Suing for alimony 20 years after their divorce

London Telegraph reports:

The ex-wife of a former new-age traveller who later became multi-millionaire wind farm entrepreneur has been told she can bring a claim for financial support from his fortune more than 30 years after their marriage broke down.

Dale Vince, owner of the green energy provider Ecotricity, described the Supreme Court ruling as “mad” and said it would leave people “looking over our shoulders” for decades in case a former partner came after them for a share of money they made later in life.

Divorce lawyers described the ruling in favour of Kathleen Wyatt as “unprecedented” and said it meant spouses could keep their options open “indefinitely” before staking a claim.

The foolishness of this is explained here, if it is necessary.

When Liberals Blew It

Liberal NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes:

Fifty years ago this month, Democrats made a historic mistake.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, at the time a federal official, wrote a famous report in March 1965 on family breakdown among African-Americans. He argued presciently and powerfully that the rise of single-parent households would make poverty more intractable.

“The fundamental problem,” Moynihan wrote, is family breakdown. In a follow-up, he explained: “From the wild Irish slums of the 19th-century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families ... never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future — that community asks for and gets chaos.”

Liberals brutally denounced Moynihan as a racist.

Yes, such name-calling is standard fare for liberals. Say anything pro-family, and they will call you racist, sexist, and various other names.

The taboo on careful research on family structure and poverty was broken by William Julius Wilson, an eminent black sociologist. He has praised Moynihan’s report as “a prophetic document,” for evidence is now overwhelming that family structure matters a great deal for low-income children of any color.

In 2013, 71 percent of black children in America were born to an unwed mother, as were 53 percent of Hispanic children and 36 percent of white children.

Indeed, a single parent is the new norm. At some point before they turn 18, a majority of all American children will likely live with a single mom and no dad.

On that last point, he means all American kids, not just blacks.

Causation is difficult to tease from correlation. But efforts to do that suggest that growing up with just one biological parent reduces the chance that a child will graduate from high school by 40 percent, according to an essay by Sara McLanahan of Princeton and Christopher Jencks of Harvard. They point to the likely mechanism: “A father’s absence increases antisocial behavior, such as aggression, rule-breaking, delinquency and illegal drug use.” These effects are greater on boys than on girls.

Yes, everyone agrees that single moms are ruining society, but they differ on what to do about it. Kristof is a mindless knee-jerk liberal, so his only suggestion is to expand welfare programs:

What can be done?

In line with Moynihan’s thinking, we can support programs to boost the economic prospects for poorer families. We can help girls and young women avoid pregnancy (30 percent of American girls become pregnant by age 19). If they delay childbearing, they’ll be more likely to marry and form stable families, notes Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution.

So let’s learn from 50 years of mistakes. A starting point is to acknowledge the role of families in fighting poverty. That’s not about being a moralistic scold, but about helping American kids.

I did not know that so many 19yo girls were already pregnant.

These liberals refuse to address the bad incentives that women have today. Increasing welfare for single moms will make the problem worse, not better.

More detailed analysis here:

I don’t often laud Nicholas Kristof. His op-eds for the New York Times are routinely smug and ill-informed. If there’s a single false assumption typically held by liberal chatterers to which Kristof doesn’t subscribe, I certainly haven’t found it. But when a person veers in the right direction, I’m honor-bound to say so, and this is one such time (New York Times, 3/11/15).

Ellen Pao trial continues

I mentioned the Ellen Pao lawsuit, and here is a report:

I’ve been attending the Kleiner Perkins gender discrimination trial for the past week looking for irrefutable examples of gender discrimination, but so far I haven’t seen the bombshell disclosures that would lead me to think Kleiner is sunk. ...

After talking to experts on the issue of gender and bias, the lack of a smoking gun is not surprising. Instead, these cases are tough to prove because they are often filled with small, everyday examples from the workplace. There is the dismissive tone in emails, the bawdy chitchat in breakrooms, the office layout with the power corridor, and seating charts at conferences.

In other words, there is no overt discrimination, and you have micro-analyze trivial behavior to allege them.

A typical complaint is that the men were once discussing a porn show. Or maybe it was just an HBO show for mature audiences.

“Standing alone, the examples don’t seem that significant,” said Jason Knott, a litigator with Zuckerman Spaeder in Washington who focuses on business and employment disputes. “But when you stand back, it can look discriminatory.”

I thought testimony about the review process produced some of the most interesting detail about the small, subtle stuff of gender bias. Pao was told she was too timid and not commanding enough. But she also had her knuckles rapped for being seen by co-workers as shrill, abrasive and not nurturing of others. Male co-workers were praised for traits that did not sound all that different.

It is possible for a woman to be both timid and shrill. And less likely for a man to be.

If men are more likely to be team players, as research has shown, is it discrimination to promote the team players?

One unusual thing about this case is that the jury is allowed to ask questions of Pao and the other witnesses. 9 of the 12 have to agree.

I don't see how they can side with Pao. She was paid $400k a year, and seducing one of the married partners. No other female employees are suing. Just this homewrecker.

On another matter, I have discovered that there are limits to the feminism at Jezebel. A post last year said:

Looking for practical advice about your relationship? You may want to avoid the Wendy Williams Show, because the talk show host just told an audience member it's okay to trick your husband into getting you pregnant if he promised you a second child. "Men have never been in control of our bodies," Williams tells the star-struck fan before telling her that she'd never suggest anyone trick a spouse in this way.

The audience agrees that the woman should trick her husband into another child.

And the war on free speech continues, with the NY Times reporting today:

The University of Maryland in College Park revealed on Thursday night that its officials had learned of email sent last year, apparently connected to a different fraternity, containing racist and sexist slurs, and that the university was investigating.

The university says that it has been investigating this email for 15 months! Apparently we have gotten to the point where a college kid cannot express an opinion in an email. Unless he is black and reciting rap music lyrics, of course.

The article also says the guy in the picture "said he was once turned away from a fraternity party because of his race." If the fraternity was so racist, why did he want to party with a bunch of racists? Maybe because the hot white college girls do not attend the black parties. Just guessing.

More comments on child support article

Yesterday's WSJ child support essay drew some comments on another blog:

I have to agree with Obama on this one. The idea of child support is archaic. It hearkens back to a time when it was assumed that people didn’t have sex until after they were married, and if it happened before marriage it was assumed that the man scammed the woman into doing something she didn’t want to do. Child support, perhaps, was seen as punishment for doing something immoral and then not getting married.

The blogger is a very class-conscious Jewish Republican.

Other comments:

If the parents have joint custody, which should be the norm unless one parent is unfit, there should not be child support. Each parent supports the children when they are living with him/her. If one parent has sole custody, the other one should pay child support. People do have a moral obligation to take care of their children.

Why does a man have a moral obligation to “support a child” the other ripped away from his care with a unilateral divorce?

Do men have a moral obligation to take care of a child they never wanted? Women don’t.

I agree with most of that.

I have to thoroughly disagree with any policy that makes the United States more like a Black ghetto hellhole. I don’t want to live in a world where non-Blacks have the incentive to live like Blacks. In fact, if such legislation were passed in all majority-White countries, I would have to seriously consider living among different race peoples. ...

This article genuinely made me angry.

We are reaching end-game of alpha-fucks, beta-bucks, and even the government is in on it.

Due to the ever diminishing integrity of our country and rule-of-law, the government is giving up on trying to extract money from alphas to pay for their children, so instead they double down on the low hanging fruit – beta bucks. ...

A woman needs child support like a fish needs a bicycle.

Live by your own standards, bitches. ...

Philp Greenspun’s blog (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/) is mostly about the U.S child support system, and he has me convinced that the system is both insane and evil (and he has collected alot of data on the subject). Essentially its evolved to yet another way to reward system gamers.

Its probably impossible to enforce child support in a way to ensure the money is actually spent on the child (there is now no requirement to do this at all, and the money is often not spent on the child), but it should be a flat rate per child calculated off of the poverty rate. If the custodial parent effectively denies visitation rights to the paying parent (such as by moving out of the area), then the obligation should be suspended. I’m actually fine with just automatically awarding custody to the women and support obligations to the man, unless the woman is in jail, crazy, otherwise incapacitated, or waives, mainly to avoid the nasty custody battles, though capping child support at a fixed amount would accomplish alot of this anyway.

Women are no longer disadvantaged in the labor market, at worst it is harder for women to get really high level jobs (but the studies show it is easier for them to get entry level jobs), so alimony should no longer exist.

There are many things wrong with the current system. They are just scratching the surface.

Update: Just to be clear, I am quoting the comments of others. I regard them as only partial understandings of what is wrong with child support. I will post on Greenspun separately.

NASCAR reverses itself

I blasted NASCAR for treating a man as guilty-until-proven-innocent, so I should credit them with reversing themselves after the man is proven innocent. AP reports:

Kurt Busch was cleared Wednesday to get back in his race car and attempt to rebuild a career that was halted two days before the Daytona 500 when NASCAR suspended him for allegedly assaulting his ex-girlfriend.

''It's been torture sitting out of the car,'' Busch said in a conference call. He called the allegations against him ''a complete fabrication.''

''I never did anything of the things I was accused of,'' he added. ''I never wavered in this whole process because of the confidence in the truth.'' ...

He said he will replace his longtime nickname ''The Outlaw'' with his signature above the door of his car.

Busch remains on indefinite probation. ...

Last week, the Delaware attorney general declined to charge Busch for the incident with Driscoll - a move O'Donnell said ''removed a significant impediment'' to reinstatement. ...

Busch has also complied with NASCAR's reinstatement requirements, the terms of which have not been disclosed. O'Donnell said a health care expert recommended Busch's immediate return.

A comment says:

That's all well and good NASCAR BUT you still owe Kurt an apology for suspending him for nothing! Now make it right and let's move on

Another says:

He was evaluated by a health care expert (who advised his immediate return) why? Is his health a question? And she obtained a restraining order against him, when SHE came to his trailer and he has and wants nothing to do with her? I have followed this story since its inception and can see no reason why Busch was suspended in the first place. Yes he's a hot-head and has prior anger problems we all know about, but this thing with Driscoll is nothing more than "he said, she said" bullshite

Obama getting soft on dead-beat dads

I have been criticizing Pres. Obama for many things, but here is something where he is not as bad as the Republicans, as there is bipartisan agreement to screw dead-beat dads as much as possible.

The Wall Street Journal has left-wing reporters and right-wing editorial, and here is an op-ed opinion. I am quoting it in full, as it is behind a paywall:

Making It Easier to Skip Paying Child Support
The Obama administration seems more focused on absent parents’ interests than on their children’s welfare.
By Robert Doar
March 9, 2015 7:20 p.m. ET

With little public attention, the Obama administration has been changing America’s child-support enforcement. The most recent Census Bureau report found that in 2011 fewer than 50% of single mothers had child-support orders — down from almost 60% in 2003. At least part of this decline reflects the administration’s shifting the focus from helping single parents with children toward helping absent parents who say they can’t afford payments. This is good news for delinquents, but bad news for children already coping with not having two parents at home.

Making absent parents (usually fathers) provide financial help for their children used to have bipartisan support and plenty of media attention. Begun in 1975 and strengthened by the 1996 welfare reform, child-support enforcement is one of the few antipoverty programs that stresses personal responsibility over government dependency. State child-support enforcement agencies — with federal funding — use wage garnishments and other techniques to hold absent parents responsible for contributing financially to the care of their children.

Reimbursing the government for welfare payments to poor single mothers used to be a primary goal. But increasingly the program has shifted from “cost recovery” to distributing the vast majority of collections to families. In 2013, 95% of the $28 billion collected was distributed to custodial parents to help pay for the daily needs of their children and to reduce their need for government assistance. For such families living below the poverty line who receive child support, the income from collections averages 45% of their family income. These numbers make child-support enforcement arguably the most cost-effective antipoverty program, collecting more than $5 for every $1 of administrative cost.

Despite its success, the program has always had critics. In the past especially, orders for monthly child support were often out of line with what some low-income parents could be reasonably expected to pay. Arrearage balances could grow so high that they condemned parents to a lifetime of debt.

Over the years, however, much progress has been made in addressing these problems. Child-support programs have found ways to reduce arrears and to “right size” payment amounts for noncustodial parents who were willing to accept responsibility but had no way of paying excessive arrears or payments. This evolution has not been fast enough for the Obama administration, which is why it has diluted the focus on personal responsibility by emphasizing “arrears forgiveness,” and “discretionary enforcement,” for absent parents.

This also may be why the administration has proposed a major update of federal regulations governing the program—without seeking congressional approval. The administration is expected to announce the final rule this summer, when states will need to comply or face possible sanctions from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Some of the proposed changes are positive. One provision would let state child-support programs use federal child-support funding to implement job-training programs for some of the unemployed parents from whom they are trying to collect. Washington used to tell states not to use child-support funding for jobs programs. The Obama administration has decided to change that.

Other changes are problematic and reflect the administration’s ambivalence about a program that once operated on the principle that paying child support should be like death and taxes—something that cannot be escaped. Federal regulations discouraged child-support programs from categorizing cases as “uncollectable.” The administration’s changes will make it easier to give up on such cases. Since states can earn additional federal funds if their collection rate increases, one way to collect more on a per-case basis is to close the hardest cases. Now states would have an incentive to do so.

Other new provisions would limit the agency’s ability to determine the income of delinquent parents. Some people will go to great lengths to hide, or avoid earning, income that could be used to pay child support. The ability to ask a court to consider what the absent parent could be making, or appears to be making based on his standard of living, gives the authorities a stronger hand with evaders.

Authorities used to have help in this effort under a provision of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which requires single applicants for cash welfare payments to participate in court and administrative proceedings to establish child-support orders. Since the late 1990s, however, the number of TANF recipients has declined dramatically as poor single mothers went to work and sought assistance from other government programs (food stamps, Medicaid, housing help). While some advocates have suggested imposing the child-support requirement on recipients of these other, non-TANF forms of assistance, the administration has shown no interest.

In the past, President Obama has emphasized parental responsibility and the important roles that fathers play in their children’s lives. As White House officials conduct their final review of the proposed new child-support regulations, they would be wise to make the final product match the president’s rhetoric.

Mr. Doar is the Morgridge Fellow in Poverty Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He served as the New York state Child Support Enforcement director from 1995 to 2000.

The proposed changes are here. Comments were accepted through Jan. 16, 2015.

No, I do not agree with taking away a man's drivers license in order to extract welfare reimbursements. I guess the Democrats like it because it expands the welfare systems, and breeds losers who vote Democrat, and the Republicans like it because it punishes deadbeats and is not considered a tax.

I question whether any man should ever have to pay for a child that he has no say in rearing. I think that the whole system is immoral, because all the incentives are wrong.

Zero tolerance for racist chant

CNN reports on our latest national scandal:

Even with the national chapter shutting the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house at the University of Oklahoma, the school president said the university's affiliation with the fraternity is permanently done as a campus group called for the expulsion of fraternity members.

The members have until midnight Tuesday to get their things out of the house, university President David Boren said in a Monday afternoon news conference.

"The house will be closed, and as far as I'm concerned, they won't be back," he said, adding that the university is exploring what actions it can take against individual fraternity members.

A Saturday video showing party-bound fraternity members on a bus chanting a racial epithet found its way anonymously to the school newspaper and a campus organization, which both promptly publicized the nine-second clip.

The students on the bus clap and pump their fists as they boisterously chant, "There will never be a ni**** SAE. You can hang him from a tree, but he can never sign with me."

By Sunday night, SAE's national chapter had suspended the University of Oklahoma members and threatened lifelong suspensions for anyone responsible for the chant, but Boren took it a step further.

Wait a minute. This was a 9-second video clip! I would have said that it is impossible to get the whole country mad at you from a 9-second video.

The punishment is against the whole fraternity, including members who were not involved. And punished for life.

I may get into trouble for saying this, but I do not believe that anyone should be punished for privately expressing their personal opinions about who they want to associate with, regardless of how offensive those opinions might be.

The former LA Clippers owner was forced out of the NBA for private opinions of who his paid mistress should associate with. That was bad enuf, but these are just partying college students who could have been joking, for all we know.

Even if they favor segregation, or slavery, or deporting blacks to Africa, or any other racist opinion, that should be their right. Certain types of discrimination in employment, housing, and a few other areas are illegal, but this action is purely against expressing an opinion.

And maybe not even an opinion. No one has  bothered to ask these boys whether it was really their opinion, or they were just reciting a chant.

I think that if a bunch of white racists in Oklahoma want to have their own little all-white private club, then the blacks and liberals should be happy that those people have separated themselves from the community so that their presence will not bother anyone.

One trouble with this is that I do not what most white people think of blacks. Many express anti-racist views, but are they just saying that to avoid the thought police?

The country Jordan does not truly have free speech:

Earlier this month, Jordan's Information Minister Mohammad Al-Momani told a conference that freedom of expression can contribute to stopping radicalization.

On the very same day, a military court in the capital Amman sentenced a man to 18 months in prison for a Facebook post that was seen as insulting a friendly country, the United Arab Emirates.

Okay, that is Jordan, but I thought that Oklahoma was better than that.

Here is another story of someone being punished before the facts are in:

In a stunning move just two days before the season-opening Daytona 500, NASCAR suspended Kurt Busch indefinitely on Friday after a judge said the former champion almost surely strangled and beat an ex-girlfriend last fall and there was a "substantial likelihood" of more domestic violence from him in the future.

NASCAR said Busch would not be allowed to race or participate in any NASCAR activities until further notice given the "serious nature of the findings and conclusions" made by the Delaware judge. ...

In a 25-page opinion explaining why he issued the no-contact order this week, Family Court Commissioner David Jones concluded that it was more likely than not that Busch abused Patricia Driscoll ...

So his race-car career is over because of some stupid family court commissioner has an opinion about what is "more likely than not", and that there is a "substantial likelihood" that he do something bad in the future?!

As I keep complaining, no one believes in innocence until proven guilty, and people are guilty in family court for what they might do in the future.

Busch has denied the alleged assault, which is the subject of a separate criminal investigation, ...

[Commissioner] Jones noted that [girlfriend] Driscoll presented false testimony that conflicted with that of a chaplain who saw her immediately after the alleged assault and said he didn't see any marks or bruises on her. Jones nevertheless said he didn't believe Driscoll's false testimony amounted to perjury or intentional falsehood. ...

Busch's attorneys filed a motion late Thursday asking Jones to re-open the Family Court hearing so that they can present testimony from three acquaintances of Driscoll who they say were previously reluctant to get involved but have now come forward to contradict statements Driscoll has made about her relationship with Busch.

So he denies the charges, the girlfriend was proved to be a liar, and he has not been criminally charged or convicted of anything.

The judge [ie, the commissioner] concluded that Busch did not appear to be a prototypical batterer who uses violence to subjugate or control, but that the incident instead was most likely a "situational" event in which Busch was unable to cope and to control his tendency to act out violently in response to stress and frustration, causing him to "snap."

At the same time, however, Jones said he believes there's real possibility that Busch will lash out again.

"Given respondent's passion for his racing career and his intemperate and frequently violent reactions to seemingly minor racing setbacks, the court finds that there exists a likelihood of future acts of domestic violence against petitioner in the event that respondent's racing career is damaged or destroyed as the result of his having been found to have committed an act of domestic violence in this case or any subsequent criminal prosecution," Jones wrote.

Jones added that because Busch has a propensity to lose control in response to disappointing or frustrating situations involving racing and that those who love him are likely to be around him at those times "there is a substantial likelihood of acts of domestic violence by respondent against future intimate partners.

So this family court commissioner is psychoanalyzing him based on him being a race-car driver. This speculation is that he might lose a future race, become irritable, and take it out of a future intimate partner!

So not only does this commissioner pre-judge Busch in a way to destroy his racing career, he punishes Busch for how he might react to his racing career being unfairly destroyed!

Family court judges rarely spell out such crazy reasoning, but I wonder how often they do it. That is, a judge takes a dad's kids away, and then is reluctant to give the kids back because the dad is probably angry about his kids being unfairly taken away.

If NASCAR thinks that he lacks the temperament or safe practices to the point where he is a hazard to other drivers or fans, then I could understand suspending him for bad behavior. But a family court commissioner trying to protect some future girlfriend who might be trying to comfort him after a loss? This is crazy. It is like that movie about pre-crime. Or wrecking his racing career based on false testimony from his girlfriend, and then justifying wrecking his career because of how upset he might be at having his career wrecked by false testimony? The world has gone mad. I wonder if anyone in the NASCAR world is defending Busch.

Update: A free speech law professor says that it would be unconstitutional to expel the students, and sticks to that after OU does expel them.

My guess is that Boren has already made a deal with some prosecutor to charge these kids with a hate crime. If they can be coerced to pleading guilty to some misdemeanor, then the university will be vindicated.

Female politicians have been bad for Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley sex discrimination is in the news, with the Ellen Pao lawsuit. But this is an area that has tried the experiment of female politicians, and it has been a disaster:

San Jose was once the female capital of the world for political power. Janet Gray Hayes was the first woman mayor of a major city. She had a council consisting mostly of women. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors also had a majority of women. Gender parity was coming into vogue.

But times have changed and fewer women are now in local public office. The Board of Supervisors has just one woman, Cindy Chavez, and previous to her special election victory the board was all male. ...

Only in Congress, where Mike Honda joins Zoe Lofgren, Anna Eshoo and Jackie Speier, is there an actual majority of women representing Silicon Valley. ...

We also have Boxer and Feinstein in the US Senate. All elected many years ago, and we are sick of them.

The feminist press complains of double standards:

Nobody cares when Bill Clinton changes his hairstyle, unless he holds up airport traffic getting it cut. Nobody comments on Dick Blum’s fashion choices when he stands next to his wife, Sen. Dianne Feinstein. They don’t refer to him as Mr. Feinstein. Nobody questions Mitt Romney’s commitment to his numerous grandchildren when he ran for president, but for some reason it is a story for Hillary.

To many in the good old boy establishment, much of this is dismissed as political correctness or women being overly sensitive to criticism — an insulting charge. The simple truth is that there is a new generation of women who will not play by the outdated codes and double standards that continue to persist. They see rules that need rewriting and want to change perceptions.

What women wear, whom they date, what they look like and what name they choose to be called is not relevant to the content of their character. It is not news and it will be challenged.

Are you kidding me? Hillary Clinton has decided herself to play up the grandmother role for her presidential run. She also is the one to emphasize her maiden name, as if she was never happy to take Bill's name.

One of my readers points out an incisive comment:

Like the child allowed to grow-up undisciplined and unruly by an inept single mom, San Jose has never found the maturity necessary to pay as it goes, address its responsibilities, or plan for the future... Take a walk along San Jose’s borders and you will find, in almost every direction, that to step across the line is to step into higher home valuation, better schools, smoother pavement, faster fire service, cleaner parks, better police coverage, and enhanced residential services.

The Dilbert site got taken down with a DDOS attack apparently because of this comment:

Locally, one hears stories all the time about some guy who did something special with a start-up, or he’s a superstar coder, or a product genius, or whatever. How many times have I heard similar stories about superstar female entrepreneurs with technology skills? Maybe…never? At least none in the past year. ...

Here’s the part that ends my career: On average, men and women are equally capable for academic and technical pursuits. But men tend to have the most freaks on the high end and low end of the IQ spectrum. One study says there are about twice as many men as women in the top 2%.

The Germans have joined other European countries in passing laws requiring women to be on corporate boards of directors.

Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, so they should have wised up about women politicians by now. They have been stupid enuf to elect women in the past, and to decide we needed a black President. Will they think we need a woman President? I hope they look at the track records of Democrat candidates a little better.

Update: Silicon Valley startups have always been against regulation, especially of the internet, but not that Obama has enacted regulations to protect Google and Facebook, the local papers are telling a different story. From today's paper:

The FCC's vote essentially puts the Internet under the same regulatory umbrella as telephones. The aim is to keep Internet service providers from slowing or blocking certain web activity -- or creating paid "fast lanes."

Silicon Valley's House Democrats -- Mike Honda, Zoe Lofgren, Anna Eshoo and Jackie Speier -- all lauded the FCC's action. But among Republicans, the only split now seems to be between those who want to use their new majority in both houses of Congress to ram through a resolution decrying the FCC in the hopes of overriding the decision, and those who would prefer to enlist some Democrats to impose different, weaker rules.

Even House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, a frequent visitor to Silicon Valley and arguably the GOP's point man for the region, blasted the FCC vote.

"The FCC has just taken the Internet -- arguably the most dynamic contributor to a growing economy and higher quality of life in the world -- back in time to the era of landlines," he said in a statement after the vote. "The Internet is too important to the everyday lives of Americans for such government overreach."

If G.W. Bush had done this, we would be hearing a lot more complaints. What a lot of people don't realize is that big companies like regulation, because their lobbying can control it, and it keeps small competitors out.

Update: Hillary Clinton's email account, while Sec. of State, was hdr22@clintonemail.com. Those are the initials of her maiden name. She just wants to use the Clinton name when it advances her political agenda.

President prosecutes those who call him a chimp

After 6 months of Pres. Barack Obama telling us that the Ferguson MO shooting was racist and encouraging rioters, his DoJ now admits that the shooting was 100% justified. But they are going to punish Ferguson anyway because the blacks there commit more crimes than whites!

USA Today reports:

When it comes to racially lopsided arrests, the most remarkable thing about Ferguson, Mo., might be just how ordinary it is.

Police in Ferguson — which erupted into days of racially charged unrest after a white officer killed an unarmed black teen — arrest black people at a rate nearly three times higher than people of other races.

It goes on to explain that blacks commit crimes at that rate, and that Ferguson arrests are similar to the rest of the country.

The smoking gun that the report uses to prove that Ferguson cops are racist is that there were 7 racist cop-to-cop emails over 6 years, including:

An April 2011 email depicted President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee.

Really? We had 8 years of the mainstream media portraying G.W. Bush as a chimp or monkey, as pictured above. I got that from a simple Google search. Doesn't anyone remember that? My local newspaper had an editorial cartoon on Friday attacking him, even tho he has been out of public life for 6 years.

I saw many more personal attacks on Bush than Obama. But of course Bush never tried to prosecute those who made fun of him. Just Obama and Third World dictators do that.

This shows just how far gone our ruling leftoid elites are. No free speech, even in private email. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent. They will start race riots if it suits their partisan political objectives. When they attack, they assume the worst motives.

That point about motives is important. The leftoid thought police act as if they have mind-reading powers. They do not judge you for what you do. They judge you for what they say is your motive for whatever you are doing.

They will cherry-pick facts in order to prove that you are a bad person, without comparing those facts to the population at large. The family court and CPS do this all the time. They will focus on some accident, or fight, or alleged inattentiveness, or whatever they can find to make you look bad, even if the facts are completely normal behavior for 50 million other parents.

Is anyone standing up to this nonsense? I no longer get Fox News TV, but I doubt that it even has the nerve to stand up to what Obama is doing. Anyone who does will be called a racist, and lacking empathy for the poor black people in Ferguson.

The population of Ferguson was 99% white in 1970, and 85% white in 1980. Now it is 67% black. Obviously black people are not treated that badly, because they keep moving there. Maybe they like the way that the white cops keep order there.

This is the same Obama administration that blocks the Keystone pipeline because of possible environmental problems, and not for anything that has been identified. It just adopted FCC regulations to regulate the internet, not because of what service providers are doing, but because of what they might do in the future. Ferguson is guilty without evidence. See a pattern here? These are the same kinds of people who consider fathers guilty until proven innocent.

Update: Now Obama says:

We’re the immigrants who stowed away on ships to reach these shores, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free –- Holocaust survivors, Soviet defectors, the Lost Boys of Sudan. We’re the hopeful strivers who cross the Rio Grande because we want our kids to know a better life. That’s how we came to be. (Applause.)

We’re the slaves who built the White House and the economy of the South. (Applause.) We’re the ranch hands and cowboys who opened up the West, and countless laborers who laid rail, and raised skyscrapers, and organized for workers’ rights.

We’re the fresh-faced GIs who fought to liberate a continent. And we’re the Tuskeegee Airmen, and the Navajo code-talkers, and the Japanese Americans who fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied.

We’re the firefighters who rushed into those buildings on 9/11, the volunteers who signed up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. We’re the gay Americans whose blood ran in the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge. (Applause.)

This was the top front page story in my local newspaper, possibly in response to this letter:

As an African American living in this community and a subscriber to this paper, I found it despicably disturbing that nothing had been mentioned in your March 4 paper about the Department of Justice findings concerning racial bias by Ferguson police. This report could be found on the front page of every national newspaper, showing that African-Americans in Ferguson, who make up 67 percent of the population, are subjected to 85 percent of vehicular stops, receive 90 percent of citations and make up 93 percent of those arrested.

The feds also found that African-Americans committed 95% of the crimes. The newspaper was doing African-Americans a favor by not mentioning the crime rates.

Law must be scrubbed clean of normal parents

Lesbian marriage is all about cutting off fathers from their kids. Consider this case:

Despite the advance of same-sex marriage in the US, it may be some time before the law is scrubbed clean of the presumption that a male/female relationship constitutes a family.

A legally-married lesbian couple in New Jersey, Sheena and Tiara Yates, are fighting requests for visitation rights from their two children’s biological fathers.

Most states have court precedents saying that parents have a constitutional right to their kids. Even the US Supreme Court said some similar things about 80 years ago.

All of that must be scrubbed clean now, to please the lesbians.

Britain is finding that it must take alleged lesbians from Africa:

The Home Office has been accused of having ‘outdated’ views on sexuality, after it rejected an asylum claim made by a Nigerian lesbian.

Aderonke Apata, 47, came to Britain in 2004 and is an award-winning LGBT rights activist.

Now, she is challenging the Government’s decision not to grant her asylum in Britain and fears that deportation to Africa would compromise her safety.

Yesterday, she appeared in London’s High Court to appeal her case.

She was accompanied by her fiancée Happiness Agboro and a group of gay-rights activists. Apata has even submitted footage and photographic evidence of her sex life to prove that she is homosexual. ...

However, the Home Office has refused to recognise her sexuality – arguing she can’t be classified as a lesbian because she has children from a previous heterosexual relationship.

Barrister Andrew Bird, on behalf of the Home Secretary, claimed that Apata wasn’t “part of the social group known as lesbians,” although he conceded that she had “indulged in same-sex activity.”

“You can’t be a heterosexual one day and a lesbian the next day. Just as you can’t change your race,” he added during the hearing.

Apata’s barrister, Abid Mahmood, called these views: “highly offensive”.

Highly offensive? I thought that the gays and lesbians get offended when you say the opposite. They are forced us all to switch from the term "sexual preference" to "sexual orientation", just to emphasize that it is unchangeable. California has even passed a law against changing sexual orientation.

Until recently, gay asylum seekers were liable to be asked ‘intrusive’ and personal questions about their sex lives, in order to establish the validity of claims about their sexuality.

So they don't ask those questions anymore?

If she does not care to publicly discuss her sexual practices, she could stay in the closet and no one would bother her.

These people want asylum for being LGBT activists, but they do not want to say what it is that they really do.

In the USA, when the feds suspect a marriage for the purpose of immigration fraud, they ask intrusive personal questions. I thought they did, anyway. I guess that now when a woman gets off the boat from Africa and demands asylum and citizenship by virtue of being a lesbian, it is rude to ask whether she really has sexual relations with another woman? And rude to ask how she got those kids (who are probably also getting asylum) if she is not oriented towards male-female sexual relations?

This is a funny thing about gay rights. The activists want to be in your face about being gays and lesbians, but in the closet about what they do. For example, the recent Alan Turing movie made a big deal about him being gay, but never gave any clue about any actual homosexual relationship.

I can buy into libertarian views on LGBTQIA behavior, but we are going way beyond that.

Moody women are now on drugs

A female psychiatrist writes in the NY Times:

WOMEN are moody. By evolutionary design, we are hard-wired to be sensitive to our environments, empathic to our children’s needs and intuitive of our partners’ intentions. This is basic to our survival and that of our offspring. Some research suggests that women are often better at articulating their feelings than men because as the female brain develops, more capacity is reserved for language, memory, hearing and observing emotions in others.

These are observations rooted in biology, not intended to mesh with any kind of pro- or anti-feminist ideology. But they do have social implications. ...

Sales of antidepressants and antianxiety meds have been booming in the past two decades, and they’ve recently been outpaced by an antipsychotic, Abilify, that is the No. 1 seller among all drugs in the United States, not just psychiatric ones. ...

At least one in four women in America now takes a psychiatric medication, compared with one in seven men. Women are nearly twice as likely to receive a diagnosis of depression or anxiety disorder than men are. ...

The most common antidepressants, which are also used to treat anxiety, are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (S.S.R.I.s) that enhance serotonin transmission. ... These medicines frequently leave women less interested in sex. ... On S.S.R.I.s, you probably won’t be skipping around with a grin; it’s just that you stay more rational and less emotional. Some people on S.S.R.I.s have also reported less of many other human traits: empathy, irritation, sadness, erotic dreaming, creativity, anger, expression of their feelings, mourning and worry.

Nobody wants to say it, but most women are emotionally unstable, without a man in the house. They need a man, or drugs, or they go nuts.

I did not know that the biggest selling drug is an anti-psychotic. That drug is primarily used for the treatment of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Under Obamacare, mental illness is supposed to be covered the same as physical illness. A separate story says nursing homes overuse this drug, and bill Medicare.

There is research showing that women change their mate preferences during their monthly cycles. There are also feminist scholars who deny this, as it implies that women are slaves to their hormones and emotions.

CPS monitors kid walking home from school

I posted about this case of CPS abuse in January. The Wash. Post now reports:

The Maryland parents investigated for letting their young children walk home by themselves from a park were found responsible for “unsubstantiated” child neglect in a decision that has not fully resolved their clash with authorities over questions of parenting and children’s safety.

Danielle and Alexander Meitiv hoped the nationally debated case — which has lit up social media and brought a dozen television film crews to their Silver Spring home — would be dismissed after a two-month investigation by Montgomery County Child Protective Services.

But the finding of unsubstantiated child neglect means CPS will keep a file on the family for at least five years and leaves open the question of what would happen if the Meitiv children get reported again for walking without adult supervision.

The parents say they will continue to allow their son, Rafi, 10, and daughter Dvora, 6, to play or walk together, and won’t be swayed by the CPS finding.

A 2-month investigation about a kid walking home from school?

Don't ever believe these creeps when they say that they are overworked. They obviously have way too much time on their hands.

The Meitivs received the CPS letter last week, they said, but consulted with a lawyer before speaking publicly.

Danielle Meitiv said when she first read the decision, she felt numb. As she reread it, she recalled turning to her husband and saying: “Oh my God, they really believe we did something wrong.”

“I was kind of horrified,” she said, adding: “You try as a parent to do what’s right. Parents try so hard. Even though I know they are wrong, it’s a painful judgment.”

I don't know what her lawyer told her to expect, but a letter like that is the best you ever get in California. CPS never says that you are innocent, no matter how compelling the evidence. The best they ever say about you is that the current charges are unsubstantiated.

You might think that if CPS investigates parents and find no fault, then those parents would becomes less suspect than the average parents. But their attitude is the opposite. Once CPS investigates, the parents are in the system, and under CPS surveillance. If the kid ever falls and breaks a bone, CPS worries that it might be blamed for inadequate intervention.

They say that when CPS started its investigation, on the day of their children’s walk from the park, Alexander Meitiv was asked to sign a form saying he would not leave the children unsupervised until CPS followed up. When he resisted, saying he wanted to talk to a lawyer, he was told that if he did not sign, the children would be removed, the Meitivs said.

The Meitivs are like a bone in the mouth of hungry pit bull. It does not let go.

In the warped twisted minds of CPS agents, the parents have signed up for govt supervision, and it would be irresponsible for CPS to drop the matter. No one can predict what might happen, they would say, so they have to monitor the situation.

I no longer have any hope that CPS can be reformed. It is fundamentally anti-parent in everything they do, and there is no political will to stop their abuses of power. No one dares stand up to CPS. Several years ago three Georgia legislators were trying to limits on CPS< and then all three were killed under mysterious circumstances.

Holder wants to convict the innocent

I have often complained that people do not believe in Innocent Until Proven Guilty anymore. An example is how the Obama administration has forced colleges, including Stanford, Harvard, and MIT.

Now US Attorney General Eric Holder wants national laws that make white males presumed guilty:

Holder told POLITICO that between now and his departure, probably in early March when the Senate is expected to confirm Loretta Lynch as his successor, he will call for a lower standard of proof for civil rights crimes. Such a change would make it easier for the federal government to bring charges in the case of a future Ferguson or Trayvon Martin.

“I think some serious consideration needs to be given to the standard of proof that has to be met before federal involvement is appropriate, and that’s something that I am going to be talking about before I leave office,” Holder, 64, said.

The attorney general’s comments appeared to be aimed partly at preparing the country for the possibility that no federal charges would be brought in the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., last summer. Holder said the inquiry would be completed when he left office, expected around the second week of March.

The Justice Department announced Tuesday that the Martin investigation had been closed, with “insufficient evidence to pursue federal criminal civil rights charges” against George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch coordinator who shot the unarmed black teenager to death back in 2012.

It is very strange how Barack Obama, and news media run by ykw like the NY Times, have relentlessly attempted to racialize the Trayvon and Ferguson events. In both cases, the eyewitnesses, physical evidence, and everything else have proved that the shootings were 100% necessary and justified. The blacks who died were vicious murderous criminals who deserved to die. These were the kind of blacks who got lynched in the old South.

I am sure that there are cases of unjustified shootings. And yet Obama and the Democrat Party choose these cases to make an issue about, not the others. They are effectively saying:

We are the hate-white-males party. We stand with black thugs who try to murder white cops and hispanic neighborhood watchmen. And if you oppose the black thugs, then the feds will do everything to destroy you, whether you are guilty of anything or not.

Many people thought that electing Barack Obama would end a lot of racial antagonism in the USA. The result has been the opposite.

The feds could not make a case against the Wilson shooting, but it is creating other charges:

Blacks make up 67 percent of the population in Ferguson. But they make up 85 percent of people subject to vehicle stops and 93 percent of those arrested. ...

Blacks were 68 percent less likely to have cases dismissed by Ferguson municipal judges and disproportionately likely to be subject to arrest warrants. From October 2012 to October 2014, 96 percent of people arrested in traffic stops solely for an outstanding warrant were black.

Blacks accounted for 95 percent of jaywalking charges, 94 percent of failure-to-comply charges and 92 percent of all disturbing-the-peace charges.

Maybe the blacks are the one who are distubing the peace. They were certainly the ones rioting and burning buildings.

Supposedly this is the smoking gun:

The investigators found evidence of racist jokes being sent around by Ferguson police and court officials. One November 2008 email read in part that President Barack Obama wouldn't likely be President for long because "what black man holds a steady job for four years."

Another jokes that made the rounds on Ferguson government email in May 2011 said: "An African American woman in New Orleans was admitted into the hospital for a pregnancy termination. Two weeks later she received a check for $3,000. She phoned the hospital to ask who it was from. The hospital said: 'Crimestoppers.'"

Holding a racial stereotype could be explained by an irrational racial animus, or it could be explained by a reflection of reality. If the case goes to trial, the feds should have to prove whether the impressions of black crime are accurate or not.

There is also a private lawsuit against Ferguson:

They allege that the cities have created an unconstitutional modern-day debtors’ prison, putting impoverished people behind bars in overcrowded, unlawful and unsanitary conditions with walls streaked with dirt, mucus and feces. ...

The purpose of the tickets and jailings, the lawsuits suggest, has been largely financial: to raise revenue to keep these tiny St. Louis County municipalities afloat.

I am against debtors prison, so I might be against Ferguson on this issue. But I am skeptical that a debtors prison raises revenue, so these charges may be exaggerated.

Ferguson was 99% white in 1970. The current mostly-black population moved in during the last 25 years. If the city is really so racist, why are all the blacks moving in?

I trust how people vote with their feet, over how some race-baiting President desperately paints a picture to generate racial hostility. Maybe the peaceful law-abiding blacks in Ferguson like the way the cops are tough on the troublemakers.

Update: The Obama/Holder report has issued, including;

* A March 2010 email mockingly read: "I be so glad that dis be my last child support payment!" Month after month, year after year, all dose payments!"
* October 2011: An email included a photo of a group of topless, dancing black women, seemingly in Africa, with the caption: "Michelle Obama's High School Reunion."
* A December 2011 email included jokes playing on offensive Muslim stereotypes

"Our investigation has not revealed any indication that any officer or court clerk engaged in these communications was ever disciplined," the report reads.

Furthermore some Ferguson thought that some of these emails were funny! I guess a sense of humor is now a federal offense.

Indiana may allow baby boxes

A lot of people presume that new moms only want the best for their babies. So why do some of them abandon them in thw woods?

Indiana brings back a medieval custom of abandoning babies in baby boxes. This whole article is sick. There is no mention of dads.

AP reports:

On the outside, the metal box looks like an oversized bread container. But what's inside could save an abandoned newborn's life.

The box is actually a newborn incubator, or baby box, and it could be showing up soon at Indiana hospitals, fire stations, churches and selected nonprofits under legislation that would give mothers in crisis a way to surrender their children safely and anonymously.

Indiana could be the first state to allow use of the baby boxes on a broad scale to prevent dangerous abandonments of infants if the bill, which unanimously passed the House this week, clears the state Senate. Republican state Rep. Casey Cox and child-safety advocates say they're unaware of any other states that have considered the issue at the level Indiana has.

Cox says his bill is a natural progression of the "safe haven" laws that exist in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Those give parents a legal way to surrender newborns at hospitals, police stations and other facilities without fear of prosecution so long as the child hasn't been harmed.

Many children, however, never make it that far. Dawn Geras, president of the Save the Abandoned Babies Foundation in Chicago, said safe haven laws have resulted in more than 2,800 safe surrenders since 1999. But more than 1,400 other children have been found illegally abandoned, nearly two-thirds of whom died.

Cox said his proposal draws on a centuries-old concept to help "those children that are left in the woods, those children that are abandoned in dangerous places."

Baby boxes, known in some countries as baby hatches or angel cradles, originated in medieval times, when convents were equipped with revolving doors known as "foundling wheels." Unwanted infants were placed in compartments in the doors, which were then rotated to get the infant inside.

Hundreds of children have been surrendered in modern-day versions in place in Europe and Asia. The devices are even the subject of a new documentary titled "The Drop Box," which chronicles the efforts of a pastor in Seoul, South Korea, to address child abandonment. ...

Some baby hatches in China have been so overwhelmed by abandonments in recent years that local officials have restricted their use or closed them.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has called for a ban on the boxes in Europe and has urged countries to provide family planning and other support to address the root causes of abandonments, according to spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell. ...

The boxes also would include a silent alarm that mothers could activate themselves by pushing a button.

"We're giving her the power to do what's right," Kelsey said. "We're hoping that these girls know that once they push that button, their baby will be saved."

The article does mention "parents" surrendering a baby, but this is all about moms, not dads.

The mom and dad never jointly decide to abandon a baby. If they do not want the baby, they just give it up for adoption. Abandonment occurs when the mom wants to get rid of the baby without the dad's knowledge or approval.

The Democrat-feminist-Roe.v.Wade dogma is that a pregnant woman has a constitutional right to obtain an abortion, at her sole discretion, thru-out the 9 months pregnancy. And laws like the above give her the sole right to dispose of the baby after birth.

Reasonable people can disagree about these issues, and I am not sure what is best. I am just pointing out how extreme the current law is.

If the mom can disclaim responsibility for a baby, then the dad should be able to also. If the mom does not want the baby, the dad should have the option to take it before it is adopted. Why are we catering to the whims of moms who are likely baby-killers? Who ever thought that it was a good idea to give the moms 100% of the say over such matters, and the dads 0%? These baby boxes are an extreme form of indulging narcissistic crazy moms.

Chained wives hire rabbi for torture

NPR Radio complains about orthodox Jewish divorce law:

In Israel, religious law governs family matters.

For a Jewish divorce, an Orthodox rabbi oversees a ritual that begins with the husband placing a folded decree into the wife's cupped hands. But that paper can be hard to get, because the husband can refuse to grant the divorce.

A new Israeli film playing in the U.S. shows how patriarchal Jewish divorce laws can trap even secular women for years. ...

These rabbinical judges almost never watch movies. They study Jewish religious and legal texts — all day, most days. The texts guide their lives and their court decisions.

They would probably like these feminist rabbis:

The trial of Mendel Epstein, a New Jersey Rabbi and alleged ringleader of a kidnapping scheme designed to force husbands into granting their wives religious divorces, entered its second day in court in Trenton today.

Epstein, 69, was arrested in October 2013 for allegedly charging undercover FBI agents $60,000 to kidnap a man and coerce him into granting his wife a Judaic divorce decree.

Rabbis Arrested in Cases of Alleged Torture

Epstein and his son David, along with two other rabbis named in the federal complaint as Jay Goldstein and Binyamin Stimler, face federal charges of conspiracy to kidnap and kidnapping. If found guilty, the men face a maximum penalty of 20 years to life in prison.

During Wednesday’s opening statement, prosecutors played a video of allegedly Epstein discussing a staged kidnapping with two undercover FBI agents, wherein he can be heard openly discussing the use of stun guns on men's genitalia.

"If it can get a bull that weighs five tons to move," the man on the video identified by the FBI as Epstein is heard telling the undercover agents, "you put it in certain parts of his body and in one minute the guy will know."

"Mendel Epstein talked about forcing compliance through the use of 'tough guys' who utilize electric cattle prods, karate, handcuffs and place plastic bags on the heads of husbands," said FBI Special Agent Bruce Kamerman shortly after Epstein's arrest.

Epstein's defense claims he was a "champion of women's rights" and employed "torture as term of art" in order to get a husband's "evil" recalcitrance to "leave his body." According to the strictest interpretation of ancient Jewish law, a religious divorce, referred to as a "get", can only be granted by a husband regardless of the circumstances that may have caused a marriage to break up. Without a "get", a religious Jewish woman cannot remarry or get on with her life and she becomes an ostracized member of the community called an “agunah” or a chained person. Convincing reluctant husbands to grant their wives divorces is a specialty among ultra-Orthodox rabbis.

The women can get civil divorces and remarriages, and only need the "get" for the approval of the Orthodox Jewish authorities.

A comment says this is not the whole story:

Many inaccuracies here. He was a thug for hire and made 100k a pop. of the 100+ men he tortured only 2 were actually refusing to divorce their wives. The rest were still going through custody disputes and he tortured the men to sign off everything to the wives. In fact he caused many problems (the Orthodox Jewish media has been on this for over a year). Also the article misrepresents Jewish Law on divorce, I know because I am in a Rabbinical College right now and have studied such laws. This guy was a thug for hire, not some champion of women's rights

Buried in some of these stories of "chained wives" is a crucial detail -- the wife ran off with the kids and she wants the husband to concede custody and child support rights. Here is the latest:

Rivky Stein, 25, testified at King's County Supreme Court in Brooklyn, New York, in a civil case against her estranged husband Yoel Weiss, 32. ...

'Whenever I refused anything from Yoel, he raped me, physically hurt me, verbally abused me and threatened me,' Ms Stein said. ...

The civil case, which began last month, will determine the custody of the couple's five-year-old son and daughter, four; child support payments; and alimony for Ms Stein.

Ms. Stein said that she wants the court to award her full custody of the children with supervised visitation with their father 'in a healthy way'. ...

In a separate matter, Ms Stein, who is an Orthodox Jew, continues to seek her get - a religious divorce which can only be granted with her husband's approval.

Ms Stein therefore lives as an 'agunah', a chained wife, unable to marry again in an Orthodox synagogue.

She told Daily Mail Online on Wednesday: 'He has continuously refused to give me a get. I don't know what I can do any more I have tried everything: Jewish court, Beis din rabbis and mediators but he refuses.

'He said he will never give me a Get, and that I will die old and alone.'

Brendan Lyle, CEO of divorce finance company BBL Churchill, is an expert in divorce cases and has met with Ms Stein and her rabbi.

He told Daily Mail Online: 'While the court can not force Mr Weiss to grant the Get, they do have several tools at their disposal to make him think twice if he doesn't provide Rivky with the get that she deserves.' ...

In court on Wednesday, she described the 'escape' from her marriage with her two children on July 2, 2012. ...

She testified that she had approached rabbis about the physical abuse by her husband, adding: 'I would ask them what I should do and if I had permission to call the police. They told me that I can’t. They wouldn’t give me permission to.'

So she kidnapped the kids and wants to be rewarded with child custody, support, and alimony, and with the judge to somehow pressure her husband for a religious blessing that she cannot get in Jewish court.

She has some outlandish allegations against him, but I have no way of assessing them.

Juvenile judge tries to silence a critic

The Geauga County Ohio Republican Party Chairwoman criticized a juvenile court judge in a private email for being "narcissist and mentally ill. Also, that he is a chameleon who takes revenge on people who disagree with him." So what does the judge do when he gets wind of it? He holds her in contempt of court!

The judge defends himself:

“Nancy McArthur improperly interfered with an ongoing (juvenile court matter) by making factually false statements about the competency and legal proficiency of the juvenile court judge … to a known party in that case,” Grendell told the Maple Leaf on Monday.

“Ms. McArthur’s conduct jeopardizes sensitive judicial proceedings that involve protection of a (juvenile),” the judge said.

Grendell said he would not discuss juvenile cases in the media.

“However, the court also will not allow Nancy McArthur or anyone else with a personal political agenda to jeopardize child safety in Geauga County by undermining the credibility and integrity of the juvenile court and the court’s ability to administer justice and protect children in pending … cases,” he added.

There is more info here.

This judge is way way way out of line to try to silence someone's free speech to comment on a public official. He will lose, of coursee.

I post this because the judge would have to have been bullying people for many years in order to get this arrogant, and because he defends himself by claiming to protect children. Whenever I here someone talking about protecting children, it is nearly always a scheme to do the opposite.

Someone once said Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. No, I think that protecting children is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Moms complain, not dads

Samantha Rodman writes a Wash. Post op=ed:

One thing I have noticed as a clinical psychologist in private practice is that men are increasingly less able to voice negative feelings about parenting, even ones that are entirely understandable. Imagine being at a play date and hearing someone say, “God, I needed a drink all day today. The kids were behaving terribly, I couldn’t deal.” You’re picturing a mom, right?

However, what if the speaker is a dad? The question is moot because I have yet to hear a dad complain this openly and honestly about his kids, and this is not for lack of trying. Dads don’t even take the conversational bait. If asked to commiserate about parenting, the average mom breathes a sigh of relief and sits forward in her seat, but the average dad looks around like he’s on Candid Camera and gives a vague answer about having lots of fun sitting around watching dance class through a two way mirror for the 15th week in a row.

Here are some comments:

But if a woman is looking for someone to listen to her endless string of petty complaints and histrionics, she should go find another woman (or a group of women), whereupon she can emote and complain at length. Don't bother me (or any other man) with your endless issues, complaints, emotional tantrums and angst.

I'm a man. Men solve problems. Problems aren't solved by whining about them.

Men do a lot of things without whining. Most things actually. A lot of the jobs men have traditionally taken in order to support their families are really not a lot of fun, and they're tiring, and stressing, and sometimes dirty and/or dangerous. Yet men don't walk in the door after a full day of not-especially-pleasant work and commence to whining for the next hour and a half.

Men created civilization and all our modern conveniences. They did it to get the women to stop complaining. If they only knew.....

Yes, this is a difference between moms and dads. The moms are forever complaining about stupid stuff.

Speaking of parental complaints, here an Amazon official in an interview trying to give an example of why you will want drones delivering your packages:

GK: I have three kids, and once when my wife was on a business trip one of the little ones woke up in the middle of the night screaming for a pacifier, which I couldn’t find. I had a moment of panic. Do I wake up the other kids, load everyone into the car, and drive to a 24-hour pharmacy — if I can even find one? I got lucky and found the pacifier. But the better solution was for the pacifier to come to me. I imagine myself pulling out my phone, pushing a button, and 30 minutes later the pacifier shows up.

I do not think he is joking. His name is Gur Kimchi, and I have no idea what ethnicity that is, so maybe there is some weird cultural issue. Surely there is some better example for the utility of drones.

No one is going to order a drone delivery of a pacifier in the middle of the night. The kid will have screamed himself to sleep by the time the drone arrives. No one is going to wake up the kids to drive to a 24-hour pharmacy for a pacifier. Was this the first time his wife left him with the kids? Is this some kind of Uzbekistan humor?

Sometimes I hear stories like this, and I wonder how parents manage. Pacifiers are useful sometimes, but they are never necessary and are not even worth looking for in the middle of the night. Just go back to sleep and forget it. If that is a crisis, then he must have 20 crises a day.

It sounds like a comical plot line about some stupid Hollywood movie about incompetent dads, such as Moms' Night Out: Official Trailer. Or maybe Amazon is signaling
that is just some silly keep-up-with-Google research project that is never intended for commercial reality.

Here is a mom complaining about sleep, in an NPR interview:

GROSS: When somebody has a baby, they're always told you're not going to get any sleep for a long time. But you point out that some people truly can't deal with sleep deprivation, and that it is sleep deprivation. I mean, there's going to be a period of time when you're just getting a few hours of sleep a night, if you're lucky, and that for some people, that's fine. For some people, that's - you know, it's difficult, but for some people, it's just kind of impossible to handle.

SENIOR: ... I was like a banana boat. I mean, I was just terrible on no sleep. And I thought I wasn't going to be because I was a veteran insomniac. I mean, I was a very practiced insomniac. I prided myself on knowing how to conduct my affairs on two to three hours of sleep. But it turns out to be different because it's very stressful, interrupted sleep.

So she could conduct her affairs on 2-3 hours of sleep a night, but was a basket case with a kid because that was being interrupted.

Newborn babies typically sleep 15-18 hours a day. How could a new mom possibly be short on sleep? Again, I don't think that she is joking. Is she spending a lot of time looking for lost pacifiers? I don't get it.

Defining a libertarian

Law professor David Bernstein writes:

I doubt any two libertarians agree on the exact boundaries of libertarianism, but how’s this for a working definition:

“A libertarian is someone who generally opposes government interference with and regulation of civil society, even when the result of such government action would be to clamp down on things the individual in question personally dislikes, finds offensive, or morally disapproves of.”

Thus, for example, a libertarian who hates smoking opposes smoking bans in private restaurants, a libertarian who thinks homosexual sodomy is immoral nevertheless opposes sodomy laws, a libertarian who finds certain forms of “hate speech” offensive still opposes hate speech laws, a libertarian who believes in eating natural foods opposes bans or special taxes on processed foods, and a libertarian who thinks that all employers should pay a living wage nevertheless opposes living wage legislation. It doesn’t matter whether the libertarian holds these positions because he believes in natural rights, for utilitarian reasons, or because he thinks God wants us to live in a libertarian society.

I have had people tell me that they believe in parental rights, but when they disapprove of some parental behavior, then they want the govt to clamp down.

Likewise people will say that they are in favor of free speech, but when they are offended, they want a clamp down.

A right means that you can do what you want, regardless of disapproval. Of course there are some limits, as when something is objectively harmful. Your right to swing your fist ends at your neighbor's nose, for example.

It is distressing how few people today believe in parental rights. Here are some childhood vaccine law changes in the works, with most of them being Democrats trying to eliminate parental rights over the matter.

Much of the discussion is over the vaccine safety. Hardly anyone says that the vaccines are safe, but should not be required. In Europe, Japan, and other modern countries, parents voluntarily get vaccines for their kids without any legal requirement.

The current debate started when a foreign tourist spread measles at Disneyland. Most of those getting it were unvaccinated adults. Childhood vaccination of Americans has almost nothing to do with the outbreak. Nevertheless it is used as an excuse to deny parental rights.

Under California laws that allowed parents to opt-out very easily, about 97% of kids were vaccinated anyway. That is more than enuf for herd immunity, and it is not worthwhile to squeeze that last 3% into compliance. If you believe in freedom, then let people make their own decisions, even if you disagree.

Opposing opinions on shared parenting

Family psychologist John Rosemond writes a newspaper op-ed:

When considering the issue of custody, domestic court judges often regard two divorcing parents who are equally responsible as deserving of equal time with their kids. They rule, therefore, that the kids will spend 132 days a year with one parent and 133 days with the other but that custody during birthdays and holidays will alternate from year to year. That’s very nice and virtually guarantees that neither parent is going to be upset, that they are both going to feel as if the court treated them fairly. Indeed, that is consistent with what they tell me: it’s fair.

No, it’s not fair. These judges are ruling for the best interests of the parents but their best interests are not the issue. Concerning custody, the children’s best interests should rule.

This shows the parent-hating attitude of the family psychologist. The judge should only settle the dispute between the parents, and leave the parents the responsibility of the kids.

But this psychologist has the leftist hivemind mentality of giving judges and psychologists control over deciding the BIOTCh.

Part if not most of the problem is that in divorces that involve children, the kids are often regarded as prizes to be “won.” ... The norm is warfare in which the kids are both suicide bombers and disputed territories.

The proactive solution is the traditional arrangement where one parent has primary custody and the other has the kids every other weekend, a month or so during the summer, and on alternating birthdays and holidays.

If equally shared parenting were the law, then there would be no such war and prizes in the vast majority of the cases. The war is created by the idea that judges and psychologists should decide the BIOTCh.

Psychology professor Linda Nielsen replies that the research overwhelmingly favors share parenting anyway:

Last year, 110 international experts on child development, early childhood attachment and divorce reached a ground-breaking consensus -- shared parenting, including frequent overnighting with both parents for infants and toddlers, is in children’s best interests.

Too many mental health professionals and professors offer recommendations about parenting plans that are based on their personal beliefs -- not on empirical data. Indeed many of these professionals have never read the available research. Just as some poorly informed doctors offer outdated or harmful advice about medical treatments, there are professionals who offer advice to judges and mental health practitioners that is not research-based.

More troubling still, many of these speakers and writers convincingly present their opinions as if they were actually reporting empirical data – a disguise that is not only disingenuous but potentially harmful to children whose lives are affected by judges’ and mental health practitioners’ decisions regarding custody issues. In short, too many well intentioned judges and practitioners have been misled into accepting advice that is not based on empirical evidence.

Shared parenting is not about parents’ rights. It is about making the best choices for children -- decisions that are firmly grounded in research -- not on the personal opinions of parents, seminar speakers, mental health professionals or judges.

To me, the best arguments for shared parenting are those of freedom, personal autonomy, and maintaining the family as a basic unit of civilization. If you value those things, it is obvious that shared parenting is better. The alternatives involve involve a vast invasion of civil liberties and social order.

Of course the research favors shared parenting, and the judges and psychologists who say otherwise are following their prejudices.

I got this from the National Parents Organization blog, and it does a fine job, but it is not enuf.

Apparently no one accepts an argument on either side unless it is phrased in terms of child interests. This is like the inmates running the asylum. The parents should be in charge of the kids. End of story.

Our society has witnessed a vast deprivation of our civil liberties for the sake of leftoid control of the kids. The people have put up with it, without much debate.

The gun lobby has done a very good job of convincing the public, and then the political authorities, that gun possession is a matter of right. Yes, there are studies showing that guns make people safer in their homes and elsewhere, but the bigger argument is that having gun rights is an essential part of our freedom.

Why can't the dads convince anyone that parental custody and authority is a right, and an essential part of our freedom? We should not need these stupid social science studies. No man is free as long as some judge or psychologist is controlling the upbringing of his kids.

Homewrecker sues for sex discrimination

It used to be that homewreckers outcasts.

Ellen Pao is an overeducated (3 Ivy degrees) Chinese-American who is currently CEO of Reddit.

The NY Times reports:

Now, in a high-profile suit set to go to trial this week, a jury will pass judgment about whether one woman suffered discrimination. The proceedings could resonate widely: A guilty verdict will be billed as a sweeping indictment of the high-tech world, while a dismissal might supply ammunition to those who feel gender issues are being overplayed.

The accuser is Ellen Pao, who worked at one of the valley’s most prominent venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. At the center of the suit is John Doerr, a legendary investor who was Ms. Pao’s boss and, according to court papers, practically a father to her.

She had an affair with a married East-Indian-American, and broke it off when he refused to divorce his wife. Then she married and had a kid with one of richest African-Americans, whose hedge fund has since gone bankrupt and may have been a Ponzi scheme.

30 years ago, I think that most men and women would say that a firm ought to fire any woman who is poaching married men at work. Such women were known as homewreckers, and were especially despised by women. It would not have mattered if the man made flirtatious comments that contributed to her seducing him.

Now, I don't know. I no longer have a feel for whether a jury would consider this acceptable behavior. Yes, it is a feminist dogma that a woman has a right to be a sexual predator and seduce whomever she pleases, regardless of anyone marital or employer obligations, and if anyone objects, she has a right to sue for millions of dollars.

But will a jury of 12 buy into such nonsense? I have no idea. We will soon find out, I guess.

Even if she loses, there will be big pressure on the tech world. The LA Times reports Women are leaving the tech industry in droves. And the masculine culture is to blame, as Pao will also argue at her trial.