Attacks on free speech

Here is a video report on a recent Toronto university protest against Warren Farrell speaking on problems facing boys. There is more video of the protest here (annotated).

The protesters seems confused. Farrell is not a right-winger, and he actively supports about 90% of the goals of feminism. Most of his work involves helping men and women in relationships. In particular, he helps men understand female views, needs, and feelings.

Some of what he says draws attention to differences between male and female thinking. I guess that upsets some radical feminists who refuse to accept any male-female differences.

He has also published summaries of research showing that joint custody and shared parenting works best for kids. This has alienated some feminists who believe in mother custody.

I am watching some court cases that will affect free speech. California has a new law restricting psychologists from telling the truth about gays, and federal law restricts drug companies from telling the truth about off-label uses. There is a Virginia lawsuit over negative reviews in Yelp, and a woman has been ordered to delete some accusations. Some states try to ban recording govt officials. I have had to remove some testimony and report quotes from this blog, because I was threatened with jail for contempt of court.

Do not journal divorce feelings

ScienceDaily reports:

Following a divorce or separation, many people are encouraged by loved ones or health-care professionals to keep journals about their feelings. But for some, writing in-depth about those feelings immediately after a split may do more harm than good, according to new research.

In a study of 90 recently divorced or separated individuals, psychological scientist David Sbarra of the University of Arizona and colleagues found that writing about one's feelings can actually leave some people feeling more emotionally distraught months down the line, particularly those individuals who are prone to seeking a deeper meaning for their failed marriage.

The findings, forthcoming in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, came as a surprise to Sbarra, who initially set out to compare the effectiveness of two different styles of expressive writing on the emotional healing of recently separated or divorced individuals.

That is why I do not write in-depth about my divorce feelings on this blog.

As usual, those who listen to advice from shrinks end up worse off.

Right to record public officials

National Review reports:

More often than not, the ACLU is totally wrong. Exhibit A: its opposition to voter ID. But the ACLU is firmly on the side of the angels when it comes to transparency of police conduct.

Thus, we should applaud the Supreme Court, which today declined the chance to review Alvarez v. ACLU of Illinois, a Seventh Circuit case. The Circuit Court had blocked an Illinois statute that makes it a felony to record audio of a police officer’s “performing duties as a law enforcement officer.”

The statute in question, 720 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/14-2(a)(1), forbade recording a conversation without the consent of all parties — regardless of whether the conversation was private or public. In an odd twist, since it only prohibits audio recordings, you aren’t violating the law if you make a silent video of a police officer making a public arrest. But if you add audio to the recording, you face four to fifteen years in jail!

The law was passed in 1961 to prevent unauthorized wiretapping. But as the Seventh Circuit said, Illinois “criminalized the nonconsensual recording of most any oral communication, including recordings of public officials doing the public’s business in public and regardless of whether the recording is open or surreptitious.”

The idea that recording a police officer making an arrest in public should subject an individual to jail time is obnoxious and a fundamental violation of basic First Amendment rights. According to the Seventh Circuit, the Illinois law “restricts a medium of expression commonly used for the preservation and communication of information and ideas, thus triggering First Amendment” protection. Illinois’s law is also bad public policy, since it limits transparency of the conduct of public officials. Such transparency is desperately needed in Illinois, with its long history of public corruption.

The ACLU was right to challenge this law, and the Seventh Circuit was right to enjoin the statute, and the Supreme Court was right to deny certiorari of the lower court’s decision. Illinois should never have put this law on the books, and it should not have pursued this case all the way to the Supreme Court.

So it should be that there is a constitutional right to record public officials doing their public duties. Here is a summary of the law. But some cops don't like it:

A California man was jailed for four days for attempting to record police officers on a public street.

Daniel J. Saulmon was charged with resisting, delaying and obstructing an officer but the video shows he was standing well out the way of a traffic stop and was only arrested when he failed to produce identification to an approaching officer.

And there is no law in California that requires citizens to produce identification. And even if there was, it would require the officer to have a reasonable suspicion that he was committing a crime.

But prosecutors have already dropped the charge against Saulmon as well as a few other minor citations relating to his bicycle such as not have proper reflectors on the pedals.

And they most likely knew who he was considering he won a $25,000 settlement from the same police department after they unlawfully arrested him on eavesdropping/wiretapping charges in 2005.

This time, it appears the Hawthorne Police Department will be dishing out much more, thanks to officer Gabriel Lira’s abuse of authority.

“They knew exactly who I was,” Saulmon said in a telephone interview with Photography is Not a Crime Saturday, adding that he has recorded them on a regular basis since the 2005 arrest when he was jailed after attempting to file a complaint inside the police station.

“They always address me as ‘Mr. Saulmon’,” he said.

No, it is not a crime to record cops, and it was police harassment to arrest this guy.

Dad wants baby his wife sold

There has been a huge public controversy over a Utah child custody case. It is quite clear to me that the dad is in the right. Dads have no rights at all, if a wife can sell their baby without his consent. The NY Daily News reports:

A South Carolina man whose wife put their baby up for adoption without his knowledge or consent will be reunited with his daughter after a nearly two-year legal battle, a Utah court ruled.

A Provo judge ruled he was “astonished and deeply troubled" by an adoption agency’s deliberate efforts to circumvent the legal rights of father Terry Achane, who was serving as an Army drill instructor when his child was adopted without his knowledge.

Judge Darold McDade gave the adoption agency and the adoptive parents, Jared and Kristi Frei, 60 days to return Achane’s daughter, Teleah, now 21 months old.

I don't know why people are donating to the Freis, because I see no merit to their position. They already have 5 kids of their own, plus another adopted kid. The Freis are white. They tried to buy two black babies from an adoption agency, for $25k apiece.

It sometimes happens that a single mom gives a kid up for adoption, and claims that she does not know who or where the dad is. That can be a problem. But in this case, the mom was married to the dad, and he was serving in the Army. There could be no doubt that there was a legal and biological dad available, and it was easy to find him.

The judge ruled the agency knowingly and deliberately ignored Achane’s parental rights.

“The right of a fit, competent parent to raise the parent’s child without undue government interference is a fundamental liberty interest that has long been protected by the laws and constitution of this state of the United States, and is a fundamental public policy of this state," he said.

The judge blames the adoption agency, and it does deserve blame, but the real blame should be on the Utah family court that ordered this adoption against the wishes of the dad, required him to litigate the case for 2 years, and is still forcing him to wait 60 days for his child.

Usually it is the leftists and LGBT activists who are trying to redefine marriage. But this is Utah, a Republican state. Apparently the Mormons do not have much respect for dad's rights either.

What does marriage mean, if a man cannot stop his wife from selling their baby? It is taking him 3 years to get his baby back. And he still may not, as the Freis say that they are refusing to comply, and are raising money on their blog to finance an appeal.

Meanwhile, there more anti-dad propaganda in my local newspaper advice column. Here is a Wed. letter:

Dear Annie: I am perplexed as to what to do. I'm positive that my wife was a victim of incest, but I don't know how to broach the subject or how to help her.

Her sister manifests similar problems that I've heard are caused by rape by one's father. But I don't have any hard evidence, only a hunch. What can I do? How do you open such a discussion? — G.

This shows that even men have absurd anti-father prejudices. The guy has probably learned some supposed symptons from bogus pop psychologists like Dr. Phil or Dr. Drew. There are no such symptoms, and there are about 100 more commons reasons for crazy behavior in women. This is really sick that the public has been so brainwashed that a man comes to this conclusion about his own wife.

Here is a Thurs. letter:

Dear Annie: My incredible husband of two years has a 4-year-old daughter with his ex-wife. I have actively helped raise "Christie" since she was barely a year.

We haven't communicated with the mother since the time we took her to court for refusing visitation, ...

But lately, Christie has been questioning my relationship with her father, saying the reason her mommy and daddy are not together is because of me. When I ask her to do something she doesn't want to do, she says her mommy says she doesn't have to listen to me because I am not her mother. Even worse, she's been told that when my husband and I have a baby of our own, Daddy won't love her as much as the new baby. ...

Dear Stepmom: Many courts now recognize parental alienation. Suggest that your husband speak to his lawyer about this possibility.

No, this is not parental alienation. It is step-parent alienation. The court will not do anything.

The dad is just getting "visitation". If he has a baby with his new wife, and he is a real dad to that new baby, instead of being just a visitor to Christie, then he is probably going to love the new baby more than Christie. It is just human nature. The family court and the ex-wife have set out to screw up Christie, so having a new baby is his best chance for a normal child.

Law infringes psychologist free speech

I mentioned before that California was banning certain psychotherapies, with the ban being challenged in court. Now AP reports:

SAN FRANCISCO—Two federal judges in California have arrived at opposite conclusions on whether the state's first-of-its-kind law prohibiting licensed psychotherapists from trying to change the sexual orientations of gay minors violates the Constitution. The measure remains clear to take effect on Jan.1.

U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller on Tuesday refused to block the law after concluding that opponents who have sued in her Sacramento court to overturn it were unlikely to prove the ban on "conversion" therapy unfairly tramples on their civil rights.

The opponents argued the law would make them liable for discipline if they merely recommended the therapy to patients or discuss it with them. Mueller said they didn't demonstrate that they were likely to win, so she wouldn't block the law.

Mueller issued her decision in a lawsuit filed by four counselors, two families, a professional organization for practitioners and a Christian therapists group. It came half a day after her colleague, U.S. District Judge William Shubb, handed down a somewhat competing ruling in a similar, but separate lawsuit.

Saying he found the First Amendment issues presented by the ban to be compelling, Shubb late Monday ordered the state to temporarily exempt three people named in the case before him—two mental health providers and a former patient who is studying to practice sexual orientation change therapy.

You can get the court rulings here.

I have no personal opinion about the safety or efficacy of this therapy. Nearly all psychotherapies do very poorly in clinical studies, and I accept that the studies say here. The APA is politically trying to ban gay therapies, and its task force said this pdf:

sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) ... involve some risk of harm ...

In all, we obtained and reviewed original publications of 83 studies. ... few studies on SOCE produced over the past 50 years of research rise to current scientific standards for demonstrating the efficacy of psychological interventions ... We thus concluded that there is little in the way of credible evidence that could clarify whether SOCE does or does not work in changing same-sex sexual attractions.

The APA also admits that all the other psychotherapies involve risk of harm, so there is no real evidence that SOCE is any worse than any other psychotherapy.

The underlying political issue is that leftists have decided that people would be more tolerant of homosexuality if they are persuauded that it is a response to an inborn unchangeable animalistic genetic craving.

Anyway, I hope these cases generate more discussion of quack psychotherapies. If all unscientific practices were banned, then child custody evaluations would also be banned. Psychologist Ken Perlmutter admitted under oath that he has no evidence that any of his 700 evaluations did any good.

Pothead mom has pothead child

An Oregon newspaper reports:

Mykayla Comstock's family says marijuana helps her fight an especially aggressive form of leukemia, keeps infection at bay and lifts her weary spirit. Twice a day she swallows a potent capsule form of the drug. Some days, when she can't sleep or eat, she snacks on a gingersnap or brownie baked with marijuana-laced butter.

Mykayla is one of 2,201 cancer patients authorized by the state of Oregon to use medical marijuana.

She is 7. ...

Mykayla's father, who is divorced from the girl's mother, was so disturbed by his daughter's marijuana use that he contacted child welfare officials, police and her oncologist. Jesse Comstock said his concerns were prompted by a visit with Mykayla in August.

"She was stoned out of her mind," said Comstock, 26. "All she wanted to do was lay on the bed and play video games." ...

Immediately, Purchase, who is divorced from Mykayla's father and has sole custody, faced decisions about her daughter's treatment.

With chemotherapy, doctors put Mykayla's odds of survival at 76.9 percent and her chance of relapse at 7 percent, Purchase said. Purchase accepted the chemo as part of her daughter's treatment, although she takes a generally dim view of the pharmaceutical industry, is skeptical of childhood vaccines, rejects genetically modified foods and avoids products made with high-fructose corn syrup.

What Purchase believes, emphatically, is that cannabis heals.

Purchase said her stepfather's topical application of cannabis oil cured his skin cancer. She said an acquaintance's lung cancer went into remission after he used pot.

And Purchase herself consumes marijuana daily.

She said she became an Oregon medical marijuana patient in 2010 to treat vomiting from a metabolic problem and from her pregnancy with her second child. She is so convinced of the drug's safety that she consumed it during the pregnancy and while breastfeeding.

She was certain of one thing when Mykayla was diagnosed: The child would use marijuana to defeat cancer.

There are many things wrong with this. How does a dopehead mom get sole custody?

I usually support parental authority in making medical decisions, but the sensible parent has been cut out of the picture.

DSM-5 drops Asperger syndrome

The shrinks are busy voting on diagnostic definitions for the DSM-5, and here is the latest:

CHICAGO (AP) - The now familiar term "Asperger's disorder" is being dropped. And abnormally bad and frequent temper tantrums will be given a scientific-sounding diagnosis called DMDD. But "dyslexia" and other learning disorders remain.

The revisions come in the first major rewrite in nearly 20 years of the diagnostic guide used by the nation's psychiatrists. Changes were approved Saturday.

Full details of all the revisions will come next May when the American Psychiatric Association's new diagnostic manual is published, but the impact will be huge, affecting millions of children and adults worldwide. The manual also is important for the insurance industry in deciding what treatment to pay for, and it helps schools decide how to allot special education.

In case you think that they have become more enlightened about pathologizing normal behavior, that is not what happened. It is just a scheme to get more funding.

And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services.

But the revision will not affect their education services, experts say.

The new manual adds the term "autism spectrum disorder," which already is used by many experts in the field. Asperger's disorder will be dropped and incorporated under that umbrella diagnosis. The new category will include kids with severe autism, who often don't talk or interact, as well as those with milder forms.

That's right, they just change the labels to get more govt money. It is just the vote of 20 guys looking to get more business for the profession.

Other changes include:

-A new diagnosis for severe recurrent temper tantrums - disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. Critics say it will medicalize kids' who have normal tantrums. Supporters say it will address concerns about too many kids being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with powerful psychiatric drugs. Bipolar disorder involves sharp mood swings and affected children are sometimes very irritable or have explosive tantrums.

-Eliminating the term "gender identity disorder." It has been used for children or adults who strongly believe that they were born the wrong gender. But many activists believe the condition isn't a disorder and say calling it one is stigmatizing. The term would be replaced with "gender dysphoria," which means emotional distress over one's gender. Supporters equated the change with removing homosexuality as a mental illness in the diagnostic manual, which happened decades ago.

Again, this is mainly politics, and not science. Parents want to blame something for the tantrums, and they do not want to admit bad parenting. If a boy thinks that he is a girl, that seems like a disorder to me. But I guess the LGBT crowd does not like that.

The NY Times Sunday Magazine just had a long article on The Autism Advantage. It says that autistic workers can excel at jobs that are suited to their talents, but they often get tripped up by unwritten and unpredictable office rules of behavior. No mention of the term Asperger Syndrome.

Supreme court child custody case

The federal courts hate child custody cases, and will do anything to get rid of them. The US Supreme Court is going to hear Chafin v. Chafin tomorrow:

Issue: Whether an appeal of a district court's ruling on a Petition for Return of Children pursuant to the International Child Abduction Remedies Act and the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction becomes moot after the child at issue returns to his or her country of habitual residence, as in the Eleventh Circuit's Bekier v. Bekier case, leaving the United States court system lacking any power or jurisdiction to affect any further issue in the matter, or should the United States courts retain power over their own appellate process, as in the Fourth Circuit's Fawcett v. McRoberts case, and maintain jurisdiction throughout the appellate process giving the concerned party an opportunity for proper redress.

So this is a child custody case, but the court will probably just rule on obscure jurisdictional issues. All of the news media attention is the same-sex marriage cases that the court is expected to hear, with an announcement probably today. I happen to think that child custody is a lot more important than same-sex marriage, but the liberal LGBT lobby has somehow convinced the media that they have a grievance.

NFL opens its own private court

Family court for years have been jumping into petty disputes, and sending the parties off to therapy or anger management class. Now the NFL is getting into the act! The NY Times reports:

Unruly, violent fans at N.F.L. games have been a problem for years. It got so bad at one point that officials in Philadelphia added an improvised courtroom in the bowels of Veterans Stadium during Eagles games to process offenders more efficiently.

The N.F.L. and its teams have recently embraced a new and perhaps more forgiving approach toward misbehaving fans. Fans ejected from games are strongly encouraged to complete a four-hour online course in anger management before they are allowed to return to see a game.

The N.F.L. also directs fans to a particular doctor to tackle their issues: Ari Novick of Laguna Beach, Calif. ...

An examination of Novick’s practice, however, shows that his claims about his professional credentials — membership in the American Psychological Association and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy — are either false or out of date, according to officials with the organizations.

In addition, part of Novick’s online operation offers a monetary commission to companies and individuals for referring clients to his anger management courses, a practice that may violate the ethics codes and regulations of the psychological association and the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, which governs licensed marriage and family therapists in the state.

Considerable portions of Novick’s online fan anger management course that is recommended by the N.F.L. have been lifted from other publications or Web sites without citation.

And a spokeswoman for Pepperdine University, where Novick until recently asserted he was an adjunct professor of psychology, said Novick had not taught at the university since 2007.

The real reason the psychologists are agitated is that they are pushing a 52-week anger management course, as that is what the California courts commonly order. Some shrinks are making a lot of money on those courses, even tho the scientific studies show that 6-week courses work just as well. They will be really upset if it turns out that a 4-hour online class also works just as well.

This is a good experiment, because it is like a private sector family court. The NFL has no interest in feminist propaganda or catering to crooked psychologists or chasing money. It just wants to run a business, and that business is football. And maybe selling beer at games. When disputes arise, the business just wants to resolve it and move on.

Maybe the family court can learn some lessons from the NFL. My family court case dragged on for 9 years so far, and there is no end in sight. I am still operating under a temporary order.

Suit claims payment for useless therapy

The NY Times reports:

Gay “conversion therapy,” which claims to help men overcome unwanted same-sex attractions but has been widely attacked as unscientific and harmful, is facing its first tests in the courtroom.

In New Jersey on Tuesday, four gay men who tried the therapy filed a civil suit against a prominent counseling group, charging it with deceptive practices under the state’s Consumer Fraud Act. ...

In California, so-called ex-gay therapists have gone to court to argue for the other side. They are seeking to block a new state law, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in September and celebrated as a milestone by advocates for gay rights, that bans conversion therapy for minors.

In Sacramento on Friday, a federal judge will hear the first of two legal challenges brought by conservative law groups claiming that the ban is an unconstitutional infringement on speech, religion and privacy.

Since the 1970s, when mainstream mental health associations stopped branding homosexuality as a disorder, a small network of renegade therapists, conservative religious leaders and self-identified “life coaches” has continued to argue that it is not inborn, but an aberration rooted in childhood trauma. Homosexuality is caused, these therapists say, by a stifling of normal masculine development, often by distant fathers and overbearing mothers or by early sexual abuse. ...

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a rights group based in Montgomery, Ala., is bringing the suit on behalf of four former patients and two of their mothers, who say they paid thousands of dollars not only for useless therapy for their sons but also for more counseling to undo the damage.

“The defendants peddled antigay pseudoscience, defaming gay people as loathsome and deranged,” said Sam Wolfe, a lawyer with the group. ...

“It becomes fraudulent, even cruel,” he said in an interview. “To say that if you really want to change you could — that’s an awful thing to tell somebody.”

The SPLC is a racist hate group that likes to file lawsuits to push its leftist anti-white-Christian agenda.

There are millions of Americans who have been succkered into paying thousands of dollars for useless therapy. I am all for holding therapists accountable, but why just these? What does this have to do with Southern poverty?

Why is it such an awful thing to tell someone that he can change if he really wants to? Telling people that they can change has been a constructive and inspiring message for millennia.

Meanwhile, the SPLC and other leftist groups are silent about the psychologists who peddle anti-father and anti-Christian pseudoscience, such Ken B. Perlmutter, Bret K. Johnson, and Faren R. Akins. At least the conversion therapists are trying to help people, while the family court psychologists are maliciously trying to destroy families.

Shrinks cannot define personality disorder

The NY Times has some psychology articles that I will post over the next few days. First is controversy over the new DSM-5 that will dominate diagnoses for years to come. The NY Times reports:

This weekend the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association will vote on whether to adopt a new diagnostic system for some of the most serious, and striking, syndromes in medicine: personality disorders.

Personality disorders occupy a troublesome niche in psychiatry. The 10 recognized syndromes are fairly well represented on the self-help shelves of bookstores and include such well-known types as narcissistic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, as well as dependent and histrionic personalities.

But when full-blown, the disorders are difficult to characterize and treat, and doctors seldom do careful evaluations, missing or downplaying behavior patterns that underlie problems like depression and anxiety in millions of people. ...

The entire exercise has forced psychiatrists to confront one of the field’s most elementary, yet still unresolved, questions: What, exactly, is a personality problem? ...

The most central, memorable, and knowable element of any person — personality — still defies any consensus.

A team of experts appointed by the psychiatric association has worked for more than five years to find some unifying system of diagnosis for personality problems.

The panel proposed a system based in part on a failure to “develop a coherent sense of self or identity.” Not good enough, some psychiatric theorists said.

Later, the experts tied elements of the disorders to distortions in basic traits.

For example, an interim proposal for narcissistic personality disorder involved rating a person on four traits, including “manipulativeness,” “histrionism,” and “callousness,” and the final proposal relied on just two, “grandiosity” and “attention-seeking.” The current definition includes nine possible elements. ...

“You simply don’t have adequate coverage of personality disorders with just a few traits,” said Thomas Widiger, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky.

Dr. Widiger compares the process of reaching a consensus on personality to the parable of the six blind men from Hindustan, each touching different parts of the elephant. “Everyone’s working independently, and each has their perspective, their own theory,” he said. “It’s a mess.”

“It’s embarrassing to see where we’re at. We’ve been caught up in digression after digression, and nobody can agree,” Dr. Millon said. “It’s time to go back to the beginning, to Darwin, and build a logical structure based on universal principles of evolution.”

This isn't science. They are just listing personality traits that they don't like.

I got sent out by the family court 8 times to see if I had any of these disorders, and every one of the experts said that I did not. They could not find any fault in anything I did. But the judges just ignored the reports anyway.

Illegal to ride a manatee

The LA Times reports:

A St. Petersburg, Fla., woman was arrested on a misdemeanor warrant Saturday after being photographed two months ago riding a manatee.

Florida's Manatee Sanctuary Act protects the endangered sea mammal and says in part, “It is unlawful for any person at any time, by any means, or in any manner intentionally or negligently to annoy, molest, harass, or disturb or attempt to molest, harass, or disturb any manatee.”

Ana Gloria Garcia Gutierrez, 53, was taken into custody without incident at a Sears department store where she works, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

The incident first came to the public's attention when Sheriff Bob Gualtieri held a news conference on Oct. 2 and asked for help in identifying the woman photographed riding the manatee at nearby Fort De Soto Park in late September.

Gutierrez has admitted touching the endangered sea mammal, the sheriff's office said. She told deputies that she was new to the area at the time and didn't know it was illegal to touch a manatee. The manatee was not hurt.

The maximum penalty is a $500 fine and six months in jail. Gutierrez was released on $1,500 bail, the Associated Press reported.

Welcome to the Big Brother society. You could be having a harmless and fun day at the park, but someone could take a picture, post it on the internet, and the local cops could spends months tracking you down for some obscure offense that hurt no person or even an animal or plant.

Courts can issue restraining orders against harassment, but there is a lot of confusion about what that is. Harassment means continued, repeated, annoying behavior that has no legitimate purpose.

What this woman did was not harassment. It was not repeated, it was not annoying, and it did have a legitimate purpose. If a park ranger had warned her that she was annoying the manatee, then it might be harassment if she did it again to spite the ranger. But all they have is a picture of one incident.

I have no idea whether the tourists are harmful to the manatees, but if they want to prevent visitors from touching manatees then the law should say that no touching is allowed, and the park signs should say so also.

Is evaluator a profession?

I listened to a debate about whether a particular line of work should be called a profession. Here were the arguments.

Do it pay lots of money? Can a college student major in the subject? Are there organizations that hold conferences on the subject? Is it licensed by the state?

None of these criteria were very convincing. The best one was: Can someone be found guilty of malpractice?

In fact, one of the best ways to decide whether a profession is really a profession is whether it can be accused of malpractice.

To determine malpractice, there has to be an established body of knowledge and practices. And there have to be some right ways of doing things and some wrong ways, and the distinctions have to be clear enough for some committee or jury to enforce the standards. In real professions, the competent ones are eager to throw the incompetents ones that degrade the reputation of the whole profession.

California and other states use child custody evaluators to advise the family court. Is that a profession?

By the above standards, I say no. Prominent local evaluators like Ken Perlmutter, Bret Johnson, and Farin Akins would have been found guilty of malpractice long ago, if that were even possible. They are sloppy, petty, malicious, dishonest, prejudiced, and corrupt. They have been exposed, and yet they continue in this so-called profession without harm to themselves.

No, it is not a profession.

White man's rant

I found this post-election white man's rant:

As a father, sitcoms portray you as an idiot. As a husband, commercials mock you as sexually undesirable because of your race. As a white man, movies openly call for you to be killed. And if by chance you do something admirable, why, Hollywood simply changes the race.

And what about your wife? Of course you love her. But what is the culture telling her? If she leaves you, she gets your kids, your money, and any future earnings. The culture tells her she has no obligation to you or your children. The law rewards her if she abandons you. The media tells you the real problem is a “war on women.” Maybe you’ve got a great girl, but just take a glance around the broken families and shattered men around this country, and ask yourself if the United States is a fit place for decent men and decent families. ...

And then, you can die. In fact, hurry up and do it. The Democrats are more becoming bolder in just telling you these things. ...

Everything you loved about what used to be your country came from one group of people. It’s the group you belong to. It’s the white race. And it’s not an accident that the same people who hate your country, your religion, and your family hate your race more than anything.

You’re a white man. “American” doesn’t mean anything anymore. If anything, citizenship is actually a burden. As a white American, you are a second-class citizen in jobs, education, and government benefits. No one cares about you and no one ever will. Those in power will deny that your suffering even exists. So why are you fighting for these people?

The nation you loved is still there. But it’s not in the flag of a government that hates you or in the guns that serve people who don’t care about you. It’s in the faces of the white people that built this country and that sustain it today. That’s what you have to fight for.

I don't agree with his conclusions because I think he is overreacting to the election. Barack Obama only won by 330k votes in 4 swing states. The Republican still control the House of Reps and about half the states. The election did bring out an alarming number of voters who voted for Obama because he is non-white.

Taking kids based on politics

The UK now takes kids away based on membership in political parties. The BBC reports:

The couple, who have been approved foster parents for seven years, were eight weeks into the placement when they were approached by social workers about their membership of the party.

The wife told the Daily Telegraph: "I was dumbfounded. Then my question to both of them was, 'What has UKIP got to do with having the children removed?'

"Then one of them said, 'Well, UKIP have got racist policies.' The implication was that we were racist. [The social worker] said UKIP does not like European people and wants them all out of the country to be returned to their own countries."

The paper says the woman denied she was racist but the children were taken away by the end of the week.

She said the social worker told her: "We would not have placed these children with you had we known you were members of UKIP because it wouldn't have been the right cultural match." ...

"These children are not UK children and we were not aware of the foster parents having strong political views. There are some strong views in the UKIP party and we have to think of the future of the children."

She added during an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today: "I have to look at the children's cultural and ethnic needs.

The UKIP is not so radical, and simply wants to limit immigration:

UKIP immigration policy

An immediate five-year freeze on immigration for permanent settlement.
After the five year freeze, a strictly controlled, points-based system similar to Australia to be introduced.
An aspiration to ensure that future immigration does not exceed 50,000 people a year.
Regain control of UK borders by leaving the EU.
Repeal the 1998 Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.
Ensure British benefits are only available to UK citizens or those who have lived here for at least five years.
End the active promotion of the doctrine of multiculturalism by local and national government
SOURCE: UKIP website

This is an example of social workers having too much power to impose their personal beliefs on others.

Singapore lacks emotion

The UK Guardian reports:

Never mind its temperate 28C weather, low unemployment rate and high per-capita GDP – Singapore is the most emotionless society in the world, according to a new Gallup poll, beating the traditionally po-faced Georgia, Lithuania and Russia in a survey of more than 150 nations.

Asking respondents questions such as "Did you feel well-rested yesterday?", "Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?" and "Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?", the survey found that Singaporeans were the least likely to reveal experiencing any emotions at all.

Just 36% of Singaporeans reported feeling positive or negative emotions on a daily basis, while 60% of Filipinos recorded regularly feeling both – the highest response rate of any country worldwide. ...

The poll's findings – released on Wednesday – soon went viral on the internet, where they became the butt of many jokes, not least among Singaporeans themselves. "Singapore ranked most emotionless country in the world – not sure how to feel about that," ran a number of Singapore-based tweets. "That [poll] is a lie," commented one reader on the online news portal Today. "I use many emoticons to express how satisfied I am."

If Singaporeans ended up in a family court with a psychologist like Ken B. Perlmutter or Faren R. Akins, then they would be apt to lose their kids. These court evaluators have severe psychological prejudices.

Texting revolutionizes postdivorce family relationships

The NY Times Fashion section has an article about joint custody:

It’s not surprising that most people don’t see eye-to-eye with the person they left seething on a couples therapist’s sofa. If you didn’t get along with someone well enough to stay married, chances are you will probably disagree after you divorce.

“People don’t want to talk to their exes because just the sound of their voice is irritating,” said Randy Kessler, chair of the American Bar Association’s Family Law Section and a matrimonial lawyer in Atlanta. “But they can e-mail. They can share an online calendar. They can use any number of resources on the Internet. There are even divorce apps.”

E-mail and texting alone have practically revolutionized postdivorce family relationships. “E-mail absolutely takes away the in-your-face aggravation and emotional side of joint custody,” said Lubov Stark, a divorce lawyer on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “You just write, ‘I want to pick up Kimmy at 5, but I’m running late and will be there at 6.’ It’s the best thing ever.” ...

“Everything on our calendar is jointly shared, so there’s no dispute,” Ms. Wu said. “For a while, I was doing all the entering of events, but I told him to put his share in, too, and now it’s all on there.”

Such arrangements are increasingly necessary. Unlike the “Kramer vs. Kramer” 1970s, when mothers won primary custody almost by default, today’s postdivorce “bi-nuclear family” setups are more egalitarian. Almost all states now offer some kind of joint custody. Joint legal custody, in which parents share or split decision-making, is almost the norm. And while laws vary widely by state, joint physical custody, where children divide their time between their father’s and mother’s homes, is increasingly common.

“In the ’80s, you used to see Dad on Sundays and get a Happy Meal and an ice cream cone,” said Leslie Barbara, a partner in the matrimonial and family law department at Davidoff Hutcher & Citron in Manhattan. “Now it’s all gender-neutral, and the parents each get spheres of influence. You put together what’s called an ‘access schedule,’ and ‘parenting coordinators’ help figure it all out.”

Yes, joint child custody is more common as all the evidence says that it works best. I haven't found that ‘parenting coordinators’ help any, but maybe others have different experiences.

James Bond's shrink

In the new movie Skyfall, James Bond gets interrogated by a psychologist, and he looks just like Kenneth B. Perlmutter! Middle aged, white hair, bald on top, nerdy half-glasses, Jewish nose, effeminate body language, and the perpetual expression of someone having a foreign object embedded in his rectum. Do they all look like that?

Anna Karenina

Steve Sailer reviews Anna Karenina:

Third and most remarkably, Wright’s film may be the first of the numerous Anna Karenina adaptations whose sympathies lie firmly with her cuckolded husband, the unsexy bureaucrat Karenin. ...

Today it’s universally assumed that an unfaithful wife should get custody of the children. Yet Wright and Stoppard don’t seem terribly interested in pointing fingers at 19th-century Russians for their lack of enlightenment about family law.

When Anna laments that she can’t possess both her lover and her son because “The laws are made by husbands and fathers,” it’s hard not to respond, “As well they should be.”

Yes, they should be. Anna runs off with another man, but it is a disaster.

This is filmed as a stage play based on the Russian novel that famously starts, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

I watched the new movie Flight, thinking that it would be less boring. Nobody told me that it is a 2 hour commercial for Alcoholics Anonymous. Denzel Washington is an alcoholic pilot who is cruelly rejected by his wife and son, even after becoming a national hero. I don't want to post any spoilers, except to say that you are unlikely to enjoy the movie unless you are sold on the AA philosophy.

To some people, alcoholism is an addiction, or a medical disease, or a psychological disorder, or a character weakness, or a genetic susceptibility, or a bad habit. The AA philosophy is something quite different from all of these ideas, and is an odd cross between religion and group psychotherapy. It is like a cult with a vast network of secret believers.

The plane crash doesn't take very long, and most of the movie concerns the pilots alcoholism. I assumed that he would eventually get a fair hearing, and we would learn whether the alcohol contributed to lives being save or lost. Nope.

Happy Thanksgiving. Eat and drink well. Just don't fly drunk.

Jailed dad will face more trouble

Fellow angry dad Dan Brewington is in prison for exposing on his blog the corruption of a family court judge and psychologist, but his angry wife is still looking for blood. He posts this:

MOTION TO SET FOR HEARING ON CONTEMPT

Comes now the Petitioner, Melissa Brewington, by and through undersigned counsel, Angela G. Loechel, and respectfully moves the Court to set her Amended Verified Petition for Contempt Citation for hearing as soon as practicable after Respondent, Daniel Brewington's release from incarceration in the State of Indiana. It is estimated that the hearing should take one full day.

WHEREFORE, Petitioner respectfully requests that the Court schedule this matter for Hearing, as soon as practicable.

As far as I know, Dan has not hurt anyone. But his ex-wife and the judge are seeking revenge for what he said on his blog.

Dan is arguing an appeal of his criminal conviction this morning. I hope he wins, but I am afraid that the fix is in.

Update: This seems to be a joke:

The Moscow authorities have refused to grant permission for a rally against “political repressions” and “violations of human rights,” saying that state law does not recognize such a phenomenon in the country.

The application to hold the event was rejected by the authorities on the grounds that the “current law does not provide any measures used by the state for repression based on political motives,” the official refusal letter reads.

The letter further explained, “in accordance to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the government guarantees equal rights and freedom of the individual.” The letter also said that the constitution rejects any forms of violation of human rights based on “social, racial, national, language or religious affiliation.” The constitution also guarantees judicial protection.

In Indiana, Brewington has been imprisoned for protesting the family court.