Court orders Moslem visitation to Christian

Often family courts take the position that divorcing parents must agree on all child-related matters, and judges send them to psychologists to force agreement. Or the judges force agreement.

This case is the opposite. The judge forced a disagreement on religion, and the Mass. supreme court upheld it.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh writes:

Father and mother split when their daughter Odetta (a pseudonym) was an infant. Father was born in West Africa, and was apparently a nonpracticing Muslim; mother was born in Haiti, and was a Seventh Day Adventist. “Upon her birth, Odetta was given a Muslim name, and the family took part in a ceremony in which she was formally recognized into the Muslim faith.”

The daughter lived with the mother, but the father helped raise the daughter, with his brother’s help, until the daughter was age three. During that time, “Odetta attended the same mosque as the paternal uncle,” and “sporadically attended a Christian church with her mother and, on occasion, with her father as well.”

Then the father murdered the mother. The mother’s Adventist family got custody. Should the father’s Muslim brother get visitation, on the theory that continued exposure “to both parents’ religions and cultures” “be in [the] child’s best interests”? (Odetta is now almost 10; the father supported the paternal uncle’s petition.)

Yes, said the trial court and Friday the Massachusetts Appellate Court affirmed, in Adoption of Odetta. An excerpt from the trial court’s decision:

Odetta’s best interests will be served by allowing “her to have some contact with her father’s family, the tenets and practices of Islam which are part of her family heritage and which the adoptive family, who are not Islamic, cannot or will not provide for her.”

Here the judge is forcing disagreement on religion.

There are many things wrong with this. Why are we even letting all these people from Haiti and West Africa into the country? We should prefer people from less murderous cultures.

No judge should be interjecting himself into a religious dispute. I thought that the First Amendment prohibited that.

The case is also a gross attack on parental rights. It gives a non-parent court-ordered visitation for the express purpose of undermining the legal parent's Christian values. This is a recipe for disaster.

I am afraid that this is a sign of many bad things to come. Parents will no longer have the right to teach their values to their kids. If the authorities do not like what you are teaching, some judge will order visitation with someone having the opposite view. The only justification with be the BIOTCh. And that can be just an opinion, not backed by any evidence. In this case, there is no evidence that an Adventist-Islam combination is good for 10yo girls.

Massachusetts finds right to spank

Eugene Volokh reports:

Parents have a right to reasonably spank their children, says Massachusetts high court

Such a right has been recognized throughout American history, as a defense against a charge of battery (under criminal law or tort law). In this case, the state trial judge seemed to conclude no such right existed, at least in public, saying,

If you’re in public with your kids, it’s not appropriate to discipline in this fashion.

But yesterday, the Massachusetts high court unanimously reversed, in Commonwealth v. Dorvil, concluding that there was indeed a common-law right to spank:

[A] parent or guardian may not be subjected to criminal liability for the use of force against a minor child under the care and supervision of the parent or guardian, provided that (1) the force used against the minor child is reasonable; (2) the force is reasonably related to the purpose of safeguarding or promoting the welfare of the minor, including the prevention or punishment of the minor’s misconduct; and (3) the force used neither causes, nor creates a substantial risk of causing, physical harm (beyond fleeting pain or minor, transient marks), gross degradation, or severe mental distress….

Part of why this dad was prosecuted was because he appeared to be angry. The incident was quite trivial, but many so-called experts say that discipline should not be done in anger.

As far as I know, there is no legal doctrine that you are certain rights as long as you are not angry.

If you spank in public, you are always subject to some jerk calling 911 just because he or she does not approve of spanking.

I am skeptical that observers or cops can even tell whether a parent is angry. Often a parent pretends to be angry as a way of impressing seriousness on the child.

People who are truly angry can make bad judgments, but the law should apply to what they do, not their emotional states.

Going to India for babies

NPR Radio reports:

In the U.S., surrogate parenting is widely accepted. Although no official figures exist, experts believe perhaps a thousand American children are born every year through surrogacy.

A patchwork of state-to-state regulations governs the practice. But the bottom line is if you're an American in the market for a surrogate — and you have money to spend — you can do it.

Things are very different in other parts of the world.

In Europe, for example, it's illegal in half a dozen countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain. It is permitted in a handful of other European nations — though there are major restrictions.

Not really so different. There are many states where the practice is illegal, like Michigan. Yes, you can do it if you are willing to move to where it is legal, but that is also true about Europe and the rest of the world.

No, it is not widely accepted. The term "surrogate parenting" is not even widely accepted. It sounds like using a substitute to bring up your kid, but that is not what it is at all.

It says 1,000 kids a year in the USA, but:

No one knows how many surrogate children are born in India. Kumari's best guess is that the figure is around 40,000 a year — more than half of them to international parents.

In India, the process can cost $60,000, while in the U.S., estimates range to upwards of $150,000.

If that is true, then the USA market is a small fraction of the world market.

Justice Kennedy's silly third argument

You are probably sick of hearing commentary on the new Supreme Court same-sex marriage mandate, but I want to point out that the opinions completely ignore the downstream consequences in family court: divorce, alimony, child custody disputes, child support, paternity disputes, etc.

In the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy gives three arguments:

A third basis for protecting the right to marry is that it safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education. See Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925); Meyer, 262 U. S., at 399. The Court has recognized these connections by describing the varied rights as a unified whole: “[T]he right to ‘marry, establish a home and bring up children’ is a central part of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause.” Zablocki, 434 U. S., at 384 (quoting Meyer, supra, at 399). Under the laws of the several States, some of marriage’s protections for children and families are material. But marriage also confers more profound benefits. By giving recognition and legal structure to their parents’ relationship, marriage allows children “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Windsor, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 23). Marriage also affords the permanency and stability important to children’s best interests. See Brief for Scholars of the Constitutional Rights of Children as Amici Curiae 22–27.

As all parties agree, many same-sex couples provide loving and nurturing homes to their children, whether biological or adopted. And hundreds of thousands of children are presently being raised by such couples. See Brief for Gary J. Gates as Amicus Curiae 4. Most States have allowed gays and lesbians to adopt, either as individuals or as couples, and many adopted and foster children have same-sex parents, see id., at 5. This provides powerful confirmation from the law itself that gays and lesbians can create loving, supportive families.
Excluding same-sex couples from marriage thus conflicts with a central premise of the right to marry. Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser. They also suffer the significant material costs of being raised by unmarried parents,relegated through no fault of their own to a more difficult and uncertain family life. The marriage laws at issue here thus harm and humiliate the children of same-sex couples. See Windsor, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 23).

I don't see how anyone can believe any of this nonsense if he has spent a couple of hours in family court. The idea that this sort of abstract reasoning can be the interest of the kids is craziness.

Suppose your mom divorces your kids, wins sole custody in family court, and moves in with a lesbian. How is a lesbian marriage going to save the kids from harm and humiliation? How is it going to allow children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.?

More importantly, there are millions of good dads who are reduced to supervised visitation of their own kids, just because someone made an unverified allegation and some psychologist cannot make up his mind, or similar such reasoning. Who is going to shelter them from their humiliation?

Why is the desires of a few thousand gays and lesbians getting the Supreme Court to try to improve their dignity, but millions of alienated parents never get any attention?

Kennedy concludes:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

Again, if he spent a day in family court he would see that other laws have reduced marriage to a financial arrangement that either can terminate at any time. Child custody and support have been removed, and replaced with the most leftist socialist scheme.

This paragraph might make more sense as one striking down no-fault divorce, or child support.

Love? Fidelity? Devotion? Family law has backed out of these concepts long ago. Kennedy acts as if marriage is a lifelong commitment. Legally, it is not.

And unmarried are "condemned to live in loneliness"? That is maybe the weirdest phrase. Earlier Kennedy says:

Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.

Really? Are there people who say, "I got married because I was lonely and I had a fear that I would call out and and find that no one was there and I wanted someone to care for me for the rest of my life."?

There are many people who achieve lifelong companionship and devotion, but not because of any legally binding document. Kennedy seems to be living in some imaginary universe with little relation to how marriage works today in family courts. Marriage is not even that important anymore. See the chart at this site:

Looking to more recent history, there has been a steady decline in marriage rates (and consequently, divorce rates) since the 1980s, with no sign of slowing down. In fact, when taking population into account, marriage rates in the U.S. are now at the lowest they’ve ever been in recorded U.S. history — even lower than during The Great Depression!

With lower marriage rates, that's a lot of people condemned to a life of loneliness.

Gays getting protection for the kids

The liberal press is getting all excited about the coming Supreme Court mandate for same-sex marriage. AP reports:

As same-sex marriage spreads, ranks of gay dads increase
Gay couples continue adopting more, closing gap with lesbian couples

More so than heterosexual couples or lesbians, who can bear their own children, gay men face high hurdles en route to parenthood. The two main avenues open to them — adoption or surrogacy — can be costly and complicated.

“They have to go out of their way to become fathers,” said Nancy Mezey, a sociology professor at Monmouth University who has studied gay parents.

By the tens of thousands, gay men are choosing to do just that. And as they celebrate Father’s Day this year, they can anticipate that their ranks will continue to swell if the U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling due later this month, legalizes same-sex marriage nationwide.

A decade ago, it was far more common for lesbians to be raising children than for gay men. The gap remains, but is closing.

Gary Gates, an expert on gay and lesbian demography with the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, estimates that there are about 40,000 gay male couples in the U.S. who are raising children, and roughly three times as many lesbian couples who are doing so.

How are the gay dads doing? At this point, there’s relatively little long-term research comparing outcomes of children raised by gay fathers to the outcomes of other children.

If nothing else, this should provide some data on how well men do child-rearing. I am betting that they do better than the lesbians.

In Dec. 20, 2013, as they were in the process of adopting their second child, change came suddenly. U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby, in a ruling that was soon echoed in numerous other states, struck down Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Clark, who received a text message with the news, was excited yet worried that the opportunity to wed might be brief. He called Mark at work with a question, “Do you want to go get married?”

“We wanted to get it done in the window,” Clark said. “We had our kids. We wanted protection for them.”

Protection for the kids? Isn't that sweet! I think that they are in for some surprises if they split up and learn exactly how that "protection" works.

Kansas raises the parent tax

Under current American law, child support is essentially a tax. That is, the govt orders the payment based on a percentage of income, with no requirement that the money be spent on the kids.

Most taxes require a vote of elected representatives, or of the people. Any tax increase is controversial and requires justification.

But Kansas raises child support, more accurately called a parent tax, by some lawyers and judges who attend a meeting and decide what they think is fair!

This sounds like what a dictatorship might do, not the USA.

A Kansas TV station reports:

For those of you who pay child support, start planning to pay more.

Every four years, federal law requires the state to review their child support guidelines.

In Kansas last year, more than $35 million was paid in child support by both dads and moms, but why?

“Children in Kansas are our most important asset so we want to make sure they’re protected financially,” said Larry Rute, Attorney at Law

Rute is part of a 14 member committee which says that the current payment schedule isn’t enough to do that.

They want to increase child support payments by an average of 3.5 percent across all income groups statewide. ...

“If you look at the guidelines and you feel that for any reason they’re unfair to you, then let us know and tell us why,” Rute said. “I promise you we will look at it.”

After the public comment is reviewed, the Kansas Supreme Court will have the final say on this possible change.

If the court adopts the proposal, then the increase in payments might start as soon as January 1, 2016.

So raising the parent tax is a way of protecting children? This is sick.

Update: A reader asks why this is a tax, and division of community property is not.

In community property states, the spouses are agreeing to split their incomes for the duration of the marriage. The division of property at divorce time is just each spouse claiming what he or she already owns.

With child support, there is no such agreement and no such ownership. It is imposed after the marriage, or if there was no marriage. No agreement between the parents comes into place. It is a tax on future earnings, or future judge-imputed earnings. It is imposed at the judge's discretion, and collected like a tax.

Amd yes, this Kansas parent tax is already too high. See this book chapter of Real World Divorce for details.

CPS backs down in Meitiv case

The Wash. Post reports:

Maryland officials have taken steps to clarify their views about children playing or walking alone outdoors in a new policy directive that says Child Protective Services should not be involved in such cases unless children have been harmed or face a substantial risk of harm.

The directive, part of a public statement to be issued Friday, follows a nationally debated case involving “free range” parents Danielle and Alexander Meitiv, who let their young children walk home alone from parks in Montgomery County.

Now the Meitivs have been cleared of all charges.

Of course they suffered a lot of headache and legal expense to keep the privilege of their kids walking to a playground. Glad to see CPS bullying was stopped.

Maintaining faulty integrity of court record

People and businesses with real integrity are happy to correct errors when suitable evidence is presented. The family court has a different attitude. If someone keeps presenting proof of mistakes, then ban him from doing that.

National Parents Organization reports:

It seems that family courts there have prohibited the use of cellphones in the courtroom. No, it’s not because people were disrupting the proceedings by talking on phones or the phones’ constantly ringing, chiming, alerting, etc. The judges don’t seem to mind any of that; what’s gotten them to issue their blanket order is that one litigant had the nerve to record the proceedings on his/her phone and use it to claim that the official court reporter’s transcript was inaccurate.

This, according to the judges, poses a “security threat” to the courts. Really.

The policy, effective March 9, has been adopted to maintain the security of the courthouse, preserve the integrity of the court record and the trial process and to ensure appropriate courtroom behavior.

"Unfortunately the irresponsible act of one person is causing us to respond at this juncture," said Chief Judge Paul Chamberlain…

"It's a harsh remedy to the problems that are coming to light," he said. "We have recognized for years that this is a security issue and maintaining the integrity of the record issue, but trying to be as open as possible to the public. We cannot allow people to come into the courthouse, make recordings, and then present those recordings as a record of court proceedings. There is an official record, a way to get that record, and it maintains the integrity of the court and individual cases to make sure an accurate and complete record gets out," Chamberlain said.

Defining Rule of Law

The NY Times reports:

It is relatively unsplashy, as these things go — not very long, not very elegantly written, just 3,500 or so words of Medieval Latin crammed illegibly onto a single page of parchment.

But Magna Carta, presented by 40 indignant English barons to their treacherous king in the 13th century, has endured ever since as perhaps the world’s first and best declaration of the rule of law, a thrilling instance of a people’s limiting a ruler’s power by demanding rights for themselves.

In the United States, Magna Carta — it means Great Charter in Latin — is treated with a reverence bordering on worship by many legislators, scholars and judges. It is considered the basis for many of the principles that form the Constitution and Bill of Rights. ...

On Monday, Magna Carta’s 800th birthday is to be observed

Earlier versions of the concept of Rule of Law go back to ancient Babylon, Greece, and Rome.

A law professor argues for rule of law:

The rule of law is a slippery term with a number of different possible meanings. ...

For example, the rule of law is often defined in contrast to “the rule of men.” Whereas the former is based on general, impersonal rules, the latter is subject to the vagaries of the bias and discretion of individual government officials. ...

Another common formulation of the rule of law is that it requires the enforcement of clear, predictable rules, as opposed to relatively vague standards (this viewpoint is often associated with Justice Antonin Scalia). ...

The rule of law might also be defined in terms of stability over time. A rule must have the same interpretation at Time B as at Time A.

While it may seem obvious that Rule of Law is good and necessary for any civilized nation, we do not have in the American family courts. Child custody and visitation is determined by BIOTCh, which means "subject to the vagaries of the bias and discretion of individual government officials."

Here is a Scottish story, illustrating rule of law:

A mother who duped her former lover into thinking she had an abortion so that she could give away his baby to a homosexual friend has been jailed for three years.

The 29-year-old and her accomplice got away with the elaborate scam for three years and were only caught after the biological father was told that he was the “spitting image” of the child.

The 35-year-old gay man who was bringing up the child as his own was also jailed for the same period.

The real father was initially told his ex-lover had aborted their child, and that the girl caught up in the case came from a fictional surrogate mother.

The pair were sentenced after earlier being found guilty of duping him into thinking there was an abortion after the child’s mother became pregnant in 2010, and denying him his parental rights for three years.

During the six-day trial, Perth Sheriff Court heard that they signed a birth certificate and claimed to be the child's natural parents, while DNA tests later proved this was not the case. ...

Police discovered that the supposed surrogate mother, called Clare Green, had been invented by the pair, who set up a fake Facebook account in her name.

Social workers were also taken in by the fraud, but immediately placed the girl on the child protection register when they discovered the homosexual man's father was a convicted paedophile.

The kid is his, and was taken wrongfully. So he should get the kid back. No inquiry into the BIOTCh should be necessary.

The one part that seems contrary to the rule of law is putting the kid on a register because the gay man's father was a pedophile. I doubt that they have any laws based on a presumption that pedophilia is hereditary.

The issue should be cut and dry. The DNA test showed that the mom fraudulently put some other man's name on the birth certificate. That should be the end of the story.

Scotland to have Named Person for every child

I regularly post articles warning about the creeping nanny state, and against judge-appoint guarian ad litems, and other attempts for the state to usurp the roles of parents.

But this story has me puzzled. Did Scotland just pass a law to assign a govt busybody social worker for every kid, whether there is an alleged need or not?

The Scottish Government has been accused of setting out to “fundamentally undermine” the role of Scotland’s parents by appointing a state guardian for every child under 18.

According to campaigners, the hugely controversial plan to appoint a so-called “named person” for ever child is about empowering a state employee to police the happiness of the country’s children.

An event is being held at Hamden Park in Glasgow on Saturday to help explain the controversial policy, and the legislation is due to come into force in August next year, although opponents are still pursuing a legal bid to stop it.

Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, claims the scheme, affecting one million children, will help the vulnerable and families in need while campaigners say it breaches the human rights of parents.

“The named person policy is wrong because it fundamentally undermines the role of parents and families and because it gives monitoring power to the state.

“It also takes resources away from the most vulnerable children. The more parents find out about this policy the more they object to it because they see the extent of its intrusion into family life. ..." ...

She added: “You are talking about significant intervention into family life, looking at minutiae with regards to whether the child is achieving, whether it is nurtured enough, whether it is happy enough.

“It is totally unnecessary and is going to cost an enormous amount of money at a time when funding for children’s services is so pushed.”

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said tomorrow’s event was about engaging with parents while continuing to improve services for children and families in Scotland, and was not centred around the implementation of the named person service.

Someday all kids will be wards of the states, and parents will be reduced to babysitters.

Judge gives opinion about girl consenting to rape

There is a sickening trend towards judges and others giving opinions about whether an underage girl consented to rape. The whole point of statutory rape laws is that a girl cannot consent if she is below the age of consent.

Eugene Volokh reports:

Unsurprisingly, New Hampshire makes it a felony for adults to have sex with under-16-year-olds. And New Hampshire also makes it a more serious felony for adults to have sex with anyone when, among other things,

at the time of the sexual assault, the victim indicates by speech or conduct that there is not freely given consent to performance of the sexual act.

But earlier this month, in State v. Lisasuain, the New Hampshire Supreme Court interpreted this “aggravated sexual assault” provision as potentially covering even conduct where the victim remains totally passive.

*After reviewing the record ... the evidence was sufficient ... that she did not consent to the sexual assaults by the defendant."

The only evidence needed for that conclusion is that she was under 16, the age of consent.

Feminists are always complaining about blaming the victim, so I would think that they would complain about any discussion of consent by an underage girl. Instead they complain about this study:

A program that taught college women ways to prevent sexual assault cut in half the chances they would be raped over the next year, a Canadian study found. It was the first large, scientific test of resistance training, and the strong results should spur more universities to offer it, experts say.

Five percent of freshman women who went through the four-session program said they had been raped during the following year, compared to 10 percent of others who were just given brochures on assault prevention. Attempted rapes also were lower - about 3 percent in the training group versus more than 9 percent of the others.

The results are "startling," said a prominent researcher on sex assault ...

Startling? It used to be that all girl were taught prudent measures for avoid sexual assaults. Now this teaching is resisted by feminists who say that girls have a right to be sexually provocative and to pursue risky behavior.

But many of those same feminists would like to abolish the age of consent laws, and allow girls of any age to be sexually active and get abortions without parental permission.

And they deny that one rape can be any worse than any other rape. To them, stranger rape is the same as spousal rape, and raping a slut is the same as raping a virgin. I don't think that a jury can even be told whether or not the victim was a virgin. Weird.

Following up on a previous story, AP reports:

California’s attorney general is asking a judge to toss out a proposed ballot initiative that advocates killing anyone who engages in gay sex. ...

Even conservative groups in California have repudiated the proposed ballot measure.

It says "even conservative groups"?! Did someone really think that conservative groups might suppoert this? Read the initiative, as it is obviously a joke.

This is like saying: "Even conservative groups have repudiated a white gunman killing black church goers in Charleston.

It has some joke reponses, such as The Intolerant Jackass Act, but the California attorney general is supporting that.

Endless demands from gay lobby

The leftist NY Times is all excited about the upcoming US Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, and reports:

If same-sex marriage is legalized nationwide as part of the monumental case before the Supreme Court — a decision is expected this month — it would become possible for more same-sex married couples to establish legal ties with their children.

No, this has nothing to do with legal ties with their children.

They already have legal ties to their kids. The issue here is creating legal ties to kids who are not their kids.

The article tells about some Ohio white lesbians who have taken in black foster kids, but only one of the lesbians has been able to legally adopt them.

They live in Ohio because Jessica’s job as an air traffic controller is there. So Melissa, who stays home to care for the children, must carry around a permission slip of sorts when she takes them to the doctor or other appointments. “I am with them all day every day,” Melissa said. “I take care of their day-to-day needs, and I have no rights to them legally. It’s hurtful.”

The article tries to make it sound like a special hardship, but there are millions of step-parents in a similar situation. That is, when a parent divorces and remarries, the new spouse has no legal rights to the kid, and may have to get one of the real parents to sign a permission slip.

The LGBTQIA crowd will not be happy with this, until they completely destroy how marriage, divorce, and adoption work for straight couples.

Legalizing same-sex marriage will not eliminate the potential for discrimination over parental rights in every corner of the country, particularly in places already working on legislation that would undermine a pro-marriage ruling. Michigan just passed a law that would allow state-funded child welfare agencies to deny services to people — including same-sex couples who want to provide foster care or adopt — based on religious grounds. Virginia and North Dakota already have similar religious exemption laws, according to the Movement Advancement Project, and Alabama and Texas have proposed them.

So the "Movement Advancement Project" wants to force religions to place kids for adoption into lesbian households?

On another matter, the Obama administration has caved into demands to put a woman on our paper money:

Growing numbers of Americans are going cashless, but demands to finally put a woman on paper currency persist. And now the Treasury has announced that a portrait of a woman, to be determined soon, will grace the $10 bill. ...

Susan B. Anthony, the social reformer, appeared on silver dollars minted from 1979 to 1981, and again in 1999, and Sacagawea, the Shoshone guide to the Lewis and Clark expedition, was featured on gold-colored dollar coins from 2000. Both coins, which were often confused with quarters, proved unpopular, and production of them was stopped.

Obviously, people do not want these women polluting our money. How long before they put LGBTQIA folks on our money, or maybe a trans-racialist or trans-ablist? They should be putting Ronald Reagan on our money, not these obscure women.

Man tries to fake paternity test

When a woman does not want a baby, she can just get an abortion. Or abandon the baby after birth, with no responsibility or consequences.

If a man does not want a baby, he can try to talk the woman into an abortion or giving the baby up for adoption. But she can just refuse, and attach his paycheck for the next 18 years.

Here is a story of such a man.

The London Mirror reports:

Thomas Kenny was in a relationship when his mistress became pregnant but she refused an abortion and the love-rat didn' want to pay child maintenance. ...

The judge said: "You are plainly the author of your own misfortunes. I have read references from people who suggest that you are normally a well behaved individual but the facts show that you can be thoroughly dishonest and highly manipulative.

"I know you are said to be the loving father of two children by your long standing relationship but this case shows you were prepared to disown a child of your own for financial gain. Morally you can not sink lower than that."

For the woman to disown a child is her constitutional right. Even if she is some slutty home-wrecker. If the man tries to disavow financial responsibility, then he has morally sunk to the bottom.

This is sick. No one should be forced to be a parent. The mistress is the one with low morals here.

Atheists infected by man-haters

There is a skeptic-atheist community that actively denounces religion, superstition, and medical quackery. Unfortunately it has been infected by leftists, feminists, and social justice warriors. They claim that the same rationality that leads them to reject God also leads them to reject men's rights, and vote for Obama and Clinton.

For below, MRM = Men's Rights Movement, MO = Modus operandi, Latin for method of operation.

A recent comment:

There are very large communities of atheists, skeptics and feminists. It's kind of murky waters. Atheists don't like religion. Skeptics don't like "irrational" things. Feminists don't like, well, we know.

Atheists and skeptics are similar communities and they often interchange. One major hub of both communities is Rational Wiki. The "rational" approach to countless topics.

But who gets to decide what's rational or not? The answer is the status quo. "Skepticism" really becomes blind defense of the status quo.

The status quo right now is that MRM are misogynists, feminists are heroes of equality, various SJW bullshit is on the right side of history. So a big part of Rational Wiki and by proxy the skeptic movement is about trying to tear down men's issues.

In a bigger way "skeptics" want to control how you think, much like feminists do. If anything, it seems the skeptic community have become the liberal activist pit bulls. ...

The skeptic community seems to be in bed with feminism and will blindly support whatever are mainstream views, and they focus their efforts on bullshit instead of things we should actually be skeptical about. ...

Feminists have in recent years taken to invading "men's spaces" and running protection rackets the same way they have successfully done with universities and businesses using the sexual harassment racket (by "racket" I mean like the mob -- threaten to damage a business if they don't pay "protection" money).

Atheists, skeptics, gamers, tech conferences. The MO is the same each time. Feminist women turn up to conferences or groups and make false accusations of sexual harassment. Then other feminists threaten to libel the group as anti-woman if they don't pay up by creating "anti-harassment" rules which give feminists more power to bully people, and also tend to employ feminists to regulate.

It's a big industry in the business world and has huge power in academia. If you don't knuckle under expect feminist flack that libel's you as a woman hating group, or even worse, more targeted false accusations.

Atheists -- Atheist Plus and a few scandals manufactured at their meetings and accusations of misogyny against prominent atheists.

Skeptics - "Elevatorgate" and accusations of rape against prominent skeptics.

Gamers: Gamergate and various accusations of rape, death threats and so on.

Tech: Donglegate and accusations of misogyny.

Generally the male leaders fall over themselves to pay of the feminists to avoid a label of misogyny or worse resulting is draconian rules that give feminists the power to have men thrown out of conferences or fired with a simple false accusation. The rules are usually worded neutrally but never enforced against the feminists who deliberately harass men.

Of all these groups only the gamers really defied the feminists, although Atheism plus never took off.

Just read about the stupid little disputes that dominate the skeptic-atheist conferences, and you will never want to attend one.

For people who claim to be rational, they are amazingly intolerant of other views. They are always trying to shut down discussion by calling people racist, sexist, homophobic, and all the other SJW name-calling.

Man tries to fake paternity test

When a woman does not want a baby, she can just get an abortion. Or abandon the baby after birth, with no responsibility or consequences.

If a man does not want a baby, he can try to talk the woman into an abortion or giving the baby up for adoption. But she can just refuse, and attach his paycheck for the next 18 years.

Here is a story of such a man.

The London Mirror reports:

Thomas Kenny was in a relationship when his mistress became pregnant but she refused an abortion and the love-rat didn' want to pay child maintenance. ...

The judge said: "You are plainly the author of your own misfortunes. I have read references from people who suggest that you are normally a well behaved individual but the facts show that you can be thoroughly dishonest and highly manipulative.

"I know you are said to be the loving father of two children by your long standing relationship but this case shows you were prepared to disown a child of your own for financial gain. Morally you can not sink lower than that."

For the woman to disown a child is her constitutional right. Even if she is some slutty home-wrecker. If the man tries to disavow financial responsibility, then he has morally sunk to the bottom.

This is sick. No one should be forced to be a parent. The mistress is the one with low morals here.

Horror movie: woman becomes considerate wife

Hollywood seems to be caving into feminist demands, and swamping us with movies having women in lead roles. But this is not good enuf for the Left:

The fourth installment in the Jurassic Park franchise features hunky Chris Pratt, lots of people getting devoured by dinosaurs, and some backward sexual politics. ...

But Jurassic World is not good. In fact, it’s aggressively bad. ...

Yes, Jurassic World is not about corporate greed, anti-militarization, crass commerciality, disrupting the food chain, or dinos eating the shit out of people. No. It’s about a woman’s “evolution” from an icy-cold, selfish corporate shill into a considerate wife and mother.

This time I agree with yesterday's tweet:

I now no longer know if I'm being trolled, if people are in on the joke, if it's causing genuine anger, or if society is simply doomed.

Complaining about conservation law wherever the dinosaurs are seems to be a joke, but the above appears to be a straight political opinion from a leftist political site.

White woman pretends to be black

The Wash Post reports:

A controversy is raging over whether a prominent Washington state civil rights activist and Howard University graduate who claimed she was African American is actually white.

Rachel Dolezal, 37, is the president of the Spokane NAACP and has claimed to be the victim of a number of hate crimes. As questions were raised about the veracity of some of her reports this week, a white couple from Montana came forward to claim that Dolezal is their daughter.

This blew up because her white parents adopted some black kids, and he is suing her parents for custody of one of the black kids.

People are saying that if Bruce Jenner can change gender, then Dolezal can change race.

Okay, fine, but how does that make her the legal mom to her adopted black brother?

This case is weird. The authorities used to try to prevent white parents from adopting black kids. Maybe there were good reasons for that.

Sometimes I wonder if we are all being trolled by Jenner, trans-racialists, and others. Or as someone said in another context:

I now no longer know if I'm being trolled, if people are in on the joke, if it's causing genuine anger, or if society is simply doomed.

That context was a famous 77yo novelist posting a wisecrack about killing dinosaurs in the new Jurassic World movie:

So barbaric that this should still be allowed... No conservation laws in effect wherever this is?

This seems like an obvious joke to me. I am leaning towards our society being doomed.

I commented on another weird case of someone presenting as black female pro basketball player, but the case is weirder than I thought. Apparently she seems like a man to a lot of people.

A Democrat politician is trying to punish the USA women's soccer goalie over a very minor misdemeanor accusation:

Blumenthal called the federation’s approach to the Solo case “at best superficial and at worst dangerously neglectful and self-serving.”

Blumenthal urged U.S. Soccer to conduct a thorough investigation, including a comprehensive review of police reports and interviews of Solo’s half sister and nephew. He also said the federation should reconsider Solo’s place on the team, writing that it “sends exactly the wrong message” to start her in goal as boys and girls tune in to see their role models play in the World Cup.

Calling domestic violence a “horrific scourge,” Blumenthal wrote that it was “intolerable particularly for an athlete representing the United States of America on the global stage.”

She should be innocent until proven guilty. The case against Hope Solo was dismissed (but might be revived). It is just a misdemeanor. If the court finds her guilty, then she can be punished by whatever punishment the law allows. But I am pretty sure that the state penalties do not include being kicked off a soccer team.

When you criticize them they cry

Here is a sexist comment you cannot say anymore:

My hero of the week is 72-year old Nobel-prizewinning scientist Sir Tim Hunt who this week went public at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Korea on the three main problems he has encountered during a lifetime working with female scientists:

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry.”

... Presumably this is because Hunt is one of those old-fashioned, pre-Social-Justice-Warrior-era sorts who believe that a scientist’s job is to tell the truth.

These opinions cannot be tolerated:

A Nobel laureate has resigned as honorary professor at University College London after saying that female scientists should be segregated from male colleagues because women cry when criticized and are a romantic distraction in the laboratory.

The comments by Tim Hunt, 72, a biochemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2001 for groundbreaking work on cell division, unleashed a torrent of fury and added fuel to a global cultural debate about gender bias and discrimination against women in science. ...

Other Nobel winners have faced a backlash for ill-judged comments about women, including the novelist V. S. Naipaul, who said in 2011 that he regarded female writers as inferior.

“I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not,” he was quoted as saying by The Guardian newspaper, adding that he thought the work was “unequal to me.”

Liberals are most eager to censor uncomfortable truths. Nobody bothers with wrong or silly comments. It is much more effective to ignore or rebut such comments. If they do not like the statement and cannot refute, they try to censor it.

Here is another example:

A Florida school district has removed a principal from his job after he posted an online comment in support of a Texas police officer who waved a gun at black teens during a pool party.

The cop did not hurt anyone. There is an ongoing public debate about whether the cops overreacted, but we won't learn much if we only hear one side of the issue.

While everyone is blaming Baltimore cops, a cop has to speak anonymously:

Forty-two people were killed in Baltimore in May, making it the deadliest month there since 1972.

When asked what's behind that number, a Baltimore police officer gave an alarming answer. Basically, he said, the good guys are letting the bad guys win.

"The criminal element feels as though that we're not going to run the risk of chasing them if they are armed with a gun, and they're using this opportunity to settle old beefs, or scores, with people that they have conflict with," the officer said. "I think the public really, really sees that they asked for a softer, less aggressive police department, and we have given them that, and now they are realizing that their way of thinking does not work."

Here is another:

The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), Amnesty International and the Open Society Foundation Bratislava (OSF) call on the Slovak government to refute the use of the “incest-argument” to justify segregated education for Romani children in Slovakia.

In April, the European Commission started infringement proceedings against Slovakia for discrimination against Romani children in schools contrary to EU anti-discrimination law. In the communication that preceded this decision, as widely reported in the media, the Slovak government justified the disproportionate number of Romani children in schools and classes designed for children with mental disabilities on the basis that there is a higher prevalence of genetically determined disorders amongst the Slovak Roma due to having the highest coefficient of inbreeding in Europe.

ERRC, Amnesty International and OSF consider that the government’s arguments, presenting Roma as a group characterized by leading such “socially-pathological” lifestyles, are racist and discriminatory. “Such statements should have no place in an official communication. Notably the country could ultimately be held accountable for discrimination against Roma at the European Court of Justice. The use of the ”incest-argument” to justify segregated education for Romani children in Slovakia suggests that the government is failing to take seriously the grave charges made against it by the Commission” said Denis Krivosheev, Europe and Central Asia acting Programme Director at Amnesty International.

This research paper says the Gypsies really are inbred, but I guess Slovaks cannot say that.

Update: Here is more censorship by SJWs (social justice warriors):

When failed discrimination plaintiff Ellen Pao was appointed CEO of Reddit last January, many predicted that it would herald a new age of censorship on the link-sharing and discussion site. Those predictions appear to have come true, as a number of communities on the site (known as “subreddits”) have just been unilaterally shut down.

The sudden move resulted in the removal of one popular subreddit, /r/fatpeoplehate, which until its closure was the 13th-most active community on Reddit. The subreddit was dedicated to mocking fat people and the “fat acceptance” movement, although it was not known for engaging in any off-site harassment. Other Redditors have cited the subreddit as an important source of motivation to maintain a healthier lifestyle.

The crackdown came after a week of censorship on Reddit, including the mass deletions of links to media stories and even satirical cartoons concerning CEO Ellen Pao. There was also a bizarre incident in which a moderator of a gaming community demanded a user write a 500-word essay on trans acceptance before being unbanned. The user’s crime was using the word “trap”: a common, but not derogatory, term of Internet slang to describe crossdressers. Despite protestations from transwomen who said they were not offended, the moderator refused to relent.

That seems to be the trend on such sites. They drift left politically, and then they impose censorship. Free speech arguments come from right-wingers.

It is strange that an anti-fat site would be the first to be shut down, when there are many other offensive subreddits, and that list does not even include CoonTown.

Unwed Mothers Should Be Publicly Shamed

That is the headline on a dopey Huff Post attack on Jeb Bush for some opinions in a 1995 book.

In a chapter called "The Restoration of Shame,” the likely 2016 presidential candidate made the case that restoring the art of public humiliation could help prevent pregnancies “out of wedlock.” ...

As governor of Florida in 2001, Bush had the opportunity to test his theory on public shaming. He declined to veto a very controversial bill that required single mothers who did not know the identity of the father to publish their sexual histories in a newspaper before they could legally put their babies up for adoption. He later signed a repeal of the so-called "Scarlet Letter" law in 2003 after it was successfully challenged in court.

So what do we expect of a woman who has sex with ten different men, gets pregnant, and wants to put the baby up for adoption, but does not even know the last names of some of the men? Shouldn't the father be given an opportunity to claim the kid?

Apparently the court say that it is too embarrassing for the woman to have to openly look for the father. A girl has a right to be a slut and abandon the baby, without any public shame.

Jeb Bush probably now has advisors who will keep him from saying more stuff like this. If he gets the nomination, you can expect a lot more leftist stories about how he is an insensitive Republican. I wonder if he is going to admit that he speaks Spanish at home.

Lesbian basketball wedding goes bad

Here is a celebrity lesbian wedding that did not work out so well. Usually I just except the ridiculous parts, but here I post the story in its entirety.

AP/NYTimes reports:

OKLAHOMA CITY — Brittney Griner filed for an annulment with Glory Johnson-Griner on Friday, a day after Johnson-Griner announced she's pregnant and a month after the two WNBA players married.

"Last Wednesday, Glory and I agreed to either legally separate, get divorced, or annul our marriage, Griner said in a statement. "I can confirm that today I filed for an annulment. In the week prior to the wedding, I attempted to postpone the wedding several times until I completed counseling, but I still went through with it. I now realize that was a mistake."

Johnson-Griner's sports marketing agent, D.J. Fisher, said in a statement that Johnson-Griner was unaware that Griner was filing and was "extremely hurt and blindsided."

"She loves Brittney and made a huge sacrifice to carry a child, put her career on hold, invest in their relationship and their future," Fisher said.

Griner, the 6-foot-8 Phoenix Mercury star, married Johnson-Griner on May 9, three weeks after they were arrested on domestic violence charges for a fight at their home in suburban Phoenix. Both players were suspended seven games after their arrests and Griner agreed to undergo 26 weeks of domestic violence counseling as part of a plea agreement.

Both players apologized and said they worked out their differences, saying they were happy about the marriage. Johnson-Griner, a two-time All-Star with the Tulsa Shock, announced on Instagram on Thursday that she was pregnant and would miss the WNBA season.

Fisher said Johnson-Griner was in it for the long haul.

"She knows how important marriage is, and made a lifetime commitment and decision to spend the rest of her life with Brittney," Fisher said.

Earlier Friday, a post on Johnson-Griner's Instagram account showed a photo of Griner and a message about seeing her again: "One day until I'm reunited with my Wife @brittneygriner ... This is about to be one CRAZY SUMMER!!!"

Her tune changed later in the day.

"She wishes to ask for privacy at this time as they work through these trials and tribulations," Fisher said. "She asks her fans for all their love, support and prayers during this trying time."

Johnson-Griner's player agent, Boris Lelchitski, said the Women's National Basketball Players Association was planning to file a grievance to appeal the suspensions for both players, but Griner backed out at the last second. Lelchitski said the deadline has now passed, and his client did not appeal.

"With what has happened lately, Glory has a lot more on her plate to worry about," Lelchitski wrote in a text message.

Johnson-Griner's suspension will not start until the 2016 season because she will not play this season.

Griner was the WNBA's defensive player of the year and helped the Mercury win the league championship last season.

The WNBA season started Friday night.

There are many things wrong here. How does a woman get to be 6-foot-8? Is she really a woman and is this really a sport?

Getting pregnant a month after the wedding is usually a cause for celebration. But not when the husband is a 6-foot-8 lesbian, I guess.

Not all domestic violence is the fault of men.

You used to be able to get an annulment if the marriage was never consummated. But what if the parties are physically incapable of consummating?

Usually marriage law provides for the husband being the presumed father. But who's the daddy here?

Someone should send this story to the US Supreme Court.

Yes, marriage has been redefined a couple of times. It was redefined when polygamy was outlawed, whenever that was. It was redefined by no-fault-divorce, by BIOTCh, and by formula child support. Also by abolishing penalties for adultery and illegitimacy. Now it is being redefined by pregnant pro basketball fighting lesbians, and maybe by whatever Bruce Call-Me-Caitly Jenner decides to marry next. He is essentially a neutered male, and I am guessing he will marry a neutered female.

I just wonder how far this is all going. I heard someone say that our society is on the brink of giving everyone dignity. I do not see it that way. Indulging mental illness is not giving dignity. I expect to be forced to accept wackier and wackier practices, while normal people are marginalized.

Psychiatrists and Hair Dryer Incident

Need some proof that psychiatrists and psychologists are screwed up? Here is story of a trivial solution to a nasty mental problem, and it is somehow controversial:

The Hair Dryer Incident was probably the biggest dispute I’ve seen in the mental hospital where I work. Most of the time all the psychiatrists get along and have pretty much the same opinion about important things, but people were at each other’s throats about the Hair Dryer Incident.

Basically, this one obsessive compulsive woman would drive to work every morning and worry she had left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house. So she’d drive back home to check that the hair dryer was off, then drive back to work, then worry that maybe she hadn’t really checked well enough, then drive back, and so on ten or twenty times a day.

It’s a pretty typical case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it was really interfering with her life. She worked some high-powered job – I think a lawyer – and she was constantly late to everything because of this driving back and forth, to the point where her career was in a downspin and she thought she would have to quit and go on disability. She wasn’t able to go out with friends, she wasn’t even able to go to restaurants because she would keep fretting she left the hair dryer on at home and have to rush back. She’d seen countless psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors, she’d done all sorts of therapy, she’d taken every medication in the book, and none of them had helped.

So she came to my hospital and was seen by a colleague of mine, who told her “Hey, have you thought about just bringing the hair dryer with you?”

And it worked.

She would be driving to work in the morning, and she’d start worrying she’d left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house, and so she’d look at the seat next to her, and there would be the hair dryer, right there. And she only had the one hair dryer, which was now accounted for. So she would let out a sigh of relief and keep driving to work.

And approximately half the psychiatrists at my hospital thought this was absolutely scandalous, and This Is Not How One Treats Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and what if it got out to the broader psychiatric community that instead of giving all of these high-tech medications and sophisticated therapies we were just telling people to put their hair dryers on the front seat of their car?

I, on the other hand, thought it was the best fricking story I had ever heard and the guy deserved a medal. Here’s someone who was totally untreatable by the normal methods, with a debilitating condition, and a drop-dead simple intervention that nobody else had thought of gave her her life back. If one day I open up my own psychiatric practice, I am half-seriously considering using a picture of a hair dryer as the logo, just to let everyone know where I stand on this issue.

Okay, half the shrinks were okay with this solution to the problem. But what's the matter with the other half?

I guess someone could say that bring the dryer was not solving the underlying mental problem. But then giving her pills surely does not either. Did they want to give her pills instead? Weird.

I think that the point of the story is that we should put up with Bruce Jenner's mental illness instead of trying to cure him, but I did not read the whole essay. I am just posting it for what it says about divergent views among mental health professionals.

British surrogacy gone bad

England is grappling with giving gay men rights to babies:

Forcing a surrogate mum to part with her child is an outrage.

Earlier this month, the English High Court forced a mother to hand her 15-month-old toddler, Baby M, over to the man who had commissioned the baby by surrogacy. In response to this ruling, there was muted criticism and little discussion of any need to change the law in favour of mothers. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the mother was forced to hand her child over to a man and his gay partner, it seems unlikely that the case would have been deemed newsworthy at all – the Daily Mail’s headline, ‘Judge takes toddler from “homophobic” mum to live with gay dad and his lover’, is a case in point. Yet the fact that our courts can force any mother to hand her baby over to any commissioning father should be the real point of concern. Something is seriously wrong with the moral compass of our policymakers.

Baby M was conceived artificially with the father’s sperm after the mother and commissioning father, H, entered into a surrogacy agreement. But by the time of Baby M’s birth, it was clear that the mother wanted the child to be hers. She made sure H was not at the hospital when the baby was born, she registered the birth without putting H on the birth certificate, and she chose the baby’s name.

Within a fortnight of the baby’s birth, H and his partner went to court. Fifteen months later they obtained a court order that said the toddler must live with them, while the mother’s contact with the child would be limited to visits supervised by an official. By court order, then, this toddler will not be allowed to live, or stay overnight, with her mother. To all intents and purposes, the normal mother-daughter relationship is at an end. H and his partner are now responsible for bringing up Baby M for the remainder of her childhood.

Some of those in the press directed their ire at the judge personally, after noting that she was the first judge to insist on being addressed as ‘Ms’ rather than ‘Mrs’, and that she did not have children of her own. These criticisms are misplaced. The judge reached her conclusion by applying the law, and it’s a law that required the judge to disregard the mother’s interests. Yes, you read that sentence correctly: if a surrogate mother changes her mind and reneges on an agreement to give her baby to the commissioning parents, then all parties may come to court with an equal right to have the baby. The Court of Appeal accepted in 2007 that ‘both sides start from the same position’. The fact that the mother has carried the baby for nine months and given birth to it gives her no right to resist a residence application from the commissioning father. The fact that the biological parents have never been in a relationship is also to be disregarded. The law on surrogacy now treats the birth mother as little more than a vessel – and that is inhumane.

In a surrogacy agreement the commissioning father will surely have made a considerable emotional investment and one can understand his disappointment if the woman who agreed to hand over her baby changes her mind, or, indeed, if she decides to abort the baby (as can happen). But the circumstances of the mother and father in a surrogacy agreement are not comparable, at least not in the eyes of anyone who values the right of a woman to have bodily autonomy and to determine the future of her offspring. Put simply, the mother should always have the right to change her mind. As Frank Furedi has pointed out, no woman who agrees to be a surrogate can be sure how she will feel about the child-to-be as it grows in her womb. These rights should also apply to women who never intended to hand over the baby (which is what the judge found to be the case with regard to Baby M). ...

While policymakers have flattened the moral landscape, judges have been given a free hand to intervene in disputed surrogacy agreements and to make judgements under the rubric of doing what is in the child’s best interests. Clearly, if the mother is a violent heroin addict, for example, then there would be a case for intervening and acting in the child’s best interests. But the Baby M case did not raise such issues and the judge noted that, under her mother’s care, the child ‘has come to no serious harm’.

This is messed up. I cannot agree with the judge throwing out contracts and deciding based on her own opinion of a baby being reared by gay men. Nor can I agree with saying that a woman can just change her mind about such an important matter whenever she pleases, after taking many 1000s of dollars.

It appears that the system is being rigged to give judges more power, and to promote various gay or feminist goals.

College has statue of mansplaining

Wash. Examiner reports>:

That scene is depicted in a statue at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas, and despite no sign of distress or physical assertion, some women have decided it is a statue of "mansplaining" — a term used to describe men condescendingly explaining something to a woman.

Funny. The college may have to add a statue of a woman nagging a man.

Free speech to rap about harm to ex-wife

I mentioned this case in June and Oct. 2014, and now we have a decision:

The Supreme Court has reversed the conviction of a Pennsylvania man who said violent messages he posted on Facebook were therapeutic, not true threats. Anthony Elonis was arrested by the FBI, which had been monitoring his posts.

At issue is the standard by which a lower court viewed rap lyrics and messages from Elonis, who often posted graphically violent language along with disclaimers that he was merely asserting his First Amendment rights. ...

Here's one example of Elonis' Facebook postings, quoted by the Supreme Court on Monday:

"Fold up your [protection-from-abuse order] and put it in your pocket
Is it thick enough to stop a bullet?
Try to enforce an Order that was improperly granted in the first place
Me thinks the Judge needs an education on true threat jurisprudence
And prison time'll add zeros to my settlement . . .
And if worse comes to worse
I've got enough explosives
to take care of the State Police and the Sheriff 's Department."

This seems much more threatening that of fellow angry dad Dan Brewington, who served 3 years in prison for blogging about holding public officials accountable.

The decision did not resolve some of the technical legal issues.

I do not approve of threatening to kill people, but rap lyrics on Facebook are unlikely to be followed by violence, AFAIK.

I am glad to see the Supreme Court side with free speech. Because prosecutors have shown their willingness to quote opinions out of context to intimidate citizens into silence, I want broader free speech protections.