Story here. Excerpt:

'Labour has imposed women-only shortlists on more than half of its seats left vacant by retiring MPs, an analysis by The Times shows.

Figures released by the party yesterday show that 24 of the 44 selections in seats won by Labour at the 2005 election are restricted to women. The proportion is expected to increase as dozens more Labour MPs quit before the next election.

Party officials complain that Harriet Harman is rigidly enforcing a policy that women should be fielded in half of winnable seats in each area. It means that local parties in areas where there are few sitting women Labour MPs are given little choice over selection as the party’s high command tries to meet the quota.

Ms Harman, Labour’s deputy leader, sits on a sub-committee of the National Executive Committee, which decides whether to allow an open selection or impose women-only shortlists. It is supposed to decide each seat case by case but is pushing through an increasing number of such contests.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'I’m not alone in this view. An entire conference was held on the subject recently at Shenandoah University, where children’s authors and illustrators met with about 300 teachers and librarians for advice on getting boys to read more, says a recent piece in Education Week. The gender gap is well-documented in national achievement-testing data showing boys trailing girls in reading skills by a significant margin. (The ad slogan for James Patterson’s and Ned Rust’s new young adult novel “Daniel X: Watch the Skies” is “OMG! My son is reading!” )

Article here. Excerpt:

'AFTER a week with Harriet Harman in charge at Downing Street, I shudder to think what would happen if this arch-feminist was the real Prime Minister.

In a few days she has turned her guns on men in a way which not only reflects her obsession with sexual politics but suggests she is aiming to indoctrinate young children with her anti-male prejudices.

What else can you say when Ms Harman, pictured, comes up with the crackpot idea that lessons on the evils of wife-beating should be given to pupils at primary school?

Her central plank seems to be that men abuse women almost institutionally. We are a nation of wife-beaters and potential rapists. There could be one living next door to you.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Women have every reason to be outraged about gender disparity on the Supreme Court. When Sotomayor joins Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court this fall, women will occupy a whopping 22 percent of the bench. Sixteen years passed between the confirmations of Ginsburg and Sotomayor, and three men were elevated to the high court during that time. At that unacceptable rate, it could take decades, maybe even centuries, to achieve a gender balanced court. There's no excuse to wait for equality: NOW calls for every open seat on the Supreme Court to be filled by a woman until there are four, if not five women justices.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'ST. LOUIS - A Missouri mother who was tried on accusations she was involved in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide has been told she can use the Internet again.

The lawyer for Lori Drew says she has been offered a job that requires her to use a computer and the Internet. A federal judge in California on Thursday modified Drew's bail so she can.

Drew was convicted last fall in the case where she was accused of illegally accessing a computer to harass a neighborhood teenager, Megan Meier. U.S. District Judge George Wu tentatively threw out convictions against Drew in July.'

Story here. Why is she NOT in jail? Why are her neighbors sympathetic with her? Why do they think "he had it coming"? Answer: She's a girl! Excerpt:

'A judge has ordered Dailia Dipolito to stay at her parents house in the Boynton Beach Community of Nautica. By late Thursday night things finally quieted down. But that was not the case earlier Thursday when Dipolito arrived.
...
"I think it's pretty sad. It's really is pretty sad. You know when you think about it. But I think there's a lot more behind it that nobody knows about", said neighbor Jack Lynch.

Another neighbor, Barbara Lombardo tols us, "Hopefully she comes out O.K. With it. But she should have just divorced her husband, I don't know."

And we all know whose fault it is! Article here. Excerpt:

'NEW YORK – It seemed too horrendous even to imagine. But the case of the mother who caused a deadly wrong-way crash while drunk and stoned is part of a disturbing trend: Women in the U.S. are drinking more, and drunken-driving arrests among women are rising rapidly while falling among men.

And some of those women, as in the New York case, are getting behind the wheel with kids in the back.

Men still drink more than women and are responsible for more drunken-driving cases. But the gap is narrowing, and among the reasons cited are that women are feeling greater pressures at work and home, they are driving more, and they are behaving more recklessly.

"Younger women feel more empowered, more equal to men, and have been beginning to exhibit the same uninhibited behaviors as men," said Chris Cochran of the California Office of Traffic Safety.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON – The Senate confirmed Sonia Sotomayor Thursday as the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. The vote was 68-31 for Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's first high court nominee. She becomes the 111th justice and just the third woman to serve.

Democrats praised the 55-year-old Sotomayor as a mainstream moderate. But most Republicans voted against her, saying she'd bring personal bias and a liberal agenda to the bench.
...
The Republicans said that they might disagree with some of her rulings, statements or views, but that she was well-qualified to serve on the nation's highest court.
...
Like Democrats, many of them called Sotomayor's background inspirational. The daughter of Puerto Rican parents, she was raised in a South Bronx housing project, then educated in the Ivy League before rising to the highest legal echelons.'

Story here.

HOUSTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Jury selection began in Houston Thursday in the trial of a mother accused of cutting off her infant son's genitals and blaming the family dog.

Katherine Nadal, 28, said the dachshund did it when the boy was 5 weeks old on March 13, 2007.

Nadal tested positive for cocaine, methadone and a tranquilizer the day after the 2007 attack, a Child Protective Services spokeswoman said.

Investigators said they ruled out dog bites and accused the former Anahuac High School cheerleader of using a sharp instrument to remove his penis, The Houston Chronicle reported.

The boy's aunt, Patches DeShazo, who is caring for the child, said the toddler is recovering and still waiting for reconstructive surgery.

Nadal is in jail in lieu of $75,000 bail.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'With endowments shrinking, donations falling and operating budgets squeezed, colleges and universities face great pressure to cut costs. Athletic departments are an obvious target. But, troublingly, men's sports are disproportionately bearing the brunt.

This year, men's programs across the country have gotten the third-strike call: swimming and soccer at Kutztown University (Pa.); baseball at the University of Northern Iowa; football at Western Washington; wrestling at Delaware State, Portland State and Carson-Newman. MIT, which has one of the largest athletic departments in the nation, eliminated men's teams in gymnastics, ice hockey, golf, wrestling, alpine skiing and pistol.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'It is Friday evening at Liverpool Street station, London, and while browsing commuters kill time in WH Smith before their trains, a dozen young women attack a stand of lads’ magazines. Over the covers of Nuts, Zoo, GQ and Loaded — “50 Boobiest Blondes”, “Summer’s real breast fest” — they slip brown paper bags adorned with handwritten slogans: “Don’t be Nuts — get this sexism out of my face”, “Stop mainstreaming porn”, “FHM: For Horrible Misogyny”.

Story here. Excerpt:

'There is acting and then there is the Academy Award-worthy performance put on by Dalia Dippolito on Wednesday morning after cops told her that her newly wed husband had been murdered.

A second after the words were uttered by Boynton Beach police, Dippolito broke down in tears and hysterical screams at the thought of her beloved husband leaving this earth. Her townhouse was surrounded by detectives and crime scene investigators.
...
Turns out Dippolito had hired a hitman to kill her husband of only six months -- or so she thought he was a hitman. It turned out to be an undercover Boynton Beach cop.'

The story of a woman who apparently killed her husband (John Housman) in Boulder, Colorado affirms what has become our cultural norm: if a woman kills a man, he must have deserved it.

The Denver Post called the murder a tragedy. The Boulder Daily Camera has now run two stories, including this one, describing Housman's various past sins, including the contents of an e-mail from an ex-wife who assures us the killer must have acted in self-defense. The murder victim apparently had a bad temper, was ticketed was for DV, and harassed a former landlord.

It's difficult to imagine any newspaper running a story that suggests, implies, hints that a murdered woman deserved to die. But the BDC has now run two suggesting Housman deserved to die. Excerpt:

'BOULDER, Colo. — Nine years ago, in the throes of a divorce, John Housman — then 32 — was ticketed for domestic violence after threatening to kill his wife and “bash” her face in, according to a Boulder police report made public Wednesday.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Topics of national and international import – the swine flu pandemic, doctors' hours, bankers' bonuses, war in Afghanistan, turbulence in Iran – are of no concern to the woman in charge while Gordon chews his nails in a sodden Lake District and rues the political necessity of having to take a holiday at home. Instead, Miss Harman's fixation with "equality" continues – although her ranting has taken on a disturbing shrillness reminiscent of the "all men are rapists" school of feminism.
...
There is no question that Miss Harman has her eye on a forthcoming vacancy. But she may come to regret her outburst this week. It has alienated a majority of women, who know, instinctively or through experience, that without merit there can never be a meritocracy.'

Crespo vs. Crespo – the case that gave new hope to anyone who was ever hit with an unwarranted domestic violence restraining order - was back in the spotlight as the New Jersey Court of Appeals overturned a lower court decision that vacated a final restraining order (FRO) against defendant Anibal Crespo.

For those unfamiliar with judicial standards of proof, there are three levels: