Pope values parents over so-called experts

The Vatican does not seem to have much influence anymore, as it cannot even persuade Ireland to stop same-sex marriage:

The overall result, of course, is most important. With opinion polls suggesting the Yes side will win comfortably, Ireland looks poised to become the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage via a nationwide vote.

The Pope has said and done some goofy things, but I am glad to see him stick up for parents over so-called experts:

(Vatican Radio) In his catechesis at the General Audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis focused on the role of parents in the education of their children, which he called “an essential characteristic” of the family.

The Holy Father noted the many difficulties facing parents today, especially those who find themselves in difficult situations. He spoke especially about the difficulties of separated couples, calling on them to “never, never, never take the children hostage!”

He spoke out strongly against “intellectual critics” who have “silenced” parents in order to defend younger generations from real or imagined harm. This has opened up a fracture between families and societies, leading to a crisis in the relationship between families and society. So-called experts have often taken the place of parents, depriving them of their proper place in the education of their own children, “even in the most delicate and personal aspects of their lives.” Parents often are afraid to correct their children, leaving it instead to experts.

That neatly summarizes a major theme of this blog.

A hot issue in California is mandatory vaccines. Most of the experts recommend the vaccines. At least 95% of the kids get the vaccines, and maybe 1% get a medical exemption. A new law is going to force nearly everyone to get the vaccines.

The risk from the vaccines is very small, but the risk of getting the diseases if you are unvaccinated is also very small. So the benefit of the vaccines is debatable.

There was a measles outbreak in Disneyland, but it was a few dozen adults catching it from a Filipino visitor. A stricter vaccine policy on American schoolkids would not have made a difference.

Nearly all parents are doing what the experts say, and there is little or no harm in others not going along, so what is the problem? Who cares?

I think that it is simply a power play in a plan to eliminate parental rights and informed consent. More of this will come, and parents will not have the authority to rear their kids according to their own beliefs.

Judge ships kid to out-of-state boarding school

Law prof. E. Volokh writes:

Many parents are reluctant to send their children to boarding schools, because they think that spending more time with their children is good for the children (as well as good for the parent). But what if the parents have split up, and one wants to send the child to boarding school and the other doesn’t? That’s the subject of an interesting decision from the Arizona Court of Appeals last week, in Baker v. Meyer:

The dad persuaded a family court judge to break the shared parenting agreement and send the kid to an out-of-state boarding school. The appeals court reversed, saying that the mom's central concerns were ignored.

There are lawyers who love to gloat about cases like this, because they say that shared parenting can never work unless it is supervised by a judge.

The unfortunate fact is that it is impossible to agree to a binding parenting plan because one side can always break it later if he convinces a meddlesome judge. And that it exactly what happened here, until the appeals court stopped it.

I wish I could say that the appellate decision upheld parental rights, but the judge can just make the same decision anyway, and explain the reasoning a little differently.

One commenter argues that the dad's choice of school is a "better school", and adds:

I have complete respect for parental rights; ...

And I would have a lot more respect for all parties if they would just agree on something and get it out of the court system. They are wasting their time and money.

That said, you are right about one thing; the world would be a better place if I was the dictator. ...

"You side with the judge because of your own opinion about the better school."

I side with no one. My opinion in these matters is always the same- people need to settle their issues. 99.99% of the time, it isn't worth the time and money. It is a waste of the family's resources to bring this before the court, and the only people to benefit are the attorneys. More often than not, it is a continuation of a dysfunctional dynamic- often, the same one that made the divorce. Get over it. Nobody- not you, not the other person, and certainly not the child, wins in family court.

"You are like a medieval serf who cannot imagine life without a king."

I appreciate the sentiment, but I am closer to the King than the serf.

The family court is infested with worms like this guy. He has contempt for parents and likes dictating their lives. He claims to believe that people are better off outside family court, but he strenuously argues for the policies that bring them into court. That is, he wants one parent to be able to break an agreement by appealing to the prejudices of a judge.

If it is really true, as he says, that the child never benefits from these legal actions, then the logical conclusion is for the court to refuse to hear them. The court has no business holding a hearing on which school is better.

Thomas Paine wrote a book in 1776 called Common Sense that convinced the American colonists that they did not need a king. Is there anyone today who can convince Americans that we do not need judges and experts micro-managing our families? Can that lawyer quoted above be convinced?

Hillary Clinton is announcing her candidacy for President, and her most famous book is It Takes a Village. It advocated government control of child rearing, and an end to family autonomy. Barack Obama campaigned on The Life Of Julia, and incorrect portrayal of government dependence and male elimination. No self-respecting man would vote for either one of these creeps.

We had more common sense in 1776.

Stanford bans billionaire for psychological kidnapping

A fellow angry dad sends this NY Times story:

After sightseeing in Rome, Lonsdale and Clougherty were together in the hotel room they were sharing when she started dressing for evening Mass. Lonsdale came up behind her and kissed her, touching her neck and hair and telling her she was beautiful. She had told him she was a virgin. Both agree they had sex. But what actually went on between them that night, and throughout their yearlong relationship, would become highly contested. After the relationship ended, Clougherty accused Lonsdale of sexual assault. ...

In the course of the therapy, Clougherty came to reject the term “relationship,” or even “abusive relationship,” to characterize her year with Lonsdale. She now calls it a “psychological kidnapping,” a term she came up with after watching a video about domestic abuse on the Internet, and she says she was raped every time she and Lonsdale had sex. ...

Meanwhile on campuses throughout the country, a movement was taking shape. A growing number of students were coming forward to criticize their universities for the handling of sexual-assault cases. ...

The government also instructed schools to adopt a new standard for determining the outcome of a sexual-harassment or violence case. At the time, many schools used the standard of “clear and convincing” evidence, meaning that the adjudicators (usually a panel of administrators or faculty) believed that it was substantially more likely than not, or roughly 75 percent likely, that the accused had committed the offense. The letter from the civil rights office demanded that schools switch to a lower standard of proof, a “preponderance” of evidence, meaning that it was more likely than not — above 50.01 percent — that the offense was committed. The office noted that preponderance is the standard that courts use to decide civil suits for sexual harassment. A few schools, including Princeton and Harvard, initially refused the new standard and then found themselves under investigation for suspected Title IX violations.

So because the 21yo woman was 50.01% believable and the Obama administration was putting pressure, Stanford banned the 29yo man from the campus.

Princeton and Harvard was not just investigated; the Obama administration found them both guilty of not acting swiftly and harshly enuf, and imposed embarrassing and punitive sanctions. The Obama policies are anti-male and contrary to basic ideas of due process.

I remember the only other time I heard of a man being declared persona non grata on the Stanford campus, because it really rattled some of the faculty where I was studying. Here is the Wikipedia story for Theodore Streleski:

Theodore Landon "Ted" Streleski (born 1936) is an American former graduate student in mathematics at Stanford University who murdered his former faculty advisor, Professor Karel de Leeuw, with a small sledge hammer on August 18, 1978. Shortly after the murder, Streleski turned himself in to the authorities, claiming he felt the murder was justifiable homicide because de Leeuw had withheld departmental awards from him, demeaned Streleski in front of his peers, and refused his requests for financial support. Streleski was in his 19th year pursuing his doctorate in the mathematics department, alternating with low-paying jobs to support himself.

During his trial Streleski told the court he felt the murder was "logically and morally correct" and "a political statement" about the department's treatment of its graduate students, and he forced his court-appointed lawyer to enter a plea of "not guilty" rather than "not guilty by reason of insanity" as the lawyer had urged. Streleski was convicted of second degree murder and he served seven years in prison for his actions.

Streleski was eligible for parole on three occasions, but turned it down as the conditions of his parole required him to not set foot on the Stanford campus. Upon his release in 1985, he said, "I have no intention of killing again. On the other hand, I cannot predict the future."

There is more info on Murderpedia. The LA TImes reported:

In a rambling and sometimes confusing discourse Sunday, Streleski repeated that he felt no remorse because remorse would undo the statement he was trying to make by killing DeLeeuw.

"I have murdered a professor at Stanford," he said. "I have submitted it to a judge and a jury. I say Stanford treats students criminally.

"If I express remorse, I cut the ground out from under that argument. OK? I would not only be a murderer but a dirty, lying dog. I am a murderer. I am not a dirty, lying dog."

That is what it used to take to get banned from the campus. Now it just takes an ex-girlfriend to realize that she blew a chance to marry a high-status man, and to watch a YouTube video about domestic abuse.

When colleges are not banning people from campus, they are otherwise trying to shelter their precious little snowflakes from upsetting ideas. Here is what one Ivy League college did when activists could not censor a debate on "rape culture":

The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said. ...

But why are students so eager to self-infantilize? Their parents should probably share the blame. Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, wrote on Slate last month that although universities cosset students more than they used to, that’s what they have to do, because today’s undergraduates are more puerile than their predecessors. “Perhaps overprogrammed children engineered to the specifications of college admissions offices no longer experience the risks and challenges that breed maturity,” he wrote. But “if college students are children, then they should be protected like children.”

Another reason students resort to the quasi-medicalized terminology of trauma is that it forces administrators to respond. Universities are in a double bind. They’re required by two civil-rights statutes, Title VII and Title IX, to ensure that their campuses don’t create a “hostile environment” for women and other groups subject to harassment.

A couple of Oklahoma students were kicked out of college for a 9-second video of a silly chant in a non-college acitivity, without any hearing to get their side of the story. The college president encourages all students to turn in their fellow students who might have privately expressed some offensive opinions.

The biggest college scandal of the last year was the UVa fraternity gang rape, and now the Wash. Post reports that a 5-month police investigation shows the story entirely false. Apparently it was part of a string of lies that Jackie told to impress some boy who was not returning her affections. And the Ferguson police shooting was 100% justified, even tho the NY Times published 106 stories in the first 3 weeks making outrageous racist claims. The Obama administration still claims that the cops are racist, but the last allegedly-racist email from a Ferguson cop was in 2011. The NY Times is still not telling the straight story about UVa.

Is this tomorrow?

Here is a glimpse of the past:

In 1947, the Catechetical Guild Educational published Is This Tomorrow: America Under Communism, a propaganda comic classic about the impending Sovietification of America. ...

An estimated 4 million copies of Is This Tomorrow were distributed in the late 1940s. The book tells the story of a Red sleeper cell that takes over America after a nation-crippling drought. The saboteurs place agents in the media, foment racial unrest, take over Congress, brainwash schoolchildren, and rig elections.

You can now view the cover or read the comic book free.

Wikipedia says that this was a piece of early ultra-right-wing paranoid McCarthyist theocratic propaganda. Here is more such criticism. The full text is here and here, with a more neutral description here. It seems prophetic to me. Hard leftists, bleeding heart liberals, and useful idiots have been played just like in the comic book.

I remember being warned that a commie takeover would turn kids into rats on their parents, and indoctrinate kids that their allegiance is to the state, not the family. We did not have a commie takeover, but their lackeys have done a lot of damage.

Here is the local Santa Cruz cartoonist depiction (from Feb. 7) of Black Panther Lesbian Commie Fugitive Angela Davis speaking on M.L. King day to attack Israel and the Jews.

Parents still ordered to pay for college

I posted about the Divorced parents have to pay college tuition. Now there is an update:

THE 21-year-old student suing her estranged parents for university fees was back in court this week claiming they should be held in contempt because they refuse to pay.

Caitlyn Ricci filed a motion on Monday arguing that her parents, Michael Ricci and Maura McGarvey, violated a judge’s previous decision by failing to pay her $US16,000 ($19,200) tuition at Temple University, Philadelphia.

Ricci’s father said he has no intention of paying until his daughter reconnects with the New Jersey family. Ricci hasn’t spoken with her parents for two years.

“That’s fine. They can hold me in contempt of court. They can do whatever they want,” Mr Ricci told US TV station WPVI-TV. “I’m not going to pay. I’m not going to give them any money until my daughter has a relationship with me and we start to heal our family.”

Here is the dad's story (also here):

Most nights before I fall asleep, I have tears in my eyes thinking about the difficulty my family is going through. My daughter is suing her mother and me for $16,000 towards college tuition, and a judge has ruled in her favor. My daughter moved out, and I only ever see her in court. It’s certainly not what I wanted for my family.

Every day I wake up and miss my daughter. I miss talking to her, seeing her, asking her about her day, and being involved in her life. I understand that after she was kicked out of her Disney internship, a program she participated in to help prepare for college, she was upset and angry at the rules her mother and I set for her. She was kicked out of the program for underage drinking, and so we had to set boundaries. That included chores, a curfew, and summer classes. When Caitlyn left our home in February 2013, to go to her grandparents, we thought we’d let her go for a couple days and then she would come home. When we called her grandparents to ask that they send her home, they said, “No, she can stay here as long as she wants.” That’s when we knew we had problems.

There is a mindset that says that college is such a good thing that it is worth any cost, and parents should make any sacrifice for the good of the kids, and therefore should do whatever it takes to pay for college. This view is very destructive. There are decent alternatives. The girl can get college loans, she can attend a cheap community college, she can work to support herself, and she can reconcile with her parents.

Here is another attack on parents:

A tattooed-up Brooklyn middle school teacher with a criminal record left her three kids home alone so she could get ink — and then went on a whiskey-drinking binge at a Lower East Side bar until Thursday morning, according to police sources and social media.

Laura Aguero, 35, who works at M.S. 88 in Park Slope, and her husband, Alfredo Bobe,41, allegedly left their 4,5, and 12 year old kids by themselves while she got tatted up at Inborn Tattoo in the Lower East Side on Wednesday night, according to police sources and posts on Facebook.

“I’m getting tatted on ludlow (Inborn) so I’ll stop by to have a drink!!! Xoxo!” she wrote on Local 138 bar’s “Whiskey Wednesday” event page at 10:32 p.m.on Wednesday. ...

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said, “While this alleged behavior is not school-related, it is unacceptable. Ms. Aguero Dupla has been reassigned away from any classroom, and will not be in contact with students.

Sounds wacky to me, but I guess tattoos and whiskey make for a good time for others.

But now it is criminal:

However, he didn't have his keys, so he punched out a glass panel on the front door.

The shattering glass woke up neighbors who called 911, the New York Daily News reports.

Police arrived to Aguero pacing outside the building while Bobe was inside the apartment.

The couple was arrested for after police learned the kids had been left home alone for hours, according to WPIX-TV.

Aguero-Dupla was charged with three counts of endangering the welfare of a child, while Bobe was charged with acting in a manner injurious to a child.

I assume the "three counts" is for the 3 kids. But millions of parents think that it is perfectly fine for a 12yo child to babysit 4yo and 5yo kids. Who was endangered? Maybe you think that a middle-school teacher should not have an evening of tattoos and whiskey, and I might even agree with that, but we have a society where that is legal and acceptable.

More stupid zero tolerance

MIT has been a leader in putting college lectures freely online, and now it has bizarrely overreacted to a minor complaint. MIT announces:

MIT is cutting ties with retired professor Walter Lewin after determining that the physicist, whose lectures had made him a beloved teacher and minor Internet star, had sexually harassed at least one student online.

The woman was taking one of Lewin’s classes on edX, the online learning platform started by Harvard and MIT. ...

MIT has revoked his title as professor emeritus, Provost Martin A. Schmidt PhD ’88 said.

MIT is also removing Lewin’s lecture videos and other course materials from edX and MIT OpenCourseWare indefinitely, “in the interest of preventing any further inappropriate behavior.”

Schmidt said that MIT’s actions were “part of a process of a complete separation from Walter,” though he also said those actions were “probably the extent of it” given that Lewin had retired.

“Given Dr. Lewin’s long career on our campus and contributions as an educator, taking this step is painful,” Schmidt wrote to MIT’s faculty. ...

Lewin joined MIT in 1966 and became a full professor in 1974. In the decades that followed he collected award after award for his undergraduate teaching.

Through OpenCourseWare and YouTube, Lewin’s lectures and physics demonstrations have reached millions.

“Professor Lewin delivers his lectures with the panache of Julia Child bringing French cooking to amateurs and the zany theatricality of YouTube’s greatest hits,” The New York Times wrote in 2007. “With his wiry grayish-brown hair, his tortoiseshell glasses and his intensity, Professor Lewin is the iconic brilliant scientist … he is at once larger than life and totally accessible.”

Lewin went on to star in viral videos of him drawing dotted lines on blackboards and swinging on steel balls suspended from the ceiling.

And then in 2013, Lewin helped launch online versions of his classes on edX. Among those who enrolled: the woman who would lodge the sexual harassment complaint this past October.

This is so stupid, I don't know where to start. The man is 78 years old, and he is only accused of making an inappropriate remark online. For that, the university is trying to destroy 40 years of loyal service, and millions of viewers learning physics from his videos.

The comments are overwhelmingly negative. For example:

I can still read Mein Kampf and The Little Red Book. So for Prof Lewin works to have been banned, he must have done something worse than mass murder. In the name of equality, let us hear his words no more. Zero tolerance!!!

I wonder if MIT was influenced by a fear of an adverse ruling from the Obama administration. The MIT over-reaction is so bizarre that it seems likely that Lewin had enemies who are just using this complaint to sabotage him for other reasons, or maybe MIT has Title IX problems with the Obama administration, and is trying to impress the leftist feminist Obama bureaucrats and avoid charges in other cases.

I note that Lewin appears to be from a Dutch Jewish family, as he had relatives die in Auschwitz. In other campus scandals I have recently posted about, feminist Jewish liberals seem to be at war against genteel southern blond fraternity boys.

To give you an idea how college cave in to leftist agitators, read this:

The president of prestigious Smith College is red-faced and apologetic Tuesday for telling students on the Northampton, Mass., campus that "all lives matter."

Kathleen McCartney wrote the phrase in the subject line of an e-mail to students at the school, whose alumni include feminists Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, former First Lady Nancy Reagan and celebrity chef Julia Child. McCartney was attempting to show support for students protesting racially charged grand jury decisions in which police in Missouri and New York were not charged in the deaths of unarmed black men.

Protesters have adopted several slogans in connection with the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, including "Black Lives Matter." McCartney's more inclusive version of the refrain was seen as an affront that diminished the focus on black lives and racism, according to emails obtained by FoxNews.com.

“We are united in our insistence that all lives matter,” read the e-mail,in which she made clear she was strongly behind the protests, writing that the grand jury decisions had “led to a shared fury… We gather in vigil, we raise our voices in protest.” ...

Some who follow campus issues say that the idea of apologizing for saying “all lives matter” shows political correctness is out of control.

My guess is that Obama administration pressure induced MIT to do this. Yes, Democrat leftist feminist bureaucrats now intervene in petty student complaints, as shown by their letter to Princeton.

Update: See Lewin's last lecture to get an idea of how popular he was.

UVa rape story is a hoax

I posted yesterday:

The Rolling Stone and Washington Post are going down as using hoax newspapers to promote a political ideology. The National Enquirer has higher standards.

Now these publications are half-way backing down.

Wash. Post:

Several key aspects of the account of a gang rape offered by a University of Virginia student in Rolling Stone magazine have been cast into doubt, including the date of the alleged attack and details about an alleged attacker, according to interviews and a statement from the magazine backing away from the article.

The U-Va. fraternity chapter where the alleged attack on a student named Jackie was said to have occurred in September 2012 released a statement Friday afternoon denying that such an assault took place in its house. Phi Kappa Psi said it has been working with police to determine whether the account of a brutal rape at a party there was true. The fraternity members say that several important elements of the allegations were false.

A group of Jackie’s close friends, who are sex assault awareness advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to her, but they also have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

Rolling Stone:

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

This is not quite a retraction or an apology, but a good start. Maybe now they should print Jackie's full name and picture.

Or maybe Jackie is just some pitiful immature lunatic who took one Women's Studies class too many. The real culprits are the leftist news media, Democrat politicians, and Obama administration who perpetrated the idea of a college rape culture.

I notice that none of the article on this UVa rape hoax, such as in the NY Times, give any credit to people like Steve Sailer who helped expose it. You get the impression that Rolling Stone and Wash. Post decided on their own to correct errors. Not much chance of that.

HBO TV girls star Lena Dunham is perpetrating her own rape hoax:

A media investigation into the allegations of rape featured in Lena Dunham's recently-released memoir has refuted the claims of sexual assault made by the Girls creator.

The writer, actor and director dedicates a chapter of her book, Not That Kind Of Girl - for which she received a reported $3.7 million advance - to a boy she met at Oberlin College in Ohio identified as 'Barry', who she alleges raped her one night after a party. ...

Dunham's description of Barry is similarly explicit, explaining him as a 'mustachioed campus Republican' with a 'mustache that rode the line between ironic Williamsburg fashion and big buck hunter', who hosted a radio show called Real Talk With Jimbo, worked in the library stacking shelves and 'wore purple cowboy boots'.

She also said that he once punched a girl 'in the boob' at a party and, following a consensual sexual encounter, another girl woke to find blood spattered all over the wall 'like a crime scene'.

Furthermore Dunham does not state that 'Barry' is a pseudonym, as she does with other names that appear in her book.

An investigation by John Nolte from Breitbart News undertaken at the Oberlin campus, which was published Thursday, concluded that the 'Barry' Dunham describes is a 'ghost', and that no such person appeared to exist at the college during the years she studied there.

The author of the Rolling Stone rape hoax story is a A Left-Wing Jew With A History Of Christian-Bashing. Ditto for Lena Dunham.

There is an obvious ideological component to these hoaxes, along with Ferguson Missouri police, Duke Lacrosse, etc.

Even leftist feminist Jezebel admits:

This is really, really bad. It means, of course, that when I dismissed Richard Bradley and Robby Soave's doubts about the story and called them "idiots" for picking apart Jackie's account, I was dead fucking wrong, and for that I sincerely apologize. It means that my conviction that Sabrina Rubin Erdely had fact-checked her story in ways that were not visible to the public was also wrong. It's bad, bad, bad all around.

The problem here is not just bad journalism. We have social justice warriors who are out to change the culture:

she'd initially been intimidated by UVA's aura of preppy success, where throngs of toned, tanned and overwhelmingly blond students fanned across a landscape of neoclassical brick buildings, hurrying to classes, clubs, sports, internships, part-time jobs, volunteer work and parties; Jackie's orientation leader had warned her that UVA students' schedules were so packed that "no one has time to date – people just hook up."

To them, fraternities represent a white Christian sexist establishment culture that they hate. There is also a guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude among the SJWs.

Consider the Rolling Stone excuse that they could not contact the alleged perps because it would annoy them or spur retaliation. What did they think that publishing the article would do? The excuse makes no sense, unless you adopt some sort of victim mentality that says that the woman's story must always be believed.

This should have been fishy:

Magazine writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely knew she wanted to write about sexual assaults at an elite university. What she didn’t know was which university.

So, for six weeks starting in June, Erdely interviewed students from across the country. She talked to people at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. None of those schools felt quite right. But one did: the University of Virginia, a public school, Southern and genteel, brimming with what Erdely calls “super-smart kids” and steeped in the legacy of its founder, Thomas Jefferson.

. In other words, she wanted to target a stereotype with her accusations.

Divorced parents have to pay college tuition

In most states, parents have no legal obligation to pay for college. The kids can get student loans, as everyone else. But NJ parents have to pay:

Two New Jersey parents have been ordered to contribute to their adult daughter's education, against their will. However, despite a midnight deadline to cough up thousands, they still say their estranged child is not entitled to a dime.

21-year old Caitlyn Ricci sued her estranged parents for her college tuition and won.

Her parents tell Action News that they haven't spoken with their daughter for almost two years. But now they may have to pay $16,000 this year and in future years for her college tuition. ...

It's interesting to note that her grandparents are the ones who paid for the attorney to sue their own son, Caitlyn's father Michael.

A NJ lawyer questions the legality of the ruling:

The fact is that accordingly to precedent is that New Jersey Courts must carefully examine the issues surrounding the breakdown of the parent-child relationship prior to apportioning college costs. Here, there was no hearing, no examination of who was at fault for the breakdown, evidence that the parents were not consulted and their opinions not respected.

A college education is an investment in the kid's future. Or maybe just a chance to attend drunken frat parties. A 21yo is an adult, and parents are not required to buy her a car, rent her an apartment, or invest in a business she may start. A fancy college is a luxury.

Cosby cannot prove his innocence

CBS News reports:

Social media is reviving sexual assault allegations against comedian Bill Cosby.

A woman came forward this week to say she'd been raped by the comedian years ago.

That set off a backlash, including the cancellation of an appearance on "Late Show With David Letterman" scheduled for next week.

Cosby has never been charged with sexual assault. But this is not the first time he has been accused.

Once accusation is from 30 years ago. Another from the 1970s. At least one says that she was given a date-rape drug.

There are no police reports, medical exams, or corroborating witnesses. For the most part, these seem to be women who only came forward many years later seeking money. Cosby is rich.

The date-rape drug is mainly a myth. Yes, there is such a thing, but nearly all accusations about it are false. If Cosby were drugging women, it would only take one to go straight to a physician for a blood test, and to the police to make an arrest. Then Cosby would be in jail. Our society has no tolerance for that sort of thing.

I say men should be innocent until proven guilty. There is no way to prove innocence or guilt about a sexual assault allegation from 30 years ago. He should be given the benefit of the doubt.

More and more, men are considered guilty based on dubious accusations. Here is the Obama administration requirement on colleges:

F-7. May the complainant’s sexual history be introduced at hearings?

Answer: Questioning about the complainant’s sexual history with anyone other than the alleged perpetrator should not be permitted. Further, a school should recognize that the mere fact of a current or previous consensual dating or sexual relationship between the two parties does not itself imply consent or preclude a finding of sexual violence. The school should also ensure that hearings are conducted in a manner that does not inflict additional trauma on the complainant.

If a man is accused of a serious crime, then he should have the right to present contrary evidence. If the girl says she was a virgin who would never have sex with a frat party date, then the guy should have an opportunity to rebut that. But Obama policy does not allow colleges to let him have that opportunity.

I wonder if the Obama feminists have discovered what is going on in Antarctica:

In 2006, they saw, for the first time, a fur seal attempting to copulate with a king penguin, on Marion Island, a sub-Antarctic island that is home to both species.

They published details of that incident, and speculated that the sex act at the time may have been the behavior of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced seal. Or an aggressive, predatory act. Or a playful one that turned sexual.

But the new incidents, published in the study "Multiple occurrences of king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) sexual harassment by Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella)", still surprised the researchers.

They could go either way on this -- try to stop it or issue marriage licenses for it.

Update: Breaking news:

Adrian Peterson, the star Minnesota Vikings running back who had been facing child abuse charges, has been suspended by the NFL for the remainder of the 2014 season without pay.

The league said it informed Peterson in a letter from Commissioner Roger Goodell that he will not be considered for reinstatement before April 15.

The league said it suspended Peterson "for violating the NFL Personal Conduct Policy in an incident of abusive discipline that he inflicted on his four-year-old son last May" - the first example of the league's crackdown on players involved with domestic violence.

He was one of the best running backs in the NFL.

Next comes the psychobabble:

In his letter to Peterson, Goodell hinted at what those aggravating circumstances might be: "You have shown no meaningful remorse for your conduct. When indicted, you acknowledged what you did but said that you would not 'eliminate whooping my kids' and defended your conduct in numerous published text messages to the child's mother. You also said that you felt 'very confident with my actions because I know my intent.' These comments raise the serious concern that you do not fully appreciate the seriousness of your conduct, or even worse, that you may feel free to engage in similar conduct in the future." ...

As part of his path to reinstatement, the NFL is insisting Peterson meet with Dr. April Kuchuk of the NYU Department of Psychiatry before December 1, 2014, reports CBSSports.com' Will Brinson. Kuchuk will design a counseling and therapy program for Peterson after that meeting to be shared with the commissioner and NFLPA. If he does not adhere to that program, he could face a lengthier suspension, Goodell warned.

Goodell gets paid up to $40M a year for pandering to feminists in this way.

I realize that people disagree about the benefits and harms of corporal punishment. But it is not the place of the NFL to tell a man to how to discipline his child. And it is certainly not fair to send a man to a re-education camp for standing up for what he believes.

The NFL is in a panic because they don't know how to stand up to feminists, and because Sunday night football ratings have fallen below The Walking Dead, a silly show about killing zombies. I do not think that they will be helped by suspending their best players.

How Obama causes male persecution

A commenter asks about hte relation between college rape policies and the Obama administration. This 2011 story explains it:

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will announce on Monday a set of thorough guidelines for how schools and colleges should respond to allegations of sexual assault. Among them are that institutions should consider such allegations under the "more likely than not" standard of evidence, rather than the stricter "clear and convincing" standard that some now use.

The guidance comes in the form of a "Dear Colleague" letter from the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights designed to clarify Title IX regulations. The letter provides a detailed overview of institutions' existing responsibilities under Title IX when dealing with complaints of sexual harassment and sexual violence. ...

The letter includes other specific examples of what institutions can and cannot do under Title IX. For example, "mediation is not appropriate even on a voluntary basis" between a victim and alleged perpetrator, says the letter. Institutions are also responsible for taking the proper "interim steps" to protect victims, such as moving the alleged victim or perpetrator to a new class or a different residence hall, providing counseling services to the complainant, or prohibiting the accused student from attending class for a period of time. ...

The letter also states that in order for a college's or school's grievance procedures to be consistent with Title IX standards, the institution "must use a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard (i.e., it is more likely than not that sexual harassment or violence occurred)." That is the standard of proof established for violations of civil-rights laws, the letter notes, and therefore is "the appropriate standard for investigating allegations of sexual harassment or violence."

Grievance procedures that use the stricter "'clear and convincing' standard (i.e., it is highly probable or reasonably certain that the sexual harassment or violence occurred)" are not equitable under Title IX, it says.

The problem with this is that rape is a crime. If the college learns of a rape allegation, it should just turn the matter over to the police, as they are much better equipped to handle crimes.

Instead the college is expected to quiz the boy and girl, and if the girl is 51% believable, then declare the boy a rapist and take away his diploma or mete out whatever other punishment it can.

As I believe in innocent-until-proven-guilty, this is a very bad idea. Pres. Barack Obama is the most ideologically opposed to male justice of any President in recent years.

The issue goes to the heart of the legal distinction between civil and criminal cases. A civil case is usually a lawsuit between two private parties, and the court remedy is to require one to pay the other some money, based on a preponderance of the evidence. A criminal case is where the state tries to put a perp in jail, and guilt beyond reasonable doubt must be proved to the court.

Mediation is appropriate in civil cases, but not criminal cases. A civil case is just a dispute over money, so if the parties can agree to split it, so much the better. But a criminal needs to be locked up for the good of society, regardless of whether the victim wants it or not. In a statutory rape case, for example, the victim's opinion is irrelevant.

When the Obama requirements say that mediation is inappropriate, they are targeting criminal cases. But they want the college boy to be found guilty, without proof. So Obama is quite deliberately mixing up civil and criminal cases for maximum persecution of college boys being accused of a crime.

To see what kind of legal morass the Obama administration has led us into, NPR Radio reported yesterday:

The trend now, and what the White House recommended in its recent guidance to colleges, is toward what's called "affirmative consent." In other words, instead of the old "no means no," the idea now is that only "yes means yes."

But even that still leaves room for interpretation — or misinterpretation — since "yes" can be expressed nonverbally. ...

Some schools have tried to avoid the ambiguity by mandating that students get explicit verbal permission before making any sexual advance. (The only way around the rule is if students have a prior verbal agreement to use a pre-arranged hand signal.)

"It's on them to say, 'Can I do this?' And the person has to respond verbally, 'Yes.' And if they don't, it's considered nonconsent, and that's a violation of our policy," says Louise Smith, dean of community life at Antioch College.

Smith says consent by Antioch's definition has to be clear and enthusiastic. "I guess so" wouldn't cut it. Also, the Antioch definition says consent must be continually renewed each time things escalate to "each new level of sexual activity."

This sounds like a joke, but it is not. Thanks, Barack. My guess is that Michelle was the sexual aggressor when they were dating.

Here is Obama's Fathers Day address and proclamation.

AP reports:

The restless president, who has compared himself to a caged animal on recent wanderings by declaring the "bear is loose," took a long Father's Day weekend away with his wife and older daughter.

The visit to the desert resort area of Palm Springs is one of the ways Obama has been trying to escape during his sixth year cloistered in the White House.

That is pitiful. Oh well, I guess I should be happy that he has quit using Fathers Day as an excuse to bash dads. He does use it to promote a feminist agenda, and argues for laws requiring women to be paid more, saying "that benefits men too." Sigh. Has he ever done anything to benefit men?

Stanford pressured to regulate sex conduct

The Obama administration is forcing colleges to take a guilty-until-proved-innocent policy towards sexual assaults, and here is the latest story:

A Stanford sexual assault victim, furious that her assailant will be allowed to gra ed rapidly online this week. ...

"This is a historic moment when there is an unprecedented movement for change," said Benjy Mercer-Golden, a junior who directs the student government's new Task Force on Sexual Assault and Relationship Abuse. "We think where Stanford goes, other universities will follow." ...

In January, Francis, a senior majoring in English, reported she was raped while away from campus during winter break by a classmate she knew. Five months later, after a hearing process she described as nightmarish and draining, a Stanford panel found the young man responsible for sexual assault, sexual misconduct and violating the Stanford code of conduct, according to university documents Francis provided. (A police investigation in their hometown remains open, and no charges have been filed, she said.)

Francis said she was appalled to learn his suspension would not begin until after his June 15 graduation and that he would be able to return to Stanford for graduate school in 2015.

If there is evidence of a crime, then the cops can bring charges. The girl could also file her own lawsuit.

But how is this Stanford's business? The two kids were boyfriend/girlfriend, and dating 100s of miles from Stanford. It appears to be a simple he-said-she-said situation. Maybe she consented on previous dates, but not the last one. Who knows?

The could have paid as much as $200k for that Stanford diploma. On what grounds could Stanford withhold it, considering that the boy has never been charged with any crime.

Imagine if you paid $200k for a house, went to the closing to get the title, and the escrow officer said that you could not have the title because a jilted ex-girlfriend in another state has posted a rant against you on the internet. You would be able to sue that escrow officer and win.

Likewise Stanford does not the power or ability to sort out these petty disputes and mete out harsh punishments. This is feminist Democrat foolishness instigated by Pres. Barack Obama.

Dad punished for letting boy walk from school

When I was 8 years old, I always walked a mile home from school. And the school never punished anyone for name-calling.

To a lot of people, going for a nice 1-mile walk in sunny Hawaii would be a great treat.

A Hawaii TV station reports:

A Kauai man is speaking out after he was sentenced and fined for making his son walk a mile home from school.

Kilauea resident Robert De Mond pleaded no contest to endangering the welfare of a minor.

But, he told KHON2, all he was trying to do was discipline his son.

De Mond said when he picked up his eight-year-old son from A-plus at Kilauea Elementary School, he noticed his son was on a time-out. On their way home, De Mond asked his son what happened.

“He answered, ‘I don’t know,’ and I go, ‘You need to take responsibility for your actions. Why were you in time out?’ He kept saying ‘I don’t know,” De Mond said.

About a mile from home, De Mond stopped the car along Kuhio Hwy. and told his son to walk home, he said.

“(I told him) basically think about what you did in A-plus to put you in time out,” he said. De Mond continued home with his two other sons.

When De Mond went back roughly five minutes later, his son was gone, De Mond said.

From this, I blame the school for punishing the boy for trivial name-calling, and for not telling the dad the cause for the time-out. And I blame the meddling stranger who kidnapped the boy.

Turns out, a bystander saw him crying, brought him back to the school and called police.

“As we went there, we picked up my son. I wasn’t able to see my son. I was put under arrest,” he said.

A judge sentenced De Mond to one year of probation and a $200 fine, calling his actions “old school punishment” that wasn’t appropriate. He also has to take parenting classes.

De Mond told KHON2 he initially wanted to go to trial and try to prove to a jury that he didn’t do anything wrong, but his attorney, a public defender, advised against it.

“All I was trying to do is have my son think about his actions and there was no intention at all that I wanted to harm my son. I just wanted him to walk home and think about what he did by the time he got home,” he said.

So why was his son on a time-out? According to De Mond, he was caught name-calling at school.

A family attorney questioned why De Mond was even charged when Hawaii law allows parents to discipline children by spanking them.

“It seems odd to me that he would have knowingly endangered the child’s mental and physical welfare. He obviously was not expecting his child to be run over or absconded with or whatever,” said attorney Brad Coates.

But child psychologist Suzanne Gelb pointed out that punishment out of anger is never good for the child. She said it’s better to give the child a choice and let him know what will happen if he doesn’t obey.

“So the purpose of the consequence is not to make the child feel bad, it’s to let him know that you need to respond a certain way or you’re gonna have to forfeit a privilege and that’s a wonderful teaching tool — no punishment, no anger, just matter of fact,” Gelb said.

De Mond says he will probably handle it differently the next time he wants to discipline any of his three sons.

If he stays out of trouble during his one year probation, his record will be wiped clean.

There is no indicAtion that the dad punished out of anger, and it is just wrong that punishment out of anger is harmful. Gelb is a good example of why you should never take child-rearing advice from child psychologists.

PoliceStateUSA.com reports:

In many people’s lives, walking to get places isn’t a punishment, it is a daily reality; the norm; how one gets places. However in Police State USA, a parent who allows their son to walk somewhere is arrested.

When a neighbor picked up the boy and called police, Mr. De Mond was arrested at his son’s school. He was charged with second-degree endangerment of the welfare of a minor. Mr. De Mond pleaded no contest.

The judge, Kathleen Watanabe, ruled that the punishment was “old-fashioned” and inappropriate. Walking was considered a punishment too severe to inflict on a child. Parents who discipline their children with walks risk criminal charges.

“These are different times,” Judge Kathleen Watanabe scolded, according to the Garden Island. “It is understandable that you became upset with your son, but it is dangerous for children to walk along the highway, and there are predators out there.”

Mr. De Mond was ordered to take parenting classes, pay the government $200. He is on probation for a year. If he is caught walking his son anywhere he risks jail time.

“It’s been pretty hard on the kids,” De Mond commented, adding that the family just wanted to put this behind them.

Walking is not illegal, even if it is “old-fashioned and inappropriate”. The chance of a predator attacking a boy who is alone for 5 minutes on a sleepy island village road is extremely small. The whole population of Kilauea is only 2,248. My guess is that it is more likely that the school will get swallowed up by a volcano.

Here is the dad's story:

"I asked him, 'Why were you in time-out at A-Plus?'" De Mond said. "He told me, 'I don't know.' I asked him again and he said, 'I don't know.'"

He told his son: "I don't know is not an answer. You need to take responsibility for your actions. There has to be a reason that you were placed in time-out."

A mile from their house, he dropped his son off and asked him to "please walk home. When you walk home, you will have an answer better than 'I don't know.' And when you do come home you'll have an answer," he said.

De Mond said the stretch of the two-lane roadway -- Kuhio Highway -- is in a safe, rural area with acre-size agricultural lots, and a wide shoulder, 10 to 25 feet wide, where it's not uncommon to see people walking or riding their bikes.

When De Mond got home, he said he turned around and within five minutes was back at the location where he dropped him off.

"I was hollering his name, and he's nowhere to be found," he said.

De Mond called his wife at work.

"I went back and forth three times along the road," he said. "At this point, I'm pretty frantic."

He called police dispatch, and learned police had his son at the school.

De Mond and his wife arrived at the school, not knowing how or why his son got there.

"I wanted to see my son to see if everything's OK and talk to my son," he said.

Instead, his wife signaled to him that he was going to be arrested.

He learned that his neighbor found the boy, but rather than bring him home, took him to school and called police.

"It's been pretty hard on the kids," De Mond said. "I just wanted to get it over with, so I pleaded no contest" to second-degree child endangerment.

He was sentenced to probation, a $200 fine and parenting classes.

De Mond said his final court hearing on the matter was Wednesday, but he is continuing to take parenting classes.

The Hawaiian emasculation is not just affecting humans. For millions of years, male Hawaiian crickets have chirped to attract females. Now they have been independently silenced on two separate islands. The NY Times reports:

But now, researchers report that the mutant males on each island stopped singing independently, through two similar but distinct adaptations. ...

Dr. Bailey said the crickets had adapted to become less vulnerable to a parasitic Hawaiian fly that is attracted to the males’ chirp. The fly larvae burrow into the cricket, causing it to die within a week.

But there is a downside: The males who do not chirp cannot attract females as easily as those who do.

“So instead they adjust their behavior,” Dr. Bailey said. “They hang around the remaining singing males and then intercept the females.”

There is a lesson here. The males have been forced to shut up to avoid parasites, and are left groveling for whatever females take pity on them. This is pathetic. The real men who stand up for their family and beliefs are being endangered, and the rext are being silenced by parasites.

Parental involvement lowers grades

Parents are often trying to convince family court judges of their involvement in their kids' schooling, as if that is something that all parents should be doing. But most of that involvement is worthless.

A couple of socilogy professors wroite in the NY Times:

Most people, asked whether parental involvement benefits children academically, would say, “of course it does.” But evidence from our research suggests otherwise. In fact, most forms of parental involvement, like observing a child’s class, contacting a school about a child’s behavior, helping to decide a child’s high school courses, or helping a child with homework, do not improve student achievement. In some cases, they actually hinder it.

Over the past few years, we conducted an extensive study of whether the depth of parental engagement in children’s academic lives improved their test scores and grades. We pursued this question because we noticed that while policy makers were convinced that parental involvement positively affected children’s schooling outcomes, academic studies were much more inconclusive.

Despite this, increasing parental involvement has been one of the focal points of both President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and President Obama’s Race to the Top. Both programs promote parental engagement as one remedy for persistent socioeconomic and racial achievement gaps. ...

In fact, there were more instances in which children had higher levels of achievement when their parents were less involved than there were among those whose parents were more involved. Even more counterintuitively: When involvement does seem to matter, the consequences for children’s achievement are more often negative than positive.

For the most part, those parent-teacher meetings are a waste of time.

In other parenting research, it does no good to feed babies in the middle of the night. NPR Radio reports:

Most of us chalk up a baby's nighttime crying to one simple fact: He's hungry.

But could that chubby bundle of joy have a devious plan?

Harvard University's David Haig thinks so. Last month the evolutionary biologist offered up a surprising hypothesis to help explain those 2 a.m. feedings and crying jags: The baby is delaying the conception of a sibling by keeping Mom exhausted and not ovulating, Haig writes in the current issue of the journal Evolution, Medicine and Public Health. ...

"It's clear that babies can get enough milk even if they sleep through the night," Haig tells Shots. "The waking becomes a different issue. ... I'm just suggesting that offspring have evolved to use waking up mothers and suckling more intensely to delay the birth of another sibling."

Moms like to feel as if they are doing something worthwhile when they do those feedings, and some are stilling doing it for 2-year-olds, but apparently there is no direct advantage to the baby.

A psychology professor writes a NY Times article on raising a moral child:

In an Israeli study of nearly 600 families, parents who valued kindness and compassion frequently failed to raise children who shared those values. ...

Genetic twin studies suggest that anywhere from a quarter to more than half of our propensity to be giving and caring is inherited. ...

Many parents believe it’s important to compliment the behavior, not the child — that way, the child learns to repeat the behavior. Indeed, I know one couple who are careful to say, “That was such a helpful thing to do,” instead of, “You’re a helpful person.”

But is that the right approach?

The experiments imply that the answer is no. And also that what you teach them does not matter so much, because they will learn from what you do, not what you say.

One of the great advances of Christianity was to move to a guilt-based culture, instead of a shame-based culture like the rest of the world. Here is the difference:

Shame is the feeling that I am a bad person, whereas guilt is the feeling that I have done a bad thing. Shame is a negative judgment about the core self, which is devastating: Shame makes children feel small and worthless, and they respond either by lashing out at the target or escaping the situation altogether. In contrast, guilt is a negative judgment about an action, which can be repaired by good behavior. When children feel guilt, they tend to experience remorse and regret, empathize with the person they have harmed, and aim to make it right. ...

If we want our children to care about others, we need to teach them to feel guilt rather than shame when they misbehave.

Suing parents for college tuition

A flaw in the child support system is that fathers are required to pay, without having any corresponding authority over the child. See mass school killer Adam Lanza's father's story about how helpless he was to correct bad hehavior.

A related problem is parents who are expected to pay for college, when the kids are legally adults. One girl is suing to force payment:

A New Jersey Supreme Court judge dismissed her case for private school tuition and living expenses but there will be another trial regarding college tuition in April.

In New Jersey, emanicipation does not occur at 18 but instead when a young person obtains an "independent status on his or her own," such as getting married, a job, or graduating from college. The question being tried in court is if a person over 18 decides to move out of the house, do parents still have an obligation to support them financially?

Several states require parents to pay for their child's college education until legal emancipation. If you live in Alabama, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, South Carolina, Utah or Washington you might be on the line.

"All of this is predicated on divorce law," says Lauren Young, money editor for Reuters. "When people get divorced and when they’re spelling out the future for their children, college is a big topic of conversation. In divorce law you decide who’s going to pay for college and it’s often based on the salaries and incomes of the parents. Here they’re using that law as the springboard for this to say, ‘should parents have to pay for college no matter what?’"

Here are some comments on the story:

While I think the lawsuit is bad, there is an issue that needs addressing and most people are not aware of it. This interview only slightly touches on it and should have gone into this further as it is a big part of this case and many people's situations. Until you are 24, your parents income and wealth is considered for financial aid. So, if your parents will not pay for you to go to college you can't get certain loans and certainly not grants even though you may be poor.

The feds consider students dependent on their parents, and require the parents' financial info for any financial aid, until the student turns 24. That has been the law since 1992. The only exceptions are students who are married, have a kid, are a veteran, have a Bachelor's degree, or were a ward of the state until 18. It doesn't matter if the student lives with the parents, or the parents claim the student on their taxes.

from where i grew up, 99% of the parents would do everything to send their kids to college. ours is a third world country and our belief is that good education will be a gateway for great opportunities. most of our grandparents barely had college degrees post world war 2 and wanted our parents to have one and in turn wanted the same thing for us. it's a common saying here by parents; "we don't have riches and wealth but we will strive hard to give you a good education. this is the only thing we can pass unto you."

The current system is unsustainable. College tuitions have risen beyond the ability of typical parents to pay. Loans have caused huge amounts of debt. Information has become dirt cheap in every other part of our society. The Democrats will probably want to absorb college into the welfare system, as they are currently doing with the medical system. Homeschooling has broken the K-12 school racket. There are lots of great free college courses online.

Update: Rachel Canning has returned to live with her parents. Her lawyer complains that her parents are pressuring her to drop the lawsuit.

Update: The WSJ has a debate:

Should Parents Pay for Their Children's College Education?

For many families, especially those relatively well-off, the idea of who will pay for college is a given: It is the parents' responsibility.

But should it be?

On one side, parents want to give their children the best chance for a happy, financially sound future. They don't want their kids starting out in life burdened with student debt—a burden that could be substantial given that the total cost of a four-year college education may approach a quarter-million dollars these days. ...

At the same time, college expenses are a burden that many parents can ill afford as well, especially for those whose nest eggs are falling short and don't have a lot of time to rebuild before they hope to retire. What's more, it isn't just a simple matter of who can better afford it. It's also about making sure that the money is spent wisely.

Saying yes is a college professor whose salary is increased by the parents' money. Saying no is a psychotherapist.

Incognito bullying story continues

The schools and parenting experts have been focused on bullying for several years. My local newspaper has had about 20 stories over the last several months about the stupid Incognito football bullying story, and it continues:

Offensive lineman Jonathan Martin wants to return to the NFL, he said in an interview aired Wednesday where he claimed that racial, aggressive and sexually charged comments all played a role in his departure from the Miami Dolphins.

Martin, who played in college at Stanford, also said he was not the only victim of hazing in the Dolphins' locker room. ...

Among the allegations Martin made in his interview with Dungy:

That teammates directed comments of racial and aggressive nature toward him, as well as sex-related comments about his mother and sister.

Is he kidding? I thought I saw a movie once where an opposing football lineman makes sex-related comments about a player's mother and sister just to distract him. I always thought that was part of the game.

Incognito is actually someone's name, not some sort of euphemism for anonymous bullying. Supposedly his worst offense was to call Martin a "half-nigger".

So how did the Stanford-educated Martin get the idea that after losing his job to a better player, he could get it back by making a sexual harassment charge? From his labor lawyer mom! Fox News reports:

Richie Incognito is fighting back. ...

Incognito's attorneys argued to Wells that Martin’s mother is a prominent attorney with a background in labor law, and that before he left the team, Martin never said he was uncomfortable with the tone of his discussions with Incognito.

In a statement to Fox News, Incognito's attorney Mark Schamel of the law firm of Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice, said: "The coarse and unacceptable comments and text messages that were sent to Jonathan Martin were of the same poor taste as those sent by him. All of these communications were provided to Ted Wells and the NFL investigation. What they show is banter between friends, not bullying."

Schamel added: "Jonathan Martin sent text messages to Richie Incognito which included threats to send someone over to Richie Incognito's home with a 'tranquilizer gun and sandpaper condoms' to homosexually rape him. Jonathan Martin sent another that said he would 'kill (Richies’s) whole family.' There was another where Jonathan Martin indicated he would ejaculate in Richie’s face."

Please spare us. I hate to hold anyone accountable for trash talk.

I just want to be able to enjoy the Super Bowl without any of this nonsense. We have two very evenly matched teams from our two leading dope-smoking capitals. The game features a white quarterback against a black one, with the corresponding stereotypes, and studies show such games get the highest ratings:

Race, Football and Television: Explaining the black quarterback effect
Nielsen ratings for ABC’s Monday Night Football are significantly higher when the game involves a black quarterback. In this paper, we consider competing explanations for this surprisingly robust effect. First, quarterback race might proxy for other player or team attributes. Second, black viewership patterns might be sensitive to quarterback race. Third, viewers of all races might be exhibiting a taste for diversity. We use both ratings data and evidence on racial attitudes from the General Social Survey to test these hypotheses empirically. The evidence strongly supports the taste-for-diversity hypothesis, while suggesting some role for black own-race preferences as well.

I wanted to link to the research paper, but found this instead:

The paper "Race, Football and Television: Explaining the Black Quarterback Effect" has been removed from this site. Our contract with Neilsen Media Research requires us to refrain from posting the results of this study online.

Apparently the NFL and ESPN make a lot of money off racial animosity, and no one wants to talk about it.

I am not criticizing. I see nothing wrong with blacks, non-whites, and even white SWPL urban metrosexual liberals rooting for the black quarterback, while rednecks and other unreconstructed Americans root for the white guy.

We have become waaaaaay toooo sensitive. If I had a half-black kid, I would teach him to be emotional strong enough not to crumble just because someone calls him a half-nigger.

Gay rights creep me out

Gay activists in the family court first creeped me out when a gay shrink recommended that I be ordered to see a nutritionist about my vegetable rotation. Some recent news items creep me out more.

The Russian Winter Olympics will soon start, and the LGBTQIA folks are all agitated because of LGBT rights in Russia:

In 2013, Russia received criticism from around the world for enacting a law that bans the distribution of "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations" to minors, ...

International rights groups have described the current situation as the worst human rights climate in the post-Soviet era, while Russian human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva has called passage of the law against gay propaganda "a step toward the Middle Ages."

The Russian are free to do whatever they want, except that they cannot promote homosexuality to minors. For people who lived thru Commie oppression, isn't this a triviality? Do they really want to make homosexual seduction of children their big public issue?

Here is the Obama administration at work:

Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday condemned a new law in Nigeria prohibiting same-sex marriages, calling it a “dangerous” restriction on freedom.

“The United States is deeply concerned by Nigeria’s enactment of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act,” Kerry said in a statement released by the State Department.

California and about 35 other states enacted same-sex marriage prohibition laws. All civilized countries in world history prohibited same-sex marriage until about ten years ago. Why is this Nigerian law any of our business?

Here is the result of another big gay cause:

After years of campaigning, a royal pardon has been granted to computer pioneer and wartime codebreaker Alan Turing, overturning his conviction over half-a-century ago for ‘gross indecency’ with a 19 year old boy.

For the ‘enlightened classes’, this act of official state forgiveness for a secular homosexual martyr symbolizes the victory of liberal progress over the backward and prejudiced attitudes of the past. In reality, as with same sex marriage and sodomite rights in general, the Alan Turing story is merely a tool that the progressive elite is manipulating in order to disguise the brutal feminist war upon ordinary male heterosexuality.

Turing was a great genius, and this embarrassing episode should have been forgotten. But now he is celebrated for the anal rape of an underage boy.

The biggest recent homosexual child molester story was Jerry Sandusky. The LA Times reports:

Since the Jerry Sandusky scandal blew up several years ago, there have been few figures quieter than Matt Sandusky, the adult son of the convicted sex offender.

The younger Sandusky has stayed entirely out of the public eye, even after he came forward with an offer to testify against his adoptive father at the close of the trial.

That changed on Sunday, when the documentarian Amir Bar-Lev premiered "Happy Valley," his new movie about Joe Paterno, Penn State and the fallout from the Sandusky affair. ...

It's hardly a simple tale. Matt Sandusky initially denied any abuse at the hands of his father. "I had to be loyal to the family. I wasn't going to betray him," he says in the film. But he decided finally to step forward when he heard the of the testimony of one of the victims.

It was a courageous move, not only psychologically but also practically; as the rare named victim in the case, Matt Sandusky has been the subject of bile from conspiracy theorists who believe the trial was a plot to bring down Paterno and Penn State. (He initially declined to participate in the film for fear of exposing himself and his family to further hatred, but agreed in November, prompting Bar-Lev to crash on an interview and re-order the movie just ahead of the Sundance deadline.)

No, it was not courageous. His testimony was that his adoptive father was innocent, until lawyers offered him $2M to change his story. He took the money. They arranged a psychologist to say he had a recovered memory. Jerry was going to prison anyway, as the fix was in. Of course the younger Sandusky is embarrassed and ashamed that he sold out, and is reluctant to talk about it.

Besides Duck Dynasty, another reality TV star (and token white hispanic) has gotten into trouble for not wanting to homosexuality to kids:

Juan Pablo Galavis, the 32-year-old star of The Bachelor ...

The writer asked whether ABC should have a gay or bisexual bachelor on the show. "No," Galavis responded. "Just 'cause I respect them but, honestly, I don't think it's a good example for kids to watch that on TV. It's hard, it's hard, it's a very thin line." ...

ABC, Warner Horizon Television and the Bachelor producers issued a joint statement: "Juan Pablo’s comments were careless, thoughtless and insensitive, and in no way reflect the views of the network, the show’s producers or studio." ...

"Study after study shows that young people raised by gay parents are as happy and healthy as other young people."

No, the studies do not show that. Even if they did, the guy ought to be able to express an opinion.

California voters are now trying to repeal the Co-ed Bathroom Bill. Otherwise California law requires schools to let boys declare themselves transgendered and use the girls restrooms and play on the girls sports teams.

No doubt all the Democrats and major news media will tell us that the initiative is motivated by hate. But we really just want the public schools to ba able to distinguish boys and girls.

I am all in favor of consenting adults having freedom and privacy. But the anti-family LGBTQIA lobby wants much more than that. They want the corruption of schools, children, and foreign countries.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama was on the Jay Leno Tonight Show:

Q You can't grasp that number, no. (Laughter.) Now, I've seen Michelle tease you about your gray hair. You have a bit of silver in your hair. Do you tease back?

THE PRESIDENT: No. (Laughter and applause.) That's why we're celebrating our 21st anniversary. (Laughter.)

Q As I'm married 33 years, I know exactly what you're saying. (Laughter.)

Will someone please check to see if Obama still has two testicles? And tell Michelle to relax.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports:

A documentary that explores the controversial movement of women becoming priests in the patriarchal Roman Catholic Church will play in Santa Cruz on Feb. 2 during a screening at Peace United Church.

"Pink Smoke" tells the stories of several women who have risen up against the long-held Catholic church rule that prohibits female priests and how they've been automatically excommunicated from the church they love for their efforts in achieving gender equality.

After the film, there will be a discussion with Father Roy Bourgeois, a priest of 40 years who was dismissed for his support of ordaining women.

This sounds like a joke. No one is excommunicated for efforts in gender equality. They get kicked out for acting against the Church. They can just join the Peace United Church, whatever that is.

"Pink Smoke" -- named for the colored smoke a group of women released in protest outside the Vatican when Pope Francis was named in March 2013 -- hits home for Santa Cruz resident Christine Fahrenbach. She is set to become ordained in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests on Feb. 8.

There are no Roman Catholic Womenpriests.

All along there was a burning desire to be a priest, something she felt as a child.

"If we ever played church, I was always the priest," Fahrenbach said during an interview in her Santa Cruz office. "I've known it since I was a small child, like knowing you're gay. I learned to live with it, with a lot of stress."

Fahrenbach, a lesbian who works as a psychologist, spent time exploring other religions, such as Buddhism, in her attempt to accept the Catholic church's exclusion of female priests. But she never found one that fit as well as Catholicism, she said.

She regularly attends Episcopal services in Capitola, but still considers herself a devout Catholic.

Oh, she is also a lesbian psycho Buddhist Episcopalian!

In 1986, the NY Times could still say that gay men are grown up sissy boys. But little girls do not know that they will be lesbians, so she is living a weird fantasy.

The women are not recognized by the Vatican and hold mass only within small ministry groups outside the traditional church. Fewer than 150 female priests exist worldwide.

There are ZERO female priests. If not recognized by the Vatican, then they are not Catholic priests.

Again, the lesbians are not happy just messing up their own lives. They need to attack everyone else also.

Homeschooling illegal in Germany

LifeSiteNews reports:

In a shocking verdict regarding a homeschool case in Germany, a family court judge has refused to return legal custody of four children to Christian parents to prevent the family from obtaining visas that would allow them to travel to a country where homeschooling is permitted.

In his December ruling against the Wunderlich family, judge Marcus Malkmus called homeschooling a “concrete endangerment to the well-being of the child,” comparing it to a “straitjacket” that he said binds children to “years of isolation.”

“The request of the parents to reinstate their right to determine the location of the children, the right to make educational decisions for the children, as well as the right to file legal applications for their children is being refused,” the judge stated.

The Wunderlich family made international headlines in August when a team of 20 social workers, police officers, and special agents stormed the homeschooling family’s residence and forcibly removed the children, ages 7–14.

Parents Dirk and Petra were accused of defying a German ban on home education. The children were returned to the parents in September on condition that the parents send their children to public school. Since the court had awarded legal custody of the children to social workers in 2012, the parents had no choice but to comply.

In his decision, the judge ruled that it was necessary to keep the Wunderlich children in public school for their own “well-being,” arguing that if the children were homeschool in Germany or abroad they would “grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.”

The judge made these comments despite admitting that the children’s “former homeschooling did not noticeably endanger the child[ren’s] well-being.”

Dirk Wunderlich said the ruling is comparable to what happened under the Nazi regime.

Germany used to be a proud nation. I don't want to make Nazi analogies, but it seems that Germany's current brand of socialism requires public school brainwashing.

Control of the public schools is always the top priority of the socialists. If they cannot persuade the adults, they can still win by indoctrinating the next generation.

American homeschooling is one of the big success stories of the last 20 years. It has gone from a fringe kooky practice to one that is widely accepted as legal and legitimate.

I am not recommending homeschooling, but I think that our society is better off for having some students with independent educations and thinking.

Alabama college limits cohabitation on campus

A black college in the South has to have a black president, and apparently Alabama was worried that a single black woman president would have a parade of unmarried lovers marching thru the president's house on campus. The Wash. Post reports:

Gwendolyn Boyd, the new president of Alabama State University, signed a contract with the school’s trustees that forbids her from allowing a lover to “cohabitate” with her in the presidential home being provided to her by the historically black university in Montgomery.

The contract, signed Jan. 2, 2014, was obtained by The Birmingham News and posted here. It provides Boyd with an annual salary of $300,000, starting Feb. 1, 2014, plus a number of standard fringe benefits such as insurance.

This sounds ridiculous, but a few years ago no one would have raised an eyebrow. After all, the university is the landlord, and the landlord is always allowed to limit how many people live in the house. Furthermore, the president is living on campus as an important role model for students, and her contract could certainly have a morals clause. In an earlier day, she would have been expected to refrain from any sexual relations outside of marriage.

But now, female sexual freedom is more important than other considerations. Marriage is dead, as a moral example for our youth.

If blacks are doing poorly in school, it must be discrimination. The NY Times editorializes:

Over the last several years, civil rights officials in the Obama administration have begun to focus on this problem, increasing civil rights investigations and forcing school districts to revise disciplinary policies that disproportionately affect minorities. ...

The guidance documents included striking data on racial inequities. For example, African-American students represent only 15 percent of public school students, but they make of 35 percent of students suspended once, 44 percent of those suspended more than once and 36 percent of those expelled. Statistical information does not in itself prove discrimination. But research has shown that black students do not engage in more serious or more frequent misbehavior than other students.

Really? Black kids are behaving just as well, but racism is getting them kicked out of school?

Speaking of racism, here is a funny parody of the Tiger Mom:

Studies have consistently shown that women of European descent are the worst mothers. They endlessly coddle their children and are incapable of setting the boundaries kids need to thrive.

You might think you're ready to be a parent. You might fantasize about putting a cute little baby to sleep at night. But if you're white, your cuddly little infant will grow up spoiled, undisciplined and undereducated, and will likely end up on welfare. ...

But when you look at the evidence, it becomes clear that overall white people are inferior and should not be a allowed to procreate. I'm sure if Neil Armstrong had a Tiger Mom he would have gotten all the way to Mars.

If you absolutely must have children, do what I did: marry into one of the successful cultural groups. Like most Chinese women, I didn't marry for love. No, I married for one reason and one reason only: the Jew-genes. My husband is Jewish and my children are perfect little Sino-Judaic hybrids.