How many more are innocent
Topic: Men's Movement
Source: Reason
Author: Radley Balko
Freddie Peacock of Rochester, New York, was convicted of rape in 1976. Last week he became the 250th person to be exonerated by DNA testing since 1989. According to a new report by the Innocence Project, those 250 prisoners served 3,160 years between them; 17 spent time on death row. Remarkably, 67 percent of them were convicted after 2000—a decade after the onset of modern DNA testing. The glaring question here is, How many more are there? Calculating the percentage of innocents now in prison is a tricky and controversial process. The numerator itself is difficult enough to figure out. The certainty of DNA testing means we can be positive the 250 cases listed in the Innocence Project report didn't commit the crimes for which they were convicted, and that number also continues to rise. (02/08/10)

Copenhagen, Dads banned on Muslim moms behalf
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Copenhagen Post
Politicians up in arms over school’s anti-bullying meeting that is aimed only at mothers of pupils. The decision taken by a Copenhagen school to ban fathers from a parental meeting out of respect for Muslim mothers has drawn deep divides between politicians and school leaders. Holberg School in the city’s Bispebjerg district has scheduled a meeting for parents about the school’s anti-bullying policy this evening. But the meeting at the multi-cultural school is mothers only, and neither Danish nor immigrant fathers of pupils have been welcomed to attend. (02/04/10)

Calgary looking at all boy schools
Topic: Gender Discrimination
Source: CBC News
Calgary's Catholic school board is considering setting up all-boys schools, while the public board – concerned about boys' performances in the classrooms – is researching the issue. Over the years the pendulum of education techniques has swung toward teaching girls, said Lynn Bosetti, an education professor at the University of Calgary, who helped set up an all-girls charter school. Charter schools are privately run but publicly funded. Some parents are worried about their sons, Bosetti said. "Their boys aren't achieving, their boys aren't engaged in their learning and the answer isn't always just more sports or kinesthetic ways of learning," she said. "[How] do we not lose our boys? How do we keep them engaged?" (02/08/10)

Brooke Sheen wants case dismissed
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Yahoo News
Charlie Sheen and his wife were reunited Monday after a judge modified a restraining order and allowed them them to work out their differences following a Christmas Day domestic violence dispute in which the actor allegedly pinned his spouse on a bed with a knife to her throat. The couple hugged in court, and Brooke Mueller Sheen's attorney, Yale Galanter, said they hugged again and kissed in the basement of the 19th century Pitkin County Courthouse after the brief hearing before leaving in separate vehicles. They planned to fly out of Aspen together, and Galanter said he has asked prosecutors to drop the case. [Ed.: it is the legal system that is now brutalizing Brooke Sheen...as well as her husband.] (02/08/10)

FLDS announces new leader
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: FOX 13 Now
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has a new president, at least of its corporate entity. The move raises questions about the role of convicted polygamist leader Warren Jeffs in the church. In a filing with the Utah Department of Commerce obtained by Fox 13 on Saturday, it was announced that Wendell Loy Nielsen has been "called as president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in conformity with the constitution, canons, rites, regulations or discipline of such church..." Nielsen, 69, was previously a counselor in the FLDS Church. Jeffs, 53, resigned his role as president of the FLDS back in 2007 shortly after being convicted in Utah of rape as an accomplice for performing a marriage between a then-14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin. He is also facing criminal charges in Arizona and Texas. [Ed.: I can't assess the importance of this move. it could well be mere tactics.] (02/06/10)

New trial for killer of Tiller?
Topic: Abortion
Source: Canada East
Attorneys for Scott Roeder signalled their intent in a motion for a new trial made public Monday. Among other reasons, they cite a decision by the judge at Roeder's trial last month to not allow jurors to consider a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. Such court filings are routine, but important to preserve the record on appeal issues. Arguments on the motion will be heard in March. Roeder was convicted of first-degree murder in the May attack on Dr. George Tiller. Roeder admitted he shot Tiller in the head during services at the doctor's Wichita church. [Ed.: the importance of this filing is that it signals the possibility of an appeal and the grounds upon which that appeal would be made.] (02/08/10)

Feds wrongly track Wis. abortion groups
Topic: Abortion
Source: Yahoo News
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security conducted a threat assessment of local pro- and anti-abortion rights activists before an expected rally last year, even though they did not pose a threat to national security. The DHS destroyed or deleted its copies of the assessment after an internal review found it violated intelligence-gathering guidelines by collecting and sharing information about "protest groups which posed no threat to homeland security," according to a department memo written last year. [Ed.: I have no doubt that 'security powers' have been similarly abused throughout the U.S.] (02/08/10)

UK moves against parents who do not pay up
Topic: Children and Family
Source: The Guardian (UK)
Officials have moved to seize the properties of more than 300 fathers who have defaulted on child maintenance payments, in a marked toughening of the approach towards serial non-payers. More than 200 parents not living with their children ‑ almost all of them men ‑ have also had their bank accounts frozen in the five months since the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC) was given powers to do so. The measures reflect the commission's determination to improve the record of the much-criticised Child Support Agency, which it took over in 2008 and which it intends to replace over the next four years. The latest figures show that the number of children benefiting from maintenance payments through the agency is exceeding 800,000 for the first time. [Ed.: how does making a parent homeless help a child?] (02/07/10)

Another scandal clouds Illinois governor race
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Philadelphia Daily News
Just when Illinois was starting to move on from the scandals of ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich, along comes Scott Lee Cohen. After the political unknown managed to win the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor Tuesday, it became widely known that he was accused of having abusing his ex-wife and holding a knife to throat of an ex-girlfriend - a woman who was herself charged with prostitution. Democratic leaders hadn't considered Cohen a threat to win and didn't highlight his past during the campaign. Now they're alarmed that Cohen could drag down the ticket he shares with Gov. Pat Quinn. He is refusing demands that he step out of the race; if he doesn't, Quinn might have to change parties to sever Cohen's political aspirations from his own. (02/07/10)

Charlie Sheen to be arraigned on DV charges
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Star Tribune
Charlie Sheen and his wife are due in court Monday amid domestic violence allegations. They'll be arriving separately and only the judge can determine if they can leave together. The star of TV's "Two and a Half Men" faces arraignment on his Christmas Day domestic violence arrest at his Aspen home involving his wife, Brooke. He is expected to enter a plea. But the Sheens, who have twin baby sons, will also ask Pitkin County District Court Judge James B. Boyd to modify a restraining order in place since the arrest. Their attorneys say they want Boyd to throw out or revise the order that prevents them from contacting each other. Such protection orders are standard in cases of alleged domestic violence. [Ed.: the case highlights the dilemma for women who wish to withdraw charges. When an alleged victim does not wish to pursue charges, the charges should be automatically dropped.] (02/08/10)

Race, gender of judge important
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: ABA Journal
A judge's race or gender makes for a dramatic difference in the outcome of cases they hear – at least for cases in which race and gender allegedly play a role in the conduct of the parties, according to two recent studies. The results were the focus of a program about “Diversity on the Bench: Is the ‘Wise Latina’ a Myth?,” sponsored by the ABA Judicial Division at the ABA Midyear Meeting in Orlando on Saturday afternoon. In federal racial harassment cases, one study (PDF) found that plaintiffs lost just 54 percent of the time when the judge handling the case was an African-American. Yet plaintiffs lost 81 percent of the time when the judge was Hispanic, 79 percent when the judge was white, and 67 percent of the time when the judge was Asian American. (01/06/10)

Burqa clad robbers hold up post office
Topic: Gender Discrimination
Source: ABC Net
Officials said postal office staff let the pair through the security double doors of the banking branch near Paris, believing them to be veil-wearing Muslim women. Once inside, the pair flipped back their head coverings and pulled out a gun. They made off with 4,500 euros ($7,100) seized from the staff and customers of the branch in Athis Mons, just south of Paris, according to the online edition of Le Parisien newspaper. (02/07/10)

Girl buried alive in honour killing in Turkey
Topic: Violence Against Women
Source: Montreal Gazette
A 16-year-old girl was buried alive by relatives in southeast Turkey in a gruesome honour killing just because she reportedly befriended boys, the Anatolia news agency reported Thursday. Acting on a tip-off, police discovered Medine Memi's body in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre-deep hole in a chicken pen outside her house in Kahta town, Adiyaman province, 40 days after she went missing, the agency said. A subsequent post mortem revealed that she had a significant amount of soil in her lungs and stomach, meaning that she was buried alive, foresic experts told the agency. [Ed.: political correctness be damned. I will not respect the aspects of other cultures that inflict violence upon innocent people.] (02/04/10)

Texas adds late term abortion centers
Topic: Abortion
Source: The 33 CW
Late term abortion services are being offered to women at the Southwestern Women's Surgery Center on Greenville Avenue. The center opened recently and is the only facility in Dallas to offer an abortion up to the 24th week of the pregnancy. In a YouTube video, clinic owner, Dr. Curtis Boyd can be seen talking about the day that abortion was legalized by the US Supreme Court. By law, Boyd is required to have a surgery center to perform the late term procedure. Dr. Boyd did not return repeated phone calls. Pro-life advocates say they are devastated to see the return of the late term abortion procedure. "There were 14 months where we didn't have this horrible practice", says director of the Catholic Pro-Life Committee, Karen Garnett. Garnett says Dr. Boyd stepped in when another facility closed and brought the procedure back to North Texas. "He predicts that he will perform 2000 late term abortions in this facility each year". (02/07/10)

Is the world really poorer without Bo?
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked
Author: Tim Black
Headlines captured the poignancy of this life lived at the end of things. ‘With the death of Boa Sr, her people and their songs fall silent forever’, ran one. ‘Last member dies, it is swan song for an Andaman tribe’, ran another. Such a reaction to Boa Snr’s fate is perhaps understandable. To bear witness to the death of a human collectivity, to see a language pass from being a meaningful mode of interaction to silence, does give one pause to reflect on the finitude of human social forms. At the same time, however, the death of a language is also a frequently occurring fact of human history, and by no means an undesirable one. (02/08/10)

The retarded state of American politics
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked
Author: Wendy Kaminer
The Democratic majority is splintered, unable or afraid to govern, often lacking the courage of its professed convictions. The Republican minority is in thrall to angry, far-right ignoramuses: two-thirds of self-identified Republicans believe or are open to believing that Barack Obama is ‘a racist who hates white people’; more than half believe or are open to believing that he ‘wants the terrorists to win’, according to a recent poll. Meanwhile, the crucial independent voters to whom both parties pander are fickle and volatile: with no partisan attachments or any appreciable understanding of policy choices, much less legislative processes, many of them shift allegiances unpredictably from right to left out of anxiety, impatience, or naivete. Independents are among the least politically engaged of voters and the most sceptical (according to the Pew Research Center); and scepticism combined with disengagement, which fosters ignorance, can easily devolve into nihilism and gullibility. As Hannah Arendt observed, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, when people are ‘ready to believe the worst’ and also believe that ‘every statement is a lie anyway ... one could make (them) believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism.’ (02/08/10)

Political correctness or repression?
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Rocky Mountain Collegian
Author: Josh Phillips
No doubt you’ve heard of the raging controversy generated by the “Cowboys vs. Indians” Facebook group created by Ben Margolit, a student here at CSU. If you haven’t heard of it, suffice to say the campus has exploded in a fervent whirlwind of political correctness. Political correctness, in all its filth and virulence, has reared its ugly head on our campus, permeating the media and tainting rationality with inconsiderate vehemence. I agree that the notion of “Cowboys vs. Indians” is indeed polarizing and suggestive of a violent boundary between two distinct cultures. According to those offended, those who responded to Ben created the maelstrom of racism and ignorance. Some of the comments were clearly racist, but political correctness, the social disease that has gripped our nation, has tightened its venomous coils around those who are otherwise upstanding examples of rationality. The mature response to these racist comments would be to ignore them. The mature response would be to treat them as the back-alley sewage that the rest of us recognized. (02/08/10)

New legal issue, compensating children in porn
Topic: Children and Family
Source: The Examiner
The abuse ended long ago and he's in prison, but the pictures he made when she was 8 or 9 are among the most widely circulated child pornography images online. Now the 20-year-old woman is taking aim at anyone who would view those images and asking for restitution in hundreds of criminal cases around the country. Her requests and those filed by other victims of child pornography are forcing federal judges nationwide to grapple with tough legal questions: Is someone who possesses an abusive image responsible for the harm suffered by a particular child? And how much should that person have to pay? The issue of criminal restitution in child pornography possession cases emerged last February in Connecticut when a federal judge said he would order a man convicted of possessing and distributing child pornography to pay about $200,000 to Amy. The judge said it was the first criminal case in which someone convicted of possessing illegal images - but not creating them - would be required to pay restitution. (02/08/10)

The Vatican of political correctness
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Daily Mail
Author: Peter Hitchens
I have the document in front of me, though our leaders have tried to keep it secret and Brussels has never officially released it. It is a ‘Reasoned Opinion’ on ‘infringement No 2006/ 2450’, signed by Commissioner Vladimir Spidla, and it orders the British Government, its subordinate, to amend the law of this country. It declares that the United Kingdom has ‘failed to fulfil its obligation to transpose correctly Articles 2(4), 4 and 9 of Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000’. It goes on to ‘invite’ this country to ‘take the necessary measures to comply’. If we don’t, we’ll end up being ordered to act by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Beside this peremptory stuff, it seems to me that a sermon from the Bishop of Rome is pretty small beer. It’s not foreign interference the sexual revolutionaries are against. It’s any sort of opposition to their semi-secret elite plan to do away with traditional morality in these islands and everywhere else. So who is really interfering in our way of life? (02/07/10)

PC runs mad
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: New York Post
Author: Kyle Smith
White House Chief of Staff Emanuel said (correctly, on substance) that for liberal bloggers to attack centrist Democratic senators for being too moderate on health care would be “f - - - ing retarded,” meaning politically unwise, then found himself getting a wedgie from Sarah Palin. On Facebook, Palin, the mother of a child who has Down syndrome, presented herself as deeply offended by the implication that . . . what, exactly? That the liberal bloggers Emanuel was speaking to (in a private, off-the-record meeting) were acting as if they had Down syndrome? Surely the more mean-spirited insult would be to accuse those with Down syndrome of behaving as senselessly as lefty bloggers. (02/07/10)