Article here. Excerpt:

'Below is the open letter Intact America placed in the July 1, 2010 issue of The Washington Post. Please tell the American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on Circumcision that the AAP simply must stand by its oath to "protect all children," and recommend against routine infant circumcision. Read the press release about the ad.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'James Shelswell said he was looking forward to Clare growing older, and the far-off day when he might finally bond with the child he surrendered when she was only four months old.

Instead, Shelswell will fly this week from Calgary to Abbotsford B.C., to attend Clare’s funeral.

On Sunday, Clare was murdered, her throat slashed open after an apparent domestic dispute between her mom and step-dad over how to discipline the kids.

Peter Wilson, 29, is charged with killing his step daughter.

And now, all that’s left for her biological dad is to say goodbye to the stranger who was once his baby girl.
...
In Calgary, Shelswell, who is re-married with two kids, is a man whose fury is mixed with remorse.

He laments that he didn’t have enough money to fight back with a lawyer, back when his wife took their Calgary-born daughters away to B.C.

Article here. Excerpt:

'BBC Radio 5 live is to launch Men's Hour, an alternative to Woman's Hour aimed at the opposite gender.

Hosted by Culture Show presenter Tim Samuels, the programme will have "leading males" from sport, entertainment and politics chatting about issues that affect men.

According to the BBC, the show will bring "real candour to the challenges of relationships and life, alongside irreverent manly chatter". Louie Spence of Sky1's Pineapple Dance Studios will be a regular weekly guest.
...
Regular features will include Questions You Daren't Ask Your Doctor and Midlife Music Crisis. According to Samuels, the six-part series - which begins on 18 July - will celebrate "modern man's mix of swagger and neurosis".
...
"It's about capturing the spirit of when good mates sit around nowadays," he said.

"Amidst all the banter you can actually open up about what's on your mind without being ripped apart."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Last week a hugely significant and historic debate took place in Scotland when the Parliament got round to finally discussing domestic violence against men. As highlighted in the discussions it's quite shameful that it took 11 years after the initial Liberal Democrat proposal to actually have the debate, particularly given that debating "violence against women" is quite literally an annual event.

Article here. Excerpt:

'On 4th March 2006, Claire Margaret McDonald gasped and burst into tears as a Victorian Supreme Court jury found her not guilty of the execution style murder of her husband, Warren John McDonald.

The court was told that McDonald had donned camouflage gear and lay in wait with a high-powered rifle for her husband to approach. She fired six shots, mortally wounding her husband.

McDonald successfully used the "battered woman syndrome" defence, claiming she had suffered years of abuse at the hands of her husband.

Within days, Queensland woman, Susan Falls, having probably read the media reports of Heather McDonald's stunning acquittal, decided to execute her abusive husband in the same fashion, in what prosecutors would describe as a cunning, calculated murder.'

[Alert on-line here]

Last week, June 23, Attorney General Eric Holder missed the deadline for issuing standards to prevent prison rape.

Men being raped in prison is so accepted by mainstream America that Saturday Night Live's writers saw nothing wrong with doing 4-1/2 minutes of ass-rape jokes in a sketch called "Scared Straight" that ended with Betty White saying emphatically, "Wizard of Ass"! Blogger Scott Starnes states the attitude explicitly. Under a graphic stating "Ass-Rape: It's Always Funny," Starnes asks: "Who honestly cares about criminals being ass-raped in prison?"

Ignorant callousness is an obvious problem for reformers trying to eliminate prison rape. But an even more insidious problem is the media's treatment of male victims as unworthy of concern, as NPR's Morning Edition recently did.. NPR chose to ignore the fact that 90% of incarcerated individuals are male, and instead focused their story solely on a female-prisoner's experience of prison-rape. This form of bias is so subtle that most listeners won't even notice it. But it is a classic example of the very media bias described by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book Manufacturing Consent, in which they write:

Our hypothesis is that worthy victims will be featured prominently and dramatically, that they will be humanized, and that their victimization will receive the detail and context in story construction that will generate reader interest and sympathetic emotion. In contrast, unworthy victims will merit only slight detail, minimal humanization, and little context that will excite and enrage.

Schlafly on Kagan here. As a reminder to one and all, the Kagan nomination hearings in the Senate are in full swing. MRAs/FRAs may have reason to be concerned. She is by some accounts a committed feminist and the article implies she admires a judge who felt it was a judge's role to make law from the bench. I will refer you to the Senate Judiciary Committee web site for contact information should you have a desire to voice any concerns you may have. Excerpt:

'When Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School, she presented a guest speaker who is known as the most activist judge in the world: Judge Aharon Barak, formerly president of the Israeli Supreme Court.

The polar opposite of the U.S. Constitution, which states that "all legislative powers" are vested in the elected legislative body, Barak has written that a judge should "make" and "create" law, assume "a role in the legislative process" and give statutes "new meaning that suits new social needs."

Article here. Excerpt:

"The government unit dealing with forced marriages received 65% more calls about male victims last year than the previous year, figures show.
...
Professionals working with young people were urged to be vigilant during summer, a time when incidents increase.

Men accounted for 14% of the total number of forced marriage cases, numbering 1,682, referred to the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) last year.

However, due to under-reporting, the figures are thought to be well below the actual number of forced marriages.'

Article here. Excerpt:

A new study by Statistics Canada using police arrest data is being widely circulated in the Canadian Media.

Some places:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Abused+women+still+partners+dependable/2905307/story.html

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Dating+violence+increases+most+grown+women/3215995/story.html

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/06/29/dating-violence.html

My commentary/criticism:

Police statistics on domestic violence are not representative of society and are just bad statistics.

There is a lack of willingness for boys to report violence as it is embarrassing, as well as reluctance for police to press charges against girls.

From Abusegate Bob:

The Violence Against Women Act spends $444 million each year. And VAWA-funded programs cause about 2 million false allegations. So each false DV allegation costs the American taxpayer $222 annually.

And now, President Obama is proposing to increase VAWA funding by a whopping $130 million!

The next Washington DC lobbying event will be held Thursday, July 22, the day before the Family Preservation Festival begins. Our message will be plain and simple: Stop the false allegations of domestic violence!

If you are a parent, grandparent, or other family member who has seen the harmful effects of false allegations on children, you need to come!

To pre-register, send your name, email address, organization name, and cell phone number to: rohara-at-saveservices.org

An orientation teleconference will be held in advance. Deadline for pre-registration is July 12.

Article here. Excerpt:

'It is frightening to watch the power of the state unleashed to destroy a 14-year-old boy.

He is Edwin McFarlane, the bumbling teen whose attempt to help a 3-year-old girl find her mother June 10 at a Burlington Coat Factory has him facing a first-degree felony charge of false imprisonment.

The case never has made sense. And confronted with the possibility they made a mistake in a high-profile arrest, Orange County sheriff's detectives and now state prosecutors have waged a campaign to save face by distorting evidence and smearing the kid.

When I began questioning the arrest, the Sheriff's Office told me surveillance cameras proved Edwin never contacted his mother before leaving the store with the girl, as she claimed. I checked the videos and found this wasn't true.'

Article here. Excerpt:

"Britain should stop its obsession with getting single mothers into work and pursue unemployed fathers, David Cameron's poverty adviser said last night. Frank Field, the Labour MP commissioned to carry out a review of poverty, blasted young dads who feel jobs paying less than £300 a week are not worth their while.
...
He said that in many households, the role of the father as the breadwinner had been taken over by the taxpayer. Speaking at a lecture to the Attlee Foundation, a charity working in disadvantaged areas, he claimed the debate about poverty had been 'feminised', letting feckless fathers off the hook for living off benefits and failing to support their families.
...
He said men who refused to take a job offered to them should have their benefits cut altogether.

Blog post here. Excerpt:

'Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S., Chair of the Board of Fathers and Families, discussed Fathers and Families' shared parenting bill HB 1400 on ABC's Boston affiliate WCVB on Tuesday, June 22. The story also featured longtime F & F member Rob Derosier, who told WCVB about his long, hard fight to remain a meaningful part of his daughter's life after his divorce. To watch the story, click here.
...
From ABC’s synopsis:

A bill before the Massachusetts legislature would change the direction of child custody decisions, making shared and equal parenting the norm.

When Rob Derosier welcomed his daughter into the world 10 years ago, he never expected that after divorce he’d become a mere visitor in her life.

“It’s the first time you have to drive up to a house and pick her up, and then drive up to the house and drop her off,” said Derosier. “That’s when it really hits home, when you realize your daughter really isn’t yours anymore.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'The female birth control pill, commonly referred to as 'The Pill,' is not 100 percent effective, and some women's bodies don't react well to the extra hormones. Now, finally, a new birth control option for men is in the works, which would allow partners to share the responsibility, and let guys be in control of whether or not there will be any surprises in the procreation department.

Prof. Haim Breitbart of Israel's Bar-Ilan University authored a breakthrough paper in 2006 describing how sperm survive in the uterus. Now the biochemist is taking those findings and using them against sperm. He's developed a number of novel compounds that have no affect on male sex drive, but succeed in impairing the reproductive ability of the sperm. If all goes according to his plan, a new male birth control pill could be on the market within the next five years, he tells ISRAEL21c.