Good judge gets demoted

California superior court judges are elected, which should mean that they are not puppets of the prosecutors, CPS, and other govt bureaucrats. But in fact most judges are ex-prosecutors and/or appointed by the governor.

So what happens when an independent thinker gets elected somehow? He gets demoted to traffic court:

San Diego Judge Gary Kreep, a conservative legal activist who led a failed fight to challenge President Obama’s citizenship, has been exiled to traffic court after several Superior Court rulings favoring defendants’ constitutional rights.

Kreep, 63, was reassigned on Sept. 9 from the downtown San Diego courthouse to a Kearny Mesa facility that handles traffic offenses and small claims.

The move came after prosecutors from the City Attorney’s Office began to boycott his courtroom over his legal approach.

For instance, Kreep often declined to take away a defendant’s 4th Amendment rights against search and seizure — something prosecutors can legally request at various points during the criminal process. …

Apparently Kreep earned the ire only of prosecutors. The Public Defender’s office, which handles the majority of the cases in Kreep’s former courtroom, said its lawyers had no problem with the judge. Private lawyers had the same view.

The reassignment came soon after prosecutors deployed the legal tactic known as a peremptory challenge to keep cases from Kreep’s court, according to defense lawyers and courthouse sources.

Under state law, each side can exert one such challenge to the judge assigned to their case. They don’t have to state a reason. Prosecutors can create a so-called “blanket challenge” by issuing the peremptory challenge for every case assigned to the judge.

“They (prosecutors) are so used to getting their way,” said Heather Boxeth, a criminal defense lawyer who represented many clients in front of Kreep. “But they blanket-challenged him over simple misdemeanors.”

One example was how Kreep handled petty theft cases. Often defendants were given a deferred prosecution deal: plead guilty and in six months — if they had attended classes, not been arrested again, and repaid the store — the pleas would be wiped out.

Kreep would often dismiss these cases long before the six-month period, after the defendant had only attended a session or two, several lawyers said.

He also would release defendants without bail on minor charges if they had a history of showing up at court appearances, Boxeth said. And he was reluctant to impose orders of protection against individuals who had yet to be judged guilty.

Man discards gold to spite ex-wife

A reader sends this NY Post article about an angry dad taking a drastic step:

His revenge was worth its weight in gold.

A Colorado man was so angry at his ex-wife for divorcing him that he had the couple’s life savings of $500,000 converted to gold — then tossed it in a dumpster so she couldn’t have any of it, the Colorado Springs Gazette reports.

In June, Earl Ray Jones, 52, of Divide, Colorado, was ordered by a judge to pay $3,000 a month to the woman he’d been married to for 25 years, so he pillaged the couple’s retirement account and had it converted into 22 pounds worth of gold and silver bars, the paper reports.

Jones claims he then tossed the modern-day treasure into a dumpster behind a motel, where he had been living temporarily, later telling the judge he had no money to give his ex-wife, according to the paper.

His wife’s lawyer called it one of the most bizarre things he’d ever seen.

“We say that when people are divorcing, they enter a state of temporary insanity,” quipped John-Paul Lyle. “But on a scale of 1 to 10, this is my 10.”

There are no witnesses to confirm the gold dumping and no lucky garbage men discovered the treasure, according to the Gazette.

“I didn’t have any drivers walking off the job with a smile in May,” garbage truck manager Rick DiPaiva said.
Jones said he first tried to withdraw the money from his bank in cash, but the request was denied.

“If that would have been an option, I would have been walking around giving people $100 bills,” he said in a sworn statement.

Jones is now in jail, doing time for assault for a separate case.

I hate to say it, but this does not work. The judge will say that he does not believe the man's story, and hold him in jail until he produces the gold. He has no right to a trial, and could be held in jail for 10 years.

If he really wanted to destroy the money, he could have opened a futures (commodities) account and made a series of bad trades. Or taken it to Las Vegas and gamble it away. Then he would have witnesses, and could prove that he no longer had the money.

Update: Thanks to a comment for the link to http://gazette.com/teller-county-man-claims-he-dumped-gold-in-landfill-during-divorce-dispute/article/1508220 with more details.

I am not defending the man. He is either a fool or a liar. The wife may be at fault also. If she ends up destitute, it will be partially because she chose to file criminal charges against him, and divorce him.

Eating the dog food

People wonder how so many family court judges, shrinks, lawyers, and others could participate in so many policies that seem so contrary to fairness, justice, common sense, and the public interest. They wonder how so many people could do so much evil without some far-fetched conspiracy theory. The simplest explanation I can give is that they eat the dog food.

Microsoft has a doctrine it calls eating your own dog food. It means that they have to use those company products if they want to keep cashing those company paychecks and stock options. They are happy to do it.

There is a related concept called Eating your own dog food, also defined here. That connotes true-believing cult-members in a suicide pact. That is a good term for people on a self-destructive ideological mission, but most of these family court jerks are more like blood-sucking leeches than kool-aid drinkers.

The dog-food eaters disclaim any responsibility for whether the policies are good or bad. They are just going along with the system in a way that allows them to cash their paychecks.

Missouri CPS under scrutiny

CPS is getting scrutiny in Missouri:

The emergency room diagnosis of the toddler’s fracture fell into that unsettling gray area where nobody was able to sufficiently prove whether it was caused by an accident or child abuse.

In the end, investigators with Missouri’s Children’s Division argued the type of break was a sign of abuse, but they had no evidence tying it to a particular parent, who both said the baby fell out of the father’s arms after he fell asleep in a chair.

For the parents, the abuse finding triggered a legal battle that cost them more than $15,000 to clear their names from state child abuse and neglect records.

The story was just one of dozens told to state legislators on the new Joint Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect as it hosted “listening posts” around the state to hear about people’s experiences with the state’s Children’s Division.

There is something really sick about CPS agents thinking that ever accident is really abuse.

Last week, Kirkton heard a variety of issues from an attorney, a private caseworker, a child advocate and a parent who came to the listening post. One said children in foster care weren’t always getting capable and effective court advocates. Another said the Children’s Division has lost so many attorneys to turnover, that adoptions and other court matters were moving too slow.

Kirkton tied many of the issues to inadequate funding.

No, CPS has too much money if they are investigating and charging minor accident fractures.

Update: A reader adds a similar story in Georgia.

Blonde child really is a gypsy

I thought that a Gypsy baby-stealer got caught red-handed, but Yahoo reports:

Sofia (AFP) - DNA tests confirmed Friday a Bulgarian Roma couple living in dire poverty as the biological parents of Maria, a mystery blonde girl discovered last week in a Greek Roma camp.

"DNA samples showed that Sasha Ruseva is the biological mother and Atanas Rusev is the biological father of the child called Maria," Bulgaria's interior ministry chief of staff Svetlozar Lazarov told reporters.

"A pre-trial probe was opened on the case against (the mother) for allegedly agreeing to sell her child in Greece in 2009," he added.

The interior ministry and the prosecution have yet to decide if the parents -- who have nine other children and live in the Roma ghetto of the town of Nikolaevo in central Bulgaria -- will be detained, the official said.

Green-eyed Maria was found living with a Greek Roma couple in a camp near the town of Farsala last Wednesday, sparking global news interest and hundreds of enquiries from parents of missing children.

DNA tests showed that the 39-year-old man and 40-year-old woman taking care of her were not her real parents.

The couple were accused of abducting the child, prompting an international appeal for help finding her parents.

Now I might have to re-calibrate some of my prejudices. Of course the Gypsies/Roma/Romani have interbred over the centuries, and sometimes ugly parents have a cute child.

Making childhood behavior a disease

I believe that child psychologists do more harm than good, even when they are not advising the court. From Salon mag:

Excerpted from "Back to Normal: Why Ordinary Childhood Behavior Is Mistaken for ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and Autism Spectrum Disorder"  ...

William’s parents were sociable. They spent a great deal of time in the company of other parents and children. They knew William’s tantrums, fussy eating habits, and social difficulties were outside the norm. Their friends’ kids were maturing, while William seemed stuck. When William was five years old, they decided to have him evaluated. A highly respected doctor at a university-based institute was sought out to conduct the initial evaluation. During a twenty-minute observation, William mostly sat staring at the doctor’s bookshelves—either ignoring or providing one-word answers to the questions he was asked. At the end of this brief observation, the doctor concluded that William was “on the spectrum” and had Asperger’s syndrome. The doctor reassured Jacqueline that her son’s difficulties were due to him having a brain disorder and that she should in no way hold herself responsible. He advised her to have further testing conducted through the institute to confirm the diagnosis and to approach her local regional center to obtain services for him—“Mostly as a precaution in case he can’t take care of himself when he gets older.”

The article goes on the explain how teachers and shrinks pathologize boys for not acting like girls.

Federal lawsuit against family court judges

A parents rights group has announced:

California Parents File Federal Racketeering Lawsuit against Family Court Judges; Charge Criminal Extortion, Bribery, Abuse of Office

August 20, 2013 -- San Diego, CA – In its continuing effort to end the harassment, fraud, and abuse rampant in California State Family Courts, a parents’ rights group, the California Coalition for Families and Children, has filed a lawsuit today in federal court charging the San Diego County courts, social workers, divorce attorneys, and psychologists with federal racketeering charges.

“The abuses of parents and children by Family Courts, social workers, and family law attorneys have harmed parents and children for far too long. We intend to end that abuse.” says CCFC President Colbern Stuart. “Family court is designed by its makers to be probably the most dangerous life event parents and children can endure. It enables and profits from every inhumane instinct known to man—greed, hate, resentment, fear—resulting in abundant cash flow and a fallout of parent and children’s misery.”

“And behind the curtain of this machine of misery we’ve uncovered its cause—the multi-billion dollar divorce industry, populated by judges, attorneys, and a machinery of tax-dollar fed social workers that George Orwell would marvel at.”

“We’ve been delivering that message kindly for years now, yet the tide keeps rising on families in crisis. We’ve appealed to the county courts, state and local politicians, state judicial oversight bodies, United States Representatives, and just plain old human dignity, but the harassment and abuse of parents and children has only increased. A resort to federal court intervention in the widespread criminal collusion in state government was the next logical step.”

I have considered filing a federal lawsuit myself. I would have done it, if I thought that it would do any good.

I wish them luck, but the federal courts have devised a long list of excuses for dismissing these sorts of caes without ever addressing the merits.

Mom loses kid because of her attitude

A single mom lost her baby because of a complaint to CPS about an "uncle" doing like Michael Jackson and hanging the baby over a balcony, and a court declared her unfit to get the baby back because:

The mother is currently unfit to parent this child because she continues to minimize the dangerous behavior of the uncle that was the reason that brought the child into foster care.

Even though the mother has complied with all services ordered by the court, her attitude and behavior have not changed sufficiently for the child to be placed with her.

The mother continues to behave in a hostile and belligerent manner toward the Department and service providers.

Two psychologists diagnosed the mother as having a personality disorder, a diagnosis that is consistent with her behavior and that is not likely to change in response to services.

In other words, she lost her kid because of her attitude, not any legitimate abuse or neglect concerns, and the crooked psychologists tried to back up CPS with a phony diagnosis.

Fortunate for the mom, the Washington state appeals court sided with her:

B.R.’s attitude and distrust of DSHS are not proper bases for termination…. While B.R. had a duty to comply with all ordered services, no statute or rule required her do so with a smile on her face.

Note how easy it was for CPS to find crooked psychologists to give some meaningless diagnosis to some mom that CPS wanted to punish.

This case illustrates how people have misperceptions about risk. Babies are so fragile that dropping a baby on his head from only a few feet is deadly. I am not sure that there is any risk difference between holding a baby upside down from 5 or 50 feet high. A drop kills the baby either way. Fortunately, people handle babies carefully, and do not drop them. Even Michael Jackson's famous blunder was not necessarily any more dangerous than walking down the staircase, provided that he had a firm grip on the child.

At any rate, the mom did not dangle the child, or approve of dangling him. She did everything to stop it. She did nothing to harm or endanger the child. And yet they made her take a bunch of parenting classes, and still would not give her the child back.

This case is proof that CPS is evil and vindictive.

Just to be clear, I am not recommending dangling a toddler over a balcony. I do not recommend black single moms raising multiple kids with multiple different dads, with goof-off relatives and boyfriends randomly loitering in the household. But if CPS is going to intervene, then it should quantify the danger of dangling, and prove it. It never did that.

I just learned that CPS sometimes offers a hearing, and advises:

The grievance review hearing shall, to the extent possible, be conducted in a non-adversarial environment.

Is this a sick joke? Can these goons really think that they can accuse a parent of child abuse, allow her to contest it, and decide the matter in a "non-adversarial environment".

My guess is that these CPS social workers will sit the mom down, and tell her that they have the child's best interest at heart better than the mom herself, and that the mom should do whatever they say if she wants to help her child. If she expresses any disagreement, they would say with a straight face that she must not love her child.

In another story:

"Despite numerous checkpoints and gate agents, officials at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport say a 9-year-old was somehow able to sneak through security and onto a Delta flight headed to Las Vegas."

That's the report from Minneapolis-St. Paul TV station KARE 11, which says the "security mishap" came Thursday when the boy sneaked into the airport and onto Delta Flight 1651 to Las Vegas.

CPS is currently considering putting the kid in foster care. When a little kid embarrasses govt bureaucrats, someone has to pay, I guess.

New Jersey goes gay

New Jersey is the latest state to adopt same-sex marriage, by a contrived scheme without a legislative or court decision, like California:

So it would seem that same-sex marriages, which began early Monday in the state thanks to a court ruling issued Friday, will continue.

Colin Reed, a spokesman for the Republican governor, tells the Star-Ledger that "although the governor strongly disagrees with the court substituting its judgment for the constitutional process of the elected branches or a vote of the people, the court has now spoken clearly as to their view of the New Jersey Constitution and, therefore, same-sex marriage is the law. The governor will do his constitutional duty and ensure his administration enforces the law as dictated by the New Jersey Supreme Court."

Gov. Chis Christie is running for reelection in a blue state. He and Pres. Obama used to claim that they were in favor of letting the people decide for themselves in each state. That is not happening in the blue states.

The funny thing is that the LGBTQIA lobby seems to want it this way. They say that some rights are so important that they should not be subject to a popular vote. So the fix is in, and we are going to get same-sex marriage whether it is popular or not, and whether the political or judicial process for it is legitimate or not.

I am much more concerned about family court policies toward natural parents. You could say that I should just accept that my views towards parental rights and the value of dads are in the minority. Yes, a lot of my views are in the minority. Part of why I post on thie blog is to try to convince the majority that they are wrong.

But even if I had the majority on my side, I am not sure it matters. The fix is in for certain leftist, feminist, anti-family goals, and we get certain policies without much public discussion or agreement.

Gun search ruins dad's life

A UK newspaper reports:

A desperate father has been banned from seeing his young son for four years after he was found with an unloaded gun he legally owned in the back of his car among his possessions as he moved house.

Brian Aitken was arrested in 2009 as he was moving back from Colorado to New Jersey to be near his child after a divorce. He was later convicted of possessing a gun and sentenced to seven years' prison.

Now the New York University graduate and digital media entrepreneur is using a crowdfunding website to raise funds so he can write a book about his ordeal and hopefully be reunited with his little boy.

I do not understand his crime. I thought that it was legal to have a gun in New Jersey.

But why should this have anything to do with seeing his son? Many dads have guns, and maybe even most dads.

More importantly, he is still unable to see his son, who is now five years old, because he cannot meet the harsh restrictions the judge placed on him.

Aitken's attorney described the case as a 'perfect storm of injustice,' to Crowdfund Insider

He now travels around the U.S. raising awareness about what happened to him and the huge ramifications it has had on his life. His story has also been covered in print, online and TV media.

In his latest push, he is raising funds on crowdfunding website Indiegogo to write a book about his experience and to be able to take his case to the Supreme Court.

I hate to say it, but he will not get his case to the Supreme Court, and he probably won't even get his book published. His story is a little different, but millions of dads have suffered injustices.

Court-appointed child molester

Here in this little California beach town, we have a court-appointed child molester:

SANTA CRUZ -- A local youth coach and child welfare advocate was rearrested Friday on suspicion of child molestation after allegedly abusing two minors he worked with as a court appointed special advocate, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office said.

Brian Criswell, 39, of Santa Cruz was arrested Oct. 4 on suspicion of child molestation after an initial investigation by sheriff's investigators, deputy Ryan Kennedy said.

Criswell posted $50,000 bail Oct. 8 but was rearrested Friday after a follow-up investigation revealed an additional victim, allegedly molested during a two-year period between 2009 and 2011, Kennedy said.

Criswell was a volunteer wrestling coach at Harbor High School until early October when he resigned in light of the investigation.

He was also an advocate for children at Court Appointed Special Advocates of Santa Cruz County. The organization trains volunteers to be advocates for abused or neglected children who have become dependents of the county. The advocates are supposed to ensure the child's needs are met.

Last month we had this:

A 47-year-old Marina man pleaded not guilty Wednesday to molesting a 15-year-old boy in downtown Santa Cruz during broad daylight.

Police arrested Johnny Camel around 8 p.m. Friday in the 400 block of Soquel Avenue, Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark said.

Camel was in Santa Cruz to attend a drug-abuse recovery facility, Clark said. Camel exited a bus at the Metro Center and started following the victim about 1:30 p.m., according to police. He made suggestive comments to the victim while following him for several blocks, Clark said. He eventually made contact with the victim, grabbed the boy's hand and placed it on his genitals , Clark said.

The victim ran away and called 911, Clark said.

The month before:

SANTA CRUZ -- A 57-year-old Soquel foster parent and school volunteer has been accused of molesting three boys, prosecutors said Monday.

Steven Irving Weissman was charged Monday with 10 counts of felony child molestation, adding to charges filed earlier in August.

Prosecutor Steve Moore said Weissman took advantage of children for more than 10 years.

"We're only on victim three, and we're interviewing a fourth victim," Moore told Judge Ariadne Symons during a bail hearing on Monday. "This is going to be an ongoing investigation."

Not even the surfers are safe, as we also had this:

Surf instructor Dylan David Greiner inappropriately touched a girl three times when she was 14 and 15 years old at a Santa Cruz beach, a park and a swimming hole in the San Lorenzo Valley, according to court documents filed this week.

Prosecutors have not alleged that he had sex with minors, but the documents trace an alleged relationship that started with a surf lesson on a girl's 14th birthday and spiraled into outings and sexual advances.

At Greiner's Westside home, she found a drawing of herself in a bikini, according to the documents.

I am not sure what to make of these stories. As with all criminal cases, I believe in innocence until proven guilty.

If they are really child molesters who did terrible things like anal rape, then I hope that they get locked up. But when the details are not revealed, I have no idea whether it is something trivial or serious.

I would hate to be a child advocate, or foster parent, or wrestling coach, or child psychologist, and be always under suspicion of being a child molester.

This shows that with all the mandated reporting, state databases, background checks, extensive interviews, etc, a court-appointed child advocate could still be a child molester. And I am not even counting psychologists like Bret Johnson and Ken Perlmutter, who legally molest kids thru bogus court process.

Single moms squared

Sailer reports:

A new academic study based on the Canadian census suggests that a married mom and dad matter for children. Children of same-sex coupled households do not fare as well.

... A study published last week in the journal Review of the Economics of the Household—analyzing data from a very large, population-based sample—reveals that the children of gay and lesbian couples are only about 65 percent as likely to have graduated from high school as the children of married, opposite-sex couples. And gender matters, too: girls are more apt to struggle than boys, with daughters of gay parents displaying dramatically low graduation rates.

Unlike US-based studies, this one evaluates a 20 percent sample of the Canadian census, where same-sex couples have had access to all taxation and government benefits since 1997 and to marriage since 2005.

... What is surprising in the Canadian data is the revelation that lesbian couples’ children fared worse, on average, than even those of single parents.

A lotta drama, a lotta instability, not a lotta money. Many lesbian couples are, in effect, single mothers squared.

We are in the midst of a grand experiment in destroying marriage. The negative results are coming in.

For completeness, here is some criticism from a typical leftist academic sociologist.

Parents do not have to pay for college

In most, but not all, states, parents have no obligation to pay for college tuition. Private colleges make their own rules about who pays. Nevertheless, some states have given family court judges the power to order divorced parents to pay for college.

The Alabama court has just reversed some of its earlier foolishness:

The Alabama Supreme Court today overturned a 1989 decision requiring noncustodial parents to help pay college expenses for children 19 and older.

In a 6-2 decision, the court ruled that the 1989 decision “failed to recognize the ordinary and common-law definitions of ‘child’ as a minor,” which the Legislature has defined in Alabama as under 19. ...

The decision came in a case originating in Limestone County in 2010. A divorced father asked the trial court to order his ex-wife to help pay college expenses for their son, who was about to turn 19. After a trial, the court ordered the ex-wife to pay 25 percent of the son's college costs. The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals upheld the decision. But today's decision reversed the ruling of the Court of Civil Appeals and sent the case back to that court. ...

The chief justice wrote that the 1989 decision violated the separation-of-powers doctrine and the fundamental rights of parents.

Here is the pdf decision. The maority opinion was written by Judge Roy Moore, who was previously kicked off the Alabama supreme court for refusing to remove the Ten Commandments from hte courthouse. I did not realize that he somehow got back on the court. I guess it makes sense that someone like that would stick up for parental rights, against some judge's opinion of the BIOTCh.

The case against spanking

I posted a case saying that it is Legal to spank with wooden spoon. Now it has 700+ comments on a law professor site.

One cited the Amer. Psy. Ass. case against spanking:

As in many areas of science, some researchers disagree about the validity of the studies on physical punishment. Robert Larzelere, PhD, an Oklahoma State University professor who studies parental discipline, was a member of the APA task force who issued his own minority report because he disagreed with the scientific basis of the task force recommendations. While he agrees that parents should reduce their use of physical punishment, he says most of the cited studies are correlational and don’t show a causal link between physical punishment and long-term negative effects for children.

“The studies do not discriminate well between non-abusive and overly severe types of corporal punishment,” Larzelere says. “You get worse outcomes from corporal punishment than from alternative disciplinary techniques only when it is used more severely or as the primary discipline tactic.”

In a meta-analysis of 26 studies, Larzelere and a colleague found that an approach they described as “conditional spanking” led to greater reductions in child defiance or anti-social behavior than 10 of 13 alternative discipline techniques, including reasoning, removal of privileges and time out (Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 2005). Larzelere defines conditional spanking as a disciplinary technique for 2- to 6-year-old children in which parents use two open-handed swats on the buttocks only after the child has defied milder discipline such as time out.

I don't think that any of the comments convince anyone of anything. The evidence on spanking is weak. Some people believe in it and some don't. About 80% of parents say spanking is necessary in child-rearing. About 80% of child psychologists advise against it.

I am not trying to persuade anyone that spanking is good or bad, but I would like to point out the illogic of the arguments against spanking.

(1) "The studies show that spanking is harmful." No, the studies do not show that, and if an expert tells you that, he is wrong. Despite many efforts, no study has shown that any other method of discipline works better than spanking.

(2) "Extremely abusive beatings are harmful, and therefore so are spankings." No, many things are beneficial in moderation, and harmful in overdoses. If a so-called expert cannot understand that, then he is not much of an expert.

(3) "Nothing is ever solved by violence, or threat of violence, and the child needs to be taught that." This is the weirdest argument of all. Violence won World War II. Violence keeps criminals off the streets. Threat of violence keeps citizens obeying the law and paying their bills. Every civilization in the history of the world has been based on violence to keep order. Yes, violence solves problems, and the sooner the child learns that, the better.

The anti-spanking zealots remind me of vegans. If they don't want to eat meat, that is fine with me. But when they claim that veganism is healthier, or the only moral way to live, then they are fanatics, far outside the norm.

Self-hating dad and other anti-male rants

A reader sends this rant by a confused dad:

It's nearly impossible to avoid stories of violence, rape, and domination. Living rightly is hard enough on your own, and now I must raise a son to do so in a world that is, in part, characterized by men's violence against women.

Louis CK sums it up best: "There is no greater threat to women than men. We are the number one threat to women. Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women." And I worry that he’s right.

Now that I am a father, this question constantly sits before me: How do I raise a son of compassion and dignity? A man who respects women?

No, this is crazy thinking. The world is characterized much more by men doing nice things for women, and women benefitting from men.

Pres. Obama just announced that he is appointing a woman to head the Federal Reserve Bank, while the IMF is already headed by a woman:

Christine Lagarde believes that women in high places are essential. Men, left to themselves, will usually make a mess of things. The 2008 financial collapse was, at least in part, she says, driven by the aggressive, greedy, testosterone-fuelled mood of male-dominated, hi-tech trading rooms.

No, this is anti-male nonsense. THe crash was caused mainly by govt guarantees for risky loans.

Physicians are now limited in Canada:

Quebec’s physicians college has forbidden its members from performing virginity tests after learning of four cases in which doctors were asked to conduct the gynecological exams.

The province’s College des Medicins said it recently provided guidelines outlining its stance on virginity testing, which examines whether a woman has engaged in sexual intercourse.

The procedure goes against its code of ethics, the college said, as physicians are not to intervene in their patients’ private lives. ...

Shaheen Ashraf, from the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, said virginity tests are “archaic.”

“We should be able to control our own bodies,” she said. “No one else should have the right to even think (along) those lines.”

Not allowed to think? Physicians do invasive exams all the time. If a medical test will help determine whether a rape took place, why not? Is there any other medial test that is refused on political grounds? I don't know what the physician does, but in India he does this:

The two-finger rape test involves a doctor inserting fingers in a rape victim's vagina to determine its "laxity" and decide if she is "habituated to sex."

Sometimes I think that there is a conspiracy between feminists and child molesters to make teenaged girls more sexually available to adults.

Baby Veronica loses her dad

I have followed the Baby Veronica case, and the dad has now lost his daughter. NPR reports:

In an emotional statement on Thursday, Baby Veronica's biological father said he and the Cherokee Nation were dropping the legal fight to regain custody of the 4-year-old girl.

"I know we did everything in our power to keep Veronica home with her family," Dusten Brown said in Oklahoma. "Veronica is only 4 years old, but her entire life has been lived in front of the media and the entire world. I cannot bear for [it to continue] any longer.

"I love her too much to continue to have her in the spotlight. It is not fair for her to be in front of media at all times," he said. "It was the love for my daughter that finally gave me the strength to accept things that are beyond my control."

If you remember, the case — which went all the way to the Supreme Court and involved fundamental questions about parental rights and Native American autonomy — was about a Native American girl who was adopted by a couple in South Carolina but who had been living with her biological father for more than a year and a half after a South Carolina court ruled that a federal law aimed at keeping Native American families together was applicable.

This is just crazy. Brown is the natural dad, he is a fit parent, has a wife and a good home, and he has been rearing the girl for as long as she can remember. And yet he has to give her up to adoptive parents who once got the baby without his approval. This is wrong for many reasons, besides being contrary to the federal law written to prevent babies being taken from Indian homes into non-Indian homes.

It is a peculiarity of American law that a dad can be 1% Cherokee and get help from the federal court to get his kid back. I cannot get help from the federal court, and it seems unfair that he would have a right that I don't. But ultimately he did not get his kid back. We should have laws favoring all dads against adoptive parents.

Mom drrowns 3 kids, has a 4th

News from New York:

A woman who admitted to drowning her three young children in her Long Island bathtub five years ago has given birth to a fourth child while incarcerated at what is supposed to be a secure upstate psychiatric hospital, the I-Team has learned.

Leatrice Brewer, 33, was found not guilty because of mental disease or defect in the 2008 deaths of her children, and has been held ever since at the secure Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center in New Hampton. Her case has received renewed attention in recent weeks because she is trying to collect $350,000 from a settlement that the childrens’ fathers won from Nassau County in wrongful death lawsuits.

But now the father of two of the three children Brewer killed says he has been contacted by a lawyer trying to find an appropriate placement for the newborn Brewer had while in custody.

“She told me Leatrice had a baby while she was in that facility,” Innocent Demesyeux said in an interview with the I-Team.

It is unclear who that baby’s father is, or under what circumstances Brewer became pregnant. The state Office of Mental Health, which oversees Mid-Hudson, declined to comment, citing privacy laws. ...

Because she was technically found not responsible for the children's deaths, lawyers say she may be able to claim some or all of the $350,000 estate their fathers won.

There are so many things wrong here, I don't know where to start. Maybe we need to go back to forced sterilization.

Lesbian couples twice as likely to divorce

A UK newspaper reports:

Lesbian couples are nearly twice as likely as gay men to end a civil partnership, according to the latest government figures.

The number of same-sex couples ending their civil unions leapt by 20 per cent last year, seven years after their introduction in 2005. Overall there were 794 dissolutions in 2012, almost 60 per cent of which were female couples, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.

In the seven years since gay couples were able to have civil partnerships, 3.2 per cent of male unions ended in dissolution, compared to 6.1 per cent of female couples.

I would have expected higher for lesbians.

Sociologists believe the lower rates of ‘divorces’ among gay men may reflect a trend of women committing sooner and having higher expectations for a relationship.

No, that is ridiculous.

Gunnar Andersson, professor of demography at Stockholm University, has found in successive studies that women in Norway, Sweden and Denmark are twice as likely to dissolve their civil partnerships than men. He said: “This reflects trends in a heterosexual marriage because women are more prone to say they want to marry - but they’re also more likely to initiate a divorce. Women usually have higher demands on relationship quality, that’s often been said in studies. Even if you control for age there is still a trend of more women ending partnerships than men.”

Previous figures show British women in heterosexual relationships are more likely to file for divorce than men. Women initiated the divorce in two thirds of cases in the UK in 2011.

Jane Czyzselska, editor of the lesbian magazine, DIVA, said: “Culturally women have been more conditioned ...

No, this has nothing to do with cultural conditioning. These academics, feminists, and lesbians refuse to accept human nature.

The most obvious explanation is that women are fussier than men, and less mentally stable. And then there is Lesbian bed death:

According to Schwartz, lesbian couples in committed relationships have less sex than any other type of couple, and they generally experience less sexual intimacy the longer the relationship lasts. ...

"Even now, some people—including lesbians—question whether gay women can have actual sex." ...

In addition to Schwartz's survey, a German study concluded that the female sex drive greatly diminishes once a woman is in a secure relationship.

Hong Kong girlfriend slaps him in public

My prejudices are such that I do not expect male-female relations to be as screwed up in the rest of the world as in the USA, but consider this story from Hong Kong:

They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – and a video of a girl repeatedly slapping her boyfriend in the street appears to prove that.

The five-minute video, which has gone viral with more than 27,000 views since it was posted on October 6, shows a young man on his knees in a Hong Kong shopping street with his girlfriend standing over him, scolding him in Cantonese for inviting another girl to his apartment.

A second female stands beside the two. It is unclear whether she is the girl at the heart of the altercation, although the young man asks her several times to confirm what he is saying.

“Why did you tell her to go to your apartment?” demands the girlfriend.

Video: Hong Kong woman beating boyfriend on the street

“Listen to me first before beating me!” he pleads, before adding: “I told her not to come!”

At one stage the second girl tells the irate girlfriend: “Don’t beat him.” But this plea falls on deaf ears as the irate girlfriend grabs the young man’s hair with her left hand and slaps him repeatedly with her right in front of stunned shoppers.

Four minutes into the video a substantial crowd has gathered to watch the spectacle in a Kowloon City street.

A female passerby eventually called the police and the girl was arrested.

The You Tube video is here, along with some stinging commentary on the pathetic man.

Legal to spank with wooden spoon

The San Jose Mercury News reports:

As far as a San Jose appeals court is concerned, parents don't need to spare the rod with their children -- ruling Tuesday that using a wooden spoon for a spanking that causes serious bruising should not necessarily translate into a finding of child abuse.

In a ruling designed to establish legal precedent, the 6th District Court of Appeal overturned a trial judge's finding that a South Bay mother should be reported for child abuse for trying to resolve discipline issues with her 12-year-old daughter by spanking her so hard with a wooden spoon it severely bruised her.

The unanimous three-justice panel concluded that while the April 2010 incident may have been on the outer boundaries of parental discipline, the overall circumstances did not warrant a child abuse report. The Santa Clara County Department of Social Services had concluded the mother, Veronica Gonzalez, should be reported to the state Department of Justice for its child abuse database for a "substantiated" incident.

"We cannot say that the use of a wooden spoon to administer a spanking necessarily exceeds the bounds of reasonable parental discipline," Justice Conrad Rushing wrote for the court.

Here is Gonzalez v Santa Clara County, in Msft Word 97 format.

I took a several appeals to that court, but I got the misfortune of getting the judges with reputations for never reversing the lower court. Maybe I would have had better luck with these judges.

Some people disapprove of spanking, but all attempts to ban it in California have failed. So a parent should not be punished just for spanking.

I got put on that same child abuse database for resetting an alarm clock from 5am to 7am.

Popular mind books are bogus

I have mentioned how weveral leading academic psychology researchers have been exposed as frauds.

The biggest-selling popularizers of how the mind works, in the last couple of years, are Jonah Lehrer and Rolf Dobelli. It turns out that both of these guys are plagiarists who make up quotes and grossly misrepresent the scientific evidence.

Then there are the TV clowns like Dr. Phil and Dr. Drew.

I mainly criticize the quacks who do forensic child custody evaluations. But it appears that the whole field of psychology is overrun with quacks at every level.

Here is a 1990 paper on Why summaries of research on psychological theories are often uninterpretable. More recently, a UK science reporter writes:

When a theory is shown to be incorrect or a publication in error, it is all too easy to think that the scientist who came up with this theory is a liar or a dishonest fraudster intent on misleading the public for personal gain. Or as Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, puts it:

Most scientific studies are wrong, and they are wrong because scientists are interested in funding and careers rather than truth.

Smith goes on to talk about this in the context of a talk given by the "brilliant" and "cuddly" John Ioannidis, professor of medicine at Stanford (while Smith assures us that he would never describe a woman as cuddly, even if she were). Ioannidis has published a report in PLOS Medicine entitled "Why most published research findings are false". Ioannidis' theory is that most scientific studies are wrong as a result of bias and random error, based on "simulations that show for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true".

Arrested biker has 6 kids

The biggest current crime story is the biker retaliation against a Chinese SUV driver, and I noticed this:

Reginald Chance, 37, was ordered held on $75,000 cash bail following the court appearance on Sunday. He reportedly extended both middle fingers as he entered Manhattan Criminal Court in connection to the Sept. 29 confrontation that went from Manhattan’s West Side Highway to a neighborhood street. Prosecutors said Chance, a married father of six, played a key role in the beating of driver Alexian Lien, who ran over another biker in what relatives said was fear for his life.

I hate to pick on Chance, because he is not the worst character in this story, but look at who is breeding in our society. I know lots of intelligent, healthy, responsible, upstanding citizens who somehow missed out on having kids for various reasons. But these lowlife gangsters are fathering lots of kids.

I watched some episodes of the new TV show Paternity Court. It has men who were hounded for years by moms for child support, without ever knowing for sure whether they were the real dad. In one case, a man lost his money, job, and served 3 years in jail during 10 years of legal actions. A couple of DNA tests supposedly showed that he was the father, but there were irregularities about the tests. Sure enough, the test on TV showed that he was not the father. When the judge asked the mom if she now knows who the real dad is, she said yes. There is almost never any compensation for the falsely accused dad, because of the theory that everything was done for the benefit of the child.

I guess the moms do not get charged with paternity fraud because they say that they had multiple sex partners and made an honest mistake about who is the dad. Maybe moms should not be able to bring paternity actions unless they can swear that they only had a single sex partner.

Wife despises the spineless husband

A woman will often complain that her husband is too controlling or drinks too much, but two things must be kept in mind. First, some women complain no matter what the circumstances, and second, most women truly despise a man who is not controlling. Here is the current newspaper advice:

Dear Margo: I am at a loss. After 13 years of marriage, I divorced a controlling, alcoholic husband and, two years later, married a wonderful, caring man who allows me to be a person in my own right and to make my own decisions. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, he also allows his son and his parents to run our lives. There is no boundary these three don't feel comfortable crossing.

When his 19-year-old doesn't get his way (which is rare), he tries to make his dad feel guilty by saying it's because his dad doesn't love him as much as he loves his "new family." ...

My husband is reluctant to articulate these basic rules, ...

My husband's parents regularly come over to our house ...

Dear Lim: Lady, this is a mess. ...

Equally important is that your husband be counseled by a therapist that it's time for him to cut the cord with his parents and grow a spine.

No, a therapist will not make him grow a spine. She is the one writing for advice, and she is the one who cannot decide whether she wants a man with or without a spine.

The next letter is different:

Dear Margo: My wife's sister has asked me if I am willing to be an "anonymous" sperm donor so she can have a baby of her own. She has no interest in my paternity, only my sperm. My wife and I already have two children.

If I go through with this, would my kids be half-siblings or cousins to the new baby? Since my sister-in-law is not married, I am afraid I might have difficulty playing uncle to my own kid. I'd like to be helpful to the family, but I'm not sure this is a good idea. — Double Trouble

Dear Dub: Yoo-hoo. There is nothing "anonymous" about using one's brother-in-law's sperm. Don't do it. Your concerns are valid, and your discomfort alone is reason enough to decline.

Level with your s-i-l and explain it would unnecessarily complicate all of the relationships. Encourage her to either avail herself of a certified sperm bank or ask a friend who is not part of the family. — Margo, procreatively

There is something "anonymous" about it. It is legally anonymous, meaning that the child will have a legal mom but not a legal dad. The writer will have no legal rights or responsibilities to the child.

There are good reasons to prefer sperm from a brother-in-law instead of a sperm bank. But note how there is no comment at all on the wisdom of single motherhood.

3+ parent law now signed in California

I explained last week Why the 3-parent law will be back, after Gov. Brown vetoed it last year.

I did not realize that it was back so soon:

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Friday that will allow children in California to have more than two legal parents, a measure opposed by some conservative groups as an attack on the traditional family.

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) said he authored the measure to address the changes in family structure in California, including situations in which same-sex couples have a child with an opposite-sex biological parent.

The law will allow the courts to recognize three or more legal parents so that custody and financial responsibility can be shared by all those involved in raising a child, Leno said.

Here is Calif SB 274, with some extra legislative info here.

"Courts need the ability to recognize these changes so children are supported by the adults that play a central role in loving and caring for them," Leno said. "It is critical that judges have the ability to recognize the roles of all parents so that no child has to endure separation from one of the adults he or she has always known as a parent."

The bill was partially a reaction to a 2011 court decision involving a lesbian couple that briefly ended their relationship, according to Leno's office. One of the women was impregnated by a man before the women resumed their relationship. A fight broke out, putting one of the women in the hospital and the other in jail, but the daughter was sent to foster care because her biological father did not have parental rights.

"Everyone who places the interests of children first and realizes that judges shouldn't be forced to rule in ways that hurt children should cheer this bill becoming law," said Ed Howard, senior counsel for the Children's Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law.

Mark Leno is a gay Jewish Russian Commie Israeli rabbinical student whose life partner died of AIDS, and he is lying about that 2011 court decision. The dad won that case, and got custody of the kid as the legal father. Even if he were not the legal father, he likely would have gotten custody anyway as the nearest relative who is a responsible parent.

This law, more han any other single law, demonstrates the evil behind American family law. Nobody would want this except gay Jewish commies who are out to destroy the family, and judges, lawyers, and other parasites who want increased power in micro-managing families.

This law is a symptom of the decline of our civilization. I expect that lesbians, polygamists, grandparents, and others will sonn be taking advantage of this law. I see nothing good coming from it. A child could soon have 10 legal parents, with none of them biologically related.

Update: Laura Wood adds:

The future custody disputes are dizzying to contemplate and include the inevitability that children will travel to multiple households, perhaps staying with a father and his homosexual friends one night, a lesbian mother another and a lesbian who now hates the lesbian mother a third night. But, it’s all done in the “interests of children.”

Parents not watching kids baseball

Steve Sailer writes:

On the other other hand, there are all sorts of emotional-related things about my past that I have only the vaguest recollection of. For example, from watching Steven Spielberg movies such as Hook I've learned that there's nothing more emotionally crucial in one's life than whether or not your parents went to your Little League baseball games. But I don't actually remember feeling any strong emotions about my parents not attending my Little League baseball games other than thinking to myself "That seems reasonable" when they announced their policy on baseball: I couldn't join Little League because Little League parents are crazy, but I could play in the league at the park because it was more low key; but they'd never walk the block to the park to see my park league games because that would "put too much pressure on me."

Spielberg made Hook before he had a child of Little League age. According to Wikipedia, his biggest childhood memory was that he was embarrassed to be an orthodox Jew.

I don't remember any kids caring much if the parents attended Little League games. Did Hollywood create the concept that fatherhood is defined by being a spectator in baseball games? The whole concept is offensive, both to dads and kids.

Here is Spieldberg's twisted idea of fatherhood:

STEVEN SPIELBERG is glad he made alien invasion classic CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND before he became a father - because the movie would have had a very different ending if he had been a dad at the time.

Spielberg admits he could never have a father turning his back on his family to leave earth with aliens because he could never imagine doing the same thing, now he's a father.

The father of seven says, "Close Encounters was about a man whose insatiable curiosity, more than just curiosity, developed into an obsession and the kind of psychic implantation drew him away from his family and, only looking back once, he walked onto the mother ship.

"That was before I had kids. That was 1977. So I wrote that blithely. Today, I would never have the guy leaving his family to go on the mother ship. I would have the guy doing everything he could to protect his children.

He said that while promoting his War of the Worlds (2005 film). In my opinion, Close Encounters has a much more positive portrayal of dads than War of the Worlds. The dad in Close Encounters is loyal to his family, but his family leaves him. The dad in War of the Worlds has a terrible relationship with his kids, cannot take care of them, and ultimately just gives them back to the mom. I assume that Spielberg has some sort of Jewish complex from his childhood, and shares common Jewish anti-family views.

Fake Yelp reviews

Here is a crazy lawsuit story:

Julian McMillan wants nothing to do with Yelp. He runs a small law firm in San Diego, California, focusing on bankruptcy law. And yet his business, like many others, has an entry on the reviews site.

But on Tuesday, McMillan was served with a lawsuit from Yelp, alleging breach of contract, intentional interference with contract, unfair competition, and false advertising. In short, McMillan is being sued over supposed false Yelp reviews posted from 2010 to 2012. The lawsuit was filed in late August 2013.

“It has no merit,” he told Ars. “I assure you I never asked anyone to do that.”

Why would Yelp suddenly focus on a small target when presumably fake Yelp reviews are happening on a daily basis across its site? In fact, this is the second such case involving Yelp suing a business over supposed fake reviews.

I couldn't figure out the ulterior motives here. Obviously there are plenty of fake reviews on Yelp. The Yelp reviews for Kenneth B. Perlmutter, PhD were overwhelmingly negative until he started posting fake reviews. Now every review has either the lowest possible rating, or the highest. One fake review says:

Dr. P definitely has the child's best interest at heart. After working with parent's of children involved in high custody disputes I know that he has an extremely difficult job. Nonetheless, he is able to wade through the accusations, resentment and anger to find what is best for each child.

No, I am pretty sure he never did that. All of his evaluations have been bad.

Rant against psycho-politics

I just stumbled across this rant:

The Brandon Raub case mentioned by cleansweep shows how the Freemason patsy governments of the Jews try to intimidate the white people by using these bullyboy criminal tactics.

The Jewish occupation governments of the west know the value of using the mental health system and sectioning as a weapon against the people. From the time of the Soviet Union mental asylums were used to destroy people who opposed Jewish communism.

Psychiatry is a Jewish creation, it has no foundation in science whatsoever, it is the most fraudulent of all the entire Jewish medical establishment. A psychiatrist can do what no police officer can do, no Judge can do, what no forensic laboratory can do, that is to section someone under the mental health act with no evidence whatsoever. Just one word is enough or a sentence taken out of context.

The psychiatrist can imprison you on the basis of one interview and force feed you mind altering medication. The drugs themselves are dangerous and can easily destabilize a normal person, so in effect the psychiatrist is creating his own clientèle.

The effect of locking a person up with other drug damaged inmates is traumatic and adds to the destabilizing effect of the drugs. “See we told you he was mad” the Psychiatrist can crow after having mangled a human in his perverted care.

Psychiatry is a Jewish communist weapon against white people, if you have not read the book, psychopolitics” Jewish communist brainwashing techniques by Kenneth Goth. You can download it for free on the internet in PDF form just search on google. This was apparently the booklet first issued in Russian to university of Moscow communist students in the 1930's. It was being distributed to communists in America.

The Jewish psychiatry of the communists is now identical to ours in the western world, a Godless criminal atheist doctrine of Frankenstein medicine that will condemn a man for having faith in God.

How stupid and perverted are our medical people to base a medical system on a man named Sigmund Freud, who stated that man’s natural instinct was to murder his father so as to have sex with his mother??!! This is against all natural instincts and natural order of creation, complete shit.

This Jewish gibberish, designed to destabilize the mind of the Christian goy for the purpose of defeating the white Christian nation for international Jewry. Just another little piece of the big Jewish war on whites and the idiots swallow it hook line and sinker. — by Jimmy

I corrected the misspellings. This is overstated, of course. There are also non-Jewish psychiatrists who push drugs. The book says:

As insanity is the maximum misalignment, it can be grasped to be the maximum weapon for the severance of loyalties to leaders and old social orders. Thus, it is of the utmost importance that psychopolitical operatives infiltrate the healing arts of a nation marked for conquest, and to bring from that quarter continuous pressure against the population and the government until at last the conquest is affected. This is the subject and goal of Psychopolitics, itself.

In rearranging loyalties, we must have a command of their values. In the animal, the first loyalty is to himself. This is destroyed by demonstrating errors to him — showing him that he does not remember, cannot act, or does not trust himself. The second loyalty is to his family unit, his parents and brothers and sisters. This is destroyed by making a family unit economically non-dependent, by lessening the value of marriage, by making an easiness of divorce, and by raising the children wherever possible by the State. The next loyalty is to his friends and local environment. This is destroyed by lowering his trust and bringing about reports upon him (allegedly by his friends) to the town or village authorities. The next is to the State and this, for the purposes of Communism, is the only loyalty which should exist once the state is founded as a Communist State. To destroy loyalty to the State, all manner of forbiddings for youth must be put into effect so as to disenfranchise them as members of the Capitalist state and, by promises of a better lot under Communism, to gain their loyalty to a Communist movement.

There is some truth in this.

Why the 3-parent law will be back

From the Thinking Housewife blog:

DIANA writes:

In September 2012, Jerry Brown vetoed the bill (introduced by homosexual legislator Mark Leno) to legalize the status of more than two parents per child. Governor Brown didn’t do that because he was opposed to it. He vetoed the bill because its passage came in the middle of an especially fraught period, in which the Defense of Marriage Act was being considered. He didn’t want to rock the boat by saying to people, in effect, “Listen up, here are the consequences of same-sex “marriage.” This is the next step in the road to perdition.” Smart move on his part.

Prediction: in two years or less, the bill will come up, it will pass, and children in California will be able to enjoy the benefits of three, four and who knows how many “moms” and “dads.” And parts of the rest of the country will follow. Other parts will not, they will be demonized as “bigots,” and yadda yadda. It’s all so familiar by now.

Back when I used to read The New Republic, I came across a promise from an activist that homosexual “marriage” is only the beginning of a long process of educating the rest of us, 24/7, in our homes, on “gay equality.” He said there was no point in winning a formal right without an accompanying revolution in grass-roots attitudes.

At least he was being honest. I would look it up but there are so many articles on that subject in that awful magazine, I’d have to do a lot of reading, and the whole subject is one I find crushing.

That’s really how the homosexual movement won. Arguing with them is soul-destroying, and the natural reaction of a normal human being is to give in and retreat to an illusory safe haven. But, as Joe Louis said, “You can run but you can’t hide.” As the homosexual activist promised, “marriage equality” is only the beginning.

Laura writes:

Just to clarify for readers who may be confused as to why this is inevitable, two women or two men who become “parents” may want to involve the mother or father of the child in the arrangement or may want to involve a man or woman to be a substitute mother or father, whichever the case may be. It also seems probable that these will sometimes evolve into polygamous groups.

Once parenthood is no longer based almost exclusively in a natural, biological relationship, the sky’s the limit.

It is not just wanting a third parent. If two lesbians marry in California, and one gets pregnant, there is an ambiguity in the law about the legal parents. The pregnant woman is the mother, and the other lesbian and claim to be the legal father by virtue of the same-sex marriage and the equality with an opposite-sex marriage where the husband is the presumed dad. The biological father can also claim to be the legal father, if he makes the claim promptly.

The legislature or the courts could decide that (1) the biological dad has the superior right, contrary to what the LGBT advocates say is marriage equality; (2) the lesbian mate is the legal dad, contrary to precedents saying that the biological dad has a constitutional right; or (3) a family court dad can declare all three to be parents, as being in the best interest of the child.

I am betting on (3) as being the most likely. Leno's bill will be back. Then all sorts of worse scenarios will follow.

I posted about Leno's bill in Heather will soon have 5 mommies, How lesbians cheat dads, and Multiple mommies vetoed. I believe that this proposal summarizes the liberal-Democrat-atheist-Jewish-LGBTQIA plot to destroy the family.

Why psychotherapy is in decline

Psychologist Brandon A. Gaudiano writes in a NY Times op-ed:

PSYCHOTHERAPY is in decline. In the United States, from 1998 to 2007, the number of patients in outpatient mental health facilities receiving psychotherapy alone fell by 34 percent, while the number receiving medication alone increased by 23 percent.

This is not necessarily for a lack of interest. A recent analysis of 33 studies found that patients expressed a three-times-greater preference for psychotherapy over medications.

As well they should: for patients with the most common conditions, like depression and anxiety, empirically supported psychotherapies — that is, those shown to be safe and effective in randomized controlled trials — are indeed the best treatments of first choice. Medications, because of their potential side effects, should in most cases be considered only if therapy either doesn’t work well or if the patient isn’t willing to try counseling.

So what explains the gap between what people might prefer and benefit from, and what they get?

The answer is that psychotherapy has an image problem. Primary care physicians, insurers, policy makers, the public and even many therapists are largely unaware of the high level of research support that psychotherapy has. The situation is exacerbated by an assumption of greater scientific rigor in the biologically based practices of the pharmaceutical industries — industries that, not incidentally, also have the money to aggressively market and lobby for those practices.

For the sake of patients and the health care system itself, psychotherapy needs to overhaul its image, more aggressively embracing, formalizing and promoting its empirically supported methods.

My colleague Ivan W. Miller and I recently surveyed the empirical literature on psychotherapy in a series of papers we edited for the November edition of the journal Clinical Psychology Review. It is clear that a variety of therapies have strong evidentiary support, including cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness, interpersonal, family and even brief psychodynamic therapies (e.g., 20 sessions).

In the short term, these therapies are about as effective as medications in reducing symptoms of clinical depression or anxiety disorders. They can also produce better long-term results for patients and their family members, in that they often improve functioning in social and work contexts and prevent relapse better than medications.

Their review is here, but it costs about $200 to get behind the paywall.

If they really wanted to present evidence to the general public that psychotherapy works, then they would make the evidence freely available. I am not sure they have any evidence, as the abstracts I saw have weak claime like this:

Although there is evidence that psychotherapy does indeed work, there are also findings that there are times when our patients are harmed by our interventions.

I have never been able to find any evidence that psychotherapy does more good than harm.