it assumes that the parents will act in the BIOTC, or it relies on some putative expert who is not really an expert at all.

I have come to the conclusion that BIOTC is one of the worst ideas in the history of human civilization. Never have I seen an idea that was so uncritically accepted among the public, and yet so utterly bogus. It is just a license for some authority figure to do whatever he wants. No good has ever come from the concept.

Iraq duty cost him custody of son

Michigan news:

Army National Guard Spc. Joe McNeilly hasn't been the same since he returned from Iraq in March.

But it's not flashbacks to explosions and injured soldiers that haunt him most. It's that he lost shared custody of his 10-year-old son while he was serving his country.

"You want to make a soldier cry, you take his son away," McNeilly, 33, of Grand Ledge, said last week as he blinked back tears. "It's devastating."

McNeilly believes he lost custody of Joey because he was in Iraq for 15 months.

... a report from the May hearing says the court favors Joey's mother, Holly Erb of Mason, because she was the "day to day caretaker and decision maker in the child's life" while McNeilly was deployed. ...

The report says that McNeilly treats his son more like a friend than a son, and "sees the child as a counterpart in his military adventures."

It also questions some of McNeilly's correspondence to his son while on active duty.

McNeilly said one postcard showed a soldier holding a gun. Another showed a soldier spearing a tire as if it was an enemy.

The court report says McNeilly also told his son how to kill people in multiple ways, and that he wrote his son "the next time someone touches you and leaves bruises on you - I'll be ready."

Yes, it does sound like the soldier is losing his son, and the son is losing his father, just because he is a soldier. It is entirely appropriate for a soldier at war to send his son a postcard showing a soldier holding a gun. The anti-male bias of the courts is frightening.

The core of the problem is that the mom took advantage of the soldier's absence to get a court-ordered $525 per month. If she allowed the son to be re-united with his father, then she would lose that $525 per month. The "best interests of the child" is just a smokescreen to allow the greedy mom to keep cheating her ex-husband, even if it also punishes her own son. A man should not be punished for serving his country.

Update: I just got a nice note from Spc. Joe McNeilly himself, along with some pictures of him with his son. He is trying to get a change to the Michigan law so other soldiers are not similarly punished for serving their country.

Falsely accused fathers

KGO radio just broadcast a segment on men who are forced to pay child support, even tho DNA tests prove that they are not fathers. In most cases, the fathers are not even served properly and have no opportunity to contest the court order.

A couple of women called in at the end of the show, and argued that the men should have to pay anyway. One strenuously argued that even tho a man might be proved to be not the father, he could have been the father. She said that most men can avoid these problems by refusing to have sex with unfaithful women.

Apparently the most common situation is when a women is secretly having sex with several boyfriends, gets pregnant, goes on welfare, and names the man with the fattest wallet. In some cases the man gets tricked into believing that he is the father until the statute of limitations has expired. In others, his wages are garnished or his licenses are suspended without him ever even receiving notice.

Sometimes the alleged father has never even met the woman. Sometimes he is the husband, and the wife is secretly committing adultery. The wife eventually runs off with the true father or some other man, and punishes her ex-husband by making him pay child support. (I shouldn't really call it child support, because the money does not goto the child.)

In no case is any woman punished for falsely and vindictively naming the wrong father. In my opinion, a woman who names the wrong father should be jailed, and she should permanently lose custody of the child. It is just not possible for a woman to make an innocent mistake.

Illegal aliens seize Arizona border ranch

PHOENIX - An Arizona ranch once owned by a member of an armed group accused of terrorizing illegal immigrants has been turned over to two of the very people the owner had tried keep out of the country.

The land transfer is being done to satisfy a judgment against Casey Nethercott, a member of a self-styled border-watch group who is serving a five-year prison term for firearms possession.

Morris Dees Jr., chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented the immigrants, said he hoped the ruling would be a cautionary tale to anyone considering hostile measures against border crossers. ...

A jury deadlocked on the assault charge but convicted him of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Morris Dees is famous for causing racist mischief. People should be rewarded for keeping illegal alien trespassers out of the country, not punished.

46 percent are crazy at some time

Fox reports:

LOS ANGELES ? A new study by Harvard University and the National Institute of Mental Health claims that 46 percent of all Americans will, at some point in their lives, develop a mental disorder.

But this new statistic has experts arguing over exactly what constitutes a true mental illness.

According to experts, severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia, dementia and manic depression are relatively uncommon. But the updated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM ? the standard survey for mental illness ? lists conditions like adjustment disorder, passive-aggressive disorder and female sexual arousal disorder as mental illness, reflecting what are claimed to be advances in the mental health profession.

Critics say that's crazy, and that it won't be long before all human quirks and flaws are classified as mental disorders.

Not all quirks. They refuse to classify certain deviant sexual practices as disorders.

Homemakers better than lawyers

Here is the latest attack on judicial nominee John Roberts:

CNN's Bill Mears, Joe Johns, Robert Yoon, Melissa McNamara, David DeSola, and Xuan Thai reviewed the latest dump of documents, which covered Roberts' work as a White House lawyer in the Reagan administration from '82 to '86. Here are some findings:

Most notably, Roberts dismissed a corporate award for women over age 30, saying, "some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."

The young lawyer made the comment as a personal aside after being asked to examine whether Linda Chavez, then the White House director of public liaison, could nominate one her aides to a "rising star" award sponsored by the Clairol beauty care company. The $1,000 grant was designed to honor women who "made a significant change in their field" after turning 30.

The aide, Linda Arey had left teaching to enter law school. She had encouraged many former homemakers to enter law, while working as a dean at Richmond Law School. Roberts, whose job in part was to decide conflict of interest and ethics issues, concluded that the award was proper.

The comment, one of many flip remarks Roberts made in official documents being reviewed this summer, annoyed women across the ideological divide yesterday. "It kind of sounds like a smart alecky comment," Phyllis Schlafly, the president of the conservative Eagle Forum, who entered law school when she was 51, told the Washington Post. Schlafly noted that Roberts was "a young bachelor and hadn't seen a whole lot of life at that point."

Roberts is right. Homemakers are trying to make the world better, and lawyers are trying to make it worse.

Research promising for chocolate lovers

Chocolate news:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's not exactly a guilt-free pleasure, but food researchers say cocoa beans could be good for you. ...

The health potential is real. Cocoa beans have natural compounds called flavanols, and a growing pile of scientific research suggests they do good things to blood vessels.

Customers at Neuhaus, a Belgian chocolate shop in Washington's Union Station, like thinking the dark stuff might be healthy, said manager Clementine Loeman.

"That way, they don't feel guilty," Loeman said, adding that chocolate was sometimes considered medicinal when the company began as a pharmacy 148 years ago.

Women often feel guilty when they eat food. Chocolate makers have discovered that they can sell more chocolate if they can alleviate guilt in women.

Climate change sceptics bet $10,000 on cooler world

UK news:

Two climate change sceptics, who believe the dangers of global warming are overstated, have put their money where their mouth is and bet $10,000 that the planet will cool over the next decade.
The Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev have agreed the wager with a British climate expert, James Annan.

The pair, based in Irkutsk, at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, believe that global temperatures are driven more by changes in the sun's activity than by the emission of greenhouse gases. They say the Earth warms and cools in response to changes in the number and size of sunspots. Most mainstream scientists dismiss the idea, but as the sun is expected to enter a less active phase over the next few decades the Russian duo are confident they will see a drop in global temperatures.

I am still trying to figure this one out. John McCain and Hillary Clinton are jumping on the global warming bandwagon.

African wives get beaten

The NY Times has a page one story with domestic violence propaganda:

Nigeria, Africa's largest nation with nearly 130 million people, has only two shelters for battered women, both opened in the last four years. The United States, by contrast, has about 1,200 such havens. Moreover, many women say wifely transgression justify beatings. About half of women interviewed in Zambia in 2001 and 2002 said husbands had a right to beat wives who argue with them, burn the dinner, go out without the husband's permission, neglect the children or refuse sex.

To Kenny Adebayo, a 30-year-old driver in Lagos, the issue is clear-cut. "If you tell your wife she puts too much salt in the dinner, and every day, every day, every day there is too much salt, one day you will get emotional and hurt her," he said. "We men in Africa hate disrespect."

American women have it better than those in any other country. They can disrespect their husbands and get away with it.

Liza writes that this article shows what life is life for women in societies without strong enforcement of criminal laws against domestic violence and other legal protections for battered women. No, that is not the significant difference between USA and Africa.

Emily Read, a domestic violence lobbyist, writes to the NY Times:

"Entrenched Epidemic: Wife-Beatings in Africa" (front page, Aug. 11) reports that domestic violence is more entrenched and accepted in sub-Saharan Africa than in most other countries, and that "one in three Nigerian women reported having been physically abused by a male partner."

Sadly, the same statistic holds true for the United States. According to the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic Violence, reporting on a 1996 study by the American Psychological Association, "nearly 1 in 3 adult women experience at least one physical assault by a partner during adulthood."

There you have it. The DV lobby thinks that American women are just like sub-Saharan Africans.

Paternal discrepancy

UK news:

LONDON (Reuters) - One in 25 fathers could unknowingly be raising another man's child, British scientists said on Thursday.

Researchers at Liverpool's John Moores University examined the findings of dozens of studies, published over the past 54 years, on cases of paternal discrepancy -- where a man is proved not to be the biological father of his child.

This is old news, of course. Many wives are unfaithful.

12 best foods

Here are the Forbes 12 best (worst) foods. I'm not sure what the point is; there is no scientific evidence that any of those foods are unhealthy.

Trouble hearing women

UK science news:

Men do have trouble hearing women, scientists find

LONDON (AFP) - Men who are accused of never listening by women now have an excuse -- women's voices are more difficult for men to listen to than other men's, a report said.

The Daily Mail, quoting findings published in the specialist magazine NeuroImage, said researchers at Sheffield university in northern England discovered startling differences in the way the brain responds to male and female sounds.

Men deciphered female voices using the auditory part of the brain that processes music, while male voices engaged a simpler mechanism, it said.

The Mail quoted researcher Michael Hunter as saying, "The female voice is actually more complex than the male voice, due to differences in the size and shape of the vocal cords and larynx between men and women, and also due to women having greater natural 'melody' in their voices.

Broadcasters should go back to just using men to read the news.

Women initiate minor aggression

From the Pittsburgh newspaper:

Women may be the primary victims of serious domestic violence, according to most experts, but they are just as likely -- if not slightly more inclined -- as men to engage in "minor aggression" such as hitting and slapping in relationships, according to a new study.

In lengthy interviews with more than two dozen women, those surveyed reported initiating aggression in more than half of the conflicts with their partners. And one of the main reasons, says University of Missouri-Columbia researcher Loreen Olson, was frustration about their inability to gain their partner's attention.

"They told us they would try and try and try to get their partner to listen to them, and that the men had withdrawn and were avoiding dealing with the issue or confronting the conflict," said Olson, who co-authored the study with Sally Lloyd, professor of family studies at Miami University in Ohio. The study will be published in the October edition of the academic journal Sex Roles.

"So they resorted to verbal aggression or even physical action, like slapping their partners on the upper torso, or throwing things at them, in an effort to get them to engage in discussion." ...

"What's typical is that I want to talk about something and he doesn't want to talk about something, and then I'm like, I just [verbally] push and push and push and then he starts where he backs off and ... he wants to leave. And I'm like, 'No, you cannot leave.' "

There are many studies finding that women initiate domestic violence as much as men.

I think we'd look like idiots

News from Congress:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Even after failing a drug test, Rafael Palmeiro insists he was being truthful when he told Congress that he never used steroids. ...

As a practical matter, perjury referrals are uncommon. Prosecutions are rare," House Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., said Wednesday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. ...

And then Davis added: "If we did nothing, I think we'd look like idiots. Don't you?"

No danger. They already look like idiots, and that won't change.

Women having strippers is fun

I found this online:

I remember back in college when a female friend told me she was shocked and dismayed that a men's dorm (no greek system at this school) had hired strippers for a party (OFF campus). She told me it was demeaning and horrible, and she planned to go to the dean of students and demand an investigation, major punishment, expulsion, etc.

I reminded her of the fact that her own dorm had been entertained by a male stripper just a few months before (ON campus, in the dorm itself). She quickly shrugged that off, though. She told me this:

"It's different, though. Women having strippers is fun, like funny. For men it's all about power and rape."

Yeah, I know the type. Some women are fanatical consumers of pornography, but they get all offended if a man looks at porn.

Female badgers prefer the dark

This UK news story says that female badgers and humans have something in common:

During a new moon, female badgers are "tolerant or indifferent" to the advances of males and, when the moon is full, they become actively hostile. ...

Last year, a survey revealed that one in five women feels uncomfortable undressing within sight of her husband or boyfriend and a similar proportion also refuses to have sex when the lights are left on.

There are also a lot of women who like to show off their bodies.

Divorce disallowed

Shawnna Hughes put her husband in jail on bogus domestic violence charges, took their 2 kids, got pregnant with another man, sued for divorce (that her husband did not contest), and obtained a judgment for child support for the 2 kids.

Spokane County (Wash.) Superior Court Judge Paul Bastine said that she didn't quite do it right. She failed to demand child support for the unborn child! He threw out the divorce decree, and an appellate court just agreed.

Family courts usually do whatever they can to bust up marriages and extract onerous support payments. I guess the judges get confused when they see a conflict between those 2 goals.

Man tells wife phony hitchhiker story

Florida news:

A man made up a story about killing a hitchhiker and burying the body in the woods in an effort to persuade his wife to leave him, authorities said.

Teddy Claire Akin, 28, of Ocala, was charged Tuesday with making a false report and petit theft. He was being held without bail.

Akin's wife, Felicia, called the Marion County Sheriff's Office Monday to report that her husband had told her that he killed a hitchhiker, authorities said. ...

Akin eventually told investigators that he was going through a divorce and had hoped the murder story would make his wife leave him...

I think I see the problem. He is nuts, and she is a backstabber.

Tom Cruise is a lousy dad

After Steven Spielberg expressed regret about the way he portrayed a father in the movie Close Encounters, I thought that he would do better in War Of The Worlds. But no, the Tom Cruise character turns out to be a worthless father who does not know or trust his kids, and cannot care for them. They don't seem to like or trust him either. In the end, he just delivers them to their mother, who has remarried another man.

I don't get it. The Cruise character is a much worse father than the Richard Dreyfus character in Close Encounters. Tom Cruise was so annoying that I walked out of the movie, and went to watch The Island instead.

The Island

I just watched the movie The Island. Spoilers below.

The movie is about a govt-funded lab that does therapeutic cloning. It had agreed to follow ethical guidelines with the clones, but it got better results by violating them, and it kept its violations super-secret.

The lab chief talks about how he is going to find a cure for leukemia and is accused of playing God. When someone threatens to expose what he is doing to the public, he hires a professional hit man. When it turns out that human lives are being created and destroyed even when there is no likelihood of saving anyone, even the hit man cannot take it anymore, and refuses to do any more killing for the lab.

The movie is mainly a futuristic action movie, but it also makes a strong statement against embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning. I am surprised that it hasn't generated more political controversy.

Mohammedan terrorism

I'd like to see some serious discussion about the proposition that the Mohammedan religion is at war with the modern world.

Those who support the proposition get censored and branded as bigots, and there is usually some politically correct nonsense about how the word "Islam" means peace. (It does not.)

Malkin describes a radio host who lost his job for supporting the proposition.

Mohammedans have always believed in killing their enemies. To this day, polls show broad support among leaders and followers for terrorist acts against innocent civilians.

Occasionally I see some Mohammedan leader disavow unjustified attacks, or something like that. But then he won't say what attacks are justified or unjustified. Other religions don't have a problem saying whether murdering innocent people is right or wrong.

Five times in recent years, the USA had gone to war to defend Mohammedans. We did it in Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. There must be some limit to American willingness to defend a religion that believes in terrorism.

Counterproductive fundraising

From Fox News O'Reilly Factor:

O?REILLY: You may remember back in 1985, Live Aid raised millions for African famine relief. Shortly after that event, "Spin" magazine reported that much of the money raised during those concerts was stolen by the Ethiopian government. ...

STAMP: Doctors Without Borders, the international version, considers Live Aid and the "We Are The World" song to be the worst thing that ever happened to
Ethiopia.

O'REILLY: Really? Why?

STAMP: Because the money was used to funnel into the tyrannical government, which was using the famine to oppress their own people.

O'REILLY: Wow.

STAMP: And so most people considered that the war actually was extended another five to seven years because of the money they got.

O'REILLY: Because the money they got that was supposed to help the poor people propped up the dictator, who was abusing the people.

STAMP: Absolutely.

I saw this on Fox News last night. It was a rerun. I don't know why a news channel is running reruns from a couple of months ago. I turn to the news channel to get current news.

But the story was amazing enough to repeat. No one ever criticizes raising money for starving people in Africa, and yet such projects can be very harmful.

8-Year-Old Charged

Utah news:

(KUTV) SALT LAKE CITY, Utah A mother is upset after a 14-year-old babysitter engaged in sexual conduct with her eight-year-old boy, and the eight-year-old was charged with lewd conduct.

Prosecutors have since dropped the charges against the boy, but his mother is still concerned.

The sexual conduct occurred during a game of ?truth or dare? while the boy was being watched by the babysitter.

Prosecutors say that, while the babysitter initiated the contact, the young boy was a willing participant.

?She dared my son to touch her breasts,? says Michelle Grosbeck, the boy?s mother.

After hiring the teenager to baby sit, Grosbeck got the feeling something was wrong.

?It was just that sense that something wasn?t quite right with this 14-year-old girl,? she said. She asked her son what had happened. ?He just came right out as if nothing was awry, and just started talking about what had happened.?

Grosbeck went to police and child protection workers, and the case went to the district attorney, after which her son, age eight, had been charged with an act of lewdness with a minor.

Grosbeck says the Salt Lake County District Attorney told her both the child and teenager were equal participants. But Mrs. Grosbeck didn?t believe that.

?My son is eight, he?s a little boy. He does not have the ability to participate on the same level as a fourteen-year-old,? she said.

Bringing criminal charges against this 8-year-old boy is sick. This whole story is just too crazy for comment.

Two-year-old boy survives

German news:

HOMBERG, Germany (AFP) - A two-year-old boy was found safe and sound after surviving for four days alone in a forest, police said.

The boy named Nabil, whose parents are Yemeni, was found by two German soldiers sitting in a pool of water at a spot around three kilometres (two miles) from the playground where he had gone missing on Sunday.

Apparently 2-year-old toddlers are not completely helpless.

Snake Invasion

Kentucky camping news:

Quincy Cook has been camping with his friends and family at this campsite for years and says he's never seen poisonous snakes until a few days ago when they were invaded.

"I had a light on my head and looked down and they was crawling everyway like night crawlers. We shot everything all to pieces, I'd say that first night we probably shot 150-200 rounds," Cook said.

Instead of crawling away like he thought the snakes would react, Cook says they acted very strange, "You would start shooting at them and they would come right at you."

Knowing some got away, cook and his friends went back to the campsite. They have now killed a total of 25 copperheads and one rattlesnake.

I'll be sure to bring my gun if I go camping in Kentucky.

Cathy Young on VAWA

Cathy Young on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA):

But underneath its mainstream trappings, the 1994 bill was steeped in a radical feminism of the ''men bad, women good" variety -- an ideology which regards domestic abuse and rape as part of a collective male war against women. Ironically, the law's political success was partly due to the fact this kind of feminism dovetails easily with a traditional, putting-women-on-a-pedestal paternalism. ...

In fact, some aspects of the act promote covert gender bias. For instance, the legislation requires states and jurisdictions eligible for federal domestic violence grants not only to encourage arrests in domestic assault cases, but also to ''discourage dual arrest of the offender and the victim." This provision is based on the false belief that in cases of mutual violence, one can nearly always draw a clear line between the aggressor and the victim striking back in self-defense. While the language is ostensibly gender-neutral, the assumption is that the aggressor is male; the feminist groups which pushed for this clause made no secret of the fact that its goal was to curb arrests of women.

The law has also created a symbiotic relationship between the federal government and the battered women's advocacy movement, which is heavily permeated by radical feminist ideology. The state coalitions against domestic violence, which formally require member organizations to embrace the feminist analysis of abuse as patriarchal coercion, play a vital role in the allocation of federal grants and in overseeing the implementation of programs and policies. Among other things, these groups frown on any batterer intervention programs that focus on drug and alcohol abuse or mental illness as causes of domestic violence.

She thinks that VAWA can be fixed. I don't. Let it die.

Couple Cleared Of Child Sex Charges

AP news:

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Parents who were charged with child abuse last August have been exonerated and reunited with their children.

Charbel Hamaty was charged with sexually assaulting his newborn son, and Teresa Hamaty was arrested for taking sexually explicit pictures.

The couple describe the ordeal as a "nightmare" that started over a roll of film that Charbel Hamaty dropped off at a north Raleigh Eckerd.

The photo that raised alarms shows a naked Kristoff, now 16-months-old, getting a kiss from his father on the belly button, Teresa Hamaty said.

When the photos were shown to the police, the couple was arrested, and Kristoff was put in protective custody, while his half-sister, Victoria, was handed over to her birth father.

Teresa Hamaty was released on bond, but wasn't allowed contact with her children for months.

Charbel Hamaty spent six months in prison before the charges were dropped because of a report submitted by an expert saying there was no criminal intent in the photos.

The couple said they are happy to be reunited with their children and to leave their legal troubles behind them.

Another example of liberal govt do-gooders at work.

More bad advice from Dear Abby

One common problem with advice-givers is that they commonly ascribe bad motives to third parties. In yesterday's Dear Abby:

DEAR ABBY: I'm 14, and I don't wear shorts because I'm self-conscious about my legs. My mother is always nagging me to wear them in the heat. ...

DEAR NEEDS ADVICE: ... Believe it or not, you don't need advice as much as your mother does. She has won the battle, but at what price? She turned your insecurity into a power struggle and pulled rank. There was no reason to force you to wear shorts ...

Maybe the mother simply wants to help her daughter overcome one of her phobias. If my 14-year-old daughter was irrationally self-conscious about her legs, then I would also encourage her to get over it. She can't go thru life always wearing long pants.

In today's Dear Abby:

DEAR Abby: Over the last two years I have lost 95 pounds. I did it by changing my lifestyle, exercising and making better food choices.

My husband, "Paul," insists that he shouldn't have to hide his cookies, potato chips and chocolate candy, and says I should have self-control. ...

DEAR RESENTFUL: Your resentment is justified. His insistence on keeping junk food where you will find it is an attempt at control. Your husband isn't "unconsciously" trying to sabotage you; it is overt and deliberate. Your victory may be a threat to him. ...

Some people lose weight by getting all the junk food out of the house, and others by keeping a surplus of junk food in the house. Both approaches have merit. If the wife has lost 95 pounds, then I'd say that whatever they are doing is working pretty well, and the husband ought to be reluctant to change a winning formula.

In each case, Dear Abby just blindly assumes that the writer's complaints have merit, and that the third party must have some bad motive. Instead, Dear Abby should be advising the letter-writer, and not just generating hostility.

Monogamous birds

The NY (Science) Times says:

Extracting and analyzing DNA from the feathers confirmed that not a single eagle had strayed from its mate during the course of the six-year study - a degree of monogamy unusual among birds.

Biologists once believed that most, if not all, bird species were monogamous. But over the past decade, that presumption, based on observations of apparently faithful male-female pairs building nests and raising young together, has been overturned by genetic "paternity tests" of blood samples from the birds.

In more than 75 percent of avian species looked at so far, researchers have discovered broods that have two or more fathers.

This is a common misuse of the term monogamy. The article confuses monogamy with fidelity.

Monogamy means marriage. In animals, it refers to mating for life. Many animals, such as a lot of birds, form pair bonds for life but are not necessarily sexually faithful to each other. If they form a permanent pair bond, then they are monogamous.

Humans can also be monogamous and promiscuous at the same time. If they stay married, then they are monogamous. In some marriages, sexual fidelity is extremely important, and in other marriages, it is not so important.

Evolutionary logic

Hot research news:

LONDON (Reuters) - Forget expensive presents or costly jewellery. Wining and dining is the best way for men to woo women, scientists said on Tuesday.

Researchers at Imperial College London developed a mathematical formula and modelled courtship as a sequential game to find the best way to impress the ladies.

Their results show that offering an expensive present signals the man's serious intentions but he must be wary of being exploited by gold-diggers who will dump him after receiving the gift. ...

"Our analysis shows there is evolutionary logic in men 'burning money' to impress the girl," said Professor Robert Seymour of UCL's department of mathematics.

I'm glad to see evolutionary logic being put to good use. Here is another article on the subject.

Phyllis on the Glenn Sacks show

Radio host Glenn Sacks says:

For decades conservatives and conservative Christians have claimed that they are fighting to "defend the family," when in reality they have wasted an enormous amount of time focusing on trivial issues like gay marriage. At the same time they have ignored the forces which are hurting children, destroying fatherhood, and tearing families apart. These are the family law system, the federal financial incentives which help shape and drive that system, and the shortsighted mothers who place their emotions or convenience above their children's needs for their fathers.

During the past six months a major conservative has finally begun to confront the issues generating mass fatherlessness. Conservative writer, commentator and activist Phyllis Schlafly is urging fellow conservatives to re-examine the Violence Against Women Act currently up for renewal in Congress, and is sounding the alarm over the harm misguided feminists have done to fathers and the children who love them and need them.

The broadcast is available in mp3 format.

What is wrong with VAWA

This page summarizes what is wrong with VAWA.

Mandatory arrest

This article describes police policies in domestic violence situations:

Mandatory arrest first became the preferred policy in 1984 when Lawrence Sherman and Richard Berk published their landmark study of the relationship between arrest and recidivism in domestic violence criminal cases.

However, a July 2001 National Institute of Justice article says:

the published results from the five replication experiments produced inconsistent findings about whether arrest deters intimate partner violence.

This looks like another example where feminists have pushed through bad policy based on bogus research.

Child safety seats

More info on child safety seats:

One of the items for evaluation was child safety seats. We evaluated child seat performance based on the child seats implicit to usage in that era and found that car seat belts were more effective for children and infants. NHTSA was incensed by this conclusion and we had to reanalyze the data numerous times and ways eliminating parts of the data they decided they did not like for, in our opinion, questionable reasons. No matter how the data was sliced and diced we found that car seat belts were more effective for children and infants (highly statistically significant effects).

There are some other reasons for liking child car seats. Car manufacturers like them because parents buy bigger and more expensive cars. A lot of parents bought SUVs just to easily accommodate child car seats. Also, a lot of moms like the child car seats because they keep the child more confined, and less likely to annoy the mom. The safety benefits are minimal, at best.

Flawed DV policies

I understand why feminists promote the criminalization of domestic violence. They want to punish men. Furthermore, feminists see it as a way of empowering women, because it allows them to put their husbands and boyfriends in jail whenever they want.

But it is strange that they promote mandatory arrest and no-drop prosecution. These are policies that require police to make arrests and DAs to prosecute, once a complaint has been made. The policies dis-empower victims because it removes their option to drop the charges.

As I understand the theory, the policies are based on the premise that women are incompetent liars who are unable to act in their own interests.

The result of these policies is that women no longer have the option of calling cops to resolve minor disputes. If a wife has a fight, then she must ignore it, or betray her husband in a way that will probably end the marriage. The predictable outcome is fewer domestic violence calls to the cops, and more marriages destroyed.

LGBT domestic violence

A new study says homosexuals are beating each other up:

The New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project announced this eek that reports to them of domestic violence in LGBT relationships increased 16 percent in 2003 and 21 percent in 2004.

"We've seen a steady rise in reports of domestic violence and the level of violence involved over the last two years," said Clarence Patton, acting director of AVP. "In 2004 alone, there was a 35 percent increase in serious injuries and a 71 percent increase in deaths or murders that occurred as a result of the violence." ...

Asked to identify some factors that have contributed to that increase, Dolan-Soto said, "We're living in a society that is in the middle of a war, that condones violence against LGBT folks, and is even willing to codify in the constitution that gays don't have legal rights. And for some gay people that equates to increased stress and pressure on LGBT people and couples and internalized homophobia. The partner that can?t control his or her anger is turning that on the other partner." ...

"When I started at AVP in 1996," Patton said, "there was one bed for a man, only available when a woman wasn't there. Just the very way in which we talk about what domestic violence is in our community can fly in the face of the historic paradigm that the anti-domestic violence movement is built on. It comes out of women's rights movement that women are victims and men are batterers. We say that is not always the case. When you're trying to move brick and mortar operations like shelter space, which is already limited, you have to look at building a bigger pie."

No, our society does not condone LGBT violence. Our society does not approve of same-sex marriage, but that has also been true of every society in recorded history, except for a few areas in the last couple of years.

I am glad to see someone challenging the feminist notion that women are victims and men are batterers.

Oakland baseball

Freakonomics has been gloating about the Oakland A's poor start this year. Levitt said:

If you look at all the stats they say are so important, the As are totally average! There's very little evidence Billy Beane [the club's general manager] is doing something right.

Since that post, the Oakland A's have been the best team in baseball, and they have a good chance of making the playoffs.

I think that the problem here is that Levitt is an economist, and that economists believe that market rates reflect actual values. If he admits that the A's have built exceptionally good teams with very low salaries, then either the market has failed or the A's have been lucky.

Fisher stunned

Hollywood news:

Sexy actress ISLA FISHER is stunned been approached by nymphomaniacs since the release of her racy comedy WEDDING CRASHERS.

In the movie, Oman-born Fisher plays a sex-mad woman who throws herself at VINCE VAUGHN's hunky character.

And while her scene-stealing turn as Gloria has raised riotous laughs among audiences, Fisher's been alarmed by the amount of women who have approached her on the streets of Los Angeles to confide that they relate to her character.

Fisher, fiancee of British comedian SASHA BARON COHEN, says, "Since the movie came out, a lot of women have come up to me and (said) they really relate to the character.

"That's when I suddenly feel the need to walk away from this person. Clearly there are a lot of Glorias out there, so men beware."

Men, you have now been warned.

Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors

USA Today says:

Today, childhood is spent mostly indoors, watching television, playing video games and working the Internet. When children do go outside, it tends to be for scheduled events ? soccer camp or a fishing derby ? held under the watch of adults. In a typical week, 27% of kids ages 9 to 13 play organized baseball, but only 6% play on their own, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

The shift to an indoor childhood has accelerated in the past decade, with huge declines in spontaneous outdoor activities such as bike riding, swimming and touch football, according to separate studies by the National Sporting Goods Association, a trade group, and American Sports Data, a research firm. Bike riding alone is down 31% since 1995.

A child is six times more likely to play a video game on a typical day than to ride a bike, according to surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the CDC. Dakota Howell says his favorite video game ?Tony Hawk's Pro Skater? is more fun than actual skateboarding.

The change can be seen in children's bodies. In the 1960s, 4% of kids were obese. Today, 16% are overweight, according to the CDC. It can be seen in their brains. Studies indicate that children who spend lots of time outdoors have longer attention spans than kids who watch lots of television and play video games, says Frances Kuo, director of the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"New research indicates that our intuition is right: Kids are spending way too much time with media and not enough time outside," Kuo says.

We should let kids play outdoors more.

Feminist pork

VAWA news:

The Violence Against Women Act expires in September, and advocates urged Congress to strengthen and reauthorize it during a committee hearing Tuesday. Among the law's advocates were former Boston Celtics Coach M.L. Carr and actress Salma Hayek. ...

"I think it's feminist pork," said Phyllis Schlafly, president of the national pro-family organization, Eagle Forum. "Taxpayers' money is going in the hands of radical feminists who use it to preach anti-marriage and anti-male ideology."

What the VAWA supporters don't have is any evidence that VAWA has done any good.

Maxim is not porn

News:

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Authorities in Florida are sending convicted sex offenders to jail for violating the terms of their probation by having men's magazines such as Maxim.

Andrew Calderon, 23, was jailed for six days before a judge ordered his release after officers found a racy poster and calendar and copies of Maxim in his home earlier this year.

Maxim is pretty tame. The supermarket women's magazines are more pornographic than Maxim.

Fewer CS majors

NBC news:

The researchers came up with an interesting ? yet disturbing ? conclusion. While adults, many of them women and minorities, are realizing they have to go out and obtain degrees in computer science to advance or just keep up at the workplace, the ?traditional? young students in four-year colleges are increasingly deciding not to major in computer science.

In fact, as the technology-dependent United States struggles to stay ahead of the Bangalores of the world, the Higher Education Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles found significantly fewer students at the college level ? 60 percent fewer ? wanted to study computer science in 2004 as opposed to the year 2000.

And what is even more alarming are the low numbers of young women pursuing computer science at the college level ? current numbers are the same as in the 1970?s. Yet in terms of demographics, women comprise more than half of the current college population.

Simple supply and demand. Bill Gates says that he wants more computer scientists, but the jobs just aren't there anymore. Too much work is being outsourced to India and China.

Bomb Mecca

CNN says:

A Colorado congressman told a radio show host that the U.S. could "take out" Islamic holy sites if Muslim fundamentalist terrorists attacked the country with nuclear weapons.

Tancredo has backed off his comments, but surely we'd have to take extreme measures if the Mohammedan religion declares war on us and nukes our cities. Tancredo said that the ultimate threat should be met with the ultimate response.

Phony autism numbers

Don't trust autism figures:

The US Department of Education figures, based on the number of children receiving special education assistance, have internal ''anomalies" and are in conflict with a number of studies on the prevalence of the condition, said the report from Portland State University in Oregon.

''Basically we don't know what the true prevalence of autism is in this country," the study's author, physician James Laidler, said in an interview. ''The problem with the data is that it may be including kids who have problems other than autism -- a less severe degree than was included even . . . a year or five years ago -- and it has some internal inconsistencies."
''That said, there may still be an autism epidemic in the United States," but the figures most widely used to demonstrate that are not valid, Laidler said.

The government figures estimate that autism as recorded in the US public school population went from 5,415 cases in 1991-1992 to 118,602 in 2001-2002.

Diagnosing autism has become a big fad.

No benefit to hands-free phone

New study:

(CNN) -- A study released Tuesday said drivers who use cell phones -- even hands-free models -- are four times as likely to be involved in wrecks involving a serious injury than are drivers who do not use cell phones.

"There was no safety benefit whatsoever from using a hands-free phone," said Anne McCartt, one of the authors of the study, which was published in the British Medical Journal and paid for by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

So all the cities and states passing hands-free phone use laws may not be making anyone safer.

UN Doudou says the obvious

BBC reports:

An independent investigator for the UN says racism in Japan is deep and profound, and the government does not recognise the depth of the problem.

Doudou Diene, a UN special rapporteur on racism and xenophobia, was speaking at the end of a nine-day tour of the country. ...

Mr Diene says he plans to recommend that Japan enact a law against discrimination, which he said should be drawn up in consultation with minority groups.

He said he would now wait for the Japanese government to respond to his comments before submitting a report to the United Nations.

Duh-duh. The UN bozo is probably uniquely qualified to make the problem worse.

Nashville news:

Parents, Stripper Sentenced; Birthday Boy Gets Off

Jason L. Miller | Staff Writer | 2005-07-08

Landon and Anette Pharris pled guilty to charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor by hiring a stripper to dance at their son's birthday party, according to the Associated press. In addition to winning two years probation, the court ordered them to take parenting classes.

The boy and about a dozen of his friends attended the party where 29-year-old Cassandra Joyce Park, stage name "Sassy," performed at the behest of the boy's parents. His grandfather was also attending.

Sassy danced for a few hours before the randy group of teenagers took up a collection, raising an additional $150 to convince her to take off her clothes completely.

Funny headline.

Next time they'll use a digital camera, so they don't have to worry about the busybodies in the photo shop.

Violence against women act

Wendy McIlroy attacks VAWA 2005. There is more info here.

VAWA has received $5B of funding over the past 10 years, and I wonder if there are any studies showing that any of the money has done any good. I suspect that the money has done much more harm than good.

Here is a 1998 study with domestic violence statistics. It shows that one can do a survey asking for complaints, and get complaints. But it fails to show that the VAWA approach helps anything.

More conservative politically

Andy writes:

America is becoming more conservative politically, which is one reason why we do not want young age to be a factor in picking the next Supreme Court justices. (Another reason is that justices typically move to the Left after serving on the Court for years, as Kennedy is doing right now.)

Here are ten examples of how conservative politics is growing. Additions are welcome. Note how few of them are attributable to GWB and the current Congress.

1. Capitalism defeated communism in the 20th century.
2. The right to own guns is stronger than it has been in decades.
3. Financial rights to invest in gold, mutual funds, etc., are at their strongest level.
4. The right not to be drafted is the strongest ever.
5. Evolution, the sacred cow of liberal atheism, is being widely discredited and discarded.
6. Liberal icons like Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter are increasingly viewed as laughingstocks.
7. The right to homeschool is the strongest ever.
8. Presidential and congressional power are at their weakest point in over a century.
9. The power of citizens to communicate and influence policy (over the internet) is at its strongest point.
10. The free market in medicine is stronger than in 30+ years.

I'm not sure about some of these. In California, the right to own guns has been weakened. Evolution is taught as much as ever. And there is a long list of liberal successes.

Child car seats don't work

Freakonomics authors say:

But no matter what you control for in the FARS data, the results don't change. In recent crashes and old ones, in big vehicles and small, in one-car crashes and multiple-vehicle crashes, there is no evidence that car seats do a better job than seat belts in saving the lives of children older than 2. (In certain kinds of crashes -- rear-enders, for instance -- car seats actually perform worse.)

There is more info on their blog.

One conclusion that I draw is to not trust the medical literature on subjects like this. Pediatricians and other medicos often give pseudoscientific arguments about things like this, and they should really stick to medicine.

Drinker loses license

Pennsylvania news:

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) ? A state appellate court has rejected an appeal from a Lebanon man whose driver's license was revoked by the state after he told doctors he drank more than a six-pack of beer a day. ...

Under a law that dates to the 1960s, doctors in Pennsylvania must report any physical or mental impairments in patients over 15 years old that could compromise their ability to drive safely. The law requires an indefinite recall of the license until the driver can prove he or she is competent to drive. ...

PennDOT receives about 40,000 medical reports and recalls 5,000 to 6,000 licenses a year, according to officials at the agency, but it does not keep any statistics on its reasons for doing so.

I guess you have to be careful about telling your physician about your beer drinking. It is entirely possible that this man never did any drunk driving, and yet he is punished anyway. I don't believe the line about keeping statistics. They just cannot defend what they are doing.

72 bottles a day

UK news:

A 20-YEAR-OLD father of SIX who lives off state handouts is getting the snip.

But Mike Blake, a recovering alcoholic who has never worked in his life, says he will still stay at home and live off the family?s £800-a-month benefits.

He claims looking after his kids with his unemployed wife Kathleen, 24, will always be his full-time job.

Blake first became a dad aged just 13 after a one-night stand with a girl.

He met Kathleen in a pub when he was 15 and they got married the day before his 17th birthday.

They are parents to Sarah, seven, Jordan, four, Courtney, three, Kia, two, and eight-month-old Stacey Leigh.

They all live rent-free in a three-bedroom house in Pontypridd, South Wales, where Blake also gets incapacity benefit for his drink problem.

He says he used to drink 72 bottles of beer a day.

Now he has booked himself in for a vasectomy.

Blake said: ?I?m on the waiting list. I should have it in about three weeks.?

Admitting they live solely on handouts, Blake added: ?That?s the best way. We can stay at home.?

The UK is famous for its lousy treatment for responsible fathers. Apparently there are irresponsible fathers who get treated pretty well. Makes no sense to me.

Parrot grasps the zero

Science news:

A parrot has grasped the concept of zero, something humans can't do until at least the toddler phase, researchers say.

Alex, a 28-year-old African gray parrot who lives in a lab at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, has a brain the size of a walnut. But when confronted with no items on a tray where usually there are some, he says "none."

Zero is thought to be a rather abstract concept even for people. Children typically don't grasp it until age three or four, Brandeis researchers say. Some ancient cultures lacked a formal term for zilch, even as recently as the Middle Ages.

I am not sure that most American adults understand the concept. Yes, toddlers can learn it easily, and yet the elementary schools are reluctant to make use of it. Newspaper articles are typically written for people who do not understand the zero.

Trend for potty parity

NY potty news:

For reasons of anatomy and culture, women take at least twice as long - and as much as five times longer - to complete a bathroom visit as men, according to studies. Men generally zip in, zip down, zip up and zip out, according to John Banzhaf, professor of law and legal activism at the National Law Center of George Washington University.

I didn't know that there were professors of "legal activism". Now I have some idea of their concerns.

DV victims

Here are 2 more victims of domestic violence law:

Marriage vows land the groom in county jail

Associated Press
Jun. 30, 2005 12:00 AM

SPOKANE, Wash. - When Rachel Dunham took out a restraining order against her boyfriend, she didn't expect to be marrying him a short time later.

So instead of honeymooning in Mexico, her beau, Rodney Tomsha, sits in the Spokane County Jail, accused of violating the order by getting within two blocks of Dunham.

He tried to persuade a Spokane judge last week to lift the restraining order, but the judge refused.

The couple were married in nearby Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

The vast majority of restraining orders are unjustified.

Sex education

Honk Kong need sex education:

Grace Wong of the southern Chinese territory's Family Planning Association said the number of inquiries at her agency rocketed 50 percent last year, with many clients claiming to have no idea how to have sex.

"Some married couples are not familiar with their body parts," Wong was quoted as telling the Sunday Morning Post. "They don't know where their sex organs are.

Also, Egyptian men.

Anita Hill

Everyone keeps saying that Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment at his Senate confirmation hearing. Here is the actual transcript:

So that at that time, there was a doubt in your mind as to whether Judge Thomas was, in fact, guilty of sexual harassment on the facts as you knew them?

MS. HILL: Well, I want to back up and say something here. In my statement to you, I never alleged sexual harassment. I had conduct that I wanted explained to the Committee. My sense was -- my own personal sense was that yes, this was sexual harassment. But I understood that the Committee with their staff could make that evaluation on their own.

So, I didn't have any doubts. But I wanted to talk with someone who might be more objective.

SEN. SPECTER: Well, you did call it sexual harassment in your extensive news conference on October 7th, even though you did not so characterize it to the FBI or in your statement to this Committee.

MS. HILL: But that news conference on August 7th had not taken place at the time -- or excuse me, on October 7th --

It is a little confusing, but it appears to me that she wanted people to think it was sexual harassment, but that she stopped short of formally making that accusation.

Clarence Thomas denied it: "I cannot imagine anything that I said or did to Anita Hill that could have been mistaken for sexual harassment."

Showering is bad

News for the paranoid:

Taking regular showers could pose a health risk and even result in permanent brain damage, it has been claimed.
Scientists believe that breathing in small amounts of manganese dissolved in the water may harm the nervous system.

The damage may occur even at levels of the naturally occurring metal normally considered safe, say the US researchers.

Although manganese levels in public water supplies are monitored, regulators have not considered the long-term effects of inhaling vaporised manganese while showering, they claim.

No, I am not going to worry about it.

Fewer UFO videos

UK news:

Oscar-winning director STEVEN SPIELBERG is baffled that fewer UFO sightings are made now than were made twenty years ago - because the technology to record would-be aliens is so commonplace today. ...

Spielberg says, "There are millions of video cameras out there and they're picking up less videos of UFOs, alleged UFOs, than we picked up in the 1970s and 1980s. There's 150 per cent more cameras, so why are we getting less from up there?.
"I think that we all know that we're not alone in the universe. I can't imagine that we are the only intelligent biological life form out there. I'm a little less sure in my fifties that I was in my late twenties whether we're
actually ever going to find out.".

He has filmed them as both friendly and unfriendly.

Trivial actions become sex offenses

Here is a stupid ruling:

He grabbed girl's arm -- now he's a sex offender

Fitzroy Barnaby said he had to swerve to avoid hitting the 14-year-old Des Plaines girl who walked in front of his car.

She said he yelled, "Come here, little girl," before getting out of his car and grabbing her by the arm.

He said he simply lectured her.

She said she broke free and ran, fearful of what he'd do next.

In a Thursday ruling, the Appellate Court of Illinois said the 28-year-old Evanston man must register as a sex offender.

While acknowledging it might be "unfair for [Barnaby] to suffer the stigmatization of being labeled a sex offender when his crime was not sexually motivated," the court said his actions are the type that are "often a precursor" to a child being abducted or molested.

Though Barnaby was acquitted of attempted kidnapping and child abduction charges stemming from the November 2002 incident, he was convicted of unlawful restraint of a minor -- which is a sex offense.

'Most stupid ruling'

Now, he will have to tell local police where he lives and won't be able to live near a park or school.

The punishment of supposed sex offenders has gone way too far. This guy is not a sex offender.