Over-criminalization is a hot-topic in America. And for good reason. Last week we told you about the Center for Prosecutor Integrity's recent survey on the criminal justice system, where two-fifths (42.8%) of the respondents said they believe that prosecutor misconduct is widespread.

We learned that 71.4% believe most cases of prosecutor misconduct are kept hidden from the public. And 73.5% believe prosecutors who commit misconduct are almost never punished. Now it's time to do something about that.

Contact your state lawmakers* today, and ask that they put effort towards ending over-prosecution.

Thank you for joining our efforts to restore confidence in America's criminal justice system.

Teri Stoddard, Program Director
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments
www.saveservices.org

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*Ed.: Couple look-up sites:
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/state-legislatures.html
http://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/
Also recommend looking at: http://sunlightfoundation.com/tools/ to help you FTM. It always leads to some place interesting!

Article here. Excerpt:

'Lulu’s founder, Alexandra Chong, says that the service is simply the natural extension of women’s longstanding desire to see if a guy is everything he’s purporting to be. And while some may consider that a worthy goal, the site’s methods should draw serious scrutiny from anyone remotely concerned with their digital privacy.

Men, whose Facebook profiles provide the foundational content for the site, are explicitly banned from the app. Furthermore, they are not notified when their information is captured, nor when their profiles are viewed, saved, or reviewed. In fact, the only way a man can have his information removed from the site is to email his Facebook profile name to privacy@onlulu.com or to download a separate app (conveniently also made by Lulu) and then deactivate his own profile.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Had a shocker in the bedroom but keen to keep it under wraps? Had a date from hell but happy to forget?

Well, guys, the worst has come…in the form of a new app called Lulu.

Allowing women to anonymously and publicly rate former boyfriends, the app is banned for males and is taking the world by storm.
...
And to make matters worse for the male population, any romantic and sexual value ratings are linked to the man’s Facebook account – allowing only women to access it.

With over 200,000 users as of April, the guy-bashing app allows women to add guys to the database, along with photos and hashtags of the male in question.

But with tags such as #smokeslikeachimney, is the app sexist?

“If there was a man’s version of Lulu, women would absolutely not stand for it,” said one review, describing the app degrading to both men and women.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Madison woman will spend the next 13 years in jail for killing her son in 2011.

A judge admonished Maria Castillo-Dominguez in court Monday for changing her story about her son's injuries too often.

Castillo-Dominguez was sentenced to 13 years in prison, and three years' probation, for the death of Luis Angel.

Castillo-Dominguez took her son to the hospital in June 2011 and said the child fell from a swing and hit his head.

She later told police she pushed the boy.

But doctors said his brain swelling and injuries were consistent with being thrown against a wall.

"You were frustrated and I have a good, great deal of sympathy for you," said Judge Julie Genovese in court Monday. "I know it must be very difficult to come to foreign country, you don't know the language, where you're work at minimum wage job. I believe you were victim of domestic violence."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Dr. Stevenson’s diverse research touches both policy and daily life, and has been widely cited in the news media. While she has written prolifically on a number of subjects, Dr. Stevenson is perhaps best known for her work on the impact of public policy on labor markets, marriage and divorce, women and families, and happiness and well-being.
...
Furthermore, we cited her research when she found that girls’ participation in sports led to increased college attendance and higher wages, as a result of Title IX, which bans sex discrimination against girls and boys in all programs at schools around the country.

Dr. Stevenson wrote of her findings, “Greater opportunities to play sports lead to greater female participation in previously male-dominated occupations, particularly high-skill occupations.” She concluded that, “the experiment designed by Title IX proves that extracurricular activities like sports play an important role in creating the skills that make us so productive.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'There's no question that Title IX has been abused - see any of the hundreds of men's sports teams that have been disbanded as a result of the landmark law as examples. Title IX was supposed to provide opportunity to women, not take it away from men - but the way various federal agencies interpret Title IX, as a de facto quota system, has had a huge impact on men's sports, mainly at the collegiate level.

It's neither the fault of athletes nor educators that spectator interest level just isn't there for women's sports. An easy comparison is the NBA and its sister league, the WNBA. The male team that has the worst attendance still draws nearly twice as many fans as the WNBA's league average, which has dropped steadily since the women's game came into being in 1999.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'When tennis legend Jimmy Connors released his memoir last month, one revelation fixated the media: Connors' disclosure that nearly 40 years ago, his then-fiancée, fellow tennis great Chris Evert, had had an abortion. Reaction was swift and negative. Evert issued a short statement expressing extreme disappointment that her former partner had revealed such a "private matter. " Writing here, Jessica Luther criticized Connors, arguing that this "was not his story to tell."

Regardless of whether Connors violated the principles of ethical memoir, the story reveals how challenging it can be for men to speak openly about their own reactions to a partner's abortion. Connors seems to remain bitter over being excluded from the then 19-year-old Evert's decision-making process (In the book, he writes to Evert: "Well, thanks for letting me know. Since I don't have a say in the matter, I guess I am just here to help.") That bitterness reinforces the stereotype that score-settling is what lies behind most men's public disclosure of a partner's abortion.

Yet men have other reasons to talk about abortion besides a desire to shame an ex. In many cases, it's about acknowledging long-suppressed feelings of loss and guilt. That is certainly true in my case, and in the cases of many with whom I've worked in men's groups.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'I’m not on strike and I refuse to be fired so I guess that makes me Dagney Taggart, which is an odd way to open a review about a book that concerns men’s rights.

If you haven’t heard the story yet, I’m sure you’ve heard several like it. In this particular incident, while at school, a 13 year old boy intervened when one classmate pulled a knife on another. He tackled the aggressor, who already had his victim in a head lock, possibly saving the other boy from serious injury or worse. He showed quick thinking, resolve, courage, and demonstrated an ethical code that placed the life of another on a par with his own.

So of course, he was punished. He was called out of class, lectured, and sent home. His mother was told that “Sir John A. Macdonald junior high school does not ‘condone heroics,’ and that her son should have sought out a teacher instead.” When she asked about the life of the other student, the school vice principle told her that it was “beside the point.”
...
What does this have to do with a book on men and why they are on strike? Well it just goes to illustrate Dr. Helen Smith’s point that men are not getting married, not becoming fathers, and not going to college, not because they are lazy, spoiled, or refuse to grow up, but because of things like what happened to the young man at Sir John A. Macdonald Junior High. She says that men are reacting rationally to a constant barrage of messages that all say the same thing, that men are nothing more than defective women and they need to be fixed.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Gender equality, now wouldn’t that be a fine thing? Well that’s what feminists for the past two centuries have been saying. Women across the world have been protesting, demonstrating, shouting and striking in the name of gender equality, but apparently we’ve been doing a rather bad job of it.

That is, if you agree with the views put forward by the Men’s Rights Activists. The movement that first emerged in the 1960s has recently had a global resurgence and now enjoys a growing internet presence, too. When a University of Warwick Men’s Rights group was recently established on Facebook, feminists and anti-sexists on campus instantly opposed the idea. So what exactly is the Men’s Rights Activism movement, and what does is mean for gender equality in 2013?
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Great, so Men’s Rights Activists are working with feminists to address these issues for the betterment of society, right? Wrong. That is exactly what Men’s Rights Activists (or MRAs) are not doing. In fact, the label “Men’s Rights Activists” is about as far removed from the truth as it is possible to be. They’d be better off branding themselves “Feminist Baiters of the World” or “Misogynistic Pigs United” because at least then we’d have a clear idea of the mind-set of these activists.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Johannesburg - Two Eastern Cape boys who underwent an illegal circumcision were hospitalised on Sunday, the provincial health department said.

"A team of police and health officials responded to [a call from] one of the villages, Mkhantatho, and rescued two boys," spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said.

"The boys were suffering from dehydration and hallucinations."
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Parents notified the department of 12 other boys, between the ages of 12 and 13, who had received illegal circumcisions in Sicambeni.'