Let VAWA expire

US News and World Report has a debate on renewing the Violence Against Women Act. Laura Wood writes:

Rename it the Violence Against Democracy Act or the Violence Against America Act, but let's end the charade that the act serves the cause of justice or reduces domestic violence. The Violence Against Women Act violates the spirit of American democracy. Indeed, it is totalitarian in nature, an accusation fully justified by its frequent denial of basic civil liberties to those accused of domestic violence. Relentless feminist propaganda and the ordinary person's lack of firsthand contact with the battered women industry serve to keep the myths surrounding this bill alive.

She's right. Too bad we don't have politicians with the guts to stand up to feminists.

SF sheriff fight continues

I have posted below about this domestic violence saga. Now a San Fran newspaper editorial urges:

Time for Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi to quit gracefully

Perhaps it was pride, or the arrogance for which he is seeking counseling, that kept Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from meeting Mayor Ed Lee's deadline to resign by 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Mirkarimi still has the opportunity to do the right thing and spare himself, his family, the sheriff's department and the city the indignity of a prolonged, ugly process to oust him for official misconduct.

The mayor should be commended for laying down the law to a "lawman" who has demonstrated so little regard for it. The case for Mirkarimi's ouster goes beyond his plea-bargained conviction for false imprisonment in connection with a domestic-violence incident.

From the moment the allegations surfaced, Mirkarimi's response has been laced with an aggressiveness and obliviousness that showed a disturbing lack of appreciation for the gravity of the crime or law enforcement's pursuit of the truth.

He initially tried to wave off the abuse allegations as "a private matter, a family matter." He hinted darkly about "forces at work that want to stop me from becoming sheriff." Neither he nor his wife, Eliana Lopez, cooperated with investigators.

The mayor has suspended the sheriff, and is expected to appoint a replacement today.

I do not think that Mirkarimi has done anything wrong. He has not been allow to see his wife for 9 weeks, and he only gets supervised visits with his toddler son. Our society has gone mad. Gravity of the crime? He grabbed his wife's arm, and she has not made any complaint about it.

Georgia bloggers lose libel cases

A reader sends this story:

Bloggers aiming to subject their enemies to flaming rhetoric should take note of three six-figure verdicts from Georgia courts in the past 15 months for plaintiffs who said they were defamed on the internet.

The latest occurred Feb. 24, when a jury in Gwinnett Superior Court in the state said a Snellville, Ga., woman should pay $900,000 to a couple she had claimed were responsible for the actions of convicted murderer Gary Michael Hilton.

I suppose he is trying to warn me about criticizing psychologist Ken Perlmutter and others for their evil practices. I have posted details about why I think that they are corrupt, unethical, and incompetent.

The Georgia cases are newsworthy because they are unusual. They are man bites dog stories.

It is sometimes said that an opinion cannot be libel, and you can say anything you want on the net. But that is not quite right, as the above story shows, you cannot call someone a murderer and automatically escape libel action by saying that it is an opinion. More precisely, the law says that a statement which is based on publicly disclosed information is not actionable.

For example, you could call O.J. Simpson a murderer if that is your opinion based on the TV trial, even tho the jury said otherwise. You could possibly run into trouble if you claimed to have some inside info (not presented in court or to the public) that shows him to be a murderer. (Even in that case, OJ would have a lot of trouble suing you, for various other reasons.)

Here is how a a federal appeals court explained how opinions are not defamatory:

Of course, the fact that a statement is an opinion does not automatically shield it from a defamation claim. After all, "expressions of 'opinion' may often imply an assertion of objective fact." Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1, 18 (1990); Dulgarian, 420 Mass. at 849. Thus, a cause of action for defamation may still be sustained where an opinion "implies the allegation of undisclosed defamatory facts as the basis for the opinion." Nat'l Ass'n of Gov't Employees, Inc. v. Central Broad. Corp., 379 Mass. 220, 227-28 (1979). Chief May's opinion, however, was based on disclosed nondefamatory facts. As the district court correctly noted, May "makes clear that the information was derived from witness statements, and qualifies his recitation of facts with phrases like 'according to witnesses' ... and 'it was reported.'" Yohe v. May, 2002 WL 924225 at *1. Since the articles establish that May's opinion was based on witness statements and reports he received, the "logical nexus between the facts and the opinion sufficiently apparent to render unreasonable any inference that the derogatory opinion was must have been based on undisclosed facts." Dulgarian, 420 Mass. at 850-51, quoting Lyons, 415 Mass. at 266. An "expression of opinion based on disclosed or assumed nondefamatory facts is not itself sufficient for an action of defamation, no matter how unjustified or unreasonable the opinion may be or how derogatory it is." Id. Consequently, Chief May's opinion about Yohe's mental state is not actionable.

In sum, the statements challenged by Yohe all fall into one of three categories: (1) unrefuted statements of fact; (2) statements which -- although likely false -- could not reasonably be considered offensive to the average person in the community; and (3) statements of opinion based upon disclosed facts. As none of these types of statements provides a basis for a defamation cause of action, Yohe's defamation claim against Chief May fails. [Yohe v Nugent et al, 1st Cir (Boston), 2003]

A 9th Circuit (federal appeals court for California) decision said the same thing in Standing Committee on Discipline v Yagman (1995).

You might think that Perlmutter might sue anyway, in order to tie me up in court and intimidate me. But that would be a SLAPP lawsuit, and it is forbidden under California law, which broadly protects speaking out on any public issue. I could hire this firm:

Since 1993, the California Anti-SLAPP Project (CASP) has been providing legal assistance and representation to individuals and organizations being sued in California for exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech and petition. CASP has earned a reputation as one of the leading anti-SLAPP firms in the state and exclusively represents defendants who have been SLAPPed, allowing us to offer unique, focused expertise to our clients.

The best part is that I would not even have to pay the law firm, because California anti-SLAPP law says that the SLAPP plaintiff has to pay attorney fees.

I post this info in the hope that other whistleblowers are not intimidated by the legal system. As long as you are reporting publicly available facts, expressing opinions based on those facts, and attempting to influence public policy with your First Amendment rights, then you are in no danger whatsoever. You are doing what our Bill of Rights was written to protect, and the courts will back you up.

You can still be hassled by Chicago cops:

When police showed up, reporters with NBC Chicago claim they respected their request to move across the street and into a median, away from the public sidewalk in front of the facility.

But that was not good enough for one officer, who argued with reporters in the road’s median, telling them that they must move. When they refused, he insisted: “Your First Amendment right can be terminated if you’re creating a scene or whatever.”

Challenged by reporters that they had not created a scene, the officer replied: “Your presence is creating a scene.”

One of the reporters’ responds: “But this is what we do for a living! What we do for a living is creating a scene?” Another reporter adds: “You’ve got a lawsuit coming.”

“I don’t care about no damn lawsuit!” the officer answers. “F*ck a lawsuit. Just ’cause you sue doesn’t mean you’re going to win.”

He then promptly arrested Donte Williams, a photographer, and Dan Ponce, a reporter for WGN-TV Chicago. Both journalists were detained for approximately 10 minutes and then released without charge.

That's funny. Jounalists arrested in Chicago for "creating a scene or whatever.” The cop is right about one thing -- they won't win a lawsuit against the city of Chicago.

Do not help teen girls

Here is more evidence that our society has gone mad with paranoia. I did not know that it was a crime to offer a kid a ride in a car. I was offered rides many times when I was a kid. CBS News reports:

BARRINGTON, Ill. (CBS) – Two 13-year-old suburban girls are being credited with helping police catch a man who offered them a ride home.

Barrington police say the teens were alarmed and disturbed by the offer and took down the man’s license plate. But as CBS 2′s Mai Martinez reports, the man says he was only trying to help the girls, not harm them.

“This is a good deed gone wrong,” Rodney Peterson says.

During a March 2 snowstorm, he saw two teen girls leave a Shell station while he was pumping gas.

“I just noticed these girls, that they had no umbrella, no coats or hood or something of that nature and I just felt like I should help,” Peterson says.

When he drove off, he saw them a short distance away on Prospect Avenue near Waverly.

“I just pulled up and said ‘How far do you have to walk?’ And one of the girls just replied, ‘We’re OK,’ and waved me on.”

Peterson says he drove off and thought nothing of it until Barrington police showed up at his home three days later.

The married father of three, who has a fourth child due in June, listened in disbelief as police told him the girls reported the encounter and he was being charged with disorderly conduct.

It is silly enough that the cops visited him, but why did they charge him? Do they have a "must arrest" policy?

Here is another crazy prosecution:

A Missouri mother confronted her son's alleged drug dealer and allegedly attacked him with an aluminum baseball bat after her efforts to help her heroin-using son failed.

Sherrie Gavan of Imperial, Mo., had switched her 18-year-old son's school, sent him to live with relatives, had him tested for drugs frequently and confiscated his cellphone, but noting stopped him from using heroin for long, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Her last resort, she said, was to confront her son's alleged drug dealer, Joshua Loyd, 21.

"Naturally, my mother's instinct took over and I got paranoid," she told the Post-Dispatch. "I had no idea what to do because we had asked the father to please keep his son [Loyd] away from us, which obviously did not get relayed."

It seems to me that a parent ought to be able to use a baseball bat to chase away her son's heroin dealer.

Excessive imputed child support

Law prof E. Volokh writes:

Child support law generally requires a parent to pay child support based partly on the amount of income that the parent could reasonably earn (your “imputed income”) — not just the amount the parent is actually earning. So if you could earn $100,000/year, of which you’d have to pay $20,000/year in child support under the standard child support guideline, you can’t lower this child support payment by just quitting work and going to art school, or joining a monastery, or going to work for a nonprofit that only pays you $40,000/year. Your obligations to your child, the theory goes, should be based on what you could earn and not just on what you do earn.

Then he tells of a current case where a US Army soldier had to pay child support based on an imputed income of $136,791, even tho his salary was only $20,000.

The appeals court said that the family court judge should reconsider the imputation because it is much more than the dad could be reasonably assumed to earn outside the military. But the appeals court fails to say the obvious -- that a soldier should only pay ex-wife support based on his actual salary, not what he might be making if acquired a law license and got a job as a high-paid lawyer.

A lawyer writes:

Most child support guidelines are based upon academic surveys of the amounts parents of different income levels spend to support their children, in intact families in which the parents live together. ... So the whole system is deliberately based upon the results of objective studies.

I don't know how anyone could say anything so ridiculous. This man was ordered to pay more than he makes. There is no objective academic surveying saying anything of the kind. The guidelines were based on consultant recommendations who cited bogus research.

Study on what makes couples happy

Some new psych research has gotten a lot of publicity:

Men like to know when their wife or girlfriend is happy while women really want the man in their life to know when they are upset, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association. ...

Relationship satisfaction was directly related to men’s ability to read their female partner’s positive emotions correctly. However, contrary to the researchers’ expectations, women who correctly understood that their partners were upset during the videotaped incident were much more likely to be satisfied with their relationship than if they correctly understood that their partner was happy. Also, when men understood that their female partner was angry or upset, the women reported being happier, though the men were not. The authors suggest that being empathetic to a partner’s negative emotions may feel threatening to the relationship for men but not for women.

Here is the full paper (pdf).

The psychologists seem to be over-analyzing with the empathy conclusions. All the study found was that men liked hearing that their wives were happy, and wives liked hearing their husbands say that they were upset about something. Maybe the women are just drama queens who feed on personal drama. Just look at soap operas and Lifetime movies that are so popular with women. The husbands tire of the nagging and bitching, and are just happy to hear their wives being happy about something.

Innocent men could have been convicted

I mentioned below the absurd case against the San Fran sheriff, and now he has agreed to a plea bargain:

While San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi on Monday ended the domestic violence case against him by pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge, Mayor Ed Lee said today the sheriff's political future is anything but settled.

Mirkarimi, 50, pleaded guilty Monday to misdemeanor false imprisonment in a deal with prosecutors, who agreed to drop three other charges stemming from a Dec. 31 incident in which he allegedly grabbed the arm of his wife during an argument. Mirkarimi will be sentenced next Monday to three years' probation, 52 weeks of domestic violence classes, 100 hours of community service and a $400 domestic violence fine, and will be required to attend family counseling, prosecutors said. ...

Under the City Charter, the mayor has the option to suspend the sheriff for official misconduct.

I think that it is crazy to ruin the marriage and career of a man because "he allegedly grabbed the arm of his wife during an argument", even if the allegations are true. But he knows the system, and I can only assume that he had a serious chance of being convicted.

He is still forbidden to see his wife and child.

I also wrote about the bizarre and implausible rape accusations against the French banker DSK, and now a famous Harvard law professor tells Newsweek that a jury might have convicted DSK:

Before Dershowitz started with his mock-court lesson, though, he needed to set a few predicates for his students, now acting as the jurors. First, Dershowitz would tell the jury they had every right to doubt the accuser. Second, Dershowitz would seek to get entered into evidence a picture of Strauss-Kahn’s naked body, possibly from the police forensic exam after his arrest. If that failed, Dershowitz would have to help jurors picture in their imagination a naked 62-year-old DSK — overweight and slightly hunched, his chest sunken and his skin sagging from the natural progression of age. With the ground rules established, Dershowitz took center stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he started, “we have enough evidence to convict this man beyond a reasonable doubt even if you don’t believe the accuser. In fact, we are prepared to concede that based on statements she’s made in other contexts, you would be within your right to have some suspicions about her credibility.”

If I were on the jury, the picture of a naked, short, fat, elderly, Jewish politician banker would make me doubt that he was capable of forcibly raping a 6-foot, 30-year-old, African hotel maid. But maybe that is just my prejudices. There is also evidence that DSK was framed by his political enemies.

I conclude from all this that men do not get fair trials when accused of some sex-related crimes.

Antipsychotic drugs grow more popular

Antipsychotic drugs are the latest fad, and you don't have to have a mental illness to have them prescribed. The Wash. Post reports:

exemplify a trend that alarms medical experts, policymakers and patient advocates: the skyrocketing increase in the off-label use of an expensive class of drugs called atypical antipsychotics. Until the past decade these 11 drugs, most approved in the 1990s, had been reserved for the approximately 3 percent of Americans with the most disabling mental illnesses, chiefly schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; more recently a few have been approved to treat severe depression.

But these days atypical antipsychotics — the most popular are Seroquel, Zyprexa and Abilify — are being prescribed by psychiatrists and primary-care doctors to treat a panoply of conditions for which they have not been approved, including anxiety, attention-deficit disorder, sleep difficulties, behavioral problems in toddlers and dementia. These new drugs account for more than 90 percent of the market and have eclipsed an older generation of antipsychotics. Two recent reports have found that youths in foster care, some less than a year old, are taking more psychotropic drugs than other children, including those with the severest forms of mental illness.

In 2010 antipsychotic drugs racked up more than $16 billion in sales, according to IMS Health, a firm that tracks drug trends for the health-care industry. For the past three years they have ranked near or at the top of the best-selling classes of drugs, outstripping antidepressants and sometimes cholesterol medicines.

It is all about money. Or control. Or evil. I'm still not sure.

CPS blocks newspaper coverage

There have only been a handful of cases of prior restraint of press publication in the entire history of the USA. One was the Pentagon Papers, involving classified Vietnam War intelligence. Another involved nuclear bomb secrets. In each case, the courts have eventually ruled that the press cannot be restrained, not even temporarily. A newspaper could be sued for libel, or even criminally punished in some cases, but publication cannot be stopped because of the First Amendment freedom of the press.

Now there is a new case of prior restraint. A law prof reports:

The Indiana Court of Appeals granted a request Friday that prevents The Tribune from publishing records the newspaper obtained from the Department of Child Services.

The appeals court’s ruling came three days after a local judge ordered the release of phone records from DCS’s child abuse hotline related to 10-year-old Tramelle Sturgis and his family …. The records include four audio recordings of hotline calls and accompanying transcripts related to Tramelle, who was found tortured and killed in his home Nov. 4.

In other words, CPS sought this order in an attempt to cover up its own complicity in someone's death.

The professor notes that this is being reversed, but it is nevertheless startling and revealing that CPS lawyers and judges would go so far to protect CPS from criticism. I am convinced that CPS is corrupt to the core, and that it will always be corrupt until everything it does is exposed to the public.

Manosphere attacked by leftist hate group

The libertarian Reason magazine reports:

The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971 as a civil rights law firm, has released its latest "Intelligence Report" on hate groups in the United States. This year's report contains a new category: the Manosphere.

The reportsays:

The so-called “manosphere” is peopled with hundreds of websites, blogs and forums dedicated to savaging feminists in particular and women, very typically American women, in general. Although some of the sites make an attempt at civility and try to back their arguments with facts, they are almost all thick with misogynistic attacks ...

The Spearhead is an online magazine that features a range of “voices in defense of ourselves, our families and our fellow men.” One post calls the recently released American version of the movie thriller “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” “hate porn for feminists” and describes its strong female lead as “like a kind of dyke junkie.”

I have cited The Spearhead before, and I had no idea that anyone would consider it a hate site. I do think that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo hate porn for feminists. The movie was made from a Swedish book titled, "men who hate women". Yes, it is a sick movie designed to appeal to man-haters.

Calling the Southern Poverty Law Center a "civil rights law firm" is being charitable. I don't know too much about the SPLC except that it is an extreme leftist political organization that promotes ethnic animosities at every opportunity, and it uses name-calling and lawsuits in efforts to intimidates its enemies into silence. A typical SPLC attack is to accuse a religious leader of being a bigot because he criticizes a rival religion.

The Spearhead has lots of opinions on it, and I am sure that it has some with which I would disagree. But for the SPLC to label it a hate site because of an opinion about a fictional movie?! The SPLC is the hate site, and it should not be allowed to intimidate the manosphere.

Carol Swain is a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, and she became a political target of the SPLC. Watch her response in this video, or read this. She is African-American with impeccable credentials. If she can be an SPLC target, then anyone can.

President kills without due process

Attorney General Eric Holder explains that due process does not mean judicial process:

An American-born Islamic cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen in late September. Some civil liberties groups condemned the attack. Others, including members of Congress, called for a more complete explanation of how such a targeted killing of an American civilian was consistent with the U.S. Constitution.

The Fifth Amendment provides that no one can be "deprived of life" without due process of law. But that due process, Holder said, doesn't necessarily come from a court.

"Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process," the attorney general said.

Okay, I guess that I can live with ignoring due process if the President says that sending a drone to kill an American citizen is important for national security. But why don't we have constitutional due process with CPS and the family court?

Joint custody and vaccinations

UCLA law prof Eugene Volokh reports:

What happens when divorced parents with joint legal custody disagree about whether their child should be given the routine childhood immunizations? That’s the issue in Grzyb v. Grzyb (Va. Cir. Ct.), decided in mid-2009 but just uploaded to Westlaw a day or two ago.

The Grzybs were the divorced parents of a 3-year-old girl, with “joint legal custody of the child, which implicitly included joint decision-making regarding the child’s medical and health care.” The father wanted the daughter immunized, but the mother had a religious objection to the immunization

The judge tried to rule based on the BIOTCh, and got hopelessly confused by conflicting and irrelevant considerations. Volokh cannot figure out what he would do either, but starts with these faulty premises:

since joint custody presupposes an ability to agree — and one parent should be given sole custody as to medical matters. But which parent? ... there has to be one decision made on the child’s behalf, so it makes sense that the court would need to decide which parent is most fit to make that decision.

This is where he goes wrong. There is no necessity for one parent to make all the medical decisions. Once you go down the rabbit hole of a judge second-guessing minor parental decisions, there there is no end to the conundrums like this case.

Saying that the mom is more fit to make a vaccination decision just because she has spent more time on the matter is absurd. She may have spent most of that time praying, and her church does not even agree with her religious objection. The other considerations are also intrusions into parental rights.

There is just no reason for the court to get involved. The parents can each do what they want on their own time. Maybe they would use different pediatricians, and make different decisions. There are some scenarios in which a medical treatment might require the cooperation of the other parent, but this is not one. The dad could get the vaccination, and the mom's interests will not be harmed in any tangible way.

This is all based on vaccinations being within the range of decisions that parents are normally allowed to make. Some people feel very strong about vaccination, one way or the other, but it is very unlikely that the decision will make any noticeable difference. If there is some compelling medical necessity, then this case would be different.

I have several comments on the above blog, where I argue with lawyer-types who want to use courts to overrule parents. The funny thing is that the blog is fairly libertarian on other issues, and is frequently promoting free speech, gun rights, and marijuana legalization. But they don't seem to understand that the family court is a massive invasion of civil liberties.

I have refrained from discussing the medical problems of my own kids, but I can say that making one parent solely responsible for medical decisions has been a disaster. It is nearly always better for both parents to be involved, even if they disagree. Letting a judge make the decision is worst of all. In the above case, the judge decided that the dad had the more valid opinion, but let the mom make the decision anyway.

Never report porn

The UK BBC reports:

A man who informed police when he found child abuse images on his computer has not been allowed to be alone with his daughter for four months.

Nigel Robinson from Hull said he called police after trying to download music but instead finding pornographic images on his laptop last November.

As a result social services said he "should not have unsupervised access with his own or other children".

He said he was "totally innocent". No arrests or charges have been made. ...

The police took the laptop away for investigation and said it could be a year before it is returned, Mr Robinson said.

Humberside Police said: "We are conducting an investigation that has resulted in the confiscation of a laptop in order for the relevant enquiries to take place - standard procedure for this type of investigation.

I am disgusted by child porn, but I would never report it. The laws and authorities are just too crazy and irrational about it. About 99% of computers have images in the browser cache that were not deliberately downloaded. If I found child porn in my cache, I would just delete it and not tell anyone. If I were selling a computer, I would erase the cache. Technically you are supposed to report it rather than delete, but you are just asking for trouble if you do.

BIOTCh contrary to rule of law

The Best Interest Of The Child (BIOTCh) in the family court is fundamentally contrary to the rule of law, as law has been understood since Hammurabi in ancient Babylon. Plato advocated rule by a philosopher king, but his student Aristotle convincingly explained the superiority of rule of law. Western civilization is built on the idea that Aristotle was right.

All American courts are based on rule of law, except that the family court clings to the idea that a judge can act as a philosopher king and decide the best interest of a child. It cannot be done without punishing parents and others for allegations and transgressions that are not contrary to any laws, rules, regulations, or policies that are written anywhere. The idea that a judge or psychologist can read some legal briefs or interview the parties and then make objectively make child-rearing decisions is as ludicrous as Plato's idea.

The main argument against Plato's idea is that the wisdom and objectivity required is unattainable. But even if a judge of infinite wisdom could be found, there are at least two other reasons that such a judge would be unacceptable.

First, if a judge is not ruling based on written rules, then there is necessarily an arbitrariness to his decisions, and we are not free men if we live under such arbitrary rule.

Second, such judicial actions destroy incentives. Eg, even if a judge could be found to assess taxes in a way that wisely and fair redistributes the wealth, then incentives to earn money would be dampened because men could not reliably predict what they could keep.

These same considerations apply to family court. Parents do not have the freedom and authority to be parents if they can always be second-guessed by a family court judge. And court interventions create bad incentives.

Suppose this court finds that a judge an order grandparent visits if there has been a history of such visits and the judge's opinion is that the BIOTCh requires continuing such visits. Other parents may see this, and decide that allowing grandparent visits is dangerous because it exposes the family to court intervention. Thus one BIOTCh order in favor of grandparent visitation may result in other grandparents being refused visits.

The BIOTCh is the core of the problem here. If the law said that all grandparents had a right to visit their grandkids for 2 hours a week, then the arguments in this brief would not apply. The problem occurs when some judge tries to play God and apply the BIOTCh. The BIOTCh is inherently unjusticiable and contrary to legal standards.

Most states make no attempt to define the BIOTCh at all. A couple of states (I only know of Michigan and Florida) list a dozen factors to consider. But the judge has no guidance on how to evaluate or rank the factors. When it comes to a simple question like grandparent visits, the judge must rely on his gut instincts.

Many states rely on psychologists or other so-called experts for recommendations. But even the psychology profession is largely of the opinion that these recommendations are unethical. Their expertise is in treating mental disorders, and they usually have no professional competence or basis for making a decision about grandparent visits.

Our Western civilization is based on the idea that parents will have the autonomy to rear their kids as they believe is best. This principle has served us well for millennia. Maybe an exception should be made to require grandparent visits. This brief does not take a position on that. But such an exception should be carefully considered by the legislative, and be codified as predictable regulations. Requiring such an exception based on some judge's opinion of the BIOTCh is unpredictable, unworkable, and contrary to everything our justice system stands for.

Never a private matter

Updating a previous story, the San Jose Mercury News reports:

When the newly elected San Francisco sheriff was accused of domestic violence against his Venezuelan soap star wife, he uttered a political cliché that has mocked him ever since: It's a "private matter."

The case that goes to trial this week against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has become a public sensation from Caracas to the Castro. And talk about in-your-face -- a support group opposed to domestic abuse erected a billboard in downtown San Francisco declaring: "Domestic Violence is NEVER a private matter." Thousands of dollars to pay for it were raised in mere days through an Internet campaign that went wild.

It's the second Bay Area case in a month -- one in San Francisco, the other in the Hayward Hills -- that exposes rocky relationships between local politicians and their trophy wives. State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, 70, is still reeling from the humiliation rendered by his 40-year-old alcoholic wife who had an affair with a meth addict she then accused of beating her up.

I am glad that these cases are getting a lot of publicity out here in the wacky San Fran area, but they illustrate what is wrong with domestic violence law.

It has become leftist-feminist dogma that the state should intervene in private families if someone disapproves of some of their behavior. Just look at that billboard. And they are constantly expanding the definition of domestic violence so that it no longer means physical violence. It can now mean just about anything where the wife feels mistreated.

In this sheriff case, the wife never even made a complaint:

Lopez, 36, is denying she is a victim of her 50-year-old husband, despite crying in front of a neighbor's video camera and saying that her husband grabbed and pulled her during then argument and left a large bruise on her arm. The video, Lopez said in legal documents, was "scripted and directed," by the neighbor, Ivory Madison, and was preceded by the two of them laughing together.

"She's an actress," lawyer Paula Canny said of her client. "She's a soap opera star."

Video shot 'just in case'

According to court documents, the video was apparently intended to be used as an insurance policy of sorts, in case the couple divorced and Lopez needed evidence against him in a custody battle.

"I'm going to use this just in case he wants to take Theo away from me," Lopez said on the video, according to the court records. He had already threatened to do so because he told her "he's very powerful," she said on the tape.

The neighbor called police Jan. 4, and despite newspapers reports of the investigation and calls for him to step aside until the case was resolved, Mirkarimi took his oath of office Jan. 8, raising his hand and swearing to uphold the law of the land. His 2-year-old son was at his feet. His wife was by his side. She wore a sleeveless dress. Less than a week later, prosecutors charged him with the trio of misdemeanor counts.

In court filings, Lopez says she feels "betrayed" by her neighbor, who she believed was a lawyer who would keep their conversation confidential. Indeed, Madison had studied to be a lawyer, but never practiced. After Madison's phone call with police -- which Lopez's lawyer said started anonymously -- Madison "ran up to" Lopez and said, "You're going to kill me. I called police and they made me tell them."

In her declaration, Lopez said she was "totally shocked" and "I yelled at Ivory Madison. I said, 'NO. This is wrong. I came to you for legal help. You do not have my permission.'"

There are many things wrong here. If we had laws guaranteeing joint custody, then would have never seen a value in making a video as an "insurance policy". If Madison had really been a friend, she would have kept her mouth shut. If the normal rules of attorney-client privilege applied, then the cops could not have seized the video. If normal criminal law applied, then the DA would have no case unless the wife chose to press charges. If the sheriff were innocent until proven guilty, then he would be able to live in his home and see his family, pending trial.

But the issue is bigger than these legal procedural issue. Let's assume that the facts are as reported, that the leftist San Fran sheriff is a little bossy at times, that the hot-headed Venezuelan drama queen has argued with him, that one evening he gripped her so hard that her arm was bruised, and that she says now that all is forgiven. How is this anyone's business? In the view of leftist-feminists and out-of-control do-gooder govt authorities, there are no limits to how much they will invade the couple's privacy if it has the purpose of busting up their family:

Jury selection is expected to proceed as planned Monday in San Francisco's Hall of Justice. But first, one of Mirkarimi's old girlfriends is expected to slip through a back door of the courthouse to meet privately with lawyers in the judge's chambers. She has her own story to tell about being on the receiving end of Mirkarimi's temper and was once pushed "up against a wall."

How is this relevant? It is an anonymous complaint from many years ago, in which no one was hurt and no one made a complaint at the time.

There is a leftist-feminist campaign to destroy the American family. A generation ago, no one would have favored using the courts to bust up a family like this. Now the leftist-feminist-Democrat mantra is "never a private matter".

Court favors recording cops

Just a couple of states (Mass., Illinois, Maryland, I think) try to criminalize recording police. But the tide of opinion is sharply against those states. Prosecutions have mostly lost in the courts, and here is the latest:

In Cook County today Judge Stanley J. Sacks declared Illinois' eavesdropping law — which is one of the toughest in the nation — unconstitutional in his ruling in the case of Christopher Drew, who was charged with the felony crime in 2009.

The eavesdropping law prohibits citizens from making audio or visual recordings of others without every recorded person's explicit consent. Sixty-year-old artist Drew audio-recorded his interaction with a police officer who was arresting him for selling art patches at the side of the road. A police officer found the tape recorder and Drew found himself with a Class 1 felony charge, which carries up to 15 years in prison. “That's one step below attempted murder,” Drew said in a January interview with the New York Times.

The issue also came up in the recent Zombie Muhammed case:

Perce said [Judge Mark] Martin gave him permission to record the proceedings, although Perce was also warned that releasing the audio could result in him being charged with contempt of court.

The judge wanted to cover up his foolish speech about free speech being a privilege. Govt officials are also trying to suppress animal videos. AP
reports:

Iowa became the first state Friday to make it a crime to surreptitiously get into a farming operation to record video of animal abuse.

We would all be better off if judges, CPS agents, cops, and family court shrinks were always video-recorded when performing their official duties. My guess is that psychologists like Kenneth B. Perlmutter would lose 80% of his income because everyone would see what an incompetent crook he is. He was extremely cruel to my kids, and no one would want their kids anywhere near him if they knew what he did to my kids.

Oregon rules against CPS

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh reports on a recent Oregon parental rights case:

Father had four children living with him and his girlfriend: his daughter, D (age 14), his son, R (age 12, D’s full brother), his girlfriend’s son, G (age 5 or 6), and his and his girlfriend’s daughter, S (age less than 2, D’s half-sister). D’s mother is in prison.

D accused father of physically abusing her, and is now in foster care. The father says “D was lying about the physical abuse and was an ‘out of control’ teenager.” The father is awaiting trial on the physical abuse charges.

D wants to visit with her siblings, and the trial court ordered that the father not interfere with that, at least as to R and G (but apparently not the very young S, though that’s unclear). The father objected, claiming this violates his parental rights with regard to R and G.

The Oregon Supreme Court agreed that the father’s parental rights were in play, and remanded for further development of the facts. Exactly what showing the court would find adequate for allowing a restriction of the father’s rights is not clear. But the court did conclude that the trial court cannot order sibling-sibling visitation as a matter of course, and had to consider the father’s rights to control access to those siblings who are still in his custody.

First, the dad is innocent until proven guilty, so for the purposes of this case, it should be assumed that the 14-year-old daughter is making a false accusation. There is not even an allegation that the dad has mistreated the other kids.

CPS was proposing that the Dad not be allowed to see his daughter, but that CPS could force the girl to see her brother. It seems plausible to me that the girl will be a bad influence on the boy, and that the Dad ought to block the visits. The Dad should be allowed to use his judgment.

I wish I could say that this was a victory for parental rights, but it appears to me that CPS only lost because it came to court completely unprepared and admitted that it didn't even know what the Dad wanted to do. The case does illustrate the evil intent of CPS in that it seems to be doing everything it can to destroy this family.

Falsely labeled with Aspergers

Ever wonder what it would be like to be reared by a psychology professor mom who takes the DSM-IV too seriously? She gives her own son a phony diagnosis and treats him like a misfit.
Benjamin Nugent wrutes in a NY Times op-ed:

For a brief, heady period in the history of autism spectrum diagnosis, in the late ’90s, I had Asperger syndrome.

There’s an educational video from that time, called “Understanding Asperger’s,” in which I appear. I am the affected 20-year-old in the wannabe-hipster vintage polo shirt talking about how keen his understanding of literature is and how misunderstood he was in fifth grade. The film was a research project directed by my mother, a psychology professor and Asperger specialist, and another expert in her department. It presents me as a young man living a full, meaningful life, despite his mental abnormality.

So she was a leading authority on Aspergers, and she was so convinced that her son was a typical specimen that she made a video showing him as having the symptoms of the disorder. But she was wrong:

As I came into my adult personality, it became clear to me and my mother that I didn’t have Asperger syndrome, and she apologized profusely for putting me in the video. For a long time, I sulked in her presence. I yelled at her sometimes, I am ashamed to report. And then I forgave her, after about seven years. Because my mother’s intentions were always noble. She wanted to educate parents and counselors about the disorder. She wanted to erase its stigma.

This shows that a little knowledge of psychology can be dangerous. Scratch that -- she had a lot of knowledge of psychology. And the more that she thought that she knew, the worse mom that she was.

Psychology is in a sorry state. It is one academic area where someone can have advanced degrees, professional titles, and expert status, and yet badly misunderstand their subject matter. There are illiterate folks who understand human nature better than psychologists.

Nugent concludes:

But my experience can’t be unique. Under the rules in place today, any nerd, any withdrawn, bookish kid, can have Asperger syndrome.

The definition should be narrowed. I don’t want a kid with mild autism to go untreated. But I don’t want a school psychologist to give a clumsy, lonely teenager a description of his mind that isn’t true.

What are school psychologists for, if not to misdiagnose teenagers? Bad as his experience was, he is still lucky that some quack like Judge Heather D. Morse did not order him on drugs or take his kids away.

NY CPS conceals child deaths

When the state passes a popular law to limit CPS abuses, you would think that someone might check to see whether CPS is complying with the law. Apparently not. The NY Times reports:

When Elisa Izquierdo, a 6-year-old, was killed by her mother in 1995, she became a symbol of a dysfunctional bureaucracy, one that allowed a drug addict to retain custody of her daughter despite numerous reports of abuse.

The resulting outcry led to an overhaul of New York City’s child welfare system and the passage in Albany of Elisa’s Law, a measure loosening the secrecy regulations in child-abuse investigations. Among other reforms, the law required a public accounting of the events leading up to the death of any child in New York State who had been reported as abused or neglected.

But for the last five years, the state’s Office of Children and Family Services has been working quietly and persistently to limit access to those case reports, which in most instances are the only record of the circumstances leading up to the deaths.

In 2007, the office tried to have the law changed. When that failed, it made its own rule. According to a policy enacted by the office in September 2008, it will not release the fatality reports mandated by Elisa’s Law if there are siblings or other children in the home and officials decide that revealing the family’s abuse and investigative history is not in their “best interests.”

CPS sure goes to a lot of trouble to cover up their screw-ups. These reports do not even mention the caseworkers' names.

Even when CPS cannot get the change to the law that it wanted, it just decides to cover up the reports based on the BIOTCh (best interest of the child). BIOTCh does not apply to dead kids, but CPS applies BIOTCh anyway because the dead kid might be related to a living kid!

How far does this reasoning go? Someday no adults will have any rights because there might be a child somewhere who is affected somehow, and some govt bureaucrat used the BIOTCh as an excuse.

Fellow blogger convicted

I have discussed the case of fellow angry dad blogger Dan Brewington before, and he has thanked me for my comments. But I lost track of his case, and I am sorry to see that he was convicted last fall of saying to much on his blog:

My criminal trial began on Monday, October 3, 2011 and wrapped up on Thursday, October 6, 2011. The jury of six returned five “guilty” verdicts and one “not guilty.” The “guilty” verdicts are as follows: Intimidation of a Judge (James Humphrey), Class D felony; Intimidation of Dr. Edward J. Connor and Heidi Humphrey, both Class A misdemeanors; Obstruction of Justice and Perjury both Class D Felonies. The most important event of the trial came during the prosecution’s closing argument, when Dearborn County Prosecutor F. Aaron Negangard explained to the jury the exact boundaries of free speech.

“You can call a judge a son-of-a-bitch but you cannot call him a child abuser.” That was the jury instruction from Prosecutor Negangard; honest to God. ...

I was convicted of felony intimidation because I called that son-of-a bitch Humphrey a child abuser. Another reason for my guilty verdict was due to the fact that I instructed people to address concerns about the Dearborn County family court system to the Indiana Supreme Court Ethics and Professionalism advisor that was located in Dearborn County. ... I was found guilty of lying to a grand jury because I stated that I did not know that Heidi was the wife of the son-of-a-bitch James Humphrey but it could be a possibility.

The charges seem lame to me, but I did not find the details. Maybe Dan posted the judge's home address, and the judge's DA buddy argued that was intimidation. There was also a charge that Dan blogged about secret grand jury proceedings against him, and that he lied about how much he knew about the judge.

I hope has a good appeal in the works. I do not see how the above jury instruction can possibly be a valid one. Family court judges who deprive children of access to their fit parents are child abusers. That is an obvious fact that I have documented over and over again on this blog, and so have many other angry dads. American free speech allows us to tell the truth about what govt officials are doing. Even lies are not criminal, according to a current supreme court case. I hope Dan posts his appeal papers and wish him the best of luck.

I hope has a good appeal in the works. I do not see how the above jury instruction can possibly be a valid one. Family court judges who deprive children of access to their fit parents are child abusers. That is an obvious fact that I have documented over and over again on this blog, and so have many other angry dads. American free speech allows us to tell the truth about what govt officials are doing. I hope Dan posts his appeal papers and wish him the best of luck.

I also don't see how it can be a crime for him to write about the grand jury hearing if he was being charged with perjury for his testimony at that hearing. Surely he has a right to blog about the criminal charges against him.

The indictment says that Dan put the judge in fear of retaliation for dissolving his marriage, and "did intimidate and/or harass" a shrink who was a witness. It seems to me that does not describe the situation at all. Dan doesn't like the judge because the judge is preventing him from seeing his kids, and Dan doesn't like the shrink because of his unethical child custody evaluation and testimony. Dan is not retaliating for the divorce decree; he just wants to see his kids. What does "intimidate and/or harass" mean? Don't they know which they are accusing him of? Intimidation and harassment are two different things. It appears to me that Dan's real crime is to expose the poor and biased testimony of a hack psychiatrist who should have been dismissed for lacking the competence to be an expert in the case.