Racist rant goes viral

The UK Mirror newspaper reports:

A MUM was kept in custody for her own safety yesterday after a video allegedly showing her launching a racist rant was posted online.

Emma West, 34, appeared in court charged with a racially-aggravated public order offence. Magistrates denied her bail over fears of revenge attacks.

The clip shows a woman with a child sitting on her lap on a tram shouting at other passengers. At one point she declares they should go back to their own country, saying they’re not British because they are black.

Here is the video. She is being obnoxious, but she is not threatening the anybody. I guess there is no free speech in the UK. I never heard of anyone denied bail for a racist comment.

If she did this in the USA, she could not be prosecuted for her rant, but my guess is that someone would call CPS. She has a toddler on her lap, and someone would claim that she was endangered her child with her provocative comments. With mandatory reporting of suspicions, I am not so sure that she would be free to express her opinions.

Shaming single moms

Chateau Heartiste writes a blog under the slogan "where pretty lies perish". It is a crude and irreverant analysis of the human nature of male-female relationships. It is also brilliant, funny, and well-written. I don't know whether he is the last of a dying breed of neanderthals, or a prime example of a new generation of hedonists who are destroying modern civilization. Either way, he is always thought-provoking.

Currently he argues Why It’s Good To Shame Single Moms:

With all the data pointing to an entrenchment of epidemic-like proportions of single momhood in the U.S., it’s helpful to remind ourselves why this is so bad not only for the health of the nation and its posterity, but for the well-being of the children who suffer under a regime of single moms. As we are neck-deep in an era of selfishness, it’s no surprise that the scourge of single momhood leads the vanguard of cultural dissolution. At 70+% among black Americans, 50+% among Hispanics, and 30% among whites, we are heading for a future of grown-up bastard spawn bringing all their neuroses and dysfunction to bear on the social contract, which is already frayed beyond rescue.

Of course, middle-upper and upper class whites think they are immune to the tidal wave of illegitimacy, and so far they can take cold comfort in the fact that their rates are considerably lower than those of their lessers (you’ll never get them to admit they have lessers, but you can bet your bottom dollar that they *believe exactly that*.) However, strong social forces can work both up and down the class and race ladder, and it is entirely plausible that a dystopian event horizon, like widespread illegitimacy, that bellies up the lower and middle classes will eventually consume the upper classes as well, either directly by the osmosis of bad habits or indirectly by the levying of trust-destroying and community-fracturing Danegeld. ...

Boys of single moms are more likely to end up huffing paint under overpasses. Way to go, single moms.

Interestingly, the study claims girls do not suffer as much from missing fathers, but the metric used in the study was degree of delinquency, which would naturally favor girls since they are the sex less predisposed to criminal behavior, regardless of parental environment. Studies that have expanded the measured variables to include other dysfunctional behaviors find clear links between fatherlessness and sluttiness in teen girls. Mothers nurture, fathers guide. Both are required to fully form the child into a self-possessed adult.

How did we ever get to the point where single moms are praised? Our society would be much better off if single moms were shamed. Single moms are doing more damage to modern society than any other demographic group.

The most popular story on Huff Post is this:

CLEVELAND -- An Ohio third-grader who weighs more than 200 pounds has been taken from his family and placed into foster care after county social workers said his mother wasn't doing enough to control his weight.

The case is the first state officials can recall of a child being put in foster care strictly for a weight-related issue.

Lawyers for the mother say the county overreached when authorities took the boy last week. They say the medical problems he is at risk for do not yet pose an imminent danger.

A spokeswoman says the county removed the child because caseworkers saw his mother's inability to reduce his weight as medical neglect.

Saying that he was "taken from his family" is a little exaggerated. He had already been separated form his dad and was being reared by a single mom. The problem here is that there is no longer any shame in being a single mom on welfare with a fat kid.

Naming the accuser

A reader asks how I know who complained to CPS about me.

I first heard about a CPS investigation when I posted this Nov. 9, 2007 summary of a CPS agent interviewing me. A week later, the Sheriff seized my kids, based on an ex-parte motion from my ex-wife, Julie Travers.

The CPS agent, Sally Mitchell, later released a report to the public record. I posted it on the net, but later had to take it down. Some of my readers probably have copies of it. It describes a "reporting party" with a bunch of bizarre and false allegations, such as running over dogs with my car. Mitchell later implied that the reporting party had some connection to the school, but there was a false allegation about me being banned the classroom, making it unlikely that she talked to either of my kids' teachers. I had recently volunteered in their classrooms, and was obviously not banned. Mitchell notified my ex-wife of the investigation, but did not ask her for an interview.

At a later custody trial, my ex-wife testified that she called CPS with her own complaint, the day before she brought her motion to seize our kids. She implied that she did not really agree with the previous complaint, but wanted to use the opportunity to gain sole custody. She did not say what her complaint was, except that we missed one day of school.

It was a very radical step for Cmr. Irwin H. Joseph to order the sheriff to seize my kids, on the ex-parte request of a bitter ex-wife who wanted sole custody. The CPS report did not recommend any action to the court, and Mitchell admitted that she did not get any adult confirmation of any of the allegations. None of the allegations involved health or safety or any cause for immediate concern. Cmr. Joseph made it clear on Dec. 6, 2007 that his action was entirely contingent on being led to believe that a forthcoming CPS report would justify what he had done.

The only allegations that Judge Heather D. Morse recognized in her April 7, 2011 decision were (cited in this motion):

the court asked George how he thought his children might feel about experiences being adduced into evidence, such as enrolling them in a math test which was reportedly way above their abilities; and resetting their alarm clock which prevented them from being prepared for school.

My ex-wife obviously complained about me to CPS, and then made some sort of back-room deal with Mitchell. Sometimes I say that, and one of my readers accuses me of having a conspiracy theory, and not having proof of the deal. I don't know why he would doubt the deal, as the above events could not have happened without a CPS deal. But if you don't want to believe in a deal, that's fine with me, as the parties are even more culpable if there was no deal.

The above story is why I say that my ex-wife made a bogus complaint to CPS. She did take the initiative to call CPS on Nov. 15, 2011 with a complaint about me, and she used it the next day to make a motion to gain temporary sole custody of our two kids. I say that the complaint was bogus because it was not about anything that would be considered abuse or neglect under California law. Mitchell admitted, under oath, that there were no allegations that would give CPS any jurisdiction over the case. And the psychologist that Joseph appointed to investigate the allegations, Ken Perlmutter, testified under oath that there was nothing that could be considered abuse under California law or psychology standards, and that he was unable to find anything wrong with my parenting practices. Every other witness also testified that there was no abuse.

It has now been over four years that my ex-wife got temporary sole custody pending an evaluation, and our kids are still living under temporary court orders.

Part of the problem is that no one will admit that the court has made a terrible mistake. At this point, I wish that I had made some identifiable mistake. Then the court could have ordered some sort of corrective measure. As it is, none of their experts has ever been able to identify anything that I have done wrong. So Judge Morse just continues to issue temporary orders, and ignore the fact that this entire mess is completely the result of a bogus CPS complaint from Julie Travers four years ago.

Accusing the Accuser

Here is today's NY Times ethicist advice about a false report to CPS:

The Ethicist
Accusing the Accuser
By ARIEL KAMINER
Published: November 25, 2011

Someone wrote an anonymous letter to the Administration for Children’s Services stating that I had physically abused my children on various occasions in broad daylight in my neighborhood. With nothing to hide, I allowed the A.C.S. to interview my children and their caregivers, and I was cleared. Against all odds, I then found out who wrote the letter. I’m mad, but I’m reluctant to turn her in lest she face a harsh penalty. Should I pursue the case or let karma do its job? ANONYMOUS

Getting the rude surprise of a lifetime, being accused of monstrous behavior and potentially seeing your own children removed from your care, you might wonder how much retribution it’s possible to enact. Instead you ask how much forbearance it’s ethical to show. I bet the A.C.S. caseworkers don’t hear that question very often.

It’s a crime to file a false report, but prosecutors rarely go after isolated offenses. So as a practical matter it might not be worth your time to turn your accuser in. But as an ethical matter, there are good reasons for you to seek justice.

False reports don’t just terrify the accused (and their families); they further strain an already overburdened system, diverting help from children who most need it. If this woman intentionally deceived investigators just to spite you, you should report her — quick, before she does it to someone else.

But can you be sure? As Michael J. Fagan, an A.C.S. spokesman, pointed out, your accuser might have thought she was doing the right thing. Perhaps she saw something ambiguous and drew a mistaken conclusion. Perhaps she, too, hesitated to speak lest you face a harsh penalty. If you don’t know what her motivation was, and if there is a chance that your awful experience has colored your judgment about her, then let the matter drop.

A system like ours, in which we rely on one another to sound the alarm when children are in danger, is bound to produce a few false positives. If every mistaken accuser got called before a jury, who would ever speak up?

We are becoming a society of snitches were anyone can make an anonymous report and cause misery to others without any accountability. The law and CPS protect the complainer's anonymity. Even this newspaper ethicist, who recognizes the harm from a false report, ends up saying that we should tolerate false reports.

As explained below, our justice system is based on our right to confront the witnesses against us. If I were reporting genuine abuse, then I would be willing to make a police report under my name and testify in court, just like any other crime. In a real court, mistaken accusers are called before the jury just like any other witness, and that is how it has worked for 220+ years.

In my case, I eventually learned that the bogus CPS report was made by Julie Travers, but she was never held accountable for what she did.

Right to confront witnesses

The LA Times reports:

Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court's most outspoken and combative conservative, is not often described as friendly to criminals.

But in recent years, Scalia has led an unusual pro-defendant faction at the high court in reversing convictions for murder, drug dealing, wife beating and drunken driving.

Next up in early December is a Chicago rapist who claims his 6th Amendment right to confront his accusers was violated because prosecutors did not put on the witness stand a lab technician from Maryland who conducted the DNA test that sent him to prison. ...

The 6th Amendment to the Constitution says the "accused shall enjoy the right … to be confronted with the witnesses against him." To Scalia, this clause not only gives defendants the right to challenge actual witnesses, but also the right to bar testimony from all those "witnesses" who did not or cannot testify in court. He takes this view even if the witness is dead. ...

In June, the court went one step further. The Scalia bloc, by a 5-4 vote, overturned the drunken-driving conviction of a New Mexico man because the lab analyst who testified about his blood alcohol did not actually work on the defendant's blood sample. ...

"This is not a left-right split. This is principle versus pragmatism," said University of Michigan law professor Richard Friedman. For Scalia, "this is all about adhering to originalism," regardless of whether the results seem strange.

This is not complicated. It is a core principle of the Bill of Rights, and in the founding of our republic. The state cannot convict someone based on a bunch of affidavits. The witnesses have to testify live in court, and answer questions.

The only bad part of this rule is that gangsters sometimes murder witnesses, and thereby eliminate their testimony.

Apparently some states think that certain prosecution witnesses should not have to testify. That is wrong. If they do not testify under oath, then they are not accountable for what they do. They must also be cross-examined to force them to explain their reasoning. Otherwise we would be headed to the day when a jury is asked to find a defendant guilty just because some nameless faceless lab technician says that he is guilty. That would not be a trial.

The family court tries to get away with relying on expert reports, whenever it can. These reports often result in a change of custody, even tho the report does not really explain the evidence for and against a change. Sometimes the experts are not really witnesses to anything. They are just quacks who collected some unsworn statements and give some conclusion about what the judge should do.

Lawyers call such statements conclusory. That word is not even in my dictionary, but lawyers use it all the time. It is not to be confused with conclusive. When a witness gives conclusive evidence, then that means proof of inncence or guilt. That is, the testimony gives a conclusion to the case.

But a conclusory statement is one that tries to give some sort of conclusion without supporting evidence. In a real court, testimony is dismissed as soon as the lawyer points out that it is conclusory. The quack court shrinks write conclusory reports that no legitimate judge would accept.

The right to confront witnesses against you in a criminal case is hanging on by a thread at the US Supreme Court. Someday, civilized societies will realize that family courts need to be following rules of evidence also.

Rant against local family court

One of my readers wrote this letter on what is wrong with the local family court. I don't know too much about her case, except that her grandson is being forced to take some psychotropic drug that doesn't even work. The know-nothing judges and know-nothing shrinks have no business making such a decision.

Ordering a drug might be justifiable if the child had some life-threatening condition and the parents were ignoring some medical necessity. But this child does not have an illness, the drug would not help if it did, and no physician has testified that the drug is necessary.

Here is her letter:

Superior Court of California, County of Santa Cruz
1 Second Street Watsonville, CA 95076

Case #FL 0xxxxx

Dear Judge Morse:

On October 9, 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed AB499 into law. Now 12 year old children have the right to get vaccinated against STDs without needing the permission of their parents. Yet, in Santa Cruz County a 13 year old boy held in bondage to the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency for 5 ½ years does not have the right to refuse an unnecessary drug that makes him sick.

Dan H., an Asperger boy, was born in 1998 to a mother who not only didn't know boys, didn't know anything about Asperger Syndrome. Fortunately for Dan, his Asperger father knew about both. Unfortunately for Dan, Santa Cruz County, the Family Law Court, Judge John Salazar, and Judge Heather Morse have continuously contrived to keep the father from having any ability to protect his son.

Santa Cruz County is filled with people who lie and no one cares about that fact, nor do they make the liars prove their allegations. From Dan's mother who has lied in her many court documents, to the County Health Services doctor who, in 2006, persuaded the boy's parents to lie and say he was mentally ill in order to get him into a program which would bring the County more of the State MHSA funds. He still keeps the boy on an antipsychotic he knows makes the boy sick.

Also on the list of liars is the mother's lawyer who freely puts down his client's falsehoods, while adding his own. The father's do-nothing, question-nothing lawyer brings a colossal fraud into the picture with her colleague/friend who calls herself a `Parent Coordinator', though the Court Clerk says the County has no such program, nor is he even aware of this `PC' and her program. She lies about her credentials, one of which is from an unaccredited school. I wrote to you, Judge Morse, asking you about the Santa Cruz County's `PC' program, which this person says she worked on creating, and also about who the supposed `PCs' were. You sent me a very short note saying `The Court has looked into your concerns.' That was all. What did this mean? That you had also found the program and the `PCs' to be bogus, as I had?

Another prevaricator in the County is the psychologist used by the County in the majority of custody cases. You told the parents that if they chose this evaluator, they would have to abide by his ruling. You are the judge, yet you gave over this responsibility to an ignorant subordinate. This man who is knowledgeable about helping himself and others out of the closet, knows nothing about children, families, and Asperger Syndrome. I have lived all my life with Aspies; half my family are or were Asperger. The support group O.A.S.I.S. says the true expert on Aspergers is the person who has raised an Asperger child. Three of my four children are Asperger: I am an expert and I don't need a doctorate from a bogus, non-accredited online school based in the Cayman Islands. Being able to quote from DSM-IV doesn't make one an expert.

This evaluator's report was filled with the mother's lies. He spoke to very few people, one being the children's therapist whose lies he quotes. The evaluator seems to have great respect for the `PC' and her lies. She is allowed to file a `confidential' report. Where are his ethics or those of all the others? I was sitting in the Family Law Court waiting room when the father's and the mother's lawyers were discussing who to choose for an evaluator. One was Elizabeth Lee, the other was this man. They chose the latter. They chose him knowing what they'd get: he gives custody to the mothers and makes the fathers take parenting classes. Mothers don't have to take classes. Apparently they know everything about raising children, even if they neglect their children, drink, and have live-in alcoholic lovers. The father's lawyer was the same lawyer for the two mothers in two other cases that the evaluator handled. She defends her female clients, threatening the fathers with loss of custody. Her male client, Dan's father, she doesn't defend and tells him to do what the `PC' and the other side wants, because he `could lose custody.'

When preparing her client for his meeting with the evaluator, my son's lawyer said that the evaluator `didn't want to read much,' so she wanted him to submit only the one page questionnaire. She said that he should come in to her office so she could `help' him with it. She gave him no copy of what was submitted. The mother's lawyer, on the other hand, had her submit 175 pages! These were filled with the usual lies, beginning with the first page where he pointed out all the letters that `were written by me.'! In putting together the report for his slipshod evaluation, (he spent all of 14 ½ hours on the entire process) he made things easier on himself by copying freely the lies the mother had in the auxiliary pages to her questionnaire. As the mother's lies, the therapist's lies, the so-called `PC's' lies were all about me, shouldn't he ethically have spoken with me? Certainly he was able to. But speaking to more people would have cut into his bottom line and he would have gotten less money. The outcome of his `evaluation' was as the two lawyers wanted: custody for the mother. The evaluator gave no reasons for taking away the father's legal right to oversee the health of his son, or my right to visit with my grandchildren, nor were any reasons asked for by you, your Honor.

The mother recently had her 15 year old Asperger daughter put on Zoloft and the therapist thinks she should also be on a drug for ADHD. Having her children on drugs is exactly what all these people were aiming at. She can do whatever she wants and one of the things the County wants is that the boy should stay in the County's Mental Health Services program and keep bringing in the lucrative MHSA funds.

But worst of all in Santa Cruz County are the judges. It's one thing for worthless lawyers to not question what is said and not defend their clients. It's another for judges not to question or examine what comes before them. There is no `Best Interests of the Children' in Santa Cruz County, because the children don't matter. Lies prevail and children can be poisoned by unnecessary drugs. All of this colluding was about me because I questioned the treatment of my beloved grandson and wrote 4 letters. The First Amendment and the Constitution don't have any value in Santa Cruz County. Rather than being direct and aiming their SLAPP lawsuit against me, they punished my son who, as the mother's lawyer stated in court on Dec. 3, 2009: `I appreciate Mr. H. He's a good dad. Rebecca respects him. She relies on him. She needs him to be in her children's lives'. No one ever had the courage to speak with me, citing only the letters I wrote and all the lies the mother, et al, said about me. My son was punished because he was supposed `to control his mother and keep her from writing letters.' At least Judge John Salazar had the decency to read my letters: `I actually agree with her. She's a very good writer.'

So, why do we even need Family Law Court judges? They don't do their jobs. They fob them off on inept and unqualified subordinates. They wait for incompetent lawyers to come up with a done deal to give them, one they need only sign off on. Your Honor ignored and refused to acknowledge your responsibility to this father, his two children and their grandmother, and for what reasons?

[name omitted]

CC: Judge John Salazar
[2 local lawyers]
Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye
Governor Jerry Brown
Attorney General Kamala Harris

She is right, but this letter is falling on deaf ears.

Drugging the irritable boy

A local grandmother filed this complaint against a local psychiatrist. It seems to me that the core of the problem here is that the schools will not do anything to accommodate a child with minor special needs. They want to treat the kid just like every other kid, or get the kid declared handicapped so that they can qualify for special govt programs. But once the parents acquiesce to that, they are going down the rabbit_hole. You might want to read this letter before you go there.

September 6, 2011
Mental Health Services Oversight & Accountability Commission
1300 17th Street, Suite 1000 Sacramento, CA 95811

Robert L. Brown, MD (C50186) is a psychiatrist with the Santa Cruz County Mental Health Services Agency. In 2006, he persuaded my son and his ex- wife to say that their, then, 7 year old son was mentally ill. The boy is Asperger Syndrome, a mental condition, not a mental disorder, let alone a mental illness. They did this because Santa Cruz County and the Pajaro Valley School District make no provision for Aspergers and the Rio del Mar Elementary School did not know what to do with him. The parents were told that if they took the boy to the county he could get in the new MHSA program. They would be able to get all the help they needed and they wouldn't have to pay for it. They weren't told, until they met Robert Brown, that their son would have to be declared mentally ill. Brown persuaded them to do this.

Once he got the boy into the program, Robert Brown prescribed Risperdal. Obviously, Dr. Brown knows nothing about Aspergers. Because it's a condition, drugs, especially an antipsychotic, would have no effect. An anti-anxiety drug can help Aspies with their anxiety, but that's all. Aspies need training to deal with society, not drugs. At least half my extended family are, or were, Aspergers; none was ever on drugs. But, once the boy was on Risperdal, Robert Brown would not deviate from his prescribing. He has the mother's approval, but not the father's.

Dr. Brown has been prescribing Risperdal for this little boy for 5-1/2 years. He sees the boy 3 or four times a year to order blood tests and write a new prescription. The boy, now 13, has had significant side effects. The father reported these to Janssen (subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson). The Janssen representative said that the boy had all the side effects exhibited by 10% of Risperdal users and that the `treatment should be stopped.' But Dr. Brown has ignored all these side effects and continues to prescribe this dangerous antipsychotic. He needs to keep boy on the drug and have him declared mentally ill for the boy to continue with the Santa Cruz County MHSA program. It's not just the 4 times a year Brown sees the child, the boy has been seen by a myriad of counselors, MFTs, and psychologists over the last
5-1/2 years. These latter are supposed to help the boy with his behavior, but they don't realize that the boy's behavior is all the side effects of Risperdal.

Janssen says that Risperdal is to be used `short- term' for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the `irritability' of autism. It's also to be monitored every three weeks. Dr. Brown has never done this. After 5-1/2 years this little boy has lost all his self-confidence and has become even more anxious. He has chronic sinusitis, has frequent stomach upsets and vomiting. His usual mental state is fuzzy, and frustration can make him erupt. They have kept him in Special Ed, something the experts say should not happen, as Aspies are very bright. He's lost the friends from the mainstream second grade class, and now only interacts with a kleptomaniac/compulsive eater, an autistic boy who doesn't speak, and an emotionally disturbed boy.

Santa Cruz County officials from the Mental Health Services Agency, CPS, and the Family Law Court have worked together to keep the boy in the MHSA program. The father is allowed no voice. The mother, who works for the county, is the only one allowed to speak and she denies that the boy has any side effects. She wants him quiet in his downstairs bedroom. The mother sued the father for full custody (didn't get it), but the father's lawyer, who doesn't support him in anything, told him not to fight it - `[he] could lose custody' - and had him go with a Parent Coordinator. This person with dubious credentials, a friend and colleague of the father's lawyer, sided with the mother and always against the father. She saw the boy once 3 years ago and put together a court order, signed by a judge who questioned none of it. There is no `Best Interest of the Child' in Santa Cruz County. The PC never spoke with Dr. Brown, yet said that the father must follow Dr. Brown's treatment. There was a second doctor who said that Risperdal should not be used. In the court order, the PC said that this doctor's `report' should be followed. However, the PC had told this doctor NOT to write a report, and the doctor did what she said. All the while, Robert Brown is ignoring the boy's side effects.

In addition to the unethical PC, Santa Cruz County has a couple of psychologists they use to do `Full Custody Evaluations.' One, a gay man who has spent years helping himself and others out of the closet, is, nevertheless, considered an expert on children and families. They use him over and over. His MO is to give custody to mothers (in this case, the mother drinks and has a live in alcoholic boyfriend.) But the mother wants to keep the boy on Risperdal and in the MHSA program, and the biased psychologist is in agreement with this. The fathers also have to take parenting classes, but the mothers never do. This psychologist, for no reason, gives full legal custody to the mother: she will, after all, keep drugging the boy. The father has been made impotent in matters of his child's health.

The Santa Cruz County Family Court is notorious for sitting on their hands and letting the lawyers and psychologists come up with their own plan, which the Family Court judge, unquestioningly, signs. Children have no rights to be drug free in Santa Cruz County. Not only does the boy not need the MHSA programs, his being in them denies the services to someone who really needs them. Dr. Brown is part and parcel to this waste. How many thousands of dollars have been spent on this one little boy? Dr. Brown's salary in 2009 was $205,000; very high for a county salary. He wants to protect this money, of course, and the boy is an easy patient. In addition to Dr. Brown are all the counselors, etc. And a little boy has to pay the price of this hubris. Dr. Brown has been quoted as saying that `were [he, Brown] in the private sector, [he] would not have [the boy] as a patient.' A very curious thing to say.

Risperdal was FDA approved for kids in 2006:

Risperdal has been approved since 1993 for the short-term treatment of adults with schizophrenia, and since 2003 for the short-term treatment of adults with acute manic or mixed episodes associated with extreme mood swings.

The product’s effectiveness in the symptomatic treatment of irritability associated with pediatric autistic disorders was established in two 8-week, placebo-controlled trials in 156 patients aged 5 to 16 years, 90 percent of whom were 5-12 years old. The results, which were evaluated using two assessment scales, showed that children on Risperdal achieved significantly improved scores for certain behavioral symptoms of autism compared to children on placebo. The most common side effects of the use of Risperdal included drowsiness, constipation, fatigue and weight gain.

So if you have a kid who has some annoying behavior, you can put him on this drug. It has been tested in an 8-week study.

It seems to me that since the FDA only approved it for short-term treatment in adults, and it was only tested for 8 weeks in kids, then it should have only been approved for short-term treatment in kids. And it should never be given based on a court order or against the wishes of the parents. I post below a NY Times story about how the drug is overused on kids by non-parental authorities.

Finally, I will get flack for this, but I must comment on the complicity of a gay shrink in this. Forty years ago, aspergers kids were considered normal and homosexuals were considered to have a mental disorder. It was the opinion of the psychiatry profession that gays were the ones who needed drugs to stifle their impulses and control their behavior. Even the gay psychiatrists considered themselves disordered. Now they are drugging the aspies. This whole story seems like black people dressing up in KKK white sheets and lynching Mexican-Americans.

Federal judge should hear Arlington CPS case

The Washington DC examiner editorializes about a Virginia case:

One of the most disturbing stories I've ever written for The Washington Examiner was about a 3-week-old baby girl who was snatched from her mother's arms and placed in foster care by Arlington County Child Protective Services because she lost 10 ounces after birth. Baby Sabrina's story hit me hard in the gut because that could have been me; my youngest daughter lost a whole pound postpartum.

Newborn weight loss is normal, Sabrina was under a doctor's care and had even regained all of her lost birth weight when she was taken. Kit Slitor, a freelance video editor, and his wife, Nancy Hey, a federal employee, were never charged with or convicted of child abuse or neglect, and the Virginia Department of Social Services exonerated them of any wrongdoing. It didn't matter.

After doing everything social workers and the Arlington Domestic and Juvenile Relations Court, or DJR, demanded of them -- including home inspections, supervised visitation, and psychological testing -- their parental rights were terminated and Sabrina was put up for adoption. They spent more than $250,000 fighting for her, all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court, which declined to hear their case.

Four years later, their story still haunts me.

On Sept. 16, a class-action lawsuit modeled after a similar pleading in Massachusetts was filed in federal court in Alexandria on behalf of eight children -- including Sabrina -- who have been placed in foster care by Arlington County. ...

If social workers and judges can take your child away without due process, the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper the powerful can continue to ignore with impunity.

I think that my readers can answer that. Our Constitution is toilet paper, on these issues.

In another case, the feds have been forcibly giving anti-psychotic drugs to the 23-year-old shooter of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has, Jared Lee Loughner, and his lawyer is appealing. I mentioned this case before, as the big issue is whether the feds can drug him without due process. The Wash. Post reports:

Loughner lead attorney Judy Clarke said in Monday’s brief that their client has been denied a prompt review for the “four- to five-drug cocktail currently forced on him” by the federal court.

“Did the prison deprive Mr. Loughner of liberty without due process by failing to seek a prompt hearing to determine whether continued forced medication was justified?” Clarke wrote. “Have the prison’s actions denied Mr. Loughner due process by forcibly medicating him without an adversarial hearing and a judicial determination that anti-psychotic medication is medically appropriate and, considering less intrusive means, essential to the safety of Mr. Loughner and others?”

The opening brief by Loughner’s lawyers challenging to the medication ruling wasn’t due until Nov. 28. It was unclear Monday why Clarke filed it a week early.

The funny part of this is that it is newsworthy that a lawyer filed court papers a week before the deadline. Nearly all lawyers wait until the deadline every time, regardless of whether there is any advantage to waiting.

Drugging our kids

The NY Times reports:

Foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychosis drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid, a new study suggests.

The report, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, is the first to investigate how often youngsters in foster care are given two antipsychotic drugs at once, the authors said. The drugs include Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa — among other so-called major tranquilizers — which were developed for schizophrenia but are now used as all-purpose drugs for almost any psychiatric symptoms.

“The kids in foster care may come from bad homes, but they do not have the sort of complex medical issues that those in the disabled population do,” said Susan dosReis, an associate professor in the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and the lead author.

The implication, Dr. dosReis and other experts said: Doctors are treating foster children’s behavioral problems with the same powerful drugs given to people with schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. “We simply don’t have evidence to support this kind of use, especially in young children,” Dr. dosReis said.

Psychiatrists used to claim that mental illnesses like schizophrenia were caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, usually involving serotonin or oxytocin. They also claimed that these new anti-psychotic drugs corrected these imbalances. But researchers have never been able to confirm that, and now these pills are handed out to anyone with a complaint.

Drugging foster kids does not do them any good. It is just a way for the govt authorities to label them as damaged, treat them as subhuman, and pretend that they are being helped.

Meanwhile, other parents cannot get enough ADHD drugs. NPR radio reports:

When it's time to renew her son's prescriptions for medicine to treat his attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Roxanne Ryan prepares for another wild goose chase.

The Philadelphia mother says she typically has to call around to 10 to 15 different pharmacies to find where the prescriptions can be filled. And when 10-year-old Sergey doesn't get his medication, he's a bundle of uncontained energy. ...

Whatever the root causes, for people like Roxanne Ryan in Philadelphia, it doesn't do much good to know there's plenty of medicine out there – somewhere. If she can't get what Sergey needs, she'll continue to give him the medication prescribed for her. (She was diagnosed with ADHD after he was – a not-uncommon story.)

"It's sacrificing so that my son can have," she says. "Every parent does that."

You might wonder why the drug industry would make all the drugs that they can sell. I think that the key is that ADHD drugs are addictive, and rationing drugs to addicted customers makes them want the drugs all the more.

There are no studies saying that the ADHD drugs work any better than a cup of coffee. This Philadelphia mom has the panic of a drug addict. Otherwise, she would just get a cup of coffee and not worry about it. As one ADD journalist explains:

The best of the addiction-based business models are "addiction-proof" addictive drug, and the Adderall story is at its core the saga of a nearly century-long quest for this unattainable ideal. Amphetamine salt -— Adderall’s active ingredient -— has been the subject of heady dispute within the medical profession since the drug company Smith, Kline and French began peddling the stuff in 1935, but for decades just about the only thing medical community generally agreed about was that it was not addictive. The SKF sales department did, however, have a term for the loyalty it engendered among consumers: “stick.” ...

Today the $4 billion ADD drug industry is about ten times its 1996 size, and Adderall is the reigning market leader.

I think that this is evil. More and more, I think that there is a systematic effort in our society to break down the family. To accomplish this, they do everything they can to put kids under the control of judges, psychiatrists, social workers, and drugs. It used to be that when a mom had a 10-year-old boy who is "a bundle of uncontained energy", the dad would teach him to play football or work on the farm to burn up that energy and make a man out of him. But now our society has convinced this mom to kick out her husband, drug the boy, and let him get fat and lazy. She even brags about what a good self-sacrificing parent she is, because she shares her amphetamines with him.

I will post a letter this week that details how the Santa Cruz court has forced unnecessary and harmful drugs on a boy, in an attempt to control him. Some of you will probably say that it a story of incompetent but well-meaning do-gooders. I don't buy it. They are evil, and they have a purpose.

Explaining a bruise

This black eye was caused by a soccer ball to the face. The picture drew hundreds of comments from women who have accidental bruises, and then find themselves repeatedly explaining to people that they do not need to be rescued from the violent boyfriend. No matter what she says, people assume that the boyfriend beat her up and she is lying to protect him.

What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering

The NY Times reports:

What they did not get, for all that time and money, was much practical training. Law schools have long emphasized the theoretical over the useful, with classes that are often overstuffed with antiquated distinctions, like the variety of property law in post-feudal England. ... “They are lawyers in the sense that they have law degrees, but they aren’t ready to be a provider of services.” ...

Consider, for instance, Contracts, a first-year staple. It is one of many that originated in the Langdell era and endures today. In it, students will typically encounter such classics as Hadley v. Baxendale, an 1854 dispute about financial damages caused by the late delivery of a crankshaft to a British miller.

Here is what students will rarely encounter in Contracts: actual contracts, the sort that lawyers need to draft and file. Likewise, Criminal Procedure class is normally filled with case studies about common law crimes — like murder and theft — but hardly mentions plea bargaining, even though a vast majority of criminal cases are resolved by that method.

If you hire a lawyer for a family court case, do not expect him to apply anything he learned at law school. If he paid attention during his evidence or constitutional law classes, he would have learned a bunch of rules that the family court judges ignore anyway.

That is not to say that a lawyer is totally useless. He ought to have the experience to know how to file court papers. He might know which court evaluators have prejudices in your favor. He might tell you that the system has a vice-grip on your balls and there is nothing you can do about it. Or he might take all your money and let you figure it out for yourself.

Family court secrecy

A front page NY Times story exposes a big family court flaw:

Today, the culture of secrecy has hardly budged. Leah A. Hill, a Fordham Law School professor who has written about and practiced in New York Family Courts, said the courts were largely as unaccountable today as they had ever been, even though they can hold a central place in the lives of poor New Yorkers.

“There hasn’t really been a public discourse about what goes on in Family Court, and part of the reason is that it is a closed institution,” Professor Hill said.

Here is the story:

New York State’s Family Courts were ordered to be opened to the public with much fanfare in 1997, supposedly allowing anyone to witness the cases of domestic violence, foster care and child neglect that inch through by the hundreds of thousands every year. But now, 14 years later, the Family Courts remain essentially, almost defiantly, closed to the general public.

Recent visits to the courts across New York City revealed officials and security officers routinely disregarding the open-courts rule in ways both large and small, direct and implied, insistent and even hostile.

Some courtrooms were locked, and many were marked with “stop” and “do not enter” signs. Court officers stationed at courtroom doors repeatedly barred a visitor, sometimes with sarcasm or ridicule, frequently demanding to know who he was and what he was doing. Armed court officers at times appeared so rattled by a visitor’s efforts to enter courtrooms that, in several instances, a group of them nervously confronted the visitor, their holsters in easy reach. ...

In Brooklyn, a judge, Michael Katz, was quickly alerted to a visitor who had managed to slip briefly into a seat. “These proceedings are generally confidential,” the judge said.

But they are not, according to the law. ...

American legal principles have long favored open courts as a check on government, and New York law has specifically said for more than a century that “the sittings of every court within the state shall be public.”

But by 1997, the Family Courts had been closed for decades, with rare exceptions. Critics said the chaos of the courts was amplified by their secrecy — a veil that had grown over the years with the support of many of the courts’ judges, lawyers and social-agency representatives. Closed courtrooms, critics argued, kept hidden the courts’ struggles, as well as the sometimes controversial ways they dealt with those who ended up in the resource-starved system plagued by delays.

In Santa Cruz, the family court is open to the public, altho I was once asked to leave someone else's trial. But it is still very secretive about evaluations and other back-room deals that are so important to the process.

I would like to put a webcam in the family court, and broadcast proceeding on the internet. If people saw how really bad the system is, it would have to change. It is worse that what you expect. Just sit in a court sometime, and find out.

The article has some excellent comments, such as this:

These courts are closed so that no one sees the justice taking place. There are child abuse proceedings dragging on where the only injury to a child is a mark or only on the basis of a child's words. There are child support proceedings taking place where men are presumed to always lie about their income. There are custody cases where children are flipped from one parent to another without a hearing. There are domestic violence cases taking place where men are always deemed inherently violent and the woman's words are used as evidence.

The apparent goal of this courtroom secrecy is the imposition of government will upon the public at its roots: the family. There is a preference for the creation of single parent homes where natural vulnerabilities of single parents are further exploited. There is a zealous desire to stamp out violence against women to such an extent that even illegal alien women who claim domestic violence are able to circumvent deportation proceedings and level horrendous charges against their American men. Children are used to build a case through their voluntary hospital admissions into psychiatric wards for the creation of reports of abuse.

There is also a hiding of biased methodologies. Judges determine who the winner of a case is sometimes by mere intuition. Then they start to sanitize the record by precluding the loser's documents and experts. They bolster the winner's case by allowing the winner's documents and experts into evidence. For example, in IDV cases, crisis center advocates will take the stand and offer expert testimony on issues they have no background on.

The most important aspect of this system of courts is that by the removal of a child from a parent, families are made to spend all their money on lawyers and white collar professionals for their kid's return to the home. Hence secrecy leads to enhanced income production for industry members and the statutes that guide all this were created at the very top of political echelons.

That is what is wrong with the family court, in 4 paragraphs.

The broccoli test

Harvard law professor Einer Elhauge writes a NY Times op-ed in support of Obamacare:

Opponents of the new mandate complain that if Congress can force us to buy health insurance, it can force us to buy anything. They frequently raise the specter that Congress might require us to buy broccoli in order to make us healthier. However, that fear would remain even if you accepted their constitutional argument, because their argument would allow Congress to force us to buy broccoli as long as it was careful to phrase the law to say that “anyone who has ever engaged in any activity affecting commerce must buy broccoli.”

That certainly sounds like a stupid law. But our Constitution has no provision banning stupid laws. The protection against stupid laws that our Constitution provides is the political process, which allows us to toss out of office elected officials who enact them. This is better than having unelected judges decide such policy questions, because we cannot toss the judges out if we disagree with them.

He uses broccoli as an example because of the obvious absurdity of any lawmaker or judge trying to dictate a broccoli policy. But I really did have a court psychologist take me to task for feeding my kids broccoli. He recommended that I be ordered to consult a dietician to determine whether my vegetable rotation would be acceptable to the family court.

I don't know about Elhauge's Obamacare analysis, but he is right about the absurdity of broccoli law. If it were really desirable to have govt oversight of a parent's vegetable rotation, then our elected officials should pass some such stupid law, assuming that they have the constitutional authority. The last thing we want is some unelected judge deciding broccoli policy on his own.

It seems as if I am belaboring the obvious, but I have gotten into many discussions about the authority of the family court, and heard someone say something like, "What's wrong with a disinterested expert applying common sense to force a parent to improve?" These so-called experts nearly always make things worse.

To placate my more liberal readers, I am not going to mention the psychologist's religion or sexual orientiation, but he was the one who was fussy about how I brushed my daughter's hair. Elhauge is a first-generation Argentine-American, and I don't know his religion or sexual orientation.

Wrong lesson from Penn State

The LA Times reports:

Outrage over the Penn State child sex-abuse scandal has led to calls for federal legislation that would require anyone witnessing child abuse to report it to law enforcement or a child protection agency.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) announced plans Wednesday to introduce the Child Protection Act, which would compel states to enact child-abuse reporting laws or risk losing some federal aid. States would set the penalties for people who fail to report abuse.

A similar bill, the Speak Up to Protect Every Abused Kid Act, was introduced Wednesday by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). ...

Thirty-two states do not require all adults to report suspected child abuse or neglect, according to Casey's office. Instead, many states have in place a requirement that people with regular contact with children, such as healthcare providers and teachers, must report child abuse.

Sigh. That is the lesson they draw from Penn State?

The Democrats will use any excuse to subvert the family, and put people under the control of social service agencies. Boxer is a San Francisco Jew, Casey is a Pennsylvania Catholic, facing reelection. Is that relevant? Maybe or maybe not. Boxer has all the same anti-family political views that other Jewish Democrats have. Casey is probably trying to avoid insinuations that he is soft on child molesters like Joe Paterno, the bishop, and other Pennsylvania Catholics. I expect a reader to point out that there are lots of other bad politicians, besides Jews, Californians, Catholics, and Democrats.

The article goes on:

A Penn State assistant football coach who, according to a grand jury report, saw Sandusky raping a boy in the football team’s showers has been widely criticized for not reporting the incident directly to police. He did report it to the university. In an email obtained by the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, the assistant coach, Mike McQueary, said that he did discuss the incident with police and stopped the assault.

If that is correct, then there was no failure to report. There was a failure to act by the police. Even the current Sandusky indictment required a 3.5 year investigation. So the DA failed to act for 3.4 years. This proposed law would not have helped the Penn State situation at all.

What this law will do is to encourage busybodies to meddle in the lives of others, and for CPS social workers and other troublemakers to expand their authority.

Five Jewish stereotypes

This is a touchy subject, but here are five Jewish stereotypes:

1. Matriarchy. Under Jewish law, Jewish identity is defined by maternal ancestry. The Jewish mother stereotype generally involves a nagging, overprotective, manipulative, controlling, smothering, and overbearing mother or wife, who persists in interfering in her children's lives long after they have become adults.
   
2. Emotional dependence on outside psychotherapists and belief in therapism. From ancient rabbis to Sigmund Freud to Woody Allen, Jews are famous for believing people are dysfunctional emotional wrecks who need outside guidance to manage their lives.
   
3. Opposition to Christian family values. Whenever an American politician extols the merits of family values, about 90% of the Jews vote against him. This happens even when the politician is firmly pro-Israel.
   
4. Greed. From Shakespeare's Shylock to Bernie Madoff, Jews are famous for preying on human trust and vulnerability, and extracting every dollar they can.
   
5. Emasculated boys. The nice Jewish boy stereotype is that of an emasculated neurotic wimp who is especially vulnerable to domination and manipulation by women, including his possessive and infantilizing Jewish mother as well as the Jewish-American princess whose consumption he slaves to bankroll.

In contrast, John Wayne symbolized American ideals such as rugged individualism, emotional restraint, and physical aggression, and Leave It to Beaver exalted traditional American familialism and the nuclear family.

Jews themselves acknowledge most of these stereotypes. Glenn Sacks writes:

Why didn't I marry a Jewish woman? The reason I lost interest in many Jewish women was the generally contemptuous, belittling, and bigoted attitude that so many of them have towards men.

Lots of Jews don't match these stereotypes at all, of course. About 25% of them even vote Republican.

Commissioner Irwin H. Joseph ordered a child custody evaluation by Kenneth B. Perlmutter, a Palo Alto psychologist whose personality, attitude, and opinions matched all of those stereotypes. Perlmutter wrote the court order that took away my joint legal custody of my kids, and charged me $28,000. Joseph rubber-stamped it. Joseph and Perlmutter are common Jewish surnames.

When I asked Perlmutter, under oath, for the basis of his conclusions, he admitted that they were not based on any legal or psychological principles, and that he had no evidence of any validity to his method. So why did he do it? If he gave some reason other than his personal prejudices, then maybe I would take that at face value, but he did not.

As noted below, the psychology profession is dominated by Jews, and an unethical quack like Perlmutter would have been run out of town if it were not for other Jewish psychologists and court officials who approve of what he does.

If I had a Mormon evaluator who applied Mormon law against me, then I would complain about Mormon influence on the court.

If I had a math-phobic social worker complain that teaching math to a girl was child abuse, then I would complain about that. (That is more or less what happened, and I have complained about it on this blog.)

I know that this is politically incorrect subject matter, but I disagree with my kids being taken away from me, and I would like to address the reasons for that happening. It seems to me that a big factor is the prejudice of Jewish psychologists. Am I wrong?

I am trying to get at the root of the problem. Several of my readers argue that the shrinks are just incompetent and greedy, and not subject to any other biases. I used to think that, but I don't anymore. They are ideologically driven to destroy American values.

New court motion

I just filed a court motion for better child custody and/or visitation, even tho Judge Heather D. Morse said not to for two years. She said that the kids need a break from the litigation.

Her argument does not make any sense. My kids are not getting a break. They have been put court supervision for the last 4 years, while the court has only issued temporary orders.

Here the case background I filed, with some names changed.

Case history
This case began in 2003 with a signed marital settlement agreement for 50-50 shared joint child custody of our two daughters. Jill made a motion for sole legal custody in 2004, but a full custody trial in 2005 resulted in a permanent order for 50-50 joint legal and physical custody.

Jill got temporary sole physical custody in Nov. 2007 as the result of an ex parte motion alleging emotional abuse, and Cmr. Joseph ordered a psychological evaluation to investigate the allegations and make recommendations. When he refused to appoint a psychologist, I appealed, and the 6th District ruled that there was indeed a final permanent child custody determination in 2005, but that the allegations constituted a sufficient change in circumstances for a temporary order pending the evaluation.

Ken Perlmutter eventually did the evaluation in early 2010. He did not find any abuse, or any other problem with our four years of joint custody. He said that we had no psychological disorders and no need for counseling. He said that Jill is not any better parent than I am, and he disagreed with how the court has handled the case. He recommended a six-month visitation plan, and suggested going back to him for an update. That plan ended in Fall 2010.

We had a trial on several days from Nov. 2010 to Jan. 2011 where Jill and her witnesses were invited to present whatever evidence they had against returning to joint custody, and to say what changes would be required of me, if any.

An April 2011 order upheld Perlmutter’s recommendation, but did not disturb the permanent 50-50 custody determination of 2005. Jill’s subsequent motion for permanent sole custody was denied.

We are currently operating under temporary orders, as we have since Nov. 2007. Jill has permitted some visits with [local court babysitter] supervising. She does not know why the visits are supervised, and has not reported any problems. Visitation is at Jill’s discretion.

Testimony and findings
All witnesses testified that our kids love me and want a relationship with me. Perlmutter's report said:

A key and incontrovertible finding in this evaluation is that these children love and want a relationship with their father. [p.38, start of last paragraph]

All witnesses agreed that there has been no abuse, and there is no threat of abuse.

All witnesses agreed that there are no psychological disorders, and there is no recommendation for counseling. There is no testimony that anything would be gained by counseling.

No witness testified that Jill is any better parent than I am. Perlmutter testified that the chief difference between Jill and me was the court has wrongly given her temporary sole custody:

11 Q. And did you find evidence favoring one parent
12 over the other?
13 A. I found existence of what the current
14 situation is. She's not a better parent than you.
15 She's not -- they are not more in love with her than
16 you. They've developed a different relationship with
17 her based on the fact that you've spent minimum time
18 with them over the last two and a half years. [June depo., p.94]

The findings from the April 2011 order after hearing were:
1. George is to follow Perlmutter's plan and to read a book. (Completed in 2010.)
2. George is to request an update from Perlmutter. (Done, but he refused to do it.)
3. “George's daughters have a resilient love for their father and still wish to have a relationship with him, but on their terms and not his. They hope he can change.”
4. George is “physically incapable of perceiving why he was being prevented from having unsupervised time with his children.”
5. “the court finds that the parties' time and money could be better spent to improve the parental relationships while there is still time to do so.”

I don't see how anyone can read this and think that the court has been reasonable, or that the kids need a break from litigation.

Penn State scandal

The hot news story is the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State. Coach Joe Paterno's reputation has been destroyed faster than anyone I've seen, without ever being committed of a crime.

Sandusky is the child molester and Penn State fired him back in 1999. So what does this scandal have to do with Penn State? The complaint against Penn State officials is that they should have called CPS based on hearsay and suspicions about Sandusky.

I think that CPS is evil. Child molesters are also evil. University officials are usually spinelss jerks. But I don't see where the officials did wrong in this case.

After some 1998 allegations, they confronted Sandusky and got him to admit to inappropriate behavior. They turned the case over to the police, but there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. They fired him. Most of the blame on the Penn State officials is based on their handling of a 2002 allegation.

My theory is that McQueary is lying about that 2002 incident. He says that he witnesses a brutal rape of a 10-year-old boy in the shower, and he walked away without doing anything. I say Sandusky was showering inappropriately, but not committing sodomy. Years later, the DA puts the heat on McQueary and tells him that they need his testimony to put away a child molester. He cooperates. Then the DA says that they’ve widened the investigation to nail officials in a cover-up. McQueary starts to get cold feet. The DA threatens to charge McQueary with failure to report, unless he testifies against Paterno and Curley. McQueary agrees, in exchange for immunity from prosecution and anonymity in the grand jury report. McQueary complies with DA pressure to exaggerate the allegations.

I think that it is pretty crazy to blame someone for not calling CPS in 2002, when no one knows what happened, or who the boy was, or what was said about it. It is also pretty crazy for prosecutors to base their whole case on a witness who, by his own admission, walked away from a child rape without intervening or reporting it.

The state mandated reporter laws usually people in the child care business to report suspected child abuse in kids under their care. I am not sure how this applies to an ex-employee who brings a non-student child onto campus. Some people are probably going to say that this case shows that officials should not just report suspected child abuse to CPS, but also any inappropriate behavior with a child. I do not agree, but I am afraid that public opinion seems to tilting toward reporting everything as a result of hysteria about cases like this.

Everyone blames Penn State for delays in taking action. But the current evidence against Sandusky was presented to the DA in Spring 2008, and they investigated for 3.5 years before arresting Sandusky. I really don't see how the DA can blame Penn State for not seeing that he was a child molester when the DA took 3.5 years to figure it out.

Grandparent visitation rights

The US Supreme Court is considering whether to hear this case:

Issue: Whether under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, grandparents who seek court-ordered visitation with their grandchildren must prove that a compelling circumstance necessitates visitation, or whether constitutional requirements are instead satisfied where the court considering the visitation request applies a presumption in favor of the parents' wishes and places on the petitioning grandparent the burden of proving that visitation is in the children's best interest.

I agree with the Alabama SC, and disagree with everything in the cert petition, except that these cases will keep coming back and Troxel was ambiguous.

(The link to the "opinion below" is wrong; the Alabama decision is here.)

The cert petition agrees with giving the grandparents visitation because:

The trial court’s detailed opinion in this case perfectly reflects that delicate balancing; the judge carefully considered all of the affected parties’ in-terests, while paying an extra measure of deference to the parents’ wishes.

Parents have no rights if minor parental decisions can be overridden by a judge who merely says that he is "paying an extra measure of deference to the parents’ wishes."

I guess that some people might read the factual history as favoring the grandparents, but I do not. Consider:

[The mother] testified that when the children were very young, the two families had basically blended together and had acted as a single unit, with the paternal grand-mother asserting a great deal of control over the care of the children, sometimes even in violation of the mother’s desires.

I suppose that some would read this as suggesting that the judge should try to reconstruct that happier period when the grandma often got her way with the kids. I don't see it that way at all. If that were the rule, then parents would be prudent to always overrule whatever the grandparents say, for fear that they might set a precedent that would be used against the parents later in court.

This grandparent visitation issue is just an amusing sideshow. There are about 20 more important issues where the family court is denying parental rights in what ought to be violations of constitutional rights. But the federal courts won't hear any of it.

Followup on husband killer

I posted last month about this acquittal for murder, and now the NY Times reports on the sentencing:

A Queens woman who killed her husband after suffering years of abuse at his hands was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison on a weapons charge, less than the maximum sentence of 15 years but short of her request for further leniency.

The woman, Barbara Sheehan, shot her husband, Raymond Sheehan, 11 times in their home in Howard Beach in February 2008; although she used two guns, she claimed that she fired in self-defense after he had first threatened her life with one of the guns. Ms. Sheehan was acquitted of murder, but convicted of gun possession — the second gun that she used that day. ...

Judge Kron had the discretion to send Ms. Sheehan to prison for as little as 27 months. The sentence included two and a half years of supervised release.

Ms. Sheehan was allowed to remain free on $1 million bail while her appeal of her verdict is pending. After the sentencing, she walked out of the courthouse and headed for the subway to go to her job as a school secretary.

She expressed deep disappointment in an interview that the judge had imposed such a harsh sentence and had failed to account for the fact that she had been the victim of vicious domestic violence.

As she walked, a passer-by hugged her.

“Keep praying for me,” Ms. Sheehan said.

I guess that the lesson is that if a woman wants to murder her husband, she should just use one gun and be prepared to whine everything he might have done years earlier.

Unmarried try to hire divorce lawyer

Louisiana TV reports:

Unmarried Couples Find Divorce Difficult
Couples Who 'Live Together' Are Hoping To Divorce Legally

NEW ORLEANS -- Divorce isn't easy; but it's even harder for couples who didn't get married in the first place.

One New Orleans attorney says he has seen an increase in the number of unmarried couples who want to file for a legal divorce.

"If you do not have a plan or you don't know your situation and you're not really understanding of the law it could be really bad for you, you could have a rude awakening at the end," says Hamilton Law Associates lawyer Peter Hamilton.

Louisiana is a community property state, a measure that applies only for married couples.

The Pew Research Center looked at the marriage trend and found that 39 percent of people feel marriage is becoming obsolete.

They want divorce lawyers in family court when they never got married? Really?

Maybe they have kids. Family court judges want to take control of parents whether there was any marriage or not. Yes, marriage is becoming obsolete, and part of that is because family courts require parenting plans, support payments, character assassinations, etc, whether the couple was ever married or not.

Need for psychoeducation during infancy

I have posted many times on the evils of the psychology profession, and here is some new bogus research that demonstrates more ideology than science:

A new research study suggests prejudice based on generalized beliefs about certain social groups could be a personality trait.

Researchers from the University of the Basque Country confirmed the link between two types of discriminatory behavior: sexism and racism. They also urge education in encouraging equality. ...

As a result of the findings, the authors strongly believe in the importance and need for psychoeducation during infancy and adolescence as a way of encouraging equality among both sexes and respect for others. ...

“Men with higher levels of hostile sexism describe themselves using adjectives associated with masculinity, i.e. physically strong, brave, sure of themselves, determined, admirable, etc” said Garaigordobil.

“Women who display hostile sexism described themselves using characteristics that go against femininity such as not very cooperative, not very tolerant, not very compassionate and not very sensitive or sentimental.”

Just what "psychoeducation during infancy" are they advocating? I hate to think what sort of brainwashing they have in mind. This is an example of misrepresenting science in order to promote an ideology.

Yes, a lot of people believe that men and women are different, and that it is only natural and appropriate that they serve different roles in our society. I think that it is fair to say that the vast majority of all people in the history of human civilization have believed that.

For a contrary view, Yahoo sports reports on female atheletes who want to be just like the men:

Women will get a chance to box in the Olympics for the first time in 2012. If the Amateur International Boxing Association has anything to say about it, they will be wearing skirts. ... Unsurprisingly, many top female boxers are against this plan. Three-time world champion Katie Taylor from Ireland does not want to wear something that she would find uncomfortable while fighting:
"It's a disgrace that they're forcing some of the women to wear those mini-skirts. We should be able to wear shorts, just like the men.
"I won't be wearing a mini-skirt. I don't even wear mini-skirts on a night out, so I definitely won't be wearing mini-skirts in the ring."

No, I do not agree with Olympic medal for female boxing, but I guess I am a sexist.

I would not be surprised if some new edition of the psychiatric diagnostic manual, the DSM-IV, says that you have a psychological personality disorder if you think that the women boxers should wear skirts. Next there will be govt day care centers with psychoeducation for infants in order to eradicate such views.

Opinion of a court psychologist

A reader asks how I know the views of the court psychologists. Let me quote from Coming Out Every Day: A Gay, Bisexual, and Questioning Man's Guide (alse here), a 1997 self-help book written by a child custody evaluator for the family court:

Getting Beyond Homophobia
In Greek mythology, Hercules slew Hydra, the many headed serpent. Unfortunately, you have your own modem day Hydra. As the hero of your journey, you will face the multifarious evil of homophobia many times before it's conquered. You've already read about internalized homophobia in chapter 7. You studied ways of managing internal fears about your sexual orientation. When you can win your internal battles, you'll be in a good position to deal objectively and authoritatively with the external battles.

Consider the following quote - an unfortunate but classic example of homophobia: "The poor homosexuals - they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution." This statement was uttered by Patrick Buchanan, American conservative and 1996 presidential candidate.

How do you feel when you read what Buchanan said? What do you think about such attitudes?

Do you have trouble believing that these attitudes (or people) exist? If so, that probably means you're one of the lucky GBQ men whose exposure to intolerance and prejudice has been minimal, or at least manageable. But believe it: These people long on judgment and short on truth are out there. As long as there are oppressive religions and cultures; as long as there are unenlightened teachers and preachers command that homosexuality is wrong; as long as there are racists and bigots, fear and ignorance, jealousy and hate, and insecurity, there be homophobia.

Homophobia is something you'll need to face, I urge you to gather your supports around you; try to find constructive ways to educate those who are misinformed and challenge those who aim to hurt or punish. Of course if you're constantly worrying about all the differences of opinion and meanness in the world, you'll never get your work done, animals won't get fed, your fun time will be spoiled, and your laundry and dishes will pile up into a big, moldy mess. But because homophobia exists and must be acknowledged, your goal will be to get beyond it and not let it have power in your life.

Sometimes getting beyond homophobia means you have to write a few people off. Sometimes you must take a stand to let them know they’re misinformed. Sometimes you'll be able to muster up the love and passion to take time to educate them, but there will likely be few whom you care enough to do that. Sometimes getting beyond homophobia means taking on more responsibility to fight it, perhaps by being more active in community or political gay and bisexual issues.

A Personal Story
After years of living as an out gay man, I am still amazed and troubled when homophobia rears its ugly head from unlikely places and in unlikely forms. I am lucky to live in California, in a relatively open-minded (if not necessarily politically liberal) community that is accepting of diversity. Even here, however, reality sometimes brings me roughly back to earth. Not too long ago, at a board of supervisors meeting in Santa Clara County, the issue of domestic partner registration was under consideration. I was astonished to encounter an elementary school age child in the crowd of antireferendum protesters carrying a sign that read, "Please don't molest me." I cannot help but marvel at the things people choose to teach their children.

How to Respond to Homophobia
Go back now and reread what you wrote about your feelings and attitudes toward Buchanan's statement and what it represents. These feelings and thoughts are your clues to understanding your role in dealing with homophobia. Your internal reactions and logic can guide you to understand what (and whom) you are meeting when homophobia shows up at your front door or knocks you down in the street when you're walking along minding your own business.

Did you write about feeling angry at Buchanan's words? That's healthy. Are you frightened by this attitude? That's normal, as well. In fact, all your feelings are valid here; you just get to make some choices about what to do with them. ... [p.210-211]

Discrimination and Prejudice: The Real Shame
We believe that the rights of all people must be protected and guaranteed. We believe that the gay and lesbian community must be supported in their civil rights as well as their right for their sexual preference. --Coretta Scott King, The Gay Almanac

Discrimination against people because of their sexuality occurs every day Fundamental human rights taken for granted by most people in the United States are often denied to openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Fortunately, groups such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Human Rights Campaign, and the Lambda Legal Defense Fund in the United States are laboring to change the legal and political playing field by actively lobbying against discriminatory legislative measures. These groups and others are working to introduce bills and constitutional amendments that will guarantee freedom from discrimination based on sexuality.

For the present, however, gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals in the United States have no such guarantee of employment, domestic partner insurance benefits, medical visitation rights, or housing rights. We do not have the right to visit as a "family member" a partner who is in the hospital. We cannot serve in the military unless we keep our sexual orientation a secret. We cannot get married, adopt a child without suffering major legal encumbrances and social disapproval, or have legal (in some states) oral or anal sex (which is illegal for some heterosexuals, too). All of the latter rights, however, are in the process of being challenged to one degree or another by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign (amongst others).

An additional disadvantage suffered by GBQ people is the misinformation and scare tactics perpetuated by groups such as the Moral Majority and Coalition for Family Values. These organizations, along with conservative religious and political groups led by people such as Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Lou Sheldon, and Senator Jesse Helms, work to create a climate of fear among the unenlightened public. By targeting and misinforming church members, conservative families, and naive individuals, they are able to propagate false and biased information that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals want special rights and threaten "family values." There have been several recent attempts to pass anti gay initiatives in various states - for example, Colorado's approved 1992 Amendment 2, later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. [p.215-216]

He is entitled to his opinion that GLB folks are entitled to guarantees of employment, and to his hatred of conservative politicians who promote family values. But I really have trouble understanding how he can complain about gays being able to visit each other in the hospital, and then be in the business of writing court orders that prevent normal and fit parents from seeing their own kids.

He says, "These people long on judgment and short on truth are out there." That is just how I would describe his court reports. He makes no attempt to ascertain any facts, and he is much more judgmental than Pat Buchanan or that schoolchild opposing a domestic partner program.

In my case, he collected a few gripes about vegetables and hair brushing, and he wrote a court order for me to attend counseling for at least 6 months or "until released", whatever that means. He had no facts, law, or psychology to substantiate what he did. He never even asked me about the gripes, and when I offered to address them, he refused to hear it. He obviously would not like it if gays were ordered to attend counseling until released.

It seems to be that this guy is ideologically opposed to normal family relationships. He abuses his power to destroy those relationships whenever he can. He is the bigot, not me. I am not opposed to him being an out gay man. I do object to him imposing his twisted values on others.

Texas mom murders her son

Texas is the one state with jury trials for child custody. You would think that a mom who is a psychologist and a college professor would have an easy time convincing a jury that she is a fit mother. The U. of Texas has now taken down her web page, but the bing cached copy says:

Dr. Karen Hayslett-McCall is a faculty member in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences (previously, Social Sciences) at UT-Dallas. She teaches courses on geospatial information systems, research methods, communities and crime, victimology, and policing. The broadest swath of her research involves the study of crime and its relationship with neighborhood resident characteristics (i.e., social ecology) as ell as neighborhood infrastructure data (i.e., physical ecolotgy). She graduated from The Pennsylvania State University and joined the faculty at UTD in 2002.

Here is her impressive resume in pdf. (The above typos are in the original -- not sure if they are her fault.)

No, the jury saw right thru her, for the crazy and vindictive woman that she. I mean that she was, because she just killed herself and her son:

A woman shot and killed her 7-year-old son before turning the gun on herself late Friday morning in Sachse, police said.

Officers forced their way into the home after hearing gunshots and found 43-year-old Karen Hayslett-McCall and 7-year-old Eryk Hayslett-McCall in an upstairs bedroom at about 10:30 a.m.

Sachse police were at the home in the 7100 block of Longmeadow Drive as a precaution when her estranged husband, Rodney McCall, arrived to pick up his son.

McCall had received sole custody of the child in a court hearing at 10 a.m.

"The father knocked on the front door," Sachse police Chief Dennis Veach said. "We were simply standing by and at both front and rear of the house when we heard three shots from within the house."

Veach said police had been to the home on several locations but there were not allegations of serious violence.

Maybe no violence, but the backstory is that the mom was vindictively framing her husband with false accusations:

Hayslett-McCall had accused her husband of molesting their son last fall. A grand jury later found no evidence of a crime, and McCall was cleared.

But McCall had lost his job as a high school teacher.

McCall's attorney told the Wylie school board in November that the case was "an allegation brought by a woman who is about to lose custody of her children," the Wylie News reported.

He also told the board that Hayslett-McCall, a former police officer who has a doctorate in criminal justice and a master's degree in psychology, knew how to manipulate the justice system, the newspaper reported.

The couple had been battling over custody of Eryk for more than a year.

They filed for divorce in Collin County in March 2010, and temporary custody orders were in place in April 2010. By November, an attorney was appointed for the child.

The judge ordered psychological evaluations in January 2011. Jurors were sworn in on Monday for opening statements, and McCall won custody of his son Friday.

A feminist blogger supports the mom:

Let’s just say, Karen Hayslett-McCall was no dummy when it came to detecting sexual deviants. She allegedly believed her husband was acting on some sort of perverse sexual deviency with their own child. It is possible that she killed herself and her son because she lost parental rights and not because her child was being totally given over to a man she believed was a child molester. It is more likely she did it because of both.

I don’t know what I would do if faced with the same circumstances.

Really? She doesn't know whether she would murder her son as some sort of sick revenge on her husband?

A professor of criminology should know that it is extraordinarily rare for a natural father to molest a 7-year-old. I have never even heard of it happening. She should also know that accusations require evidence in order for action by the authorities. They are supposed to, anyway. Apparently she did succeed in getting him fired from teaching based on her unfounded accusations.

Wait a minute -- she doesn't teach criminology, she teached "victimology". I never heard of that, but I am pretty sure that the U. of Texas does not need more feminists teaching victimology.

A comment disagrees with the blogger:

You have no idea of the facts in this case. I am one of the jurors who terminated her parental rights this morning. She was a truly vile person who destroyed her child and her husband. She knew how to manipulate the system. Why do you immediately think she was the victim in this? You really should have been at the trial. Amazingly, everyone that knew her more than a couple of years, including former friends and colleagues testified in the husband’s behalf.

It would be interesting to see those psychological evaluations of her that the judge ordered. My hunch is that the jurors had her figured out much better than the psychologists and other authorities.

A female reader adds:

As a matter of fact, Mr. McCall had reached out to CPS two weeks prior to the trial to have his son put in protective custody during the trial pending whatever the outcome was to be. He was worried about Eryk’s well being and would have preferred that he be protected by strangers than with either side’s families and friends to avoid bias.

It also should be known that Karen is the one that kicked Mr McCall out of the house in March of 2010 and filed for divorce because of her new boyfriend. She was not abused, but in reality was the abuser by verbally abusing her husband. Back in December of 2010, they had their first trial and the judge awarded joint custody. Mr McCall was happy with that decision, but it was Karen that filed the motion to have the decision overturned and requested a new trial. Karen was the one that did not want to share her son with his father and was the first to seek termination of parental rights. Mr McCall’s reasoning to seek termination was because she was coaching their son to make these false allegations and possibly even abusing him herself or one of her new found friends that had moved into that house.

The reality is Mr McCall never abused his son in any manner, but loved him very much. Yes, he was arrested, but the grand jury did not indict since there was no case there.

There are so many things wrong here, I cannot list them.

Christian-hater wants censorship

A Christian-hating reader left this comment yesterday:

The United States needs to look towards Europe and adopt their policy of prosecuting those that publicly spread hate speech. ... Christian values and white males have caused nearly all of the heart ache, misery and injustice in this world.

Wow. I expected criticism, but I did not expect someone to (1) express anti-Christian hatred, (2) fail to dispute anything I said, and (3) favor laws censoring me from telling the truth.

Christian values and white males made America great. That should be so transparently obvious that I do not see how anyone can dispute.

But there are anti-Christian bigots who are working to destroy America, and they want laws to censor anyone who exposes them for what they are.

I mentioned the California psychologists Bret K. Johnson and Kenneth B. Perlmutter, who do child custody evaluations for the family court. They testified in my case, and demonstrated their hatred of Christian values. I asked them under oath if their opinion was based on any facts, law, research, or expertise, and they were both unable to give any explanation for their opinions other than their own anti-Christian hatred.

Perlmutter's Yelp page now has 23 reviews. 21 of them give him one star, the lowest possible rating. Unfortunately, some of them are hidden from view.

Perlmutter told me that whenever possible, he avoids letting the parents see his report on them that he sends to the court.

These two evaluators are not just isolated examples of incompetence. The entire profession is corrupt, and hardly anyone in it speaks out against the horrible work being done.

I favor exposing these creeps for what they do. If they were doing honest legitimate work, they should not mind having their court testimony publicized.

In Europe it is getting harder and harder to praise Christian values without being accused of hate speech. I must have hit a nerve is someone wants a law against me telling the truth about what the court accepts as expert testimony.

Jewish psychologists

A reader warns me that I risk criticism by referring yesterday to a big-shot Jewish Harvard psychology professor, Steven Pinker.

Tiger Woods' ex-caddie just apologized for a negative comment that had the word "black" in it. Maybe he did not mean it to be racist, but it sounded that way. I certainly do not want to sound anti-Jewish, as that would distract from my message here.

But I do criticize psychologists a lot, and psychology is a very Jewish profession, so I still run the risk of offending people even if I never explicitly mention Jewish issues.

A Jewish site says:

Jewish psychologists and the influence of Jewish tradition have been instrumental in creating the field of modern psychology. The fundamentals of several psychological movements can be traced directly to Jewish values, ideas, and practices, and Jews in the 20th century were at the forefront of research about the psyche and the varieties of human behavior.

Jewish psychologists founded several branches of psychological inquiry. All of the major theorists of the Gestalt school, except Wolfgang Kohler, were Jews. Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Kurt Lewin, and Kurt Goldstein posited theories of perception and understanding based on holistic understanding, rather than a previous model based on the computation of parts.

Psychoanalysis was founded by Sigmund Freud and, with the notable exception of Carl Jung, most of its early proponents were also Jews.

Freud and Jung were also quacks. Freud faked his work, and nothing that he did
had any scientific merit. His reputation was created largely by other Jews who idolized him.

Why the Jews?

Some intellectual historians speculate that it was particular Jewish personality and cultural traits that led Jews to lead the field of psychology in its early days. ...

According to studies conducted by Mark Zborowski, an anthropologist who investigated cultural aspects of pain, Jews respond more quickly to physical discomfort than non-Jews. Jewish families often discuss issues and problems in great detail, and suffering individuals are encouraged to "let out" their feelings and achieve catharsis through communication.

According to Peter Langman, "Jews differ from many cultural groups in that they place less value on self-reliance and are less suspicious of taking their problems to professionals." Thus, the traditional role of rabbi/rebbe involves extensive counseling or psychotherapy.

My ex-wife and I had two child custody evaluations by psychologists, one gay and one Jewish. Both appear to be seriously emotionally damaged shrinks who project their own personal problems on others. I originally thought that they were just incompetent, but they are much worse than that. They are vindictive and malicious charlatans.

Maybe Jews have a tradition of psychological problems, counseling, and emotional dependence, but other Americans have a tradition of self-reliance and family autonomy.

Woody Allen made movies that popularized the image of Jews as dysfunctional neurotics who need regular psychotherapy to cope with daily life. Most Jews are not like that, of course, but the court psychologists do not seem to understand that normal Americans have no use for psychotherapy.

So is the destructive value of the child custody evaluation work related to them being gay and Jewish? I think it is. I do not believe that a Christian heterosexual family man would write reports anything like what these jerks did. He would not charge $28,000 either.

I don't want to blame all gays and Jews. I have no doubt that most gays and Jews would sharply disapprove of the practices of these child custody evaluators. But the psychology profession is dominated by gays, Jews, and others who are opposed to traditional American Christian family values, and they abuse their power and influence to destroy the families of others. They are the bigots, and political correctness should not prevent me from pointing it out.

If there are any gays or Jews or psychologists who speak out against what the psychology profession is doing in the family court, please let me know so that I can credit them. There is a war going on between decent Americans, and those who are trying to destroy American values. I want to know who is on which side.

In other news, a New Jersey newspaper reports:

The price was steep. As much as $160,000 to secure a donor willing to give up a human kidney for transplant.

And Levy Itzhak Rosenbaum — who told neighbors in Brooklyn he dabbled in construction and real estate — bragged on surveillance recordings that he had participated in many such black market deals.

Today, the 60-year-old Israeli pleaded guilty in federal court to helping an FBI informant procure a kidney as part of an elaborate federal sting. At the same time, he admitted arranging transplants for three other New Jersey patients with failing kidneys — all of whom underwent surgery in out-of-state hospitals after paying Rosenbaum. None of the patients or hospitals was named, nor were they charged.

It marked the first time in this country anyone has ever been convicted for brokering illegal kidney transplants for profit. ...

Separately, five Orthodox rabbis from Brooklyn and the Jersey shore were charged with laundering millions of dollars through various religious charities.

If the feds can do a sting and prosecute the kidney sellers, they ought to do a sting against the corrupt family court psychologists.