Story here. How about that!? Geez, if you give a whit about them and teach them the way they need to be taught, boys CAN actually succeed and even EXCEL in school! Wow, what a novel concept! And it works for girls, too. It's just that that particular approach has been applied to all our public schools, and so, the results are well-known there: fast-diminishing graduation and college acceptance rates for boys while girls continue to increase their level of excellence -- at the boys' expense. Excerpt:

'Chicago – In Chicago, the graduation rate for African-American boys is about 40 percent, and only about half of all students are accepted to some form of college. The chances of young black men going to college – particularly young men from the poorest neighborhoods – are not good.

Story here. This shouldn't come as a surprise. I have no problem with women on the highest court, but to nominate someone based on gender is unacceptable. Excerpt:

'The National Organization for Women also weighed in on Stevens' retirement. The group called on the president to nominate a woman to the high court, which counts Justice Sotomayor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg among its nine members.

"NOW is dedicated to achieving gender parity on the Supreme Court, and we call on President Obama to nominate a woman to fill this seat," NOW President Terry O'Neill said in a statement. "The Supreme Court is out of balance, with women making up a mere 22 percent of the bench. That's simply not enough."'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Eleven inmates have filed lawsuits against the Orangeburg-Calhoun Regional Detention Center in U.S. District Court over living conditions.

Inmates claim they’ve suffered malfunctioning toilets and showers, don’t receive prescription medication in a timely manner and have no emergency call system in their cells, among other things, according to complaints filed between Feb. 16 and March 15.

Robert Hooper, who chairs the Orangeburg-Calhoun Law Enforcement Commission, says some of the issues arose during the 2009 annual state Department of Corrections inspection.
...
Last July, the Regional Detention Center was cited for housing sentenced and pre-trial inmates together. Other violations cited were the lack of two-way emergency intercom systems in individual cells and failure to give inmates required outdoor exercise time due to staffing shortages.

Story here. Excerpt:

'ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A self-described Wiccan had a man's phone number programmed in her cell phone under the word "sacrifice" before she stabbed him to death, then claimed he had tried to rape her, authorities said Thursday.

Angela Sanford, 30, is accused of killing 52-year-old Joel Leyba last month with a dagger after inviting him to join her in a Wiccan celebration of spring near a popular hiking trail east of Albuquerque.

She told police she stabbed Leyba three times in the stomach after he tied her up and tried to assault her.

But police say Leyba was stabbed 11 to 13 times, and a detective reviewing Sanford's cell phone found the nickname "sacrifice" instead of Leyba's name.

"It makes us absolutely confident there was something more here than her claims of self-defense," said Patrick Davis, a spokesman for the Bernalillo County district attorney's office.'

Article here. We post a lot of 'women behaving badly' articles, and a lot of examples of men being treated poorly, as second class citizens, and often even as sub-human. This article should be a shining example to anyone who doesn't think men deserve basic respect of the type of selflessness and heroism men are capable of. It would be easy to attribute his actions to outmoded ideas of chivalry and sacrifice, or to suggest he should never have risked his life in the first place, but I choose to view it as a doctor doing all in his power to help a patient, an example of the type of person, man or woman, that we should all wish there were more of it in the world. Excerpt:

'An Allentown man saved a suicidal woman's life but suffered extensive arm fractures when they fell 30 feet from the roof of a Lehigh Valley personal care facility on Monday.

From Abusegate Bob:

Domestic violence laws are bad for men because they strip due process protections from the falsely-accused, deny services to male victims, and stereotype men as batterers. Some say the effect of our nation's DV laws is to turn men into a new social under-class.

Since 2008, a dedicated group of men and women has been working on Capitol Hill to educate lawmakers about the harmful effects of DV laws. Three times, this group has succeeded in blocking bad bills from being passed:

2008: International Violence Against Women (I-VAWA) Act
2008: National Domestic Violence Volunteer Act
2009: Security and Financial Empowerment (SAFE) Act

But it's not enough to stop bad bills from becoming law. Now, we need to reform the existing laws, especially the Violence Against Women Act, so they are effective, inclusive, and respectful of civil rights.

On May 6-7, we will take our campaign to a new level. WE WILL WORK A MIRACLE.

Register here. Just do it.

Announcement here. Excerpt:

'Date: Saturday, April 10, 2010
Time: 9:00am – 4:00pm
Location: CARFAX TOWER, OXFORDSHIRE
City/Town: Oxford, United Kingdom
...
NEW FATHERS 4 JUSTICE has a protest in the run up to the General election will be going to do a demo on our battle bus (open top double-decker bus). We will be targeting David Cameron (the likely new PM) in the run up to the election.

The bus is will be decorated with our banners and slogans and will be making 3 points of call:

1.OXFORD TOWN CENTRE
2.WITNEY OFFICE (David Cameron’s constituency)
3.DAVID CAMERON’S HOUSE

Spread the word.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Poor, poor Tim Pawlenty. The earnest Minnesota governor brought his best zingers and one-liners to the Minneapolis Convention Center on Wednesday, but he got his biggest applause at the GOP fundraiser only when he introduced Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. The two brightest stars of the conservative movement were headliners for the event to raise cash for Bachmann's re-election campaign. On the charisma scale, he was chalk to their napalm.

Via an ACFC release:

This Saturday, April 10th, there will be a rally in Chicago coinciding with the next meeting of the Illinois Family Law Study Committee. Awareness and the list of supporting organizations continues to grow. All are welcome to attend. Click here for details.

From Abusegate Bob:

Last Friday, Susan B. Carbon took over as director of the DoJ Office of Violence Against Women. As we work to reform VAWA and the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (which funds abuse shelters and state DV coalitions), it’s important that the OVW understand and support the need for reform.

So I’d like to encourage your group to send a one-page welcome letter to her. The letter should outline your organization’s work to stop domestic violence, offer to work with the OVW in its continued efforts, and be polite and constructive in tone.

You may also want to include a paragraph to this effect (change the exact wording so it doesn’t sound canned):

Research shows men and women are approximately likely to abuse. The 2000 NIJ-CDC survey found approximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States. More recent CDC studies have found women are more likely to be the perpetrators of abuse:

1. Among young adults, 71% of perpetrators in one-way abuse are female: Daniel Whitaker et al. Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence American Journal of Public Health, May 2007.
2. Teenage girls are substantially more likely to initiate physical aggression than teenage boys: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Youth Risk Factors. Behavioral Surveillance—United States, 2007. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Review 2008; 57.

Article here. Excerpt:

'HADLEY, Mass. - Lawyers for three teenage girls accused of participating in the bullying of a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide entered not guilty pleas Thursday on their behalf to charges including civil rights violations and criminal harassment.

Ashley Longe, Sharon Chanon Velazquez and Flannery Mullins, all 16, did not appear in Franklin-Hampshire Juvenile Court for their arraignments.

A judge ordered them to have no contact with the family of Phoebe Prince, a South Hadley High School freshman who hanged herself in January after what prosecutors called an "unrelenting" three-month bullying campaign by six teenagers. Prosecutors say Prince was targeted after she briefly dated a popular boy.
...
Mullins, Velazquez and Longe are charged as youthful offenders with civil rights violations resulting in injury. Mullins and Velazquez are also charged with stalking.

Article here. Excerpt:

'In a place where women have few rights, it seems improbable women would plead for men's advancement too. But, it's happening in Afghanistan.

Not for the reasons you might think, but because many Afghan women realize without the support of fathers, brothers and uncles, they will remain second-class citizens.

For years, the United States has developed and funded special "women's only" programs to help women start their own small businesses.

And while those efforts have been greatly appreciated, some global women's groups wonder if these programs are as effective as they could be when it comes to achieving equality in a patriarchal society.

More disturbingly, some other women's groups say these efforts, if not done well, may actually endanger women.

"Women are put at greater risk of violence when they must return home to frustrated, unemployed husbands who don't understand why their wives are getting training and credit and they are not," says Ritu Sharma, president of Women Thrive Worldwide.

Story here. Excerpt:

'March 27, 2010, (Sawf News) - Sandra Bullock is reportedly consulting top family lawyers in Los Angeles to explore options for joint custody of Jesse James' six-year-old daughter Sunny, a source tells UK's Sunday Mirror.

However, Sandra has been cautioned that she faces an uphill legal battle; being a step-mother her rights are limited. Sandra's best hope is that Jesse agrees to joint custody.

Sandra, who married Jesse in July 2005, brought up Sunny as her own daughter.

In November 2009, she and Jesse fought a legal battle to wrest custody of Sunny from her biological mother and Jesse's former wife, porn star Janine Lindemulder.

"Sandra and Sunny have a special bond. She raised her since before she could walk. She did everything for that girl and now it looks as if she's going to have to fight even for visitation rights. It's heartbreaking," the source tells Mirror.'

Article here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a series of recommendations on Title IX policy Thursday aimed at what it called an "unnecessary reduction of men's athletic opportunities."

The commission recommended that schools use a model survey offered by the Department of Education in 2005, calling it "the best possible method" for measuring women's interest and abilities. The survey is one of three ways schools can meet the participation requirements of Title IX, the law that bans sex discrimination at schools receiving federal funds.

That model survey was blasted by women's groups when it was introduced. The NCAA asked member schools not to use it. Few have. Daniel Cohen, an attorney who was a panelist before the commission, said he knows of several schools that have used it, though he declined to name them.