This is just horrible. Apparently, it's OK for a mother to put a child up for adoption without the father's consent. Excerpt:

'John Wyatt raced to the hospital, excited to be a father but worried about the mother.

His girlfriend had promised to call him the moment she went into labor, but she'd turned off her cellphone. Wyatt had been calling it for hours. Finally, an operator at Potomac Hospital in Woodbridge confirmed the news: His girlfriend was there, and his daughter had been born.

When Wyatt arrived at the hospital that morning of Feb. 11, 2009, he got the shock of his 20-year-old life: Administrators insisted that no such baby was there -- and no such mother.

Court records show that Wyatt's daughter, Emma, was born Feb. 10, at that very hospital, and that she spent the next week at two Woodbridge hotels before being put up for adoption -- in Utah. "We just want Emma to come home," says Wyatt's mother, Jeri. "My son wants his child. I want to see my granddaughter."

Story here. Excerpt:

'WHEN JANINE Giandomenico's son explained his school project to her, she dismissed his worries and figured she'd have to fork out a few bucks for poster board, magazines and a glue stick or two.

Then she read the letter that accompanied the project, over and over again, and believes that her son's third-grade teacher at the Maude Wilkins Elementary School in Maple Shade, Burlington County, was asking the class, including the boys, to dress as women during a fashion show for a Women's History Month project.

Blog entry here. Excerpt:

'Education | The academic gender wars got a bit more spirited last week, Inside Higher Ed reports, with the creation of the above-named interdisciplinary effort, announced at a conference at Wagner College on Staten Island, to study malehood in all its power and powerlessness. Quote:

Lionel Tiger, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, said the field takes its cues “from the notion that male and female organisms really are different” and the “enormous relation between … a person’s biology and their behavior” that’s not being addressed in most contemporary scholarship on men and boys.

“I am concerned that male-averse attitudes are widespread in the United States and that masculinity is becoming politically incorrect,” said Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.”

By now some of you have heard of this incident in Maryland near the University of Maryland. As the video shows, the kid was doing nothing wrong but skipping down a sidewalk. When an officer on horseback approached him, he got scared and backed away. Then a number of other police descended on him and beat him into unconsciousness. The police then lied about the incident in official reports, all the while thinking that they were not being filmed.

So my question to you is this: Had he been a she, would this have happened, even if all those police had been female? I don't think so. I think this is a further example of how men, and young men in particular, are viewed as fair fodder for things like beatings and abuse by the authorities. After all, if they can be drafted into the armed forces to get blown to bits, then why shouldn't the state or its agents feel they can get away with beating them senseless whenever they feel like it?

Men's rights are human rights. After all, we're human... right?

Release here. Excerpt:

'(I-Newswire) April 13, 2010 - ROCKFORD, Illinois: Children’s adventure and mystery author, Max Elliot Anderson, has signed contracts for 11 books to be published by two publishers.

Comfort Publishing, in Concord, North Carolina, will republish his first 7 titles after the original publisher could not withstand the economic pressures that have hurt so many small businesses.

The titles to be republished by Comfort Publishing include Newspaper Caper, Terror at Wolf Lake, North Woods Poachers, Mountain Cabin Mystery, Big Rig Rustlers, Secret of Abbott’s Cave, and Legend of the White Wolf. A new book, Barney and the Runaway, will also be published.

Comfort Publishing has also contracted a first right of refusal option on another 16 titles and wants to pursue an extensive series with him. This could become a 24 book deal. “These books are already written,” Anderson said, “although I'm doing a revision on each one to increase the word count.”

Article here.

'Winfrey's relationship with longtime "love" Stedman Graham, her reputed dirt-poor upbringing in rural Mississippi, her rumored lesbian crushes on women such as Diane Sawyer -- all are stories she has manipulated for decades in the name of sensational ratings, according to writer Kitty Kelley's latest unauthorized biography "Oprah."
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The much-anticipated book details how:

* Winfrey concocted stories about sexual abuse she suffered as a child -- and grossly exaggerated the poverty she was brought up in.
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The future star would steal from her mother's purse, pawn her jewelry and even turn tricks. She was eventually sent to live in Nashville with Vernon Winfrey, who was her mother's former lover and who is listed on her birth certificate as her father. He has been described as the domineering disciplinarian who set her straight.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Tennessee mother who horrified the adoption community when she put her 7-year-old son on a plane back to Russia was in the process of trying to adopt a second child.

Torry Hansen had turned to a second adoption agency to bring home a child from the Soviet Republic of Georgia, a source with the sheriff's department told ABC News.

She switched adoption agencies after the agency that arranged the adoption of her first child, World Association for Children and Parents, urged her to wait before adopting again, the source said. The association advised Hansen it would be best to settle in with the boy before adding to her family, the source said.

A few months later, Hansen, of Shelbyville, Tenn., and her mother, Nancy Hansen put 7-year-old Artyem Savilev on a plane back to Moscow in hopes of having the boy's adoption annulled.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'From the invasion of Afghanistan until last summer, the U.S. military had lost 761 soldiers in combat there. But a higher number in the service — 817 — had taken their own lives over the same period. The surge in suicides, which have risen five years in a row, has become a vexing problem for which the Army's highest levels of command have yet to find a solution despite deploying hundreds of mental-health experts and investing millions of dollars. And the elephant in the room in much of the formal discussion of the problem is the burden of repeated tours of combat duty on a soldier's battered psyche.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Ben Roethlisberger might have promised to be a role model, but the district attorney who declined to press sexual assault charges stemming from a drunken evening at a nightclub said it was the actions of the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, not his words, that would prove it.
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Bright said that due to scant physical evidence and conflicting statements from the student, he could not prove a crime had happened.

"You get a lot of he said, she said," Bright said, "but it's unclear. It's foggy, and I couldn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt."

The woman, who Bright said told police after the incident she didn't know if they even had sex, wrote a letter asking that Roethlisberger not be charged, but Bright said it made little difference in his decision.

"Without that letter, I still feel we did not have enough to prove him guilty, at least of the charge of rape," Bright said.
...

Blog post here. Excerpt:

'If you search the web, you will find few web sites that deal with the emotional abuse of men by women. Most sites that deal with this subject tend to be a bit on the misogynistic side. As a man, I don't want to be painted with the same brush as men who abuse women, so it's not fair to paint all women as emotionally abusive.

In my search, I did find one web site that presented an intelligent, balanced view of the subject. WomenAbusingMen.org was founded by Dr. Claudia B. Cornell and Kimberly C. Taylor.

While I found WomenAbusingMen.org to be quite intriguing, I wanted to learn more on the subject of emotional abuse of men by women. I sent an email with a comprehensive list of interview questions. Fortunately, I received a prompt response from Dr. Cornell expressing a great willingness to answer my questions in the hope of spreading awareness on the emotional abuse of men by women.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Fathers & Families’ mission is to protect children’s right to the love and care of both parents after divorce or separation. One of the ways fit parents are sometimes driven to the margins of their children’s lives is by one parent using the other parent’s disability or partial disability as a pretext to deny them custody or visitation with their children.
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Existing California family law codes do not address the issue of disabled parents, leaving the door open for unnecessary and often expensive litigation, even in cases where the disabled parent had been successfully parenting the children for many years prior to the separation or divorce.

SB 1188 will add Section 3049 to the Family Code. It will read:

Blog post here. Excerpt:

'San Francisco’s top public defender, Jeff Adachi, recently called for the city’s crime lab to become independent of the police department. This announcement comes on the heels of a series of scandals in the San Francisco Police Department’s forensic laboratory initiated by the discovery that a criminalist was stealing cocaine from evidence storage facilities. What initially seemed to be a problem with one unethical employee has led to the unearthing of myriad problems within the lab, including two cases of tainted DNA samples. Moreover, a troubling audit was released showing an improper maintenance of chain of custody of evidence, inadequate record keeping, and a lack of cleanliness in the overall facility. Multiple legal challenges raised in the aftermath of the scandal, including a murder case, have pointed to the possibility that police and prosecutors withheld vital information about the drug thefts from defendants’ attorneys.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Washington woman is accused of luring a disabled man into a relationship with promises of marriage and children only to squander thousands of dollars of his money, leaving him suicidal and in debt, investigators say.

Alesha Lair, 23, is charged with theft and domestic violence stemming from what King County prosecutors are calling a "deceptive" two-year relationship with 55-year-old Douglas Lare.

Lare was diagnosed at birth with mild mental retardation and cerebral palsy and has a mental age that ranges between 6 and 12 years old, according to the probable cause report from the Seattle Police Department.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Tampa, Florida (CNN) -- Former middle school math teacher Stephanie Ragusa was teary-eyed Monday as she pleaded guilty to having sex with two underage students.

Ragusa, 31, faces up to 10 years in prison when she is sentenced on June 15.

She pleaded guilty to three counts of lewd and lascivious battery in a March 2008 case involving a 14-year-old boy.

She also pleaded guilty to two counts of having unlawful sex with a minor in an April 2008 case involving a 16-year-old student.

Prosecutor Rita Peters said Ragusa had intercourse with the 14-year-old on three occasions between October 2006 and May 2007. Evidence in that case included a phone conversation police recorded with the teen's consent. During the phone call, Ragusa could be heard urging him to keep their encounters secret, Peters said.
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Ragusa has been in jail since her arrest, and defense attorney Robert Herce said she has spent more time behind bars than several other teachers in Hillsborough County, Florida, who have faced similar charges.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'I don't have a son so I've never had to make the circumcision decision. I know which way I'd go, but that's neither here nor there.

And in Madatom blogger Jacob Harper's opinion, it's irrelevant what any mom thinks because moms should not be the ones making the decision of whether or not to circumcise their kid.
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Harper is one guy who isn't the least bit shy about sharing his opinion. In his blog post "Living the Dream: Uncircumcised in America," he writes about being in the "freaky hooded minority," but says that he's proud not resentful.
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I do think Harper's post is hilarious and I enjoyed reading about circumcision from his perspective, but what he fails to appreciate is that making decisions that affect their kids' lives is what moms do every day -- on things that go well beyond haircuts. Sometimes it's just not practical to wait 18 years and let your kid make a life-changing decision on his own.'