NY Times against straight parents

NY Times editor Bill Keller writes an op-ed in favor of judicially imposed same-sex marriage:

The history of this issue is filled with stories of hardship and heartbreak befalling children whose parents are not recognized as — well, as parents. There are the cases of mothers and fathers turned away from a child’s hospital bed because they are not “family.” There are the cases of beloved adults denied visitation rights after a breakup. Many states restrict the ability of a gay parent to adopt or to respond to a child’s medical emergency.

This kind of argument makes me mad. No mothers and fathers are ever turned away from a child’s hospital bed because they are not family. They are only turned away because a vindictive ex-spouse gets a restraining order based on a phony abuse accusation.

I have been treated worse than any gay or lesbian parent in the nation. So have thousands of others, if not millions. And yet these leftist editors will only speak up for LGBTQIA activists, as if that promotes some sort of equality principle. It does not. People like Keller are out to destroy parental rights.

But it is fair to say that the research shows no significant disadvantage associated with being raised by lesbian mothers or gay fathers — not in academic performance, not in psychological health, not in social or sexual development, not in violent behavior or substance abuse. And the research leaves little doubt that stable, two-parent households (of whatever flavor) are likely to be better off financially, more attentive to the upbringing of children and more secure than single-parent households.

Sure, a couple of gay men adoptive parents probably do better than a slutty heterosexual single mom at child-rearing. But that's not the issue. What the studies overwhelmingly show is that kids do better with their two natural fit parents than all other alternatives. And that is what family courts are systematically denying for millions of parents and kids today.

When a lesbian couple schemes to get legal parental rights, it is often at the expense of some real dad, and to the detriment of some kid who gets deprived of having a dad. There is not a shred of evidence that any child has ever benefited from such an arrangement. I guess that there are a few examples of lesbians rearing test-tube babies successfully, but that does not imply that lesbianism is good social policy, and it ignores the far greater problem of fatherless homes.

As mentioned here, studies indicated that LGBT parents do worse. Keller says that the leading study was rebutted by a sociology professor in this article, saying that the study should not have been published because its definition of lesbian mother included bisexuals, and because three of the six reviewers are on record as opposing same-sex marriage. Furthermore, the journal editor has received a steady stream of angry e-mails, from both colleagues and irate strangers. Apparently there are academic hate groups that will try to end your career if you publish anything unfavorable about LGBTQIA households.

As I've said, I really don't care about the private lives of LGBTQIA folks. I do care that their activists are out to destroy parental rights for the rest of us, and forcing kids to grow up without dads.

Dilbert robot empathy

From the Dilbert comic strip.

Movement to limit gay freedoms

NY Times columnist (and Obama supporter) David Brooks writes:

I don’t think we’ve paused sufficiently to celebrate the wonderful recent defeat for the cause of personal freedom. After all, these sorts of defeats don’t happen every day.

Over the past 40 years, personal freedom has been on a nearly uninterrupted winning streak. In the 1960s, we saw a great expansion of social and lifestyle freedom.

So what is he talking about? Several paragraphs later, he explains his point:

But last week saw a setback for the forces of maximum freedom. A representative of millions of gays and lesbians went to the Supreme Court and asked the court to help put limits on their own freedom of choice. They asked for marriage.

Marriage is one of those institutions — along with religion and military service — that restricts freedom. Marriage is about making a commitment that binds you for decades to come. It narrows your options on how you will spend your time, money and attention.

Whether they understood it or not, the gays and lesbians represented at the court committed themselves to a certain agenda. They committed themselves to an institution that involves surrendering autonomy. They committed themselves to the idea that these self-restrictions should be reinforced by the state. They committed themselves to the idea that lifestyle choices are not just private affairs but work better when they are embedded in law.

No, the LGBTQIA agenda does not include decades of commitment or loss of sexual freedom. Those aspects of marriage have already been abolished. We have so-called no-fault divorce, where either spouse can get a divorce at any time for any reason. We have also abolished laws against adultery.

What we have had, since the 1960s, is the dramatic rise of the family courts and their infringement of the freedoms of parents, whether they are married or not. Brooks and his allies seem completely blind to this.

I suspect that this shift in public acceptance will be permanent, unless it turns out that marriages are more unstable when two people of the same gender are involved.

More unstable? Of course those marriages will turn out to be more unstable. But that will not matter.

Assuming the court forces same-sex marriage on us, it will never achieve that public acceptance. It will be just another example of elite liberals trying to force values on us. Previous examples are forced racial busing, late term abortions, legalized flag burning, and abolishing capital punishment.

As the court's most radical feminist argues:

With two same-sex marriage cases before the Supreme Court, numerous commentators have latched on to remarks by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg critical of the court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. It is not the judgment that was wrong, but “it moved too far, too fast,” she said at Columbia Law School last year, a view she has expressed in various speeches and law review articles.

That's right, and the court will never have broad respect until it admits its error.

Note: LGBTQIA stands for Lesbian; Gay; Bisexual; Transsexual, Transgender, or Transvestite; Questioning or Queer; Intersex; and Ally or Asexual.

The Snow White defense of Jodi Arias

The Jodi Arias trial for the Killing of Travis Alexander continues to go off the rails. The prosecutor is attacking Alyce LaViolette lecture on 10/16/08 YouTube, Gender Fairytales and Domestic Violence. The questioning concerns whether Snow White was a battered woman.

Arizona prosecutor Juan Martinez challenged domestic violence expert Alyce LaViolette’s opinion that Arias was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of her former boyfriend, slaying victim Travis Alexander, 30. LaViolette gave a presentation in 2012 that found Snow White was a battered woman, which the prosecutor said shows the expert can find abuse in situations she knows very little about, including "myths."

"What this shows us is that even if it’s a myth -- all made up -- you can come up with the opinion that the person is a victim of domestic violence," Martinez said.

I am not sure about prosecutor Martinez's strategy, but LaViolette is someone who sees domestic violence in any man, and leaps to abuse conclusions without regard to facts or scientific knowledge. He seemed content to just ridicule her.

LaViolette testified that Jodi was a "battered woman" in an "abusive relationship".

The evidence was very weak. I did not hear any actual quotes that were abusive. There are no police reports, medical treatments, corroborating evidence, or anything like that. There are hundreds of pages of emails, diaries, text messages, and voicemails. LaViolette just argued that her impression was that there was abuse.

LaViolette claimed that Travis once called Jodi a "sociopath", he said she "can't get off lazy butt", he "doesn't want her apology", and he understands how evil she is. These are quotes from LaViolette, not Travis, and no context for these remarks was given. She described the abuse as "character assassination, not name-calling", and therefore a higher level of abuse. She also accepted Jodi's stories that Travis choked, slapped, and broke her finger.

There was also testimony that Jodi and Travis had many good times together, and enjoyed fun trips.

LaViolette also complained that Travis flirted with women, and made sexualized suggestions to them. He even implied that was less sexually experienced that he was, and he had violated Mormon teachings about abstaining from sexual relations before marriage.

LaViolette told one story about how Travis and Jodi had broken up, they were still communicating, Travis told Jodi he did not want to hear about her other dates, Jodi accidentally forwarded a message to him from messages with another boyfriend, Travis was "upset" with this and asks her not to do that, and Jodi was apologetic. LaViolette says this shows that Travis is jealous, controlling, angry, fearful, overreactive, threatening, and critical. In other words, abusive.

Travis also once said that he was "merciful" to her, and LaViolette said that is an example of how abusers perceive things different from others.

I still don't see much relevance to the expert testimony. If Jodi committed premeditated murder against Travis, then she had some motivation. If Martinez is right, then it was a jealous rage. If LaViolette is right, then Jodi was not jealous at all, but was unhappy about the relationship because Travis occasionally called her a skank or some other negative term. Does that make it better?

Usually the battered woman defense is given when the woman is supposedly trapped in a marriage, and feels that she cannot leave because of financial dependency, care for the kids, social pressure, emotional dependency, or loyalty. But none of applies here, as Jodi was living in another state and occasionally dating other men.

I just learned that the DSM-5 creates the relational disorder. This means a cuople might have no individual disorrders, but there relationship is disordered. I didn't know that psychologists ever diagnosed anything but individual problems. So perhaps Travis and Jodi had a relational disorder, but there was nothing wrong with Travis individually.

If I were the prosecutor, I would have directly attacked the scientific basis of the defense expert testimony, because there is none. However, I don't know whether that would be more effective with the jury. Maybe that would be taking LaViolette too seriously, and she does not deserve it.

Arias expert tells stupid frog story

A defense expert at the Jodi Arias trial testified:

Psychotherapist Alyce LaViolette: Most of us, when we do things that we want, either in a relationship or a job, and we are compromised, we lose part of who we are when that happens. And you see this a little at a time, it is gradual.
So nobody is losing all of themself at once.

There is an analogy that if you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, the frog is gonna boil, but it is gonna jump out. But if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly turn up the flame, the frog gets boiled because its gradual and it doesn't know what's happening.

LaViolette: Defense lawyer: Oh, okay. So can I guess to abusive relationships, when they're gradual like this, the person doesn't necessarily have that reckoning, that it is happening to them? Is that what you mean?

Yes, that is what I mean.

No, the boiling frog story is not true. I did the experiment myself, even tho I got some criticism from some animal rights sympathizers. If you don't believe me, do the experiment. Or look it up.

So what is this woman's expertise? Much of what she says is common knowledge, such as saying that relationships have ups and downs, or that one might be more in love than the other. But when she makes some claim, she has no facts to back it up. Here it is just a bogus myth to back up her conclusion.

Later she shows some knowledge when she says:

LaViolette: It's a mandatory report to the police [when a domestic violence medical injury is treated in California] ...

What I find to be most true is that there is not a lot of record of medical or police calls in a lot of domestic violence cases, that when people are intending to stay together, they don't call the police, because they don't want their partners arrested, they don't want a record, that kind of thing. ... That will go for victims of either gender.

There is some truth to this. The broader principle is called the law of unintended consequences. California feminists and liberals can pass a law requiring reporting, and the result can be less reporting, because the reports have severe and unfair consequences that people want to avoid.

Of course LaViolette does not have any data that would allow applying to this case.

She also testified:

LaViolette: I also, by the way, have people who are sophisticated enough that they are not doing physical abuse because they know that they can be arrested for it. And much more of the abuse is controlling behavior and psychological.

Defense lawyer: You mean you have actually seen perpetrators do that:

LaViolette: Yes.

So if laws against girlfriend beating are enforced, then men will do it less. But in her view, the psychological abuse is worse, so I guess these laws are counter-productive.

LaViolette was asked about the Conflict tactics scale. She said she had several disagreements with it. This drew an objection, but the defense successfully argued that an expert is allowed to give her opinion.

The trouble with this line of argument is that an expert is supposed to be following generally accepted knowledge. Once she starts disagreeing with the accepted knowledge, it leaves the jury confused. Are they supposed to follow the accepted knowledge or the disagreement?

And ultimately LaViolette's testimony is based on her impression of a lot of hearsay, while there is no direct admissible evidence for her premises. For example she assumes that Jodi was abused by her parents, and those parents are sitting in the courtroom without having testified.

A lot of what LaViolette says seems just plain wrong. For example, she testified that the evidence shows that Travis was jealous, and there is no trace of Jodi being jealous. But Jodi's diary said:

I certainly wasn't thrilled - no - I was DEVASTATED when I discovered that he wasn't being faithful to me. I just don't get why men cheat!!! ... Infidelity is so awful and causes rediculous [sic] pain. ... Each time the transgressor seemed grieved that I got hurt.

This proves that Jodi was jealous. LaViolette also testified that Jodi did not write about her being abused because she believed in the law of attraction. But the above diary shows that Jodi did write negative things about Travis.

Update: The defense complained about the release of documents and videos, and asked that the jury be sequestered. The judge said no. The documents and video seem to contradict what the defense experts are saying, and the defense does not want the jury to see that.

Expert says victim was an abuser

I continue to be baffled at how the Jodi Arias domestic violence expert LaViolette is taken seriously.

If the man she killed, Travis Alexander, were an abuser, then that might be a motive for Jodi to kill him. But it would still be murder. They were not married or living together, and she was not particularly dependent on him. She could have easily walked away.

But the purpose of the testimony seems to be that the abuse from Travis was so subtle that only an expert would recognize it. Jodi did not know that she was being abused.

Here is the abuse. Travis is accused of flirting with women. Travis once called Jodi a "skank" in a text message. Travis had anal sex with Jodi, including once after Jodi had a Mormon baptism.

Jodi did not like being called a skank, but Travis apologized so Jodi did not take it as abuse. Jodi thought that the anal sex was less sinful than the vaginal sex, and she enjoyed it with two other boyfriends also. This showed that she did not realize that the anal sex was abusive.

The expert testified that anal sex is inappropriate after a Mormon baptism.

Jodi once emailed one boyfriend saying that she was loyal to Travis, and then forwarded the email to Travis. This supposedly shows that while Travis said that their relationship was not exclusive, he somehow preferred Jodi to not have other boyfriends.

This all is supposed to explain why Jodi never told anyone about the abuse. The abuse was so subtle that no one would have belleve that it was abusive. Her friends might tell her, for example, that Travis was not being abusive when he told her that she could date other men.

Her biggest argument was that an email showed that Jodi was more in love with Travis than Travis was in love in Jodi. This created a power inbalance in the relationship, and such relationships are inherently abusive.

I thought that LaViolette is making a fool out of herself, but I afraid that I am wrong. My guess is that her client list and rates will go way up after this trial.

Here are some of her buzz phrases: "learned hopefulness", for Jodi sometimes hoping for marriage with Travis and sometimes not, and "variable interval reinforcement", for Travis sometimes being nicer than at other times, "loving respite" and "honeymoon phase", for making up after an argument.

LaViolette somehow finds Travis to be deceptive, manipulative, and jealous. As far as I can see, there is no actual evidence on the record of any of those things. Those terms apply much more to Jodi. It seems to me that LaViolette is just a man-hater, and that she could call Travis abusive no matter what he did. The only psychological diagnosis here to be made is that Jodi is a psychopath, and these experts would say so if they were honest and competent.

Correction: HLN TV just broadcast the police interviews of Jodi's parents, and they told the police that Jodi was bipolar. So yes, there is another possible diagnosis.

Google down-ranks unnatural links

I mentioned that this blog is blocked by some filtering software. Now I get this email, about Google's censoring policies:

Hi George,

We would like to discuss an important matter with you regarding your site.

It has come to our attention that Google has penalized our site due to our backlink profile. Unfortunately, a link to our site on your website may be considered unnatural by Google and may be partially responsible for our penalization.

Because of this, we request that you remove the link to our site that is located here and says: ...

Apparently this firm posted some spam in my blog comments a couple of years ago, and now Google is penalizing them for it. So now they want me to remove the comments.

Perhaps I should be happy that Google is discouraging spam, but who appointed Google the policeman of the web? I am using Google to filter the spam, so if some got thru, I blame Google. (Occasionally a legitimate comment gets held up by mistake.)

The questionable practice here is that Google penalizes sites for what it considers unnatural links. Apparently I could punish a site I don't like by putting a bunch of unnatural links to it on my blog. They would be left begging me to remove the links, as the above letter does. I could refuse.

Google complains a lot about censorship in China and elsewhere, but it does its own form of censorship when it down-ranks web sites out of disapproval of the links to those sites.

Criminal court experts can also be bad

I have been following the Jodi Arias trial, and I may have to reassess some things I've said here in the past. I have long complained that the family court allows expert testimony of the sort that would not be admissible in a criminal court. For example, I wrote in Dec. 2011:

Power corrupts, and the psychologists are not reliable. I got a Palo Alto psychologist named Ken Perlmutter and he gave testimony that would never be admissible in a real court. He did not apply any psychological expertise at all, and just gave an incompetent opinion. I have detailed his incompetence and bias on this blog. Maybe someday the legal system will recognize that a crook like Perlmutter should never testify in court.

And in Nov. 2011:

But a conclusory statement is one that tries to give some sort of conclusion without supporting evidence. In a real court, testimony is dismissed as soon as the lawyer points out that it is conclusory. The quack court shrinks write conclusory reports that no legitimate judge would accept.

Jodi gives shrink the finger. HLN TV blurred it.

But the Jodi Arias defense experts are shockingly bad, and the judge and prosecution meekly put up with them.

Maybe this judge has just lost control of the case. Maybe she (yes, judge Sherry Stephens is a woman) is scared that a death penalty verdict will not withstand appeal unless she bends over backwards to allow the defense to do whatever it wants. I doubt it, because this trial is a train wreck that probably will not have a death penalty verdict anyway. There is overwhelming evidence of premeditated first degree murder, but it will be hard for the jury to stay focused on the real issues.

It appears that the problem with expert psychotherapist testimony is much more widespread than I thought.

One of the basic rules of American justice is the hearsay rule. It is shown in the Sixth Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial,... to be confronted with the witnesses against him; ...

The idea here is that you cannot be convicted based on someone's out-of-court accusations, or even affidavits under oath. All statements have to come from witnesses who testify in court, and are cross-examined when confronted in court.

The Jodi Arias trial violates the hearsay rule at least 20 times a day. The defense domestic violence expert LaViolette is testifying that Travis (the victim) was an abuser based entirely on hearsay.

Normally, testimony of abuse has to come from an eyewitness. Jodi could testify that she was abused. A voicemail or email could be admitted only if the author testifies about what he meant by the message. Since Travis is dead, his emails would be hearsay but might be admitted under a hearsay exception.

You sometimes hear about a trial witness being murdered before he can testify at a gangster trial. That is because all his police statements, affidavits, and depositions are all hearsay unless he actually testifies in the court trial.

But LaViolette has read emails from Jodi and Travis and argued that they are evidence of abuse. The judge has ruled that this is admissible provided that LaViolette does not quote from the emails. As long as she paraphrases an email or draws her own factual conclusions, the testimony is allowed.

This is backwards. The emails do not even show any abuse. LaViolette's theory is that the abuse is so subtle that only an expert like herself can recognize it. But she does not even have any expertise in reading emails.

LaViolette might think that anal sex is abusive. I doubt that it was, as Jodi herself testified that she enjoyed anal sex with other boyfriends. But that is up to the jury, and this witness's opinion is irrelevant unless she has some data or other generally accepted expert knowledge about anal sex to inform the jury. But LaViolette has no expertise in anal sex and has not presented any knowledge on the subject. She just has her opinion.

Occasionally the prosecutor makes a hearsay objection by saying, "objection foundation". He is not allowed to say any more before the jury because the judge has forbidden "talking objections". If such an objection is sustained, then the defense lawyer merely backtracks slightly by asking something like, "Is this email important to you? ... Please explain why." Whereupon the witness says that the email shows abuse or whatever the defense wanted, and usually without objection. Thus the defense has managed to get in all of the hearsay as evidence.

This goes against what I thought that I knew about criminal procedure. There is supposed to be some linkage between the witness's expert knowledge, and some factual question at issue in the trial. Here, there is none.

This trial is costing millions:

The Jodi Arias murder trial became even more of a spectacle Thursday as defense attorneys argued that the prosecutor committed misconduct by signing autographs and posing for pictures with fans outside court. ...

The argument played out as officials revealed that the cost of Arias' defense to taxpayers has exceeded $1.4 million to date. Arias is represented by court-appointed attorneys at a rate of up to $250 per hour after she was unable to afford her own defense.

This does not include the tax money spent by police, prison, prosecutor, and court.

The press reports:

LaViolette said many victims of domestic violence don't leave their abusers because "shame and humiliation will keep people stuck."

During her 18 days on the witness stand, Arias described repeated instances of Alexander physically abusing her, once even choking her into unconsciousness.

LaViolette explained that it's typical for a battered woman not to tell anyone about the abuse.

"They want people to like their partner," she said. "They don't want anybody to think they have lousy taste."

Typical? It would be more useful to say that first degree murderers lie about their crimes.

If she were really an expert on this, she would tell us what percent of women are abused, and what percent do not tell anyone. And also she would tell us about all the women who make up a phony abuse story in court, when her lawyer advises her that it is to her legal advantage.

A real expert would tell us whether she can distinguish real abuse from phony abuse, and give some verifiable procedure for measuring her accuracy. LaViolette cannot do anything of the kind, of course.

Most ourtageiously, she claimed that an "email string" showed abuse, but was unable to point to any specific words or sentences that were abusive. She explained this by saying that she heard somewhere that 90% of communication is nonverbal, so she was inferring abuse from the emails without necessarily having verbal evidence.

Prosecutor Juan Martinez is widely praised as a tough cross-examiner, but I do not think that he is competent enough to pick apart LaViolette. We will see. And if he is, I do not think that Judge Stephens is smart enough to understand just how bad LaViolette is.

Here is how the testimony was reported:

LaViolette was referencing email exchanges between Arias, Alexander and his longtime friends Chris and Sky Hughes.

LaViolette was not allowed to quote from the emails and they were not shown to the jury, but she was allowed to paraphrase the content and offer her opinion on it.

"The question with regard to whether or not the Hugheses thought Mr. Alexander had previously been abusive with women, is that important to you?" Arias’ defense attorney, Jennifer Willmott, asked LaViolette.

"Yes, it is," LaViolette replied.

"Does that help you to formulate an opinion ultimately about the type of relationship this ended up to be?" asked Willmott.

"Yes it does," said LaViolette.

"And so, in this e-mail, is there information about whether or not Mr. Alexander's closest friends thought he had issues with women?" Willmott asked.

"Yes, there is," said LaViolette.

Isn't this obviously bogus? If Alexander's friends thought he had issues, and if those issues were somehow related to his killing, then the friends could be called in to testify under oath. For some shlock expert to testify that he had issues based on some emails is crazy. And it is even worse that the jury is not allowed to see the emails.

California passed Evidence Code 1107 just to grease the wheels for domestic violence experts:

1107. (a) In a criminal action, expert testimony is admissible by either the prosecution or the defense regarding intimate partner battering and its effects, including the nature and effect of physical, emotional, or mental abuse on the beliefs, perceptions, or behavior of victims of domestic violence, except when offered against a criminal defendant to prove the occurrence of the act or acts of abuse which form the basis of the criminal charge.

(b) The foundation shall be sufficient for admission of this expert testimony if the proponent of the evidence establishes its relevancy and the proper qualifications of the expert witness. Expert opinion testimony on intimate partner battering and its effects shall not be considered a new scientific technique whose reliability is unproven.

... it refers to "intimate partner battering and its effects" in place of "battered women's syndrome."

This law does require "relevancy", and therefore defense lawyers argued that the prosecution should not be allowed the use domestic violence experts unless there is some evidence of domestic violence. This law was written to make it easier to convict men of domestic violence.

However the California Supreme Court removed ine relevancy requirement in People v. Brown (2004), which decided (also reported here):

Expert testimony on battered women's syndrome may be introduced at domestic violence trials, even in the absence of prior evidence of abuse, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday. Such evidence can be admitted, the court held, because the judge could use it in evaluating the credibility of a victim's courtroom testimony. A domestic violence counselor testified that 80 percent to 85 percent of battered women recant their testimony before or at trial.

Sometimes a man is charged with domestic violence, and the only witness is his wife or girlfriend  and she testifies that he did not abuse her or refuses to testify. The the prosecution uses a domestic violence expert to testify that the woman is just trying to protect her man, and that the state needs to bust up an unhealthy relationship.

The lone dissenter was Janice Rogers Brown, who is now a federal appeals judge in DC. The name of the case, "People v Brown", is based on a defendant named Brown. By a coincidence of names, it was also "People v Brown" because Judge Brown was the only sensible judge we had in California.

I do not know whether Arizona has a law like California's. Apparently Arizona does allow bogus domestic violence expert testimony.

Update: I have previously mentioned Supreme Court cases on the right to confront witnesses here and here, and Justice Scalia's skepticism about psychologists.

Update: Here is LaViolette's exact testimony:

Defense lawyer (after objection): Why is that important to you, Ms. LaViolette?

LaViolette: It's important to me because there is a saying in the -- I don't know if it's all the world, but in the clinical world that 90% of all the communication is nonverbal. One of the things we're looking at is a communication apparently by Mr. Alexander that although he says it's okay for her to date, ...

Prosecutor: Objection.

So she managed to testify that her expertise allows her to figure out that Travis Alexander's non-abusive email was actually controlling somehow. She later cited an email Jodi wrote to other boyfriend, saying she is loyal to Travis even tho they are in a non-exclusive relationship. Jodi forwarded the email to Travis. So maybe Jodi did not want to maintain multiple sexual relationships at once, and told the man she wanted to be her main boyfriend. How is this abuse? Don't most women do this?

Hired man to fake rape

The local Santa Cruz California Sentinel published these letters:

Time for Santa Cruz to pick a new slogan

I have to say it. I cannot stand the slogan "keep Santa Cruz weird." It reminds me of the 1960s. We dressed differently, grew out our hair, used drugs, protested anything and everything, lived in communes, loved everyone and were considered weird. ...

Melanie Defe, Santa Cruz

We need a safer Santa Cruz now

Years ago I used to work in downtown Santa Cruz and knew may of our transients by sight and some by name. As time went on, a new, aggressive group of transients began moving in and downtown began feeling very unsafe to me.

Seven years ago, holding my 6-month-old, I was aggressively accosted by a panhandler wielding a machete who got angry with me for not giving him money. That is when I attended my first Santa Cruz City Council meeting ...

Salvetoria Larter, Santa Cruz

Wondering about crime and weirdness in Santa Cruz? I mentioned a false campus rape claim, and now the newspaper has more details:

Triplett broke up with a boyfriend Feb. 16 and posted ads twice on
Craigslist that day for someone to harm her, prosecutors said.

"I am looking for a gun owner to shoot me in the arm/shoulder with the smallest caliber bullet possible," according to the post, which was quoted in court records. "No charges will be filed and I am willing to compensate you. I need this to happen tonight, Feb. 16."

A second post that night, titled "Seeking Strong Hand," said she wanted someone to "beat me up," including "punches, bruises and kicks."

Several men replied and a man came to the UCSC campus on Feb. 17. Triplett had been at UCSC to attend a Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender conference, prosecutors said.

Schonfield said Triplett met the man on campus and he agreed to beat her in exchange for sex.

"They had sex and afterwards she used a cellphone screen reflection as a mirror to see if the injuries were bad enough and then directed him to hit her some more," according to court records.

The man left and Triplett called 911, saying that she was looking for banana slugs on a path when a man attacked and raped her.

They probably taught her some crazy things at the UCSC LGBT conference, but at least she had the decency to keep her word with the man.

We really have girls who wander off into the woods looking for banana slugs, so that is not as weird as it sounds. The DA asked the court to order her to stay off Craigslist, and not place any more personal ads of any kind.

Meanwhile, a fold singer is being locked out of shows in some sort of diversity statement:

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) -- Her show had been cancelled, but that didn't stop alternative folk and rock singer Michelle Shocked from showing up at a Santa Cruz nightclub where she staged a sit-in with tape across her mouth that read "Silenced By Fear." ...

On Thursday night, she posted signs that read "Does speech scare you that much?" and on her back she had scrawled "Gimme Wit, Not Spit."

So they are shocked that someone named Shocked said something shocking? No, they are just intolerant leftoids who want to censor other points of view.

Justice Kennedy confused about gay couples

The LGBTQIA lobby is celebrating winning over the Supreme Court swing justice, such as in Time magazine's How Gay Marriage Won:

Charles Cooper was extolling heterosexual marriage as the best arrangement in which to raise children when Kennedy interjected: What about the roughly 40,000 children of gay and lesbian couples living in California? “They want their parents to have full recognition and full status,” Kennedy said. “The voice of those children is important in this case, don’t you think?”

Kennedy has misrepresented the evidence. We don't have that many kids wanting parental recognition. Kids do not have same-sex parents. They have moms and dads.

Here is the official oral argument:

JUSTICE KENNEDY: I -- I think there's -­ there's substantial -- that there's substance to the point that sociological information is new. We have five years of information to weigh against 2,000 years of history or more.

On the other hand, there is an immediate legal injury or legal -- what could be a legal injury, and that's the voice of these children. There are some 40,000 children in California, according to the Red Brief, that live with same-sex parents, and they want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case, don't you think?

If the voice of those children is so important, then maybe they should have testified. A lot of kids live with one parent and one boyfriend/girlfriend acting as a step-parent, and they hate the acting step-parent. They do not want their parent to marry and make that person a step-parent.

Here is what the red brief (pdf) says:

Indeed, the only harms demonstrated in this record are the debilitating consequences Proposition 8 inflicts upon tens of thousands of California families, and the pain and indignity that discriminatory law causes the nearly 40,000 California children currently being raised by same-sex couples. ...

Indeed, nearly 40,000 children in California are being raised by gay and lesbian couples. Pet. App. 238a. ...

And because Proponents acknowledge “the undisputed truth that children suffer when procreation and childrearing take place outside stable family units,” Prop. Br. 37, they must also acknowledge that the undeniable effect of Proposition 8 is to cause “suffer[ing]” among the nearly 40,000 children in California being raised by gay and lesbian couples. See Pet. App. 238a. Indeed, Proponents’ principal expert testified that “adopting same-sex marriage would be likely to improve the well-being of gay and lesbian households and their children.” J.A. 903 (Blankenhorn).

David Blankenhorn is an advocate of same-sex marriage, so his opinion is not important here, as it is contrary to the Prop 8 supporters.

The point here is that the 40k kids are being raised by same-sex couples, not same-sex parents. In many cases, the child of a straight marriage ends up with a same-sex couple, after a divorce. For example, a wife will sue for divorce from her husband, make phony accusations of domestic violence, get child custody, and move in with a lesbian. The child still has two legal parents, the natural dad and mom. The child is not going to benefit from a lesbian wedding, as that may be just a device to further alienate the child from the dad.

Again, my concern here is not what LGBTQIA folks do in private. My concern is with anti-family laws and court rulings that make false presumptions about the interests of kids. Lesbian marriage is often just a legal device for cutting off kids from their dads. Justice Kennedy has misunderstood the 40k California kids.

Update: Maureen Dowd writes in the NY Times that Kennedy's comment was the high point of the oral argument:

Justice Anthony Kennedy had a single compassionate moment, mentioning the children whose gay parents were stuck in marital limbo.

No, there are no gay parents were stuck in marital limbo.

Mutilation of the soul

I thought that the psychologist defense expert was bad, but the domestic violence expert is ten times worse. She rambles on and on with anecdotes that have no grounding in recognized facts or obvious relation to issues at trial.

In one rare factual statement, she said that 80% of women making domestic violence accusations later recant. She gave no source. Originally she said that she "heard" it, bringing an objection. But she got to repeat it anyway, when it was couched in a discussion of her experience.

The obvious implication is that those 80% of the accusations are false. LaViolette seemed to imply that all accusations are true, but the accusers back out anyway. Maybe the truth is somewhere in between. But unless the expert has some objective data on this, she should not be testifying about it.

My guess is that most of the time, when the accuser sees the draconian domestic violence penalties in states like California, she decides that the original offense does not deserve those penalties. So in that sense the accusations are false. The authorities exaggerate the significance of the incident into a major crime, and the accuser decides that no such major crime was committed.

AP reports:

PHOENIX - A domestic violence expert is testifying in Jodi Arias' murder trial to explain for jurors the generalities of abusers and victims.

Psychotherapist Alyce LaViolette (la-VI'-oh-let) spent much of Tuesday testifying about how most victims of such abuse don't report it and rarely tell anyone because they feel ashamed and humiliated.

The defense witness resumes testimony Wednesday.

Arias faces a possible death sentence if convicted of first-degree murder in the 2008 killing of Travis Alexander in his suburban Phoenix home.

Authorities say she planned the attack on her lover in a jealous rage. Arias initially told authorities she had nothing to do with it then said it was self-defense.

Arias says Alexander grew physically abusive prior to his death, but no trial evidence has supported her claims.

Here is LaViolette making a rare reference to a publication:

Psychological-emotional-verbal abuse tend to create the mood in the relationship. But also it is happening more frequently, you know. There's articles on psychological-emotional abuse being “Mutilation of the soul”, for instance, there's an article on that. But they generally will tell you that that's terrible for them.

What article? I could not find it. Who is "they", and why does their opinion matter? How is this informing the jury of anything useful?

I am surprised that this sort of vague, imprecise rambling gets allowed as expert testimony.

Here is some testimony about Jodi:

Q. Does she have issues with her mother?

LaViolette: She does have issues with her mother. I read some things, her grandparents said that they believe Jodi is angry at her mother. She is angry at her mother because Jodi's mother didn't protect her from her father, that her father said mean things to her. And there weren't details about what those mean things were, but that was what the grandparents said.

How is this allowed? This is hearsay of the worst sort. She read that someone else believe that some other person did not do some unspecified thing in response to some unspecified statement. Where did she read it? How did the grandparents hear about it? What was said? Is this the expert's opinion or the grandparents' opinion? Without some details, this is worthless.

For LaViolette to be effective, she has to argue that very mild and subtle verbal language can be abusive. Based on the evidence, the most abusive thing the victim did was to call Jodi a "skank" in a private text message. It is going to be a big stretch to consider that an excuse for murder. The term skank may have been accurate. Here is how LaViolette describes her after telling a story about her willingness to give a blow job in a parking lot to a man she just met:

I believe that Miss Arias, and because of her family history, her boundaries were probably a little more fluid than some other peoples' boundaries at that point.

No, her family history did not make her a skank.

Supreme court marriage cases

This week's US Supreme Court oral argument over California Prop 8 had this exhange:

JUSTICE SCALIA: I’m curious, when -­ when did — when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted? Sometimes — some time after Baker, where we said it didn’t even raise a substantial Federal question? When — when — when did the law become this?

MR. OLSON: When — may I answer this in the form of a rhetorical question? When did it become unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriages? When did it become unconstitutional to assign children to separate schools.

JUSTICE SCALIA: It’s an easy question, I think, for that one. At — at the time that the Equal Protection Clause was adopted. That’s absolutely true. But don’t give me a question to my question. When do you think it became unconstitutional? Has it always been unconstitutional? . . .

MR. OLSON: It was constitutional when we - ­as a culture determined that sexual orientation is a characteristic of individuals that they cannot control, and that that -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: I see. When did that happen? When did that happen?

MR. OLSON: There’s no specific date in time. This is an evolutionary cycle.

So I guess sexual preference evolved into a sexual orientation, and then a bunch of LGBTQIA activists convinced everyone that there is a gay gene. Funny how the scientists never found that gene. I'll stick to the science, and the Supreme Court is probably reading trends in the polls right now.

Anyway, this case caused me to look at an older case, STANLEY v. ILLINOIS, 405 U.S. 645 (1972):

Joan Stanley lived with Peter Stanley intermittently for 18 years, during which time they had three children. 1 When Joan Stanley died, Peter Stanley lost not only her but also his children. Under Illinois law, the children of unwed fathers become wards of the State upon the death of the mother. Accordingly, upon Joan Stanley's death, in a dependency proceeding instituted by the State of Illinois, Stanley's children 2 were declared wards of the State and placed with court-appointed guardians. Stanley appealed, claiming that he had never been shown to be an unfit parent and that since married fathers and unwed mothers could not be deprived of their children without such a showing, he had been deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed him by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Illinois Supreme Court accepted the fact that Stanley's own unfitness had not been established but rejected the equal protection claim, holding that Stanley could properly be separated from his children upon proof of the single fact that he and the dead mother [405 U.S. 645, 647] had not been married. Stanley's actual fitness as a father was irrelevant. In re Stanley, 45 Ill. 2d 132, 256 N. E. 2d 814 (1970).

Stanley presses his equal protection claim here. The State continues to respond that unwed fathers are presumed unfit to raise their children and that it is unnecessary to hold individualized hearings to determine whether particular fathers are in fact unfit parents before they are separated from their children. We granted certiorari, 400 U.S. 1020 (1971), to determine whether this method of procedure by presumption could be allowed to stand in light of the fact that Illinois allows married fathers - whether divorced, widowed, or separated - and mothers - even if unwed - the benefit of the presumption that they are fit to raise their children.

So I guess that Illinois unwed fathers were presumed unfit until 1972. The 5-2 decision sided with the dad, and declared the Illinois law unconstitional as part of a string of illegitimacy cases.

The dissent said:

The Illinois Supreme Court correctly held that the State may constitutionally distinguish between unwed fathers and unwed mothers. Here, Illinois' different treatment of the two is part of that State's statutory scheme for protecting the welfare of illegitimate children. In almost all cases, the unwed mother is readily identifiable, generally from hospital records, and alternatively by physicians or others attending the child's birth. Unwed fathers, as a class, are not traditionally quite so easy to identify and locate. Many of them either deny all responsibility or exhibit no interest in the child or its welfare; and, of course, many unwed fathers are simply not aware of their parenthood.

Furthermore, I believe that a State is fully justified in concluding, on the basis of common human experience, that the biological role of the mother in carrying and nursing an infant creates stronger bonds between her and the child than the bonds resulting from the male's often casual encounter. This view is reinforced by the observable fact that most unwed mothers exhibit a concern for their offspring either permanently or at least until they are safely placed for adoption, while unwed fathers rarely burden either the mother or the child with their attentions or loyalties. Centuries of human experience buttress this view of the realities of human conditions and suggest that unwed mothers of illegitimate children are generally more dependable protectors of their children than are unwed fathers. While these, like most generalizations, are not without exceptions, they nevertheless provide a sufficient basis to sustain a statutory classification whose objective is not to penalize unwed parents but to further the welfare of illegitimate children in fulfillment of the State's obligations as parens patriae.

This seems quaint today. I wonder anyone on the Supreme Court today will have the guts to say that the govt can create presumptions based on centuries of human experience with homosexuals.

Much as I stick up for dads on this blog, I cannot actually agree with this 1972 decision. Common human experience really does tell us that there are differences between moms and dads. The dad could have locked in his parental rights by marriage or adoption. We have had a system of legally recognizing parents for centuries, and the court was irresponsible to tamper with it. The state gave a reasonable justification for its law:

When explaining at oral argument why Illinois does not recognize the unwed father, counsel for the State presented two basic justifications for the statutory definition of "parents" here at issue. First, counsel noted that in the case of a married couple to whom a legitimate child is born, the two biological parents have already "signified their willingness to work together" in caring for the child by entering into the marriage contract; it is manifestly reasonable, therefore, that both of them be recognized as legal parents with rights and responsibilities in connection with the child. There has been no legally cognizable signification of such willingness on the part of unwed parents, however, and "the male and female ... may or may not be willing to work together towards the common end of child rearing." To provide legal recognition to both of them as "parents" would often be "to create two conflicting parties competing for legal control of the child."

The second basic justification urged upon us by counsel for the State was that, in order to provide for the child's welfare, "it is necessary to impose upon at least one of the parties legal responsibility for the welfare of [the child], and since necessarily the female is present at the birth of the child and identifiable as the mother," the State has selected the unwed mother, rather than the unwed father, as the biological parent with that legal responsibility.

... Counsel replied that, on the contrary, "Illinois encourages him to do so if he will accept the legal responsibility for those children by a formal proceeding comparable to the marriage ceremony, in which he is evidencing through a judicial proceeding his desire to accept legal responsibility for the children."

Yes, it is manifestly reasonable to have a system where the parents voluntarily accept the legal parents rights and responsibilities.

Women have the chance to voluntarily accept parenthood, as they have the exclusive and unilateral right to make an abortion choice, under the court's decisions. Men may be involuntarily paying child support, and today's system seems designed to create two conflicting parties competing for legal control of the child, with family court judges supervising the best interest of the child (BIOTCh). While the Supreme Court has meddled in family law in the above case and similar cases, it refuses to do anything about the sort of injustices that I regularly describe on this blog, such as the millions of dads who have been cut off from their kids. The US Supreme Court has made a huge mess out of family law, and it is itching to make things worse again with the marriage cases this week.

Psych defense experts at Arias trial

I have been following the Jodi Arias trial on TV (TruTV and HLN), and it now moves into the Battered woman defense. The evidence for abuse is extremely thin, consisting of some messages referring to "animalistic sex" and related matters, and Jodi telling an abuse story about a year after the killing, and after telling other elaborate false stories.

Jodi did not just have animalistic sex with the man she killed; she testified that she had anal sex with two other boyfriends. She also testified that she did not write about the abuse in her diaries because she believed in the law of attraction. (According the HLN, her diary says that she stopped believing in that law, but that has not been entered as evidence yet.) Samuels said that the anal sex was a sign of low self-esteem, but anal sex is a lot more common among young people than most older people realize.

Women can be very illogical on this subject. One HLN viewer said:

After being married to a man like Travis, I know he abused her. I snapped & still don't know what caused it.

This is like saying, "I know Jodi is a murderer because I once heard of another Mexican-American murderer."

So we now have expert witnesses testifying about the profile of an abuser.

ABC TV reports on the previous expert:

The prosecutor in Jodi Arias' murder trial pounded on a table Monday as he attacked the credibility of a psychologist who diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder and amnesia, appearing to mock the expert witness who feverishly defended his work.

Arias faces a possible death sentence if convicted of first-degree murder in the June 2008 killing of Travis Alexander in his suburban Phoenix home. Authorities say she planned the attack on her lover in a jealous rage. Arias initially told authorities she had nothing to do with it then blamed it on masked intruders. Two years after her arrest, she said it was self-defense.

Psychologist Richard Samuels, a defense witness, testified previously that his diagnosis of PTSD and amnesia explains why Arias can't recall many details from the day she killed Alexander as the defense works to convince jurors she may have lied repeatedly before, but she isn't lying now.

Prosecutor Juan Martinez has spent several days picking apart Samuels' evaluation techniques, and even accused him of forming a relationship with Arias that biased his diagnosis.

"You have feelings for the defendant!" Martinez yelled.

"I beg your pardon, sir," Samuels responded as defense attorneys objected.

Earlier in the day, Martinez pounded on a table as he questioned Samuels' credibility, appearing to rattle the witness who thumped his own finger loudly on his notes.

Samuels has denied the allegations of bias and missteps that could have skewed his findings. He testified that he based his diagnosis of Arias on multiple interviews with her, reviews of crime scene photos and police reports, as well as the tests he performed on her.

Martinez later again questioned how Samuels could have come to any definitive diagnosis based on Arias' lies. When Samuels began evaluating her in jail, Arias was sticking to the intruder story.

Martinez also questioned how Samuels could know whether Arias indeed doesn't recall details from the killing and suffers from amnesia or if she is faking it.

"I can respond in terms of psychological probability," Samuels explained.

"Which is basically telling me you don't know," Martinez snapped.

The prosecutor ripped into Samuels for minor minor mistakes, ethical lapses, and having compassionate feelings showing a lack of objectivity.

Samuels keep arguing that he was trained to be a neutral observer, to have empathy but not sympathy. I guess he had compassionate feelings, but not sexual feelings.

The prosecutor did a good job of poking holes in Samuels' testimony, but I am afraid that he is just poking small holes and not rebutting the big issues.

Samuels spent most of his testimony talking about DSM-IV symptoms, computer-scored tests, and other matters where he seemed to be backed up by professional knowledge. The real trouble with his testimony is that he slyly slipped in some indefensible implications.

He argued that Jodi "creating an alternative reality" is an involuntary consequence of PTSD. He has no support for that. Jodi is a masterful liar who has told the most brazen lies. You cannot trust anything she says, even if she sounds convincing.

The whole idea that Jodi has some stress disorder is implausible. From what I have seen, she has handled the stress of the trial remarkably well. I estimate 9 out of 10 people could not hold up as well on the witness stand for 3 weeks, even if they were telling the truth. She testified that she was uncomfortable by a man interrogating her, but she held up extremely well.

More outrageously, he gave this answer:

Jury: Can the acute stress occur in a planned killing, as opposed to self-defense?

Samuels: Possible, not probable.

He has no support for this at all. There is nothing in the DSM-IV or any of his authorities that say this.

He did say that a soldier doing a planned attack is less likely to get PTSD than a soldier who is attacked. But that is a lot different. A soldier is doing what he is supposed to do. Jodi is accused of premeditated murder. For her to get caught murdering her boyfriend is surely more stressful than the great majority of PTSD diagnoses.

He also argued that her PTSD diagnosis and his professional clinical judgment tell him that Jodi was not motivated by jealousy. Again, there is no data, or textbook, or scientific research to back up such a ridiculous statement.

When cornered, Samuels would say that psychology is an inexact science, and that is why he speaks in terms of probabilities. But he never gave any probabilities for anything. If he is going to testify that a jealous rage murder is not probable, then he should have to back it up with a calculation based on generally accepted data. It is up to the jury to decide that question. Samuels should only be explaining expert knowledge that informs the jury, and not just giving his conclusion.

The prosecutor did not hammer these big issues. My guess is that he will bring his own psychologist who gives a different conclusion. Meanwhile, the defense domestic violence expert Alyce LaViolette is testifying, and I'll report on that later. So far she has described credentials and experience (mainly counseling abusers and victims), and going into a rambling profile of a domestic abuser.

She says that abusers can be respected in the community, and not show any outward evidence. Sometimes they have sexual practices that are coercive but not forcible. Sometimes the man will be jealous, and ask his girlfriend a lot of questions if she is out partying with others. He might show controlling behavior, such as calling her at home to see if she is at home. Sometimes he might lose his temper easily, and even tho he does not hit or harm her, she is walking on eggshells so as to not upset him. Sometimes he is more fun to be with early in the relationship. Sometimes he tells her negative comments about her family or friends.

The expert's main thesis is that there is a "continuum of aggression and abuse". That is, it cannot be quantified or diagnosed like DSM-IV PTSD. It exhibits many different behaviors to many different durations and degrees.

LaViolette told anecdotes about "monopolization of perception" and "shift in perception". This occurs when a wife or girlfriend starts looking at things from the man's point of view. In some cases, he will make a comment, she will take offense, and he will apologize and clarify his comment so that it does not offend.

She said that women said that psychological or emotional abuse is worse than physical abuse. As an example, a husband might tell the wife that she has gained weight. When the wife takes offense, the husband might say that she looks great. As another example, he might call her a cutesy name, and then stop when she says that she does not like the name.

I am not getting what these anecdotes have to do with the case. If anything, Jodi was the controlling and jealous one. Who was abusing whom? This is a brutal murder trial. It seems absurd to talk about trivialities like someone giving a lover the silent treatment for a few hours. I guess the point is going to be that trivial pieces of evidence of abuse will put the victim on the abuse continuum, and therefore make it plausible that he tried to kill Jodi and Jode acted in self-defense.

My problem with LaViolette is that she is not reporting any generally accepted expert knowledge. She is just telling anecdotal stories that have no obvious relevance to Jodi Arias. The anecdotes should not be admissible. Normally, if a bank robber is on trial, the judge will not allow an expert to testify to just tell stories about other bank robbers. I will post more about the admissibility of evidence.

Update: LaViolette testified that she has used her continuum chart in family court against dads who did not seem to meet the profile of an abuser. By showing a chart that describes abuse as a very wide range of behaviors, she can show that just about any man is in the continuum.

She also said that the term "domestic violence" is being replaced by intimate partner violence or abuse.

Bias against Neanderthals

I had a judge suspect me of Asperger syndrome even tho the court psychologists said otherwise and the diagnosis is being dropped from the DSM-5.

I wonder if some of the bigotry is rooted in prejudice against Neanderthals.

This article suggests that autism may come from Neanderthal genes, and adds:

I want to be perfectly clear on this point: this discovery absolutely does not mean that the Denisovans, Neandertals, and other ancients were autistic. Nor does it mean that autistic people exhibit prehistoric thinking. Rather, what it underscores is that normal modes of human thought occupy a broad continuum.

The “neurotypical” way in which most people see the world today is only one way of doing it. As enlightened studies of autism repeatedly drive home, we need to appreciate those variations as part of our human spectrum rather than just labeling them defective or abnormal.

With or without all our cognitive abilities, the Neandertals and Denisovans survived under amazingly hostile conditions for hundreds of thousands of years. Their different ways of thinking may have been dominant throughout long stretches of the past, and might even have had advantages over our own under their circumstances. The lesson that these ancients offer is that we should broaden our minds about how broad minds can be.

There is a theory for this origin of autism:

The theory shows that autism is not always a disease and that some forms of autism exist for a simple reason: Every population has a surrounding frontier where there are few members. Adaptation to frontier sparseness produces a Sparseness Adaptation Syndrome that plausibly accounts for much of autism. In other words autism is an expected result of adaptation to the unrelenting sparseness of population frontiers.

Popular portrayals of Neanderthal men show them to be ugly and stupid. They were not so stupid, as New Evidence Debunks 'Stupid' Neanderthal Myth:

Many long-held beliefs suggesting why the Neanderthals went extinct have been debunked in recent years. Research has already shown that Neanderthals were as good at hunting as Homo sapiens and had no clear disadvantage in their ability to communicate. Now, these latest findings add to the growing evidence that Neanderthals were no less intelligent than our ancestors.

Metin Eren, an MA Experimental Archaeology student at the University of Exeter and lead author on the paper comments: "Our research disputes a major pillar holding up the long-held assumption that Homo sapiens were more advanced than Neanderthals. It is time for archaeologists to start searching for other reasons why Neanderthals became extinct while our ancestors survived. Technologically speaking, there is no clear advantage of one tool over the other. When we think of Neanderthals, we need to stop thinking in terms of 'stupid' or 'less advanced' and more in terms of 'different.'"

Some new research leads to this speculation:

For ages, anthropologists have puzzled over Neanderthal and human brains, since they were the same size. If each species had comparable brain power, why did humans dominate?

A comparison of Neanderthal and human brains has revealed it was a matter of allocation: Neanderthal brains focused more on vision and movement, leaving less room for cognition related to social networking. ...

Another theory, supported by this new study, is that Neanderthals went extinct because they were less capable of forming larger social networks. Pearce theorized that "smaller social groups might have made Neanderthals less able to cope with the difficulties of their harsh Eurasian environments because they would have had fewer friends to help them out in times of need."

She continued, "Overall, differences in brain organization and social cognition may go a long way towards explaining why Neanderthals went extinct whereas modern humans survived."

Dunbar further thinks that new diseases brought in by humans could have hurt Neanderthals.

I have had my genes sequenced, and they are 2.8% Neanderthal. Neanderthal men had a European look, with hairy bodies, light skin and eyes, stocky builds, and large cranial capacity. Some people find it very upsetting that brain size could be related to intelligence.

I am here to speak out against Neanderthal prejudice.

Right to petition for redress

I have posted about the Dan Brewington case. The Indiana Lawyer

Humphrey, who didn’t preside in Brewington’s criminal trial, said it would be inappropriate to comment about the case at this time.

But Dearborn-Ohio County Prosecutor Aaron Negangard said Brewington’s case is anything but a First Amendment matter. “The advocates for this have said they don’t want to get into the minutiae,” he said. “Why let the facts get in the way of the case?”

Humphrey is hiding behind an indefensible position. It might be inappropriate to comment if he were the presiding judge in the criminal trial, but he brought a public complaint against Brewington and testified as a witness.

I am happy to discuss the minutiae of the case. Brewington's comments, in context, only threatened to hold public officials accountable thru the law and public opinion.

He said jurors decided Brewington’s guilt based on evidence that included witnesses who said Brewington had made them fearful with warnings such as, “I’ll destroy you.”

The state argues in its response to the transfer petition filed March 12 that the Supreme Court should take the case, but for far different reasons. “This Court should affirm Brewington’s conviction for intimidation because Brewington’s communications to and about the judge were truly threatening communications, conveying the threat that he would injure the judge or commit a crime against him,” the brief states.

Brewington’s speech is unprotected, the state claims. “Brewington communicated ‘true threats’ to Judge Humphrey, although he cleverly attempted to disguise them. Brewington’s communications to and about the judge included communications that both indicated Brewington’s capacity for setting things on fire … as well as communications that made clear to the judge that Brewington knew where the judge lived, and knew where the judge’s wife lived.

“It is a disappointing irony that Brewington, who is no friend of free speech when it is spoken by his victims, now takes refuge in the First Amendment,” the brief says, noting the judge and custody evaluator have a right to perform their duties without fear of violent reprisal. “Brewington does not have the First Amendment right to place them in fear of such violent reprisals for their speech.”

“This was not just someone posting stuff on a blog, but he was threatening our judicial system by putting witnesses in fear,” Negangard said. “You don’t get to communicate threats to someone to get them to change their testimony or not testify. The First Amendment does not protect those types of actions, otherwise, we lose our justice system.”

The prosecutor is referring to Brewington's blog suggesting sending complaints to a govt official, using an address from the public record.

Brewington's right to do this should be protected by 3 different clauses of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That is, he has a free speech right to express his opinion, a free press right to publish it on his blog, and a right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The prosecutor's complaint is that Brewington petitioned the Government for a redress of grievances, and that govt officials were upset by this. Posting a mailing address for a written complaint is not a violent threat, and the jury did not find that it was a violent threat.

Negangard noted that after Brewington was arrested in Hamilton County, Ohio, evidence was presented at Brewington’s bond hearing from a cellmate who said Brewington had broached the subject of murder-for-hire. Negangard said there was insufficient evidence to bring charges on that allegation.

Brewington’s co-counsel Sam Adams said those allegations are false and have been disproven. Brewington, he said, “never spoke with this inmate and his attorney in Ohio obtained the jail movement logs for both (Brewington and the other inmate), and it showed they were never in the same place at the same time.” ATF agents also investigated the allegation, Adams said.

“Our opinion is it was pretty much a jailhouse snitch trying to get his own charges lessened,” Adams said.

Why is the prosecutor running around to the press accusing Brewington of charges where there was insufficient evidence to bring them in court? Now that is truly inappropriate slander. Negangard could defend the conviction that he got in court, but instead he attacks Brewington with a series of accusations that were not proved in court.

That alone should convince you that Brewington got screwed. If he committed some real crime, then the prosecutor would be able to explain it based on the actual conviction.

Dan's blog reports that a Russian Pravda article has cited his case as an example of political persecution outside Russia. It compares Dan to some Russian cases, but the Russians did not actually serve jail time, as Dan has. Maybe a better analogy would be to the Pussy Riot, where a couple of Russian punk rocker women are still in prison.

Jury deadlocks on bogus picture charges

Here is another guest post about a local prosecution for some innocent pictures. 10 jurors had some common sense, even if no one else did. The prosecutor says that this is a "unique case", but he ought to drop it.

Dear George,

Months ago, I found your blog post Overzealous child porn prosecution on my boyfriend Alexander Morisse that is being falsely accused by his ex-wife. We were so relieved to see that somebody in the digital world REALLY understood what this case is about. The articles in Santa Cruz Sentinel and Mercury News depict a horrible case and could really tarnish his reputation. We just finished the 2 1/2 weeks trial, here in Santa Cruz. We've had over 30 different supporters come to court...Family, friends, even some friends that used to be mutual friends of Alexander Morisse and Eliina Karyndinha (his ex) and that are now on our side. Since yesterday, we are all impatiently waiting for the jury's verdict. Here's the most recent stub: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_22833941/jurors-begin-deliberations-child-pornography-trial.

Here are some points on the case, that have been argued by our lawyer Kellin Cooper that clearly state the truth of the matter. The following information was part of his closing statement.

This case is a tragedy - Alex Morisse is innocent - The police and prosecution got this wrong

Did Alex Morisse take these polka dot photos for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer? Answer: “No”

Circumstantial evidence:

If you can draw two or more reasonable conclusions from the circumstantial evidence, and one of those reasonable conclusions points to innocence and another guilt, you must accept the one that points to innocence.

ALL the evidence points to complete lack of sexual intent:

Truth is simple,

The polka dot photo’s (the ones he got arrested for) were NEVER in his possession, always in the mother and daughter’s possession (on THEIR computer)

Alex’s statements are truthful and consistent every step of the way

Disclosure to Marriage Family Therapist Julie Raudenbaugh months before the pictures were found by mother. Alexander Morisse questioned her about if it’s normal for 4 years old children to be so curious of their body and want to take pictures to "see how their parts look like". He told Julie Raudenbaugh exactly how the pictures were taken (to Sahtah’s request) and even described them. She gave him advice on how to handle a request like this, if it happened again, and acknowledged that children that young are very curious about their body.

Truthful and consistent in ambush pretext statement (the morning of his arrest on April 25th 2012, Alexander Morisse received an ambush phone call from his ex Eliina. She was in a police van, questioning him precisely about the polka dot pictures she had found. Alex had NO idea this phone call was going to lead to his arrest)

Morisse was tricked

Truthful and consistent in statement to the police on April 25th 2012

Dr Robert Kaufman opines he was truthful

Dr Charles Flinton opines he was truthful – Alexander Morisse took a full slew of forensic psychological evaluations that determine such things as deception, sexual deviancy and maladjusted behaviors. The conclusions were totally in his favor. He did not score on ANY of the deception, sexual deviancy and maladjusted behaviors’ tests.

Charles Flinton is an EXPERT in paraphilia, pedophilia being a sub branch of it.

Sahtah corroborates truthfulness! She asks her mother WHY can’t she see her dad and WHERE is he. When the mother explains that he took “inappropriate” pictures of her and shows which ones they are, Sahtah replies “I wanted to take these pictures”

Eliina is not to be trusted:

Eliina testimony can not be relied upon because it is untrustworthy,

Eliina committed perjury at the preliminary examination,

She destroyed evidence, pictures she had on her computer

Refusal to identify herself in photos,

She fabricated false allegations

The prosecutor asked the jury to totally ignore:

Julie Raudenbaugh, a mandatory reporter for the state of California, whom didn’t even find reasonable suspicion in this case after Alex’s full disclosure, more than 6 months before his arrest
Dr Kaufman, who states that
- There is no evidence that Alex has any proclivities that can be described as sexually exploitive.
- Alex is focused on the best interest of Sahtah
- No indication that Alex derived any sexual gratification from the photos

Dr Flinton’s forensic evaluation found that,
- Alex is not a pedophile.
- Alex does not have a predisposition to engage in sexual misconduct toward minors.
- the polka dot photos are not child pornography.

By the way, we got the verdict of the jury last Friday. It is a mistrial, the jury couldn't come to a unanimous decision. Alex, who was charged with 7 counts (for 7 different pictures) got in average 10 jurors out of 12 that voted not guilty. ... May the truth be revealed and innocent fathers defended!

Thank you indefinitely!
Alexe

How to Modify Alimony Payments

This is a guest post. I am not endorsing the links.

The "D" word is something the breadwinner in any marriage never wants to hear. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 28.5 percent of men aged 40 to 49 had divorced at some point in their lives. The same 2009 survey found 31 percent of women in that same age group had divorced at some point. Alimony, or spousal support, payments are no longer exclusively the ex-husband paying the ex-wife either. Forty-seven percent of U.S. divorce lawyers say they have seen a hike in women paying alimony, according to a 2012 survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. The following defines the different types of alimony and how you can potentially modify your obligations.

Reimbursement vs. Rehabilitative Alimony

The terminology for each of these types of spousal support will vary based on your state of residence. Reimbursement alimony, also called maintenance support, is generally ordered in cases which one spouse worked for the entirety of the marriage, and the other did not. It could also be awarded, for instance, to a husband who worked several jobs while the wife attended medical school. The husband can be entitled to maintenance support if she earns substantially more than he did at the time of divorce. Reimbursement alimony can be permanent or set at a fixed number of years. However, modifications can be made based on changes in circumstances.
Rehabilitative alimony, known as transitional support in some states, is generally awarded on a temporary basis. A fixed payment is awarded, for instance, to the ex-wife, to complete her bachelor's degree so she can earn a respectable living. Once the ex-wife finds a job in her field, these payments can be stopped upon the filing of a proper motion with the court.

Change in Circumstances

The most common and successful way to get alimony payments reduced or eliminated is a change in the payee's circumstances. An ex-wife moving in with a boyfriend who makes substantially more than her ex-husband, or their combined incomes exceed that of the alimony payer, can be grounds for support modification. The payer spouse will bear the initial burden of proving there is, in fact, a cohabitation situation with the payee spouse. This is normally done with the filing of an ex-parte motion, or a court brief asking a judge to hear your evidence of cohabitation without the other party present.
The motion will be served on the other party in accordance with that respective state's rules of civil procedure. In Ohio, for example, Rule 4.1 stipulates service can be done personally, by certified mail, or by leaving a copy at the payee's residence. If you rather have a process server do it and cannot afford it in Ohio, payday loans are a quick way to obtain funds and get the litigation rolling. Changes to state laws, disability, and a financial emergency with the payer can all be grounds for modification, as well.

Be Prepared

The last thing you want to happen is your case being dismissed because of a procedural error. Most family courts will provide pro-se (self-represented) litigants literature and forms to assist in the process. You can find any state's rules of civil procedure online with a simple search. State laws are usually termed "revised statutes" and can also be found online. An e-book called "How To Represent Yourself In Court" is an easy-to-read instruction manual written by Nolo Law, which owns several legal websites.

Democrats want men to give up guns

The NY Times has a long piece of feminist gun control propaganda that starts:

Early last year, after a series of frightening encounters with her former husband, Stephanie Holten went to court in Spokane, Wash., to obtain a temporary order for protection. ...

In neat block letters she wrote, “ He owns guns, I am scared.”

In some states, that is all it takes for a man to lose his gun rights.

Minority Report was just a stupid movie. We do not have precogs who have the psychic ability to predict future crimes. I am all in favor of taking guns from convicted felons, but citizens are innocent until proven guilty in America. They are supposed to be, anyway.

The anti-man liberal Democrats want want judges to be precogs. The NY Times editorial says:

A man abuses and threatens his ex-wife. She tells a judge that she is frightened and that he is armed. The court orders him to stay away from her. Should it also order him to give up his guns?

Of course it should. If a protective order is to mean anything, the court must do all that it reasonably can do to keep a vulnerable person from becoming a homicide statistic. ...

Representative Lois Capps, a California Democrat, recently introduced a bill to toughen the federal law to cover temporary protective orders and current or former “dating partners,” not just spouses. Congress should pass it, and states should reinforce it with their own laws, requiring judges to act when a person’s safety is at obvious risk from an ex-partner with a gun.

If the man is really committing crimes, he can be charged for those. But most restraining orders are not justified, and a ex-wife is harassing her ex-husband by trying to deprive him of his rights. The newspapers claims that there are studies showing that the order can prevent violence, but they do not consider all the harm that the orders do.

Men on Strike

Psychologist and blogger Helen Smith has announced a new book coming out this summer, Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters:

American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are consciously and unconsciously going “on strike.” They are dropping out of college, leaving the workforce and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. The trend is so pronounced that a number of books have been written about this “man-child” phenomenon, concluding that men have taken a vacation from responsibility simply because they can. But why should men participate in a system that seems to be increasingly stacked against them?

As Men on Strike demonstrates, men aren’t dropping out because they are stuck in arrested development. They are instead acting rationally in response to the lack of incentives society offers them to be responsible fathers, husbands and providers. In addition, men are going on strike, either consciously or unconsciously, because they do not want to be injured by the myriad of laws, attitudes and hostility against them for the crime of happening to be male in the twenty-first century. Men are starting to fight back against the backlash. Men on Strike explains their battle cry.

Just read my blog, and you will get an idea why men are dropping out. Or read her blog.

She also comments on a NY Times story:

Only 63 percent of children lived in a household with two parents in 2010, down from 82 percent in 1970. The single parents raising the rest of those children are predominantly female. And there is growing evidence that sons raised by single mothers “appear to fare particularly poorly,” Professor Autor wrote in an analysis for Third Way, a center-left policy research organization.

She adds:

Boys and men right now are off to a bad start from day one and those who don’t go along with the female -privileged society are stuck on the sidelines. A boy’s typical day might be one with a single mom, mostly female teachers who rarely give him a break, a culture that tells him he is a pervert, TV shows, bulletin boards and news shows portraying him as a rapist and domestic violence abuser and all around bad guy. It’s no wonder men have opted out of an economy and culture that values them so little.

A reader sent this infographic about how single black women cannot find a suitable black man because they are all unemployed, fat, high-school dropouts, gay, prefering non-black women, or already have kids with another woman. And they don't even count the criminals and drug users! (Correction: They did count criminals.)

These figures sound impressive, but the truth is more nearly the opposite. The typical black girl is a sex maniac at age 14, has had a couple of abortions by age 17, a couple of kids by age 20, and is morbidly obese by age 25. Furthermore, they have a tradition of unstable matriachal families, and they are undermined by bad welfare incentives for illegitimacy.