Free speech to report criminal trial

The local newspaper reports:

SANTA CRUZ -- Attorneys are dueling over what evidence jurors will be allowed to hear and how much courtroom security is needed for a man facing more than 50 felony charges.

Pretrial motions in the Maurice Lamont Ainsworth escape and home invasion cases consumed hours Tuesday, and are expected to do so Wednesday.

Ainsworth, 26, is accused of assaulting and escaping from a sheriff's deputy at Dominican Hospital in November 2010 and using her stolen gun to rob a preschool teacher of her car keys. He then stormed into a nearby home and holding an elderly couple hostage. Prosecutors allege he was trying to avoid prosecution for a violent March 2009 home invasion in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The two alleged crime sprees were combined for trial purposes. If convicted, he faces at least one possible life sentence.

This was a huge local story when it happened a couple of years ago. I had a family court trial going on at the same time, and it was all the court deputies were talking about.

Verinsky said Ainsworth is 6 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs about 265 pounds and was a "very physically imposing figure."

"If he acts out, it will require a number of deputies to restrain him," he said.

Burdick issued a tentative ruling that Ainsworth be fitted with two leg braces under the clothes he will wear at trial, and that three deputies could be in the courtroom.

Ainsworth escaped before because he faked a shoulder injury and a 5-foot tall 95-pount woman deputy took him by herself to get an MRI. They removed his handcuffs for the MRI. Then he overpowered her, took her gun, and went on a rampage.

The court deputies I talked to denied that her sex was the problem. She was highly trained and competent, they assured me. Obviously those deputies were fully trained in politically correct excuses.

My guess is that they will have 5 men on the guy now, as well as leg irons.

Tuesday, prosecutors asked Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Paul Burdick to bar news media from naming any of the civilian witnesses.

The Sentinel challenged that motion, given that many of the witnesses previously have been named. Sentinel attorney James Chadwick of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton argued that to bar the press from printing legally obtained information would constitute "prior restraint" and violate the First Amendment.

Prosecutor Celia Rowland argued printing victims' and witnesses' names would endanger them, and that the court has the power to protect them.

Burdick called an order barring all victims' names "extraordinary" and said he was "extremely uncomfortable limiting press coverage." Yet he also said it was an extraordinary case with significant safety concerns. He said he would rule on the issue Wednesday morning.

A decision also is expected Wednesday on a defense motion proposing that no evidence of Ainsworth's alleged Norteño gang affiliation be allowed in at trial.

Yes, a gag order would be extraordinary and unnecessary. The USA has a First Amendment guaranteeing free speech. Ainsworth is never getting out of prison anyway. In other countries, prosecutors and judges get away with gag orders and coverups.

The order was just announced:

SANTA CRUZ- Judge Paul Burdick denied a motion by prosecutors to bar news media from naming any of the civilian witnesses in the trial of Maurice Ainsworth, who faces trial on more than 50 charges for escaping custody and a prior home invasion.

In his ruling Wednesday, Burdick also stated that he didn't have the authority to bar the press from reporting that Ainworth's codefendant in the March 2009 home invasion will be testifying for the prosecution during the trial.

"Jyler Raines' involvement in the case has been widely reported," Burdick said. "I don't believe I have the authority to restrict the press from reporting that."

Meanwhile, I am forbidden to quote certain testimony in my trials, even tho it was given in open court with no restrictions. The issue was not confidential info about my kids or my ex-wife's mental condition or anything like that. It was just a case of judges protecting the incompetence and corruption of court officials.

Advice to dispose of an imperfect husband

Some people are under the false impression that shrinks and other advice-givers try to help save marriages. Another false impression is that divorce is caused by men abandoning their families.

This is anecdotal evidence, but look at a newspaper advice letter:

Dear Annie: I was with my ex-husband for 18 years before I divorced him. We have three children, and he hasn't been the best father or husband. Lately, however, he has been nice and comes around to visit the kids. I appreciate the fact that he is doing this, but he is now saying things to me that make me uncomfortable.

He slept on my couch a couple of nights because he stayed late with the kids when I was out. But now he is coming every day and staying over every night. We often end up sleeping together.

I told him to stop coming around with the expectation that we are getting back together, because we are not. But he refuses to listen, and now he has asked me to marry him again. He won't take "no" for an answer. What should I do? — Think I've Been Too Nice

Too nice? No, that is not her problem. She is too mean.

A lot of women would love to have a man like that. But this one divorced him because of some unspecified imperfections. And now her main complaint is that he loves her and wants to save the family.

If we had a father-custody rule in the USA, divorces like this would not happen.

No, the advice is not to save the marriage. The advice is to limit contact with him and make sure he stays divorced.

In defense of psychopaths

The current Scientific American has an article in defense of psychopaths. John Horgan writes:

In his remarks as in his book, Dutton held that being a psychopath—someone who lacks the empathy, compassion and conscience that bog down us ordinary folk–ain’t so bad. Dumb, extremely impulsive psychopaths often end up dead or in prison, Dutton said, but psychopaths can thrive if they’re smart and disciplined.

Psychopaths tend to be fearless, ruthless, capable of extraordinary focus, and they are cool and decisive in high-pressure situations that make others quail. Psychopaths excel at reading other peoples’ facial expression, which comes in handy if they want to manipulate someone. (Dutton wrote about conmen and other master persuaders in a previous book.) They have a better-than-average ability to tell whether someone else is lying or is emotionally vulnerable. Psychopathy, Dutton noted, falls on a spectrum rather than being an all-or-nothing condition, and psychopathic traits are common among CEOs, lawyers, media personalities, special-forces soldiers and surgeons.

Psychopaths are often charismatic, cheery, fun to be around. In their presence, Dutton said, you feel like “anything is possible.” Dutton has never met a psychopath who regretted being a psychopath. Psychopaths tend to be happy even when locked up in prison or facing the death penalty. Rather than fearing the consequences of their actions, psychopaths focus on potential rewards, and they feel little or no regret when things go bad.

I am glad to see someone challenging the negativity of psychobabble labels.

This illustrates the confusing definitions of Empathy. Psychopaths are said to lack empathy, but that would mean that they are blind to the feelings of others. But it is just the opposite. Their skill in manipulating others is based on their being very good at reading the feelings of others.

The author recommends this self-test:

Now find out if you could be a psychopath

1. I rarely plan ahead. I’m a spur-of-the-moment kind of person 0 1 2 3
2. Cheating on your partner is OK so long as you don’t get caught 0 1 2 3
3. If something better comes along it’s OK to cancel a longstanding appointment 0 1 2 3
4. Seeing an animal injured or in pain doesn’t bother me in the slightest 0 1 2 3
5. Driving fast cars, riding rollercoasters, and skydiving, appeal to me 0 1 2 3
6. It doesn’t matter to me if I have to step on other people to get what I want 0 1 2 3
7. I’m very persuasive. I have a talent for getting other people to do what I want 0 1 2 3
8. I’d be good in a dangerous job because I can make my mind up quickly 0 1 2 3
9. I find it easy to keep myself together in situations when others are cracking under pressure 0 1 2 3
10. If you’re able to con someone, that’s their problem. They deserve it 0 1 2 3

How do you rate
0-10: Low
11-15: Below average
16-20: Average
21-25: High
26-30: Very high

This is a typical psychological test. You have to answer honestly for it to be useful. Even so, it doesn't really define a disorder. It describes a personality type.

UK banker wife turns hippie

A UK newspaper reports:

The mother-of-four who made headlines last year leaving her children to go join Occupy Wall Street is divorcing her husband and cashing in on his banking-earned riches in the process.

Stacey Hessler cites protesting as her profession and famously devoted herself to the Occupy movement, demonstrating against the very banks behind her recently increased cash-flow.

She walks away from former banker Curtiss Hessler with a total of $85,385 from his stock-filled retirement fund and bank account. ...

It is understood by friends of the Occu-Mom that her persistent protesting has caused their relationship to fail. ...

Twisting her hair into long dreadlocks and wearing hippy-style t-shits with logos like 'Make Love, Not War', the 39-year-old traveled to New York, leaving her children behind.

'Military people leave their families all the time, so why should I feel bad?' she told the Post, responding to criticism of her mothering techniques. 'I’m fighting for a better world.'

Kentucky weakens grandparents' rights

The Louisville newspaper reports:

The Kentucky Supreme Court has made it harder for grandparents to win visitation with their grandchildren when the child’s parents object.

In a 6-1 ruling, the state’s high court ruled Thursday that parents who oppose giving a grandparent visitation must be presumed to be acting in the child’s best interests.

The court did not strike down Ken­tuc­ky’s 1984 grandparent visitation law but said a grandparent must present “clear and convincing” evidence to win the right to visit a grandchild over a parent’s objection.

“Kentucky courts cannot presume that grandparents and grandchildren will always benefit from contact with each other,” the court ruled. “If the only proof that a grandparent can present is that they spent time with the child and attended holidays and special occasions, this alone cannot overcome the presumption that the parent is acting in the child’s best interest.” ...

“That is an awful high legal standard,” said former Jefferson Family Court Judge Louis Waterman, adding that it gives “near-total authority” to parents. ...

The court said grandparents may win court-ordered visitation if they can show that the child would be harmed by denying it or where the grandparent and child lived in the same household for some time or the grandparent regularly baby sat the child.

The court directed judges to consider eight factors, including the nature and stability of the relationship between the child and the grandparent; the amount of time they had spent together; the effect that granting visitation would have on the child’s relationship with the parents; and the wishes and preferences of the child.

Of course the parents should have near-total authority. The alternative is to give some stupid family court judge near-total authority.

I have readers who are grandparents, and they want to see their grandkids. But should the judge really be overruling the parents and saying who the kids can and cannot visit? I say no.

Even with this decision, if parents ask the grandparents to babysit the kids, then they are running the risk that some judge will order visitation in the future. If the parents want to play it safe, then they should put their kids in daycare instead letting the grandparents babysit, if there is any risk that the grandparents will turn litigious.

Of course I am a parent, and these Kentucky grandparents still have more rights to see their grandkids than I have to see my own kids. I was not just a babysitter either.

Reports are intellectually bogus

I am watching a lawsuit over a Sandusky comparison, and I find this in the court complaint:

Mr. Lowry's statement, published by NRI on National Review Online, calling Dr. Mann's research "intellectually bogus" is defamatory per se and tends to injure Dr. Mann in his profession because it falsely imputes to Dr. Mann academic corruption, fraud and deceit as well as the commission of a criminal offense, in a manner injurious to the reputation and esteem of Dr. Mann professionally, locally, nationally, and globally.

Really? That phrases imputes a criminal offense? Is it a crime to be intellectually bogus?

Google says that I have used the word "bogus" 585 times. (Google overcounts.) When I say research is bogus, I usually mean that the results are not what they appear to be, usually because of sloppy methods, biased work, overstated conclusions, or even outright dishonesty.

If I say that a court psychologist, like Ken Perlmutter, Faren Akins, or Bret Johnson, writes an intellectually bogus report, then I am not accusing them of a criminal offense. Maybe it ought to be a crime to give such bogus opinions to the court, but they have not been prosecuted, as far as I know.

I say that their reports are bogus because they are not grounded in any generally recognized expert knowledge. I would say this whether the root cause was their stupidity, dishonesty, sloppiness, greediness, or corruption. Or their religion, feminism, politics, or anything else.

I know that the reports are bogus because they are contrary to basic psychology, law, and common sense. In Perlmutter's case, he admitted under oath that his report was bogus. (That was not his word, but he used equivalent words.) So I do not see anything wrong with calling their reports bogus on my blog. But I will keep an eye on this lawsuit, in case someone finds a law against telling the truth.

Here is some skeptical analysis about the lawsuit.Cuisinart Smart Stick Stainless Steel Hand Blender & Chopper (Google Affiliate Ad)

Man sues wife for ugly genes

Here is a funny story:

Divorces are never pretty, but this one is pretty ugly. A man from northern China divorced and sued his wife for being ugly. He won $120,000 in the lawsuit and has once again made the world question the validity of phrases like “marriage” and “love”.

The northern Chinese man, Jian Feng, married his wife and was reportedly absolutely in love with her. Soon, as will happen, she became pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl, which was when the problems arose for Feng.

He thought the baby was incredibly ugly, to the point where it horrified him. The baby resembled neither of her parents, so Feng demanded to know who the father was, because jumping to conclusions about your wife’s faithfulness is the obvious thing to do when you have an ugly baby.

As it turns out, his wife didn’t cheat, but did gloss over the fact that she had spent $100,000 on intense plastic surgery to severely change how she looked before she met him.

The man has a point. The wife should have warned him that ugliness runs in her family, and they could have an ugly baby.

Update: A reader points out that this is an old story from 2004. But I wasn't the only one fooled -- Jay Leno told a joke about this story on the Nov. 2, 2012 NBC TV Tonight Show. Sorry, Jay, if you got this from my blog!

Update: This story was also carried elsewhere without mentioning the date. A good story has a life of its own, I guess.

Stop the war on women

The Spearhead blog writes:

The second reason to vote this November is to put a stop to the “war on women” myth. As liberal politicians have become more dependent on the women’s vote, their pandering to women has reached a fever pitch with the myth of the “war on women”. The only way to put a stop to this level of pandering to women is by voting against any and all politicians who say there is a “war on women”. Vote for a conservative politician or a third party politician.

Pres. Barack Obama has based his campaign largely on appealing to parasites like Lily Ledbetter and Sandra Fluke.

Ledbetter was the one who wanted to sue over a 20-year-old performance evaluation. She waited until the supervisor died, and the US Supreme Court ruled that the statute of limitations had expired.

Fluke was the 30yo single law student who wanted a Catholic university to pay for her $10-per-month birth control pills.

The whole “war on women” is based on Republicans not supporting Ledbetter and Fluke. Vote Republican as long as Democrats are promoting a “war on women” myth.

The Sandusky of the family court

I try to avoid libeling anyone on this blog, but a new case may force me to reconsider. Scientific American magazine reports:

Michael Mann, an influential climatologist who has spent years in the center of the debate over climate science, has sued two organizations that have accused him of academic fraud and of improperly manipulating data.

Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, on Monday sued the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, along with two of their authors, Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn.

The lawsuit, Mann's lawyer said in a statement, was based upon their "false and defamatory statements" accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Here is the most offensive post:

Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science

The analogy is based on the accusation that Penn State failed to adequately investigate either one of them for misconduct. You can get one defendant's response to Mann here.

You can get the Mann complaint on the LegalTimes blog, which give another offending quote:

"If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up?" Steyn wrote. "Whether or not he's 'the Jerry Sandusky of climate change', he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his 'investigation' by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke."

I check my logs to see whether I ever compared any family court officials to Jerry Sandusky. I did comment on Sandusky last year here and here. My main concern was that hysteria about the case would be used to expand the power of CPS and others who arbitrarily take away parental rights without good evidence.

I do not think that that Sandusky got a fair trial. There was no physical evidence, timely complaints, or neutral witnesses. Every single prosecution witness was someone with recovered memories and a lawsuit against Penn State for millions of dollars.

I did not actually say this, but I do not see how it could be libel for me to say that psychologist Ken Perlmutter is the Jerry Sandusky of the family court because he molested and tortured data in the service of a corrupt family court, and was inadequately investigated for his bad behavior.

I even think that Perlmutter is worse than Sandusky, because I do not think that Sandusky raped anyone. And Perlmutter did deliberately and maliciously use his authority to abuse my kids.

Mann's complaint says:

4. Recognizing that they cannot contest the science behind Dr. Mann's work, the defendants, contrary to known and clear fact, and intending to impose vicious injury, have nevertheless maliciously accused him of academic fraud, the most fundamental defamation of his professional reputation, defendants have also maliciously attack Dr. Mann's personal reputation with the knowingly false comparison to a child molester.

I don't see how Perlmutter (or the other psychologists, such as Bret Johnson or Faren Akins) could say anything like this. There is no science behind his work. To the extent that he might claim that there is any academic science, he is an academic fraud. That is not the most fundamental defamation of him, because he is much worse than that. I would never make any knowingly false comparison to a child molester.

I did once compare Johnson to a child molester, and my ex-wife complained to the court about it. But the court said that was free speech and lawful. I also posted this Perlmutter complaint about me comparing him to a child molesting psychologist. But that psychologist has not been convicted, and yesterday's newspaper updated his story:

SANTA CRUZ -- A civil lawsuit has been filed against a Capitola psychologist who is facing criminal charges of sexual abuse against a child.

Dr. John William Visher was arrested last month at his La Selva Beach home after Capitola police investigated allegations that he committed lewd acts against an 8-year-old girl. The girl had been his patient and detectives believe the incidents occurred at Visher's former Bay Avenue office in 2009.

Last week, the girl's family filed a personal injury suit against Visher in the civil divisions of Santa Cruz County Court. It charges him with sexual harassment, professional negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and seeks unspecified damages.

Visher pleaded not guilty on Oct. 9 to five felony charges that include lewd acts upon a child, sending obscene material and possession of material depicting a minor engaging in sexual conduct. He is due back in court Nov. 14.

I happened to know that Perlmutter has committed bad acts against an 8-year-old girl. I have listed them on this blog. Visher could have been framed for the purpose of collecting on a big lawsuit, for all I know.

Mann argues that he should not be accused because Penn State University has exonerated him. I am not sure why Penn State administrators should have the last word on the subject, but Perlmutter, Johnson, and Akins have never been exonerated by anyone, as far as I know.

Mann's complaint makes a big deal over one of the defendants having removed a Sandusky comparison from a blog, and admitting that it was inappropriate. I would expect that Mann would be happy about the removal, and that the removal would not cause liability for the defendants. But maybe I should not remove anything until I study this lawsuit better.

I am going to have to be careful about what I say until I study this lawsuit. From what I know about free speech law, it seems to me that the lawsuit has no merit. Perlmutter is probably reading this, and considering hiring Mann's lawyer. So until I can confirm the law, I will avoid saying that Perlmutter is the Sandusky of anything.

Update: Defendant Mark Steyn now accuses Mann of lying about getting a Nobel Peace Prize. I guess he is not too worried about the lawsuit.Eastland Newport Slip-On Shoes (Google Affiliate Ad)

Colleges lack due process

A reader asks for a specific example of how the Pres. Barack Obama administration has been anti-men.

His VP, Joe Biden, brags that his proudest political accomplishment has been the Violence Against Women Act.

Colleges get a lot of federal money, and are subject to a lot of federal regulations. What do you think happens if a college professor or student is accused of sexual misconduct. Would a man be considered innocent until proven guilty? The answer is no -- not under Obama administration regulations.

Joseph Cohn carefully explains the arguments for and against a presumption of innocence:

On October 1, I penned an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education arguing that the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights' (OCR's) insistence that colleges and universities use the "preponderance of the evidence" standard when adjudicating accusations of sexual misconduct was wrong. OCR says the standard must be used on campus because it is the standard used in federal courts for civil suits. But OCR's comparison of campus tribunals with federal courts is deeply flawed because it fails to take into account the many due process protections required in federal courts that ensure the basic fairness of trials—protections that aren't required or commonly provided on campus.

In response to my piece, Nancy Hogshead-Makar, the senior director of advocacy at the Women's Sports Foundation, and Brett A. Sokolow, the founder of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, have authored a Chronicle op-ed of their own.

Hogshead-Makar and Sokolow do not attempt to refute my point that the comparison of campus tribunals to federal courts is inexact. Instead, they broadly argue that OCR's mandate is appropriate for three reasons: (1) they claim an institution's use of any standard higher than preponderance of the evidence may be considered "deliberate indifference" by a federal court, thus potentially subjecting a university that employs a higher standard to liability for violating Title IX; (2) they claim that the preponderance of the evidence standard is the only fair standard on a normative basis; and (3) they claim that the preponderance of the evidence standard protects the best interests of the colleges, the students, and the employees. All three arguments are faulty.

So a boy may be accused of sexually harassing a girl, and then he will get kicked out of college because the college was more concerned with protecting itself from Title IX liability.

The article has a link to a defender of the Obama policies, so you can read it yourself.

Keep in mind that if a boy is accused of a crime such as rape, the accuser can always make a police complaint and get a criminal prosecution. The accuser can also file a civil lawsuit. These college regulations apply when there is no criminal or civil complaint, but a girl tries to get a boy kicked out of college for non-criminal behavior.

The colleges ought to be treating their own employees and students as being innocent until proven guilty. And they ought to have due-process protections for anyone facing career-ending accusations. But thanks to the Obama administration, the colleges now have feminist-written policies that force an accused man to prove his innocence.

Kentucky court favors lesbian custody

A Kentucky appeals court just rejected this reasoning:

The Respondent is seeking to live an unconventional life-style that has not been fully embraced by society at large regardless of whether or not same-sex relationships should or should not be considered sexual misconduct. Like it or not, this decision will impact her children in ways that she may not have fully considered and most will be unfavorable.

The appeals court was favorable towards lesbian rights, but this comment really explains what's wrong:

We seem not to have a problem deciding who gets the car or who gets the house without considering the best interests of the car or the house. As for whether it's "better", I submit that there is virtually no objective test for "best interests" and this is just an excuse for the courts to exercise their prejudices. We are fortunate in this case that the judge made the idiocy explicit. ...

The only reason the judge's idiotic reasoning is known and going to get corrected in this case is because he said what his reasoning was explicitly. Most of the time, the prejudices are silent and unreviewable. The "best interests of the child" standard doesn't do much other than allow the judge to exercise his prejudices about what he thinks are in the best interests of the child. It's rarely any kind of objective analysis. (As a parent, I certainly wish there was some objective way to determine what was in a child's best interests, but I'm not deluded enough to believe that there is such a thing.)

And yes, I am suggesting that we replace the "best interest" test for child custody issues with the same sort of analysis that determines who gets the car and the house. The right to raise one's child as one pleases subject to not infringing on the rights of others (including the child's, of course) is not much different from the right to control one's property as one pleases subject to not infringing on the rights of others.

Ironically, I strongly suspect it would be in the best interests of the children if the State refrained from trying to decide what was in their best interests.

Lesbian law professor Nancy Polikoff likes the outcome, but adds this caveat:

This trial court was transparent about its reasoning.  All parents make mistakes and there is almost always something other than sexual orientation that a judge can use as a basis for a decision.  In fact, in spite of this appellate court win, the court sent this case back to be retried.  In other words, it's not over yet for Angela Maxwell and her children (I can only hope they settle at this point.)  Even the prohibition on her partner's overnight presence is still on the table; there just need to be evidence tying the restriction to the children's best interests.  Some children are uncomfortable with a parent's same-sex partner, and that has been used over and over to justify restrictions.  The two older Maxwell children said they liked their mother's partner, but what if they hadn't?  Furthermore, all the children were doing well; the appeals court calls them "flourishing."  Well, not all children do well.  It is still possible for a trial judge to find  a causal link where none exists between a parent's sexual orientation and the problems that a child might be experiencing.

It seems to me that the LGBT lobby ought to be opposing the Best Interest Of The Child (BIOTCh) standard for family court child custody. Please let me know if they ever do that. It appears to me that they are too closely allied with feminists for that.

Filed my briefs comic

This is from Brewster Rockit, Oct. 3. If you click on other dates in the same week, you will get other comics on a child custody dispute in a spaceship.

Asperger glasses

I had a judge accuse me of possibly having Aspergers, even those all of the eight court psychologists said that I did not. I think that it is not a disorder anyway, and it is being eliminated from the DSM-5.

Nonetheless, it is amusing to track popular misconception about this alleged syndrome. The NY Times reports on new technology:

She has been working for more than two decades to translate emotions into 1’s and 0’s, the language of machines. One early project, with a collaborator, Rana el Kaliouby, was to design glasses for people with Asperger syndrome, a mild variant of autism, that warned them when they were boring someone. People with Asperger’s often fixate on particular topics and find it hard to read the social cues, like yawning, fidgeting and looking away, that indicate the listener is bored.

The prototype included a tiny traffic light, visible only to the wearer, that flashed yellow when the conversation was starting to drag and red when facial cues suggested the listener had completely tuned out.

I have a simpler idea -- just make a small box with a button on it, and a label that says, "Press button when bored."

When Adam is talking to Beth, and Beth has difficulty communicating her boredom to Adam, why would anyone conclude that Adam is the one with the disorder? This shows how shrinks are profoundly bigoted against certain cognitive styles. I say that Beth is the one with the disorder if she is unable to express herself to Adam.

Of course I like this blog because I can babble on with my opinionated rants, and my bored readers cannot interrupt me. If you think that means that I have a disorder, go ahead and say so in the comments, where I can ignore you.

If those ridiculous Asperger glasses ever reach the market, some judge will probably order me to wear them on supervised visits to my kids. My last supervisor did not allow me to talk math to my kids, even when one kid wanted to talk about math. I always taught my kids to tell me when they want to change the subject. They would never rely on boorish behavior "like yawning, fidgeting and looking away". Not to me, anyway. But maybe I am an emotional abuser for teaching them that.

That 20 year warning shot again

The maker of The House I Live In (2012 film) was on the Jon Stewart (Comedy Channel) show complaining about criminal prosecutions. One of his complaints was a Florida black woman who got 20 years for firing a "warning shot". I criticized this case here. The jury convicted her of attempted murder. It was not a warning shot, but an attempted kill shot that missed. Or that is what the prosecutor convinced the jury of.

I would normally be sympathetic to a documentary about over-prosecution of crimes. Especially domestic or victimless crimes. But this was 20 years for attempted murder, not for a warning shot. The movie maker is misleading.

Stewart had Pres. Barack Obama on his show last night, and he was misleading also, but that's another story.

Benefit of having two parents in the home

Mitt Romney said this in the recent presidential debate:

MR. ROMNEY: ... But let me mention another thing, and that is parents. We need moms and dads helping raise kids. Wherever possible, the — the benefit of having two parents in the home — and that's not always possible. A lot of great single moms, single dads. But gosh, to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone — that's a great idea because if there's a two-parent family, the prospect of living in poverty goes down dramatically. The opportunities that the child will — will be able to achieve increase dramatically.

So we can make changes in the way our culture works to help bring people away from violence and give them opportunity and bring them in the American system.

A few years ago, this would have been uncontroversial, and like praising apple pie. But Pres. Barack Obama inaccurately bragged that he was raised by a single mom, and he is entirely dependent on single women voters:

in a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, single women favored Mr. Obama over his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, by 29 points

Romney leads among married men and women, according to recent polls.

The incentives are clear. Democrats win votes by promoting single motherhood. Republicans win votes by promoting policies that favor kids having two parents.

I am going with kids having two parents. Single moms are ruining America.

I was raised by a single mom

Barack Obama tried to show his empathy for single moms by saying in last night's debate:

I was raised by a single mom who had to put herself through school while looking after two kids.

Obama is apparently referring to about a year in about 3 years near 1974 when his mom finished her MA graduate degree in anthropology. You can find the full story on Wikipedia.

For the big majority of Obama's childhood, his mom was married to either her first husband (1961-63) or her second husband (1964-on), or he was living with his grandparents and attending a fancy private school.

I had thought that Obama was abandoned by his father and step-father, but he was not. His mom left both men, and she did it shortly after giving birth in both cases.

Obama also said:

OBAMA: My grandmother, she started off as a secretary in a bank. She never got a college education, even though she was smart as a whip. And she worked her way up to become a vice president of a local bank, but she hit the glass ceiling.

She attended Univ. of Washington and UC Berkeley. I guess she never got a degree, but it is false to say that she never got a college education.

Obama's personal life story was his main claim to fame, before being elected President. Why would he lie about his background? Does he not know that his grandmother went to college? Does he think that people are really going to buy this "single mom" story? I would think that genuine single moms would be annoyed at being compared to a woman like his mom.

Lesbians for laws against dads

The Wash. Post reports:

For Rachel Dabney, the right to be legally called a mother would be decided in Docket No. 24-A-12-000043. Whether she would be deemed “fit and proper” to raise the children whose diapers she had been changing for more than a year now rested in the hands of a judge, an inch-thick case file and exhibits A through O. ...

Because [Amy] Rice was the one to give birth, she was, in the eyes of the state at least, the twins’ mother. Dabney was a legal stranger, her name not on the children’s birth certificates.

Thta's right. Rice is the mom, and Dabney is not. Only one mom is listed on the birth certificate.

If Maryland becomes the first state to legalize same-sex marriage by a popular vote next month, the victory would be built in part on a campaign message pushed by Gov. Martin O’Malley. Vote for gay marriage, he often says, “for the kids.”

“We cannot rightly conclude that the children of some parents should have lesser protections under the law than children of other parents,” O’Malley (D) recently told a group of deep-pocketed donors in the District, imploring them to open their checkbooks to fund an ad campaign defending the state’s same-sex marriage law.

This is crazy. As the story explains, Rice and Dabney did successfully use the family court to eliminate the dad from the lives of his twin boys, and the lesbians adopted the boys. Their case is not really an argument for same-sex marriage, except that a change in marriage law would have simplified the legal process for Dabney to make sure the boys grow up without a dad.

The only sensible paragraph in the story is this:

“Marriage provides children the best chance of being raised by a mother and father,” a narrator says in an ad the Maryland Marriage Alliance began airing across the state on Tuesday. “Children do best when raised by their married mom and dad.”

Before you accuse me of being bigoted against a sexual orientation, I don't even believe that these women have a sexual orientation. They are too fat and ugly to find husbands. Most lesbian couples like this do not actually have sex with each other. But I don't care what they do in private.

My objection is to changing the law to facilitate forcing kids to grow up without a dad, and then claiming that this somehow benefits kids.

The newspapers write these stories as if it is some sort of tragedy if some woman, who is not even a parent, has some legal inconvenience in adopting kids. Meanwhile, real parents like me do not even see our kids.

The LGBT lobby has been co-opted by the anti-dad lobby. Am I wrong here? If there is some example of an LGBT organization sticking up for real dads, I would like to hear about it. It sure seems to me that the LGBT lobby is always pushing for laws to enable lesbians to force kids to grow up without their dads.

Telling my kids the truth

A reader commented:

I think that you actually do compromise your kid's privacy with your blog. I think it's the lesser of the evils though. Fighting for your parental rights, first amendment rights, and transparency is in your kids better interest, vs. not doing it.

I had a dispute with the court psychologist, Ken Perlmutter, related to this.

Perlmutter said that it was very important that my kids never learn that the family court ruled against me, or that I was paying child support. He said that my kids have a new family now, and they do not need to know those things. He said that I should tell them that it was my decision not to see my kids. Once a psychologist and a commissioner had decided the best interest of the kids,

He repeatedly asked me why I would tell them what the court had done. He acted as if he genuinely did not understand why a parent would do such a thing.

I explained to him that I had always been honest with my kids, and I believed in telling them the truth. They had been led to believe that I had abandoned them, and complained that I never do anything for them. I said that it was wrong for kids to be told such falsehoods about their own dad, and furthermore there are numerous studies showing that it is harmful for kids to believe such things.

He admitted that there is no objective evidence of harm in telling my kids the truth, or in anything else I had done. His reasons had more to do with his greed, his vindictiveness, and his religion.

No, I will not tell my kids that I abandoned them.

Sheriff could face recall

San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi is back on the job, have been saved by his fellow extreme leftist allies:

The four supervisors whose votes blocked the sheriff's ouster on Tuesday are progressives like Mirkarimi. John Avalos, David Campos, Jane Kim and Christina Olague each denounced domestic violence, but said Mirkarimi's incident didn't rise to the level of official misconduct according to the City Charter.

On Wednesday, Kim emailed her constituents explaining her vote while also saying her faith in Mirkarimi as a person and sheriff has been "greatly diminished." She even suggested that voters demand a recall.

"I am deeply pained by the decision because regardless of the legal reasoning for my final vote, I know that the public may perceive this as a statement that violence committed by an elected official is OK," Kim said. "The electorate has every right to recall the sheriff, an action which I would support."

For any recall vote of Mirkarimi, petitioners would need to gather more than 48,000 signatures - about 10 percent of all registered voters in San Francisco - within 160 days, John Arntz, the city's director of elections, said Thursday.

So she voted to save him, but endorses a recall? It appears that the fight will continue, and his friends are not his friends.

The city does not have any Republicans or moderates. The political fights are between the Democrats and the extreme leftist "progressives".

The mayor is still badmouthing Lee:

But high emotions continued Wednesday as Lee lambasted Avalos, Campos, Kim and Olague over their decisions.

"I believe they sought out an excuse for an inexcusable act that was confirmed by the criminal courts," the mayor told reporters.

Lee said Mirkarimi's return to office tarnishes the city's nationally recognized programs designed to combat domestic violence.

Willie Brown used to be the smartest politician in California, and now he writes:

Talk about falling up: Suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi's return to his job has made him the de facto leader of San Francisco's progressive wing.

And barring a recall, it has also instantly made him the leading candidate against Mayor Ed Lee in the 2015 election.

Before his arrest, conviction and suspension for falsely imprisoning his wife, Mirkarimi was known mainly to political wonks and to constituents in his Haight-Ashbury/Western Addition supervisorial district. He got elected sheriff not through any popular groundswell, but because of ranked-choice voting.

Today, Mirkarimi is both a household name and, thanks to the four fellow progressives on the Board of Supervisors who saved his bacon, the most visible foil to the moderate Lee.

Besides, who else does the left have in its corner?

Supervisor John Avalos has already run once for mayor and fell short.

Supervisor David Campos hopes to be up in the state Assembly by the time Lee runs for re-election.

State Sen. Mark Leno? Not pure enough for the true progressives.

And at this point, Supervisors Jane Kim and Christina Olague are so confused about who they really are, they could both have a hard time running for any future office.

Plus, chances are Ross will face some pretty tough opposition if he runs for re-election as sheriff. Why not try falling up again? It's worked so far. And while he is at it, how about appointing former Mayor Art Agnos as the undersheriff to oversee domestic violence cases, because after all Agnos is a former social worker.

Mark Leno not pure enough for the true progressives? He's gay, Jewish, and out to destroy marriage by saying judges have the discretion to force a kid to have 3 mommies. I hate to think what the true progressives want.

Dad just got custody

This is a happy dad:

Just got custody of my daughter in a "mom state". It took me over two years.

Reply: Now I don't know your whole story, but if you're like 90% (pulled that number out of ass, but better safe than sorry) of the cases out there, the story isn't over. It's never over. The mother might still disagree with what transpired and in that case, as long as the courts are open to her, anything you do that could be used against you is a danger to what you've accomplished. Sorry to be such a downer.

The comment is right. It's never over. There is no limit to the interventionist evildoers.

China advises leftover women

A NY Times op-ed complains about

In 2007, the Women’s Federation defined “leftover” women (sheng nu ) as unmarried women over the age of 27 and China’s Ministry of Education added the term to its official lexicon. Since then, the Women’s Federation Web site has run articles stigmatizing educated women who are still single.

Take this uplifting column from March 2011 that ran just after International Women’s Day:

Pretty girls don’t need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family, but girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult. These kinds of girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don’t realize that as women age, they are worth less and less, so by the time they get their M.A. or Ph.D., they are already old, like yellowed pearls.

After knocking some good sense into those misguided women who pursue a higher education, the column accuses educated, single women of sleeping around and having degenerate morals:

Many highly educated “leftover women” are very progressive in their thinking and enjoy going to nightclubs to search for a one-night stand, or they become the mistress of a high official or rich man. It is only when they have lost their youth and are kicked out by the man, that they decide to look for a life partner. Therefore, most “leftover women” do not deserve our sympathy.

This is funny. Yes, the Chinese girls will seek out alpha men and become sluts, if given the opportunity. It is human nature. Feminists pretend that they are immune to it, but they are not.

If the Chinese commies understood the threat, they would shut down the women's studies and other feminist influenced departments at their colleges, before it is too late. And they would never give women the vote.

The Chinese are just giving sensible advice. The Islamic countries take more drastic measures. Laura Bush writes:

On Tuesday afternoon, Malala Yousafzai was a 14-year-old girl riding home on a school bus. Now, after a masked gunman apparently boarded her bus, asked for her by name and shot her in the head and neck, she is fighting for her life. Malala was targeted by the Pakistani Taliban because for the past three years she has spoken out for the rights of all girls to become educated. After this despicable shooting, a Taliban spokesman said that his organization considers Malala’s crusade for education rights an “obscenity” and accused her of “propagating” Western culture. If she survives, the group promises to try again to kill her.

CNN reports:

There were at least 185 documented attacks on schools and hospitals in Afghanistan last year, according to the United Nations, and the majority of those attacks were attributed to armed groups opposed to educating females.

No, I do not agree with Islamic law, or with the Obama administration installing an Islamic govt in Afghanistan.

Update: The Spearhead blog adds:

I came across a hilarious article in the NY Times, in which a typical American feminist has a fit over material published by the Chinese Women’s Federation.

When holding out for a man, if you say he must be rich and brilliant, romantic and hardworking … this is just being willful. Does this kind of perfect man exist? Maybe he does exist, but why on earth would he want to marry you?

I love that last line. Way to throw cold water on the Fifty Shades crowd.

The NY Times feminist’s commentary is the typical fare, so there’s no reason to repeat much of it here. To sum it up, she’s indignant. Big surprise…

A reader suggests that China read the manosphere blogs. That would be funny. The Chinese have they own idea of common sense. And feminists cannot stand to hear the truth.

Psychology is poster child for bad science

I sometimes post evidence for the sorry state of psychology, even if it does not involve the family court. Even many of its most respected leaders are quacks. The UK journal Nature reports:

Nobel prize-winner Daniel Kahneman has issued a strongly worded call to one group of psychologists to restore the credibility of their field by creating a replication ring to check each others’ results.

Kahneman, a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, addressed his open e-mail to researchers who work on social priming, the study of how subtle cues can unconsciously influence our thoughts or behaviour.

Kahneman's email says:

As all of you know, of course, questions have been raised about the robustness of priming results. The storm of doubts is fed by several sources, including the recent exposure of fraudulent researchers, general concerns with replicability that affect many disciplines, multiple reported failures to replicate salient results in the priming literature, and the growing belief in the existence of a pervasive file drawer problem that undermines two methodological pillars of your field: the preference for conceptual over literal replication and the use of meta-analysis. ...

For all these reasons, right or wrong, your field is now the poster child for doubts about the integrity of psychological research. ...

I am not a member of your community, and all I have personally at stake is that I recently wrote a book that emphasizes priming research as a new approach to the study of associative memory – the core of what dualsystem theorists call System 1. Count me as a general believer.

Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, has been the biggest selling science-related book of the last several years.

The book's main thesis is that there are two kinds of thinking, system 1 (fast) and system 2 (slow). His favorite example is that G.W. Bush is a fast thinker while B. Obama is a slow thinker. His book details examples of how both thinking styles can give wrong answers to trick questions.

So now Kahneman complains that his book is based on priming research that has never been replicated, except by fraudulent research? The book makes a big deal out of studies that people will pay more for life insurance after they have been "primed" by a salesman emphasizing the possibility of a terrorist attack. Kahneman considers this an example of irrational thinking, because the chance of a terrorist attack is small.

Even some of the most highly respect work in psychology is crap. I don't know how a million people could buy Kahneman's book and praise it so highly. It should be obvious that his analysic of the difference between Bush and Obama is nonsense, and his examples are silly. Now he admits that he relied on bogus research.

Intolerant left fires diversity officer

A reader questions whether the leftist-gay-feminist lobby are really the most intolerant. Consider this story:

WASHINGTON — The chief diversity officer at Gallaudet University has been placed on paid leave after she signed a petition to put a gay marriage referendum on the ballot in Maryland.

Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz announced Angela McCaskill’s leave in a statement Wednesday.

Hurwitz says McCaskill “participated in a legislative initiative that some feel is inappropriate” for someone in her position.

Gallaudet is the nation’s leading university for the deaf and hard of hearing.

McCaskill lives in Maryland, where voters will decide in November whether to approve a state law legalizing gay marriage. The referendum was placed on the ballot by opponents of same-sex unions.

Same-sex marriage in Maryland started when state officials began recognizing alleged marriages from out of state, against the will of the people. Any fair-minded person favoring self-government would also favor putting the issue to a vote of the people.

And yet a university official got suspended for signing a petition on her own private time.

Same-sex marriage lost a vote in California in part because the gay lobby made it clear that they would not tolerate any diversity of opinion on the subject, and would use marriage law to force people to acquiesce to the gay agenda.

Update: McCaskill is a deaf black woman whose skin color was supposed to make her a good diversity officer. The complaint against her came from some (probably gay) anonymous professor who refused to identify himself or herself. There are many things wrong here.

Sheriff survives witchhunt

I reported previously (including July August) about the witchhunt against the San Fran sheriff. Now he has avoided getting fired:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — After nine months of headlines and bitter legal squabbling over the fate of San Francisco's sheriff, three members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors said Tuesday that they decided he should not be removed from office over a domestic violence case involving his actress wife.

It would take at least nine votes from the 11-member board to oust Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, who was elected last fall and mired in controversy before his swearing-in ceremony. But three of the first four supervisors to discuss their upcoming vote said they would not find that Mirkarimi was guilty of official misconduct.

Mayor Lee only got 7 votes to fire the sheriff. Here was his argument:

Lee, who was at City Hall for an unrelated Latino Heritage Month celebration, said that was mere speculation — and that the supervisors had to examine the facts of this particular case.

“This is domestic violence,” he said. “This is an involuntary incarceration of another person, happened to be a spouse, and I think if you narrow it down to that set of facts, you cannot help but conclude, as I did and the Ethics Commission did, that this is official misconduct.”

No, this was not domestic violence or involuntary incarceration. It was a man who grabbed his wife's arm, in the most intolerant city on Earth.

Update: An anonymous comment argues that the conviction could be considered domestic violence. I quote the Wikipedia article on Ross Mirkarimi:

On January 13, 2012, Mirkarimi was charged with domestic violence battery, child endangerment, and dissuading a witness in connection with a New Year's Eve altercation he had with his wife.[5] While jury selection was underway, Mirkarimi entered into a plea agreement with the district attorney, pleading guilty to one count of misdemeanor false imprisonment."

So he was charged with domestic violence, but not convicted of it. It is slanderous of the mayor to accuse Mirkarimi of domestic violence, when he was legally innocent of that charge.

Husband killers to get released

I have a reader who doubts that California is controlled by extreme leftist feminists. Yes, Gov. Brown signed leftist bills. Here is the latest:

Brenda Clubine is a platinum blonde with focused blue eyes and a no-nonsense demeanor.

She spent 26 years in prison for killing her husband. After enduring beatings and emergency room visits, she says, it finally ended in a locked motel room where he told her to give him her wedding rings.

"I said, 'Why?' He said, 'Because tomorrow they won't be able to identify your body without them,' " Clubine says.

She hit him in the head with a wine bottle, and he died of blunt force trauma. She got out of prison four years ago, but many women with stories similar to Clubine's are still behind bars.

Now, those women may have a chance at release. California Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed a bill to allow new evidence to be considered in the cases of women serving decades-long sentences for killing their abusive partners.

No, Clubine's story is not plausible. Dead bodies are identified by relatives and by dental records, not wedding rings. If he really wanted to kill her, he would kill her and remove the rings himself.

This feminist bill is a capitulation to demands to let husband-murderers out of prison. And they will not even have to register as sex offenders after they get out!

Husband-murderers are hard to convict in California because of this evidence code rule:

1107. (a) In a criminal action, expert testimony is admissible by either the prosecution or the defense regarding intimate partner battering and its effects, including the nature and effect of physical, emotional, or mental abuse on the beliefs, perceptions, or behavior of victims of domestic violence, except when offered against a criminal defendant to prove the occurrence of the act or acts of abuse which form the basis of the criminal charge.

So a bogus feminist psychologist can argue for the defense that the killer has battered wife syndrome, but the prosecution cannot offer such evidence against. The defense attorney then convinces the gullible jury that the poor abused woman had to kill her husband.

The stated purpose of this new law is to free the husband killers who were convicted before the above evidence rule was enacted.

These laws and expert testimony are contrary to common sense and established facts. Here is a new study:

Conventional wisdom suggests that women usually kill their spouses in self defence or as a final, desperate reaction to chronic battery, the burning-bed syndrome that is sometimes cited as a defence in murder trials. A new Canadian study, however, suggests that barely a quarter of husband-killers are victims of domestic abuse, less than half suffer from any identified psychological problem, and fewer still have had trouble with police.

The majority of the slayings – perpetrated by knife, gun and strangulation — appear generally unheralded, suggests the analysis of 20 years of Quebec homicide files.

“Women rarely gave a warning before killing their mates,” concluded the study, co-authored by Dr. Dominique Bourget, a forensic psychiatrist at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. “In the vast majority of cases of women who killed their mates, there were very few indicators that might have signalled the risk and helped predict the violent, lethal behaviour.” ...

“We’ve got a stereoptye about domestic violence … that the oppressor or perpetrator is the male and when female violence happens, it’s a reaction against male violence,” he said. “The stereotype is so strong, that when you look at the actual data, you’re shocked.”

Every female murderer in California just got a get-out-of-jail-free card. All she has to do is to invent some saga of abuse.

Another stupid new law

Here is another new law:

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed legislation introduced by Assembly member Toni Atkins, (D-San Diego) that prevents victims from being forced to pay spousal support to ex-husbands or wives who are convicted of violent crime against them. Assembly Bill 1522 was inspired by the case of a San Diego-area woman, Crystal Harris, who was ordered to pay her former husband monthly spousal support during the pendency of his criminal trial. After he was convicted and sentenced to six years, Harris was ordered to pay a portion of his legal fees.

This may sound reasonable, but look at the case that justified this law:

A man accused of sexually assaulting his wife will not have to stand trial again, 10News reported.

Shawn Harris is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 5 after he was convicted last Friday of forcible oral copulation against his wife, Crystal. Jurors deadlocked on the two other charges, including forcible rape. ...

In court, she testified her husband had raped her and said the attack was the culmination of abuse that started months before. ...

For her own protection, she said she set up a tape recorder to record the threats. However, one of the recordings was the actual rape, Harris added. ...

While too graphic for 10News to broadcast in its entirety, jurors who listened to the 50-minute recording did not believe the defense's story that the sex was part of role-playing. But the jury did not completely buy into Crystal Harris' story as well.

"There were inconsistencies in their stories. Some things are just not plausible," said juror Lisa Yumi Mitchell. ...

"This is one of those crimes that I don't ever hear talked about in the media or in our culture," said Harris.

Nobody talks about it because no one believes that it is a crime. What kind of wife tape-records her husband having sex with her, and then claims that the tape is evidence of rape? Even tho she was free to say whatever would best frame her husband, the jury did not believe her story.

The wife was not exactly helpless. This is not the Crystal Harris who left Hugh Hefner at the altar last year. This Crystal Harris had the money:

Despite Shawn Harris' record of domestic violence and the fact that he was awaiting a separate trial for rape charges during their divorce proceedings, family court Judge Gregory Pollack ordered Crystal Harris to pay her husband $1,000 a month, in part because she was the family breadwinner, a financial advisor making about $120,000 a year, while her husband stayed home with the kids. Before the birth of their sons, Shawn Harris had worked as a used car salesman.

"The computer came up with a number of $3,000 a month that I should pay Shawn, but the judge did lower that down to $1,000 a month," Crystal Harris said.

The new law seems severe:

(1) An award of spousal support to the convicted spouse from the injured spouse is prohibited. ...

(4) The injured spouse shall be entitled to 100 percent of the community property interest in the retirement and pension benefits of the injured spouse.

So the wife makes a bogus rape accusation and the husband loses 100% of his pension?

Harris was not trapped in an abusive relationship. She could have left at any time. We have unilateral (no fault) divorce for that. She had an ongoing sexual relationship with her husband. If she changed her mind about how much she liked the rough sex, she could have gotten a divorce. It appears to me that this vindictive woman set up her husband so that she would not have to pay alimony.

San Francisco sheriff Mirkarimi faces a big vote on whether he gets fired for once grabbing his wife's arm. They would probably try to take his pension away also, if they could. Stay tuned for how liberal Democrats intervene in the private personal lives of others.

Multiple mommies vetoed

I complained on July 11 and July 12 about a new proposed California law for kids to have 3 or more mommies. The NY Times then wrote about it. A couple of other states already have such laws.

It is a horrible idea. I am pleasantly surprised that even our leftist governor agrees. An LGBT site reports:

California governor Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have provided protections for children with more than two parents, explaining he was sympathetic to the families where this applies but needed more time to consider the issue.

This misstates the bill. There are no children with more than two parents. This bill would not have protected any children. The primary purpose was to let lesbians interfere with natural parents. I had to learn about this from the LGBT press because the LGBT lobby is obsessed with destroying normal families.

The bill, which was authored by state senator Mark Leno would have adjusted a recent California Court of Appeal decision, In re M.C., which ruled that courts can never determine that a child has more than two parents, regardless of the situation and even if it would protect the child from harm, according to the National Center for Lesbian Rights. The court did, however, call upon the legislature to address the issue.

Leno said the bill could have ensured that "children are not unnecessarily put in the foster care system by allowing judges to recognize the fact that some young people are raised by more than two parents." He added that he would continue to work with the governor to create a solution. ...

"Until this law gets changed, judges in California will be forced to issue rulings they know will hurt children by bluntly ordering an end to their real relationships with their real parents," Howard said. "This is wrong and it should not endure."

As I explained before, that case did not subject the child to harm. It said that the child should be returned to his dad, instead of the two lesbians who had blocked the dad's parental rights. The two lesbians were found to be unfit. This was a case where the child has one fit parent, not three.

No, the court case did not call upon the legislature to address the issue. The closest the decision comes to that is this:

But even if the extremely unusual factual circumstances of this unfortunate case made it an appropriate action in which to take on such complex practical, political and social matters, we would not be free to do so. Such important policy determinations, which will profoundly impact families, children and society, are best left to the Legislature. ... to date, the Supreme Court has rejected the concept of dual paternity or maternity where such recognition would result in three parents ...

But as the court explained, having three parents would not have helped this case. The root of the problem in this case is that a flaky drug-addicted unfit lesbian claimed paternity by virtue of being in a domestic partnership with the mom. If there is any legal change that this case begs for, it is that a lesbian should never be considered the father of a child.

Leno, the gay Jewish extreme leftist politician, is wrong to say that his law would save kids from foster care. It would not have even helped the kid in the case he cites.

This destructive law will surely be back, as it is a logical consequence of same-sex marriage. The LGBT lobby is desperate to destroy the natural meaning of the word "parent", and we will have proposals for polygamy, plural marriage, plural parenting, and anything else that serves to help destroy the traditional American family.

Obama appeals to feminists

I watched the Presidential debate to see how long it would take for Barack Obama to reveal himself as an emasculated weakling and blame all his problems on G.W. Bush. It only took 10 seconds:

21:04:24: PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Well, thank you very much, Jim, for this opportunity. I want to thank Governor Romney and the University of Denver for your hospitality.

There are a lot of points I want to make tonight, but the most important one is that 20 years ago I became the luckiest man on Earth because Michelle Obama agreed to marry me.

And so I just want to wish, Sweetie, you happy anniversary and let you know that a year from now we will not be celebrating it in front of 40 million people.

(LAUGHTER)

You know, four years ago we went through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Really? He wants to be re-elected and his most important point is to remember his wife's anniversary?

In other words: Feminists, please vote for me, because I am subservient to a woman!

Or maybe: Don't vote for me so that on next years anniversary, I will have nothing to do but to cater to my wife's wishes.

Obama sounded as it he did not want to be President.

The claim of "worst financial crisis" is crazy. We had a housing crash, but it was no worse than the NASDAQ crash in the last years of the Clinton administration. You didn't hear Bush spending 4 years blaming Clinton.

Romney showed that he was firmly in control as he smoothly and gracefully and pointedly disrepected both Obama and the host, Jim Lehrer:

21:26:31: ROMNEY: ... What things would I cut from spending? Well, first of all, I will eliminate all programs by this test, if they don't pass it: Is the program so critical it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And if not, I'll get rid of it. Obamacare's on my list.

I apologize, Mr. President. I use that term with all respect, by the way.

OBAMA: I like it.

ROMNEY: Good. OK, good. So I'll get rid of that.

I'm sorry, Jim, I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I'm not going to -- I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That's number one.

Romney left no doubt what he thinks of Obama by comparing him to a lying child:

21:16:44: ROMNEY: ... Number two, I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals. I know that you and your running mate keep saying that and I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's just not the case. Look, I've got five boys. I'm used to people saying something that's not always true, but just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I'll believe it. But that -- that is not the case. All right? I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.

That was the most audacious put-down since Dan Quayle was told that he was no Jack Kennedy.

Obama is an incompetent, effeminate, narcissist who is ruining the nation. We need a man to do a man's job.

Obama would be nowhere without heavy support from blacks, single women, Jews, the welfare class, and the super-rich. Those groups support him in heavy numbers. What do they have in common? You figure it out.

Obama also benefits from bigotry and white guilt. A Gallup poll shows that 95% of Republicans are willing to vote for a black president, but only 72% of Democrats are willing to vote for a Mormon.

Most of all, Obama is catering to feminists, as he desperately needs the single woman vote. The NY Times explains:

As much as Ms. Sheradin is up for grabs in this election, so too are the legions of unmarried women who helped lift Mr. Obama to victory in 2008. Single women are one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups — there are 1.8 million more now than just two years ago. They make up a quarter of the voting-age population nationally, and even more in several swing states, including Nevada.

And though they lean Democratic — in a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, single women favored Mr. Obama over his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, by 29 points — they are also fickle about casting their ballots, preoccupied with making ends meet and alienated from a political system they say is increasingly deaf to their concerns.

But the Obama campaign, needing their support to offset traditional Republican strength among married women, is lavishing attention on them.

The future of the Democrat party lies in destroying marriage, and convincing feminist women that it is better to be dependent on the govt than dependent on a man.

While most married women support Romney, here is an exception:

A 74-year-old Hollywood man has been arrested for allegedly slapping his wife in a heated dispute about the 2012 presidential election, police say.

On Wednesday, Peter Schwartz told Broward County Judge John "Jay" Hurley that he and his wife argued after they had gone out to eat. He said his wife told him she disliked him because of his choice of presidential candidate.

"She said, 'You're like my mother, you like Romney. That means I don't like you,'" Schwartz said. ...

Hurley said that before Schwartz sees his wife again, he wants the issue to "settle down." He ordered Schwartz to stay 500 feet away from his wife until another judge rules otherwise. Hurley allowed him only to talk to her by phone. The judge reminded Schwartz about the adage of never talking religion or politics in polite company. ...

Schwartz reacted by raising his arms in the air. "It's ridiculous, your honor," he said.

Yes, it is ridiculous for a a 74yo man to be kicked out of his own home because his 47yo has fallen under Obama's hypnotic spell and threw a tantrum about it. Who is this judge to tell a man not to talk to his wife about religion or politics? He is probably under Obama's spell himself.

Angry dad bites ear

Some angry dads are giving the rest of us a bad name. USA Today reports:

Another disturbing story about out-of-control parents and youth sports. An angry dad allegedly attacked a 6th grade basketball coach after his son's team lost a game, then bit off part of the coach's ear.

The stricken coach was rushed to a local hospital where he underwent surgery to have the severed portion of his ear reattached.

The attack occurred Friday night at Holy Name School in Springfield, Mass., according to local TV station WWLP. After his son's team lost in the Catholic Youth Organization finals, Timothy Lee Forbes punched the winning coach, then bit off part of his ear, said Hampden assistant district attorney Marie Angers. Several of the 10-12 year old kids, who had gathered on the court to shake hands, were knocked to the floor and left crying after the incident. ...

Another father was recently ejected from a girl's state tournament hockey game in Massachusetts for shining a laser pointer into the eyes of players on the opposing team.

Let me make it clear that I do not condone biting the ear of your enemies. Altho I once suggested challenging someone to a duel, it would not have involved ear-biting (unless both parties agreed, of course).

It is fitting that this angry dad is from Springfield, hometown of Father Knows Best and TV's best angry dad, Homer Simpson.

California bans psychotherapies

I mentioned before an effort to ban certain psychotherapy, and now it has become law (effective at year-end). The San Francisco California newspaper reports:

California has become the first state in the country to ban controversial therapy practices that attempt to change the sexual orientation of minors after Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to outlaw them Saturday.

The bill, SB1172 by Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance (Los Angeles County), bars mental health practitioners from performing so-called reparative therapy, which professional psychological organizations have said may cause harm. Gay rights groups have labeled them dangerous and abusive.

"This bill bans non-scientific 'therapies' that have driven young people to depression and suicide. These practices have no basis in science or medicine and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery," Brown said in a statement to The Chronicle.

I am all in favor of delicensing quacks using unscientific practices. Then Ken Perlmutter, Bret Johnson, and Faren Akins would lose their licenses.

These psychologists do not just give bad advice. They use the authority of the court to cut off kids from their parents, and they use completely bogus justifications. Perlmutter admitted under oath that he was not following generally accepted knowledge and practices, but only applying his personal bigoted prejudices.

Here is the actual text of SB-1172:

SECTION 1. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) Being lesbian, gay, or bisexual is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming. The major professional associations of mental health practitioners and researchers in the United States have recognized this fact for nearly 40 years.

(b) The American Psychological Association convened a Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation. The task force conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed journal literature on sexual orientation change efforts, and issued a report in 2009. The task force concluded that sexual orientation change efforts can pose critical health risks to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, including confusion, depression, guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, shame, ...

(b) (1) “Sexual orientation change efforts” means any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.

(2) “Sexual orientation change efforts” does not include psychotherapies that: (A) provide acceptance, support, and understanding of clients or the facilitation of clients’ coping, social support, and identity exploration and development, including sexual orientation-neutral interventions to prevent or address unlawful conduct or unsafe sexual practices; and (B) do not seek to change sexual orientation.

865.1.
Under no circumstances shall a mental health provider engage in sexual orientation change efforts with a patient under 18 years of age.

865.2.
Any sexual orientation change efforts attempted on a patient under 18 years of age by a mental health provider shall be considered unprofessional conduct and shall subject a mental health provider to discipline by the licensing entity for that mental health provider.

This is crazy. Saying that being gay is not a disorder was not based on any fact-finding by those professional associations, but merely a political vote of the members.

The task force did say that certain therapies can cause risks, but they say that about all therapies. There is no evidence that the gay therapies are any riskier than any others.

Note tha the law does not just ban efforts to change an orientation; it also bans efforts to "change behaviors or gender expressions". So if your boy sometimes dresses up as a girl, and you take him to a shrink, then the shrink will not do anything to discourage such behavior.

Do not take your kid to a licensed shrink in California.

Update: A lawsuit challenges the new law:

A college student who claims he once had same-sex attractions but became heterosexual after conversion therapy has filed a lawsuit against California, which has enacted a law that bans so-called "gay cures" for minors.

The lawsuit, also joined as plaintiffs by two therapists who have used the treatments with patients, alleges that the law banning the therapy intrudes on First Amendment protections of free speech, privacy and freedom of religion. ...

The bill's sponsor, California state Sen. Ted Lieu, said the therapy -- called "conversion therapy," "sexual orientation therapy," "reparative therapy" or "sexual orientation change efforts" -- amounts to "psychological child abuse."

"I read the lawsuit and, as a matter of fiction, it is a good read," Lieu said in a prepared statement after the suit was filed. "But from any reasonable legal standard, the lawsuit is frivolous. Under the plaintiffs' argument, the First Amendment would shield therapists and psychiatrists from medical malpractice and psychological abuse claims simply because they use speech in practicing their medicine. That is a novel and frivolous view of the First Amendment."

No, even without this law, psychotherapists were subject to malpractice claims. This law restricts professional from expressing legitimate opinions, and in doing therapies that are not considered malpractice.

Cuckoo bird visits cuckoo court

I am always complaining that my local family court has gone cuckoo, and that is literally true. The cuckoo bird has only been seen in the continental USA in 1981 where Ted Kennedy killed a woman, and now just outide the local county family court. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports:

WATSONVILLE -- The news of a rare bird sighting in the wetlands near Ramsay Park has set hearts aflutter in the birding community.

Lois Goldfrank, a veteran Santa Cruz County birder, spotted what's been tentatively identified as a common cuckoo on Friday morning at Watsonville Slough while on an outing with the Santa Cruz Bird Club.

"It was a great feeling to see such a bird," Goldfrank said. "She seems to be very happy eating caterpillars. Everyone is catching her gobbling them up so she may stick around for a while."

Don't let the name fool you. The common cuckoo, a 13-inch bird also known as the Eurasian cuckoo, breeds in Europe and Asia, and winters in central and southern Africa. The bird rarely has
been seen in North America and then mostly in Alaska's westernmost islands. The only other recorded sighting of the cuckoo in the lower 48 was in 1981 on Martha's Vineyard.

I goto Watsonville to see cuckoo judges, lawyers, and shrinks, and now I can go there to see genuine cuckoo birds!

Most shrinks are crazy

A reader alerts me to the latest Straight Dope column. This column has been a reliable source of facts for decades.

Dear Cecil:

Is it true that, as a class, psychotherapists and other mental health professionals are crazier than average? And that despite their training and experience, they can recognize their own issues less readily than the average nutcase? — Paul

Cecil replies: ...

A widely noted study from 1980 found 73 percent of psychiatrists had experienced moderate to incapacitating anxiety early in their careers, and 58 percent had suffered from moderate to incapacitating depression. ...

One British study found psychiatrists had nearly five times the suicide rate of general practitioners, and U.S. research indicates psychiatrists commit suicide at two to three times the rate of the general population.

Similarly, depression, stress, and burnout are high among physicians but higher among psychiatrists; the same is true of alcohol and drug abuse. Psychiatrists have a divorce rate 2.7 times that of other physicians and as much as five times that of the general public. From a quarter to a half of psychiatrists say they’re suffering from burnout at any given time.

A study of more than 8,000 Finnish hospital employees found the psychiatric staff was 81 percent more likely to suffer from a current or past mental illness and 61 percent more likely to miss work due to depression. Psychiatric staff were twice as likely to smoke as other hospital staff and had much higher rates of alcohol use. A 30-year study of 20,000 UK medical workers found psychiatrists were 46 percent more likely than their peers to die from injuries and poisoning, and at 12 percent greater risk of dying overall. ...

Does the mental health field attract people with mental problems? Research is thin, but some studies have found mental health workers are more likely than average to have experienced early abuse and trauma. A much-cited 1963 study reported that 24 out of 25 psychiatrists had entered the field because of a wish to explore some personal conflict.

That gives one pause. Sure, there’s value in consulting a health professional who’s been down the same road as us. But who wants their therapist thinking, “Maybe after I get this head case straightened out, I’ll figure out what’s wrong with me”?

— Cecil Adams

A Psychology Today article details Why Shrinks Have Problems:

In 1899 Sigmund Freud got a new telephone number: 14362. He was 43 at the time, and he was profoundly disturbed by the digits in the new number. He believed they signified that he would die at age 61 (note the one and six surrounding the 43) or, at best, at age 62 (the last two digits in the number). He clung, painfully, to this bizarre belief for many years. Presumably he was forced to revise his estimate on his 63rd birthday, but he was haunted by other superstitions until the day he died—by assisted suicide, no less—at the ripe old age of 83.

That's just for starters. Freud also had frequent blackouts. He refused to quit smoking even after 30 operations to correct the extensive damage he suffered from cancer of the jaw. He was a self-proclaimed neurotic. He suffered from a mild form of agoraphobia. And, for a time, he had a serious cocaine problem.

Neuroses? Superstitions? Substance abuse? Blackouts? And suicide? So much for the father of psychoanalysis. But are these problems typical for psychologists? How are Freud's successors doing? Or, to put the question another way: Are shrinks really "crazy"?

Yes, it is my experience that the craziest people become shrinks. And that is what all the studies say.

I you wanted to lose weight, would you pay for advice from a 400-pound man? Of course not. You would not pay him to coach you to train for a triathlon either. If he does not know how to get his own life together, then it is very unlikely to have the ability to help you get your life together.

The become a court child custody evaluator, shrinks have to take a seminar on domestic violence, but there is no requirement that they not be crazy. And the ones at my local court all have severe personal problems.