Another reason to eat your broccoli

The Chicago Tribune reports:

As if we need yet another reason to eat our broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, a new study has come out of Oregon State University indicating that the compound sulforaphane -- found in the veg -- can target cancer cells while leaving normal cells unaffected.

Sulforaphane is found in broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, rapini etc., vegetables that may cause gas in some but are loaded with nutrients and antioxidants that make the gas part seem like a minor inconvenience.

I had a court-ordered psychological evaluation several years ago from the man that my readers call "Dr. Gay". He interviewed my kids, and reported that they said that they get a vegetable rotation of mainly broccoli, potatoes, asparagus, and macaroni. He recommended the following be ordered by the court:

8. Nutrition: Mother and Father shall provide a nutritionally balanced and varied diet and three regular, timely meals per day, minimize unhealthy andjunk foods whenever possible, and shall both consult and document such with a nutritionist regarding the children's diet, if further problems emerge.

I could never get a straight answer from him on whether eating broccoli was a problem, or why he would write an order about "further problems". He did not appear to have any knowledge as to whether our kids were eating any better or any worse than anyone else. I never liked broccoli, but my kids liked it so I would make it for them.

I think that I have just figured out why Dr. Gay was so agitated about broccoli, and too embarrassed to explain himself. Broccoli causes gas in many people, and hence smelly rear ends. He hates that, but did not want to put it in his report.

Penalty for jaywalking

The FreeRangeKids mom reports:

The Atlanta mom who was convicted of “vehicular manslaughter” after her 4-year-old wriggled away from her and was killed by a drunk driver, does not have to do jail time. While she could have been sent away for three years, she will instead do a year of probation and perform 40 hours of community service. She also has been offered the option of another trial.

The driver, meantime, already did six months in jail and was released in October. He will serve the remained of his five-year sentence on probation, reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

I did not know that an African-American mom in Atlanta could be convicted of “vehicular manslaughter” because her kid was jaywalking after getting off a bus at a busstop. I thought that vehicular manslaughter meant driving a vehicle and killing someone, not being a pedestrian and seeing your kid killed by a drunk hit-and-run driver.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

A reader tells me of a new film that is being shown tonight:

In his most provocative documentary to date filmmaker Janks Morton turns his lens to the crisis in America's family courts. Utilizing the stories of five men Morton reveals the untold story of how family court processes yield millions of fatherless children.

The massive machine of family courts directly impact the lives of nearly one third of our nation's citizens, with little oversight and limits on its enormous power. It is a system riddled with conflicts of interest where the 'best interest of the child' is often an afterthought.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent is the beginning of a necessary national dialogue.

Purchase Tickets to the Washington, DC Premier

Premiering at The Avalon Theater, July 26th, 2011, Show Time 8:00 p. m. Discussion following film. The Avalon Theater is located at 5612 Connecticut Ave. NW Washington, DC 20015

I don't know if I have any readers in DC. I am sure it will come out on DVD.

Update: You can now buy the DVD for $15.

Norway Manifesto

The Andrew Berwick manifesto says:

I sometimes wonder whether the modern West, and Western Europe in particular, should be dubbed the Fatherless Civilisation. Fathers have been turned into a caricature and there is a striking demonisation of traditional male values. Any person attempting to enforce rules and authority, a traditional male preserve, is seen as a Fascist and ridiculed, starting with God the Father. We end up with a society of vague fathers who can be replaced at the whim of the mothers at any given moment. Even the mothers have largely abdicated, leaving the upbringing of children to schools, kindergartens and television. In fashion and lifestyle, mothers imitate their daughters, not vice versa.

The elaborate welfare state model in Western Europe is frequently labelled "the nanny state," but perhaps it could also be named "the husband state." Why? Well, in a traditional society, the role of men was to physically protect and financially provide for their women. In our modern society, part of this task has been "outsourced" to the state which helps explain why women in general give disproportionate support to high taxation and pro-welfare state parties. According to anthropologist Lionel Tiger, the ancient unit of a mother, a child and a father has morphed from monogamy into "bureaugamy," a mother, a child and a bureaucrat. The state has become a substitute husband. In fact, it doesn't replace just the husband, it replaces the entire nuclear and extended family, raises the children and cares for the elderly.

He is Anders Behring Breivik, the Norway killer. A UK newspaper reports:

Mr Beivik divorced Wenche when Anders was just one, and went on to marry Tove Vermo, another embassy worker.
Anders became the subject of a custody battle, as Mr Beivik and his new wife wanted to raise him in Paris, but they lost their case.
As a child, Anders used to visit his father at his flat in Paris, and at a holiday home in Normandy, western France.
They fell out because of Anders's increasingly unruly behaviour as a teenager.

Obviously the boy needed a father. A single mother cannot handle an unruly teenager, and neither can a father who just has some visitation rights.

California court budget cuts

SAN FRANCISCO—This county's presiding superior court judge stood at the lectern and looked out at the bank of television cameras and assembled press. She took a deep breath.

"This is the saddest and most heartwrenching day I have experienced in my professional life," said Judge Katherine Feinstein, the daughter of California's senior U.S senator.

As San Francisco's top judge, it fell to Feinstein to close the court's $13.75 million budget hole. On Monday, she announced that she was laying off 40 percent of the court's work force and shuttering 25 of 63 courtrooms and all but putting the civil division out of business. ...

Courts in all 58 counties are grappling with a third straight year of budget cuts that have reduced spending by an unprecedented 30 percent over that period. Hundreds of workers have been laid off across the state and thousands more placed on unpaid furloughs. ...

"It has never been worse," said Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who took over as the state's top judge in January after serving as trial court judge and appellate jurist since 1990.

I will not believe that they have a money problem as long as they are expending so many resources on cases that do not need to be litigated. My ex-wife and I had a signed marital settlement agreement in 2003, and there has never been any good reason for the court to intervene. She has bombarded the court with thousands of pages of complaints, but no one has been able to identify any wrongdoing on my part. And yet the court keeps having motions, hearings, evaluations, trials, etc. No good has come from any of it.

The child support incentives

Rachel Alexander writes:

The latest effort to change the system calls for “shared parenting.” Although advocacy groups differ on how shared parenting would be implemented, it generally consists of making the default custody arrangement 50/50 joint physical and legal custody when parents split up, absent egregious circumstances. This would replace the current system which leaves it up to a judge’s whim to decide what constitutes “the best interests of the child.” Shared parenting bills are being introduced in state legislatures around the country, and several states now have some version of shared parenting. In those states, studies are finding that divorce rates are lower and the children are better adjusted.

In addition to passing shared parenting laws, there must be tougher requirements for issuing restraining orders and reform of child support laws. 50/50 shared custody should not include child support unless there are egregious circumstances. Child support creates an incentive to continue fighting. Neither parent wants to get stuck paying it, and some parents greedily want it as a source of income to use as they please, since there is little monitoring of how it is spent. Eliminate child support in all but the most egregious situations, and most of the fighting clogging our family courts will cease.

She is correct. Most of the family court conflict is caused by bad incentives created by the court. In my case, 100% of it is.

Court uses phony doctor

I posted before about my reader who is smoking out a local parenting coordinator who has blocked access to her grandkids. The grandma complained to Judge Heather Morse, and got back a letter saying only "I have looked into your concerns". The grandma complained to the ethics official of Monterey Bay Psychological Associaton for its Tamara Ellis, MFT, Ph.D. Profile Page. Apparently Ellis is a member and is using the Psychological Associaton to promote her bogus credentials. The ethics official (and psychologist) responded:

Thanks again for bringing your concern to my attention. I have made a thorough investigation as to the credibility of Dr. Ellis as well as the well being of your grandchildren in terms of their safety in psychotherapy. Rest assured that Dr. Ellis is indeed a Doctor of psychology who received her doctorate from Lewis and Clark under her married name. She is certified as a licensed marriage and family therapist which is the license she works under. As I had shared with you before, it is absolutely legal for an individual to refer to themselves with the title of "Dr.'" if they have received one, even if their professional license is under another degree.

... I would encourage you to consult a professional therapist of your choice in order to facilitate an improved sense of security about your worries and concerns as a loving grandmother.

Wow, what a putdown! G Katie Dashtban "made a thorough investigation" and not only does Dr. Ellis not have a Doctor of psychology from Lewis and Clark, but grandma needs psychotherapy for asking.

This really offensive. Grandma had some completely legitimate concerns about the care of her grandkids, and some psychologist official blows her off and tells her to get psychotherapy herself.

This would even be offensive if grandma were completely wrong about Ellis, but she is not wrong. Ellis has been married and divorced a couple of times, so tracking her by name is confusing, but she only has a masters degree from Lewis and Clark. Grandma got this response from the Registrar at Lewis & Clark College

We do have record of a Tami E. Saltz that completed her Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology in November of 1992. That was her last term of attendance. The first graduate form our doctoral program was in 2005.

We do not and have never offered a doctoral degree in psychology. The only doctorate program we have is a Doctorate in Education in Leadership. It is for school administrators with our first graduate in December of 2005.

So it appears that Ellis lied about having a PhD from Lewis & Clark. My guess is that she has a mail-order PhD degree from some diploma mill. It seems obvious that if she had a real degree from a real university, she would say so on her web site.

So why is grandma so eager to smoke Ellis out? This would all be just a petty case of a local quack exaggerating her credentials, but grandma's real complaint is that Ellis has used her authority with the court to sabotage the upbringing of her grandkids. Not only did Ellis restrict grandma to supervised visitation, but Ellis wrote the court order that the parents keep the kids on an antipsychotic drug that supposedly helps control behavior problems.

I don't know these kids, and I don't know the drug. It seems theoretically possible that the kids could be helped by the drug, but I really doubt it. This usage of antipsychotics is very controversial.

Whether this drug has some hope of helping these kids or not, I know for sure that a parent coordinator should not be claiming to have a PhD that she does not have, psychology associations should not have an ethics official who falsely vouches for charlatans and who tells the whistle-blower to get therapy, judges should not just acknowledge concerns and do nothing, the court should not be giving authority to people with bogus credentials, grandparents should not have to be supervised, the judge should not be relying on flaky therapists to write court orders, someone with only a masters degree in psychology should not be giving court opinions on the use of psychoactive prescription drugs, and family courts should not be giving parents orders to drug their kids to control behavior problems.

It seems silly to make such a big deal out of one court therapist's bogus credential. The bogus credential is not the problem. It is just a symptom of a whole set of much deeper and more serious problems.

Update: A comment says that Ellis's PhD appears to be from Rushmore University, an unaccredited school with a mailing address in the Cayman Islands. Its own website says, "The reality is that employers seldom investigate the accreditation of the school that a potential employee has attended."

Update: A reader confirms that Ellis got her PhD from Rushmore University on Nov. 15, 2007. That explains why she is no secretive about this phony degree.

Court hearing canceled

The Watsonville court called and said that Judge Heather Morse would not be in, and all cases were postponed to Aug. 10.

I was thinking of trying to post a summary of what happens in court, and posting it before going to court. That is, I was going to try to predict what happens before going. Too late.

All I get out of Judge Morse is stalling. I have been in her court for over a year, and she stalls at every opportunity. Supposedly I am being charged with contempt of court, but she does not show the slightest interest in figuring out what I am supposed to be doing, or determining whether I should be punished. I think that if she could have her way, she would just postpone the contempt charge indefinitely.

The law places some limits on how long a contempt charge can be postponed, unless the defendant waives the time limits. In court last time, Judge Morse practically begged me to waive the limits, so she could take the contempt charge off her calendar and forget about it.

Even more so, she wants to postpone making a decision on whether I can see my kids. She knows that the process in which my kids were taken away was completely crooked, but she does not want to deal with it. If she can stall for 6 more years, then both kids will be over 18. I think that is her objective.

Arraigned for contempt

Tomorrow morning I am supposed to be arraigned for contempt. I am expecting Judge Morse to follow her usual pattern and keep us until 11:55 and everyone other case has been disposed of, so my ex-wife and I are the only ones left in the courtroom. Then she will tell us that it is almost lunchtime, and schedule us to come back next month.

There are two contempt charges. One is that my ex-wife wants me to pay for some orthodontic expenses. She claims that I was supposed to pay dental expenses, but to me, that does not include orthodontic services. The other charge is that I told the story on this blog about how she got sole legal custody by lying and claiming that she already had. She wants me to remove the quotes from the court-appointed psychologist saying that she lied. I don't see how it can be unlawful to truthfully say what the court did. I am not revealing anything confidential, such as saying what the psychologist said about my ex-wife's mental health.

There is also the continuing issue of child custody and visitation. My ex-wife has not permitted me to see our kids in four months. Her only excuse is that she has a pending motion for permanent sole custody, and if she gets that, then any visitation will be at her discretion.

The harm of self-esteem

The current Atlantic magazine has a cover story on how parents who follow the advice of today's experts are rearing a generation of messed-up kids who end up in therapy:

How to Land Your Kid in Therapy

Why the obsession with our kids’ happiness may be dooming them to unhappy adulthoods. A therapist and mother reports.

Here I was, seeing the flesh-and-blood results of the kind of parenting that my peers and I were trying to practice with our own kids, precisely so that they wouldn’t end up on a therapist’s couch one day. We were running ourselves ragged in a herculean effort to do right by our kids—yet what seemed like grown-up versions of them were sitting in our offices, saying they felt empty, confused, and anxious. Back in graduate school, the clinical focus had always been on how the lack of parental attunement affects the child. It never occurred to any of us to ask, what if the parents are too attuned? What happens to those kids? ...

Meanwhile, rates of anxiety and depression have also risen in tandem with self-esteem. Why is this? “Narcissists are happy when they’re younger, because they’re the center of the universe,” Twenge explains. “Their parents act like their servants, shuttling them to any activity they choose and catering to their every desire. Parents are constantly telling their children how special and talented they are. This gives them an inflated view of their specialness compared to other human beings. Instead of feeling good about themselves, they feel better than everyone else.”

In early adulthood, this becomes a big problem. “People who feel like they’re unusually special end up alienating those around them,” Twenge says. “They don’t know how to work on teams as well or deal with limits. They get into the workplace and expect to be stimulated all the time, because their worlds were so structured with activities. They don’t like being told by a boss that their work might need improvement, and they feel insecure if they don’t get a constant stream of praise. They grew up in a culture where everyone gets a trophy just for participating, which is ludicrous and makes no sense when you apply it to actual sports games or work performance. Who would watch an NBA game with no winners or losers? Should everyone get paid the same amount, or get promoted, when some people have superior performance? They grew up in a bubble, so they get out into the real world and they start to feel lost and helpless. Kids who always have problems solved for them believe that they don’t know how to solve problems. And they’re right—they don’t.”

Last month, I spoke to a youth soccer coach in Washington, D.C. A former competitive college athlete and now a successful financier, he told me that when he first learned of the youth league’s rules—including no score-keeping—he found them “ridiculous.” ...

“A principal at an elementary school told me that a parent asked a teacher not to use red pens for corrections,” she said, “because the parent felt it was upsetting to kids when they see so much red on the page. This is the kind of self-absorption we’re seeing, in the name of our children’s self-esteem.” ...

Sometimes, if my preschooler was having a meltdown over the fact that we had to go to the grocery store, instead of swooping him up and wrestling him into the car, I’d give him a choice: “Do you want to go to Trader Joe’s or Ralphs?” (Once we got to the market, it was “Do you want the vanilla yogurt or the peach?”) But after I’d set up this paradigm, we couldn’t do anything unless he had a choice. One day when I said to him, “Please put your shoes on, we’re going to Trader Joe’s,” he replied matter-of-factly: “What are my other choices?” I told him there were no other choices—we needed something from Trader Joe’s. “But it’s not fair if I don’t get to decide too!” he pleaded ingenuously. He’d come to expect unlimited choice.

Your grandparents probably had more common sense than today's child-rearing experts.

Meanwhile, today's NY Times reports that all the child development experts have been wrong about playgrounds:

When seesaws and tall slides and other perils were disappearing from New York’s playgrounds, Henry Stern drew a line in the sandbox. As the city’s parks commissioner in the 1990s, he issued an edict concerning the 10-foot-high jungle gym near his childhood home in northern Manhattan.

“I grew up on the monkey bars in Fort Tryon Park, and I never forgot how good it felt to get to the top of them,” Mr. Stern said. “I didn’t want to see that playground bowdlerized. I said that as long as I was parks commissioner, those monkey bars were going to stay.”

His philosophy seemed reactionary at the time, but today it’s shared by some researchers who question the value of safety-first playgrounds. Even if children do suffer fewer physical injuries — and the evidence for that is debatable — the critics say that these playgrounds may stunt emotional development, leaving children with anxieties and fears that are ultimately worse than a broken bone. ...

Sometimes, of course, their mastery fails, and falls are the common form of playground injury. But these rarely cause permanent damage, either physically or emotionally. While some psychologists — and many parents — have worried that a child who suffered a bad fall would develop a fear of heights, studies have shown the opposite pattern: A child who’s hurt in a fall before the age of 9 is less likely as a teenager to have a fear of heights. ...

“Paradoxically,” the psychologists write, “we posit that our fear of children being harmed by mostly harmless injuries may result in more fearful children and increased levels of psychopathology.”

You are better off if you never listened to the psychologists in the first place. The most sensible comments come from a 10-year-old kid.

Brooklyn boy murdered

Lenore Skenazy, who has been called the world's worst mom, is shaken about the murder of the Brooklyn Orthodox Jewish boy:

It is with an actually, physically aching heart that I report to you the death of an 8-year-old Brooklyn boy, Leiby Kletzky, who disappeared from a short, solo walk yesterday and was later found in a dumpster. ... It is really hard to even suggest that life continue on as normal, but that is what I truly believe is the only response to this crime.

People are overreacting to this crime. I would have thought that this community could take care of the crazies in their own community, but maybe not.

9-11 proved that terrorists can hijack planes and crash them. It did not prove that we have to live in fear.

Skenazy is a breath of fresh air on this subject. Her blog is excellent.

Dad web site shut down

UCLA law professor and famous First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh writes about one of my fellow angry dads:

“Father Shall Take Down That Web Site and Shall Never on Any Public Media Make Any Reference to Mother At All, nor any reference to the relationship between mother and children, nor shall he make any reference to his children other than ‘happy birthday’ or other significant school events.” That’s the text of a judge’s oral order in Morelli v. Morelli, No. A06-04–60750-C (Diane Gibbons, J., Bucks Cty., Pa. June 6, 2011). If the father says anything about the mother in public, he could be sent to jail for contempt of court. The order isn’t limited to banning libelous statements (though I think even such a much narrower ban would itself pose constitutional problems, especially under Pennsylvania law), nor is it even limited to statements about minor children (though even that sort of order strikes me as constitutionally impermissible). Rather, the court order categorically orders the removal of a Web site, and prohibits all public statements — factually accurate or not — by one person about another person.

That strikes me as a pretty clear First Amendment violation; whatever the scope of family courts’ authority to protect children’s best interests might be, it can’t extend to criminalizing one adult’s public speech about another adult.

The web site is www.thepsychoexwife.com. He appears to be complying, because his front page just has a link to the court order, and to complaints about it. But the original files appear to be still there, and you can get them by starting here. (Please don't tell the judge or the ex-wife!)

Like this blog, his web site is a blog about a divorced dad's family court hell. I did not see any real names on it. He refers to his ex-wife as PEW, for Psycho Ex Wife, and to himself as LM. He calls the judge JC, for Jucge Contempt.

His blog has lots of comments from readers who are grateful to hear of a case like their own. The guy was providing a useful service. I can see where the ex-wife would not like the armchair diagnosis of a borderline personality disorder, but he does not mention her by name and a man surely has a right to call his ex-wife crazy if she is battling him in family court for 7 years.

One of Volokh's commenters says:

This is daily stuff in family law court. Why is it suddenly being considered unconstitutional? Maybe there is hope after all.

There is a lot of scary stuff going on in family court.

That's right. This order is unusual in that it is so explicitly unconstitutional.

Update: Divorced dad's blog becomes free-speech test.

AMA wants to seize fat kids

The child do-gooders are always thinking up of reasons to take kids away. Here is the latest:

A controversial new opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests taking severly obese children out of their homes and placing them in foster care.

Dr. David Ludwig, who co-authored the article, claims he's not blaming parents but protecting children.

State intervention will "support not just the child but the whole family, with the goal of reuniting child and family as soon as possible," he said.

The editorial is here, but you can only get the first couple of paragraphs for free.

I predict that the fat kids will get fatter in foster care.

Update: Fox News O'Reilly sided with the AMA, and wanted to take the fat kids away. His guest, Gretchen Carlson, was much more sensible. She said that if a kid is malnourished, then the state can act and feed the kid. But managing a fat kid is much trickier, and the state is not good at that. I don't know why anyone calls O'Reilly a conservative. A conservative would favor parental rights, and O'Reilly does not.

The domestic violence scam

Carey Roberts writes:

It's been some 17 years since our nation declared war on domestic violence and enacted the Violence Against Women Act. It seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, who could be unmoved by tales of women trapped in lethal relationships, enduring ritual beatings at the hands of an overbearing mate?

But unnoticed to most, the Violence Against Women Act was soon hijacked by a radical ideology, a belief system that ascribed all partner violence to a single root cause — patriarchy. Soon the war on domestic violence became transmogrified into an unrelenting fusillade trained squarely on the male of the species. ...

Another fly in the ointment arises because in most cases, a woman who files a criminal charge later recants the allegation or refuses to cooperate with the prosecution.

The solution? "Evidence-based" prosecution in which the DA files the case, even absent the star witness. Again, no need to allow burdensome probable-cause requirements to get in the way. ...

The Department of Justice's Office of Violence Against Women now defines domestic violence as "a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner."

Did your spouse ever hand you a Honey-Do list? Was she attempting to exert power and control over you? You betcha, you were a victim of domestic violence!

He is right. The cover story on the current Ms. magazine is a big complaint that the law sometimes distinguishes between forcible rape and other forms of rape.

Domestic violence is mainly an accusation by vindictive feminists.

Response to Board

I sent this letter to the California Board of Psychology, in response to their request:

I received your July 1 letter asking for additional documents. ...

Some of these documents put me in a bad light. Commissioner Joseph expressed the opinion that I emotionally abused my kids, but his principal allegations were that I reset an alarm clock for 7:00 a couple of times, and that I entered my daughter in a math contest above her grade level. There was also an allegation about running over a dog, but the dog owner testified that it never happened and that the dog was alive and healthy. For these trivial reasons, I was separated from my kids for nearly four years.

Judge Morse said that I am “physically incapable of perceiving” why I have been separated from my kids. In a sense she is right; I see no rational or valid reason for it.

I maintain that what I did was solely to benefit my kids, and that those actions were beneficial to them. They were not abusive under any definition of the term. No one has ever been able to tell me what is wrong with what I did.

I do not expect you to take sides in my child custody dispute. But if I did nothing wrong, then Ken Perlmutter should have explained that to the court. If I did do something wrong, then he should have explained to me and to the court how I can take steps to correct my behavior and restore my relationship with my kids. He did not. The result is that the court is clueless about how and when my kids can be reunified.

In case you think that I might be too stupid to understand what I have been told, I have a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Neither Perlmutter nor any of the other psychologists and evaluators have alleged any disorder of any kind.

If I had been accused of genuine abuse or neglect and if my case had been in juvenile dependency court, I would be given a reunification plan. Within one year, the court would have had to declare me unfit or give me my kids back. But instead, I am living under Perlmutter’s plan, and my kids are likely to be under court supervision until they are age 18. I am not even accused of doing anything contrary to generally accepted child-rearing standards, and yet I cannot see my kids and Perlmutter recommends that child-rearing decisions be made by a special master until my kids are age 18. The judge does not understand what the problem is, and she perpetually postpones our court case. This has continued for 3.5 years already, and there is no resolution in sight.

I have supplied my ex-wife, AngryMom, with the paperwork concerning this complaint. She notified the family court judge, Judge Morse, that she did not agree with me filing the complaint. Judge Morse suggested that AngryMom could file a motion to the court if she had an objection to me sending documents to the state Board. AngryMom decided not to file a motion. I do not object to her telling her side of the story.

A  reader writes:

Good for you! Turning over the rocks and letting the light of day shine on the vermin beneath! This week I am send the Board of Psychology a complaint on one of our favorites: Dr. Gay. ... I sent Morse my papers exposing their favorite parent coordinator as a fraud: ... Morse sent me back a letter saying only: 'I have looked into your concerns.' Interesting sentence, because it's fine as it is, but, it could also be a clause: 'I have looked into your concerns and have found them groundless.' or I have looked into your concerns and am investigating them further.'

Yes, let the light of day shine on the vermin. You must be onto something for the judge to send you such a suspiciously defensive remark.

Board wants more documents

I sent some documents to the state board investigating Kenneth B. Perlmutter, and now they want some more:

Board of Psychology Control No.: 1F 2011 215103 (Dr. Kenneth B. Perlmutter)

Dear Mr. AngryDad:
Thank you for your letter of June 25, 2011, acknowledging receipt of the Board's request for additional documentation concerning the above-referenced complaint you filed against Dr. Perlmutter.

Following a review of the documentation received, it is apparent we will need additional information. Please provide the Board with the following:

• It appears that you may have not provided the Board with all pages of the November 16, 2007 order (you said that you were providing page 1, 2, 5 and 6). Please provide the Board with all pages and attachments related to this order.
• A copy of the December 6, 2007 Minute Order re modification of child custody
and visitation
• A copy of the May 1, 2008 Findings & Order After Hearing
• A copy of the May 28, 2008 Minute Order
• Please sign and return the original enclosed Authorization, allowing the Board to contact Dr. Perlmutter concerning your allegations. List your name and date of birth at the top of the Authorization, Dr. Kenneth Perlmutter's name on line #1, and sign and date as the "patient." Please be advised that faxed or electronic copies are not accepted.

This information is due by July 15, 2011.
Thank you.

I don't know why they want these documents. Nothing happened at the Dec. 6, 2007 hearing. The May 2008 documents are of no real consequence either.

I had not signed the Authorization before because I said that it does not make any sense. It asks Perlmutter to send his diagnosis and treatment records to the state. But I was not Perlmutter's patient, and he did not diagnose or treat me. He does have about 3000 pages of court documents that my ex-wife dumped on him, but I don't think that the Board wants those because I already supplied the relevant papers.

So I don't know what is going on. I just sent the documents and signed the form as requested.

Supplying documents to the Board

I had to complain to the state Board about a court-appointed psychologist, and the Board asked for more documents. The judge told my ex-wife that she could file a motion if she had some objection. She decided not to object, and I sent this letter to the Board:

To: Xxxx Xxxx, California Board of Psychology
Re: Control Number 1F 2011 215103

Dear Ms. [name omitted]:

I received your June 20 letter asking for additional documents. [I supply the documents.]

I am unable to provide direct proof of Judge Morse’s comments on May 23. No court reporter was present and there was no written order. However the previous order was for an update from Perlmutter, and the case is proceeding without any input from him or any other psychologist. There can be no doubt that he is out of the case.

I have not seen my kids since March 6. The reason is partially because Perlmutter refused to do an update, and because the court is reluctant to act without input from someone who has interviewed our kids.

Some of these documents are long and/or confusing. Please let me know if I can help.

Sincerely, ...

Normally my ex-wife would know nothing about this complaint, as it does not involve her and there is no obligation to notify her. However, I believe that an investigation like this should be public. It is one state agency investigating the incompetent and unethical practices of a state psychologist. This psychologist could have ruined dozens of lives with his incompetent and/or malicious practices. So I am happy to let my ex-wife or anyone else file whatever objections they please. I think that Ken Perlmutter's other victims should tell their stories to the state agency.

Mars Needs Moms

I missed the movie Mars Needs Moms, and so did many others:

Robert Zemeckis’ motion-capture pic was one of the most expensive bombs in Hollywood history, costing at least $150 million to produce and grossing $21.4 million at the domestic box office. Overseas, it didn’t do much better, grossing $17.6 million for a total $39 million.

If the movie had been successful, the sequels were going to be titled Mars Needs Lawyers, and Mars Needs Psychologists.

Baby killer walks

I was wrong about Casey Anthony. I thought that the jury would be impressed by the govt expert witnesses with the fancy CSI arguments, and repulsed by the lying and irresponsible mom. We still don't know who the dad was, as the only DNA test was negative. I don't think that a mom should be allowed to keep a baby if she cannot name the father.

A reader sends Central Coast Has 2 Casey Anthony-Like Cases. These are moms who murder their babies, in immigrant and illegal alien communities.

A reader sends an essay on How Can We Get Men to Do More at Home?:

A recent article in a series in The International Herald Tribune noted that while German and other European women are making strides in education and in the workplace, their professional advancement stalls once they have children. They opt out of the job market, or seek part-time work, just as they do in the United States, as well as in Canada and Australia.

The reasons are similar: the availability and affordability of child care are cited as factors, combined with the hard-to-quantify traditional ideas about parenting, housework and the need to care for elderly parents. ...

If greater equality between men and women in the work force has not led to greater equality in child-rearing and other domestic responsibilities, what will?

I would be inclined to say nothing, but the Europeans are way ahead of us. The caption says:

A year ago, Fredrik Friberg, a Swedish civil servant, said that he was complimented for cutting his work hours to raise his child, but that his wife, who did the same thing, was not.

The German Green party is on the cutting edge of feminism, environmentalism, and progressivism, and it is demanding better sex toys.

The hyenas are ahead of the Germans and Swedes, as the NY Times explains. They have reached the pinnacle of female sexual empowerment. I cannot say any more in a family blog.

Trusting a child psychologist

This is a doctored version of the editorial cartoon in last Sunday's Santa Cruz Sentinel. I was amused because the name is that same as a local court psychologist.

Actually, I would not call him a child psychologist. He does make child custody decisions for the court, but he has no training in child psychology. His expertise is in advising me on coming out of the closet. Like many psychologists, he went into the field into to help resolve his own personal problems. You would not voluntarily let this guy advise your kids.

Pegs and Holes

I mentioned 4 months ago a controversial post by the Dilbert cartoonist, Scot Adams. He has done it again, with this:

If you have a round peg that doesn’t fit in a square hole, do you blame the peg or the hole? You probably blame neither. We don’t assign blame to inanimate objects. ...

Now consider human males. No doubt you have noticed an alarming trend in the news. Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world. The current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior. That seems right. Obviously we shouldn’t blame the victims. I think we all agree on that point. Blame and shame are society’s tools for keeping things under control.

The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?

The way society is organized at the moment, we have no choice but to blame men for bad behavior.

The feminist blogs have posted scathing attacks, and Adams has defended himself.

Dilbert is not hard to understand. He is a cartoonist. He tries to be thought-provoking and entertaining at the same time. He finds humor in looking at the world in unconventional ways. He is often trying to make a point, but he does not have a larger agenda.

And yet the feminists who attack him cannot seem to understand what he is saying. Some were offended that he might be making excuses for the French Socialist IMF banker DSK who was accused of rape, but DSK was released today based on evidence that the accuser was paid to frame him.

I think that the attacks on Adams have only proved the validity of his points. His latest post has a disclaimer for the feminists who do not understand him, but I doubt that it will make any difference.

The pegs and holes problem starts in kindergarten. I have girls, not boys, so I was not complaining. Their schools were structured around things that girls want to do, not boys. Only about half the time was devoted to some sort of learning. The rest of the time some female teacher was leading an activity that was primarily of interest to the girls.

Needless to say, the problem extends to the family court, and all of its psychologists, social workers, mediators, etc.

The Science of Fatherhood

Scientific American has some new articles on fatherhood.

Asking for ex-parte motion

In Wednesday's hearing, my ex-wife complained to the judge that I had filed a complaint against the court psychologist, and that the state had asked for a copy of his report. She said that she would have not even known about it, except that all the info was posted on this blog. She said that I needed the permission of the court to comply with the California Dept. of Consumer Affairs request. Judge Morse indicated that she might issue a stay on release of the report until I could bring a motion for permission.

I replied that there is no law or obligation to get court permission for this. The judge conceded the point, and then suggested that my ex-wife bring an ex-parte motion to block me from cooperating with the state agency.

This is a new one for me. Normally a court proceeding requires the judge and jury to only hear issues with all parties present and giving their evidence and arguments. An ex-parte motion is a rare exception when one party has to make some sort of emergency temporary motion, and it is impossible for the court to hear both sides.

But here we were, both parties to the case, in court and willing to present our arguments. Instead of listening, the judge tells one party to bring an ex-parte motion! It was the legal equivalent of the judge saying, "George, I don't want to hear your side of the story. So please step outside of the courtroom while I rule against you."

My readers may say that they have also been backstabbed by the court, and in worse ways. I don't doubt it. I think that it is much worse that the court had a secret unrecorded interview with my kids a couple of weeks ago. But this is the first time I have heard of a judge suggesting an ex-parte motion while the other party was standing right there in the courtroom.