Article here. Excerpt:

'Let's talk. If you're not someone like Sessions, Hatch, Graham etc. this is NOT directed to you.

I can imagine that it's really an adjustment for you to see so many changes taking place in our nation. We have our first non-white President and we are on the cusp of having only our third woman and first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice.

Article here

'A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not know that a gaggle of white Republican men afraid of extinction are out to trip her up.

After all, these guys have never needed to speak inspirational words to others like them, as Sotomayor has done. They’ve had codes, handshakes and clubs to do that
...
President Obama wants Sotomayor, naturally, to bring a fresh perspective to the court. It was a disgrace that W. appointed two white men to a court stocked with white men. And Sotomayor made it clear that she provides some spicy seasoning to a bench when she said in a speech: “I simply do not know exactly what the difference will be in my judging, but I accept there will be some based on gender and my Latina heritage.”
...
And then there’s the Supreme Court, of course, which gave up its claim to rational neutrality when the justices appointed by Republican presidents — including Bush Sr. — ignored what was fair to make a sentimental choice and throw the 2000 election to W.'

Video report here.

Apparently the accused rapist asked the boy's mother for her blessing to continue the 'relationship'.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Not torn up enough to make it her subject, alas. Yet Moore claims she was "startled" at the paucity of writing to come out of the tragedy. She notes to Laidlaw that a 1985 Royal Commission report revealed: "A lot of safety practises were ignored. The men weren't trained properly. There weren't enough survival suits. They didn't have a safe exit plan."

Story here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON (AP) - A woman accused of killing her four daughters told police in an interview that the girls were possessed by demons and that she got rid of most of the family's possessions to contain the evil spirits.

A District of Columbia Superior Court judge spent a second day Tuesday reviewing a recording of a police interrogation of Banita Jacks. The decomposing bodies of Jacks' daughters—ages 5 to 17—were discovered in January 2008 when U.S. marshals came to evict her from her southeast Washington home.

Judge Frederick Weisberg was to decide whether to admit the interview as evidence in her trial. Jacks' attorneys want it excluded. They say police were trying to get a confession from her before they had evidence that she was responsible.

Weisberg will decide the case without a jury at Jacks' request.

Jacks' lawyers have urged Jacks to use an insanity defense, but she has refused. Weisberg has found her competent to stand trial.

Article here. Excerpt:

'I go to dinner with a bunch of Hollywood Republicans every month or so and I’ll tell you one thing, the women are easy on the eyes, none more conservative or good looking than my Beloved. Republican women are happy, they don’t mope around like victims or screech about how terrible men are for being men. The men at these get-togethers are happier and generally sport less hair product. Married men are polled to have more sex and more satisfying sex than singles so Republican men have another great quality over their unmarried Democrat counterparts.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'PHILADELPHIA -- H. Beatty Chadwick, imprisoned in Delaware County for the last 14 years, was in the jail library yesterday giving legal advice to female inmates when a prison official walked up and gave him the news.
...
Minutes earlier a Delaware County Common Pleas judge issued an order granting Mr. Chadwick's petition for freedom, thus ending his incarceration for contempt of court -- a U.S. record for the charge.
...
In 1995 -- the year "Apollo 13" was a box-office hit, O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder and 169 people were killed in the bombing of an Oklahoma federal building -- Mr. Chadwick was a corporate lawyer who grew up in Bryn Mawr and became embroiled in a nasty divorce. In April that year, he was arrested by two sheriff's deputies at his dentist's downtown Philadelphia office and landed in jail.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'VANCOUVER, Wash. — Former Vancouver police officer Clyde Ray Spencer spent nearly 20 years in prison after he was convicted of sexually molesting his son and daughter. Now, the children say it never happened.

Matthew Spencer and Kathryn Tetz, who live in Sacramento, Calif., each took the stand Friday in Clark County Superior Court to clear their father's name, The Columbian newspaper reported.

Matthew, now 33, was 9 years old at the time. He told a judge he made the allegation after months of insistent questioning by now-retired Clark County sheriff's detective Sharon Krause just so she would leave him alone.
...
Spencer's sentence was commuted by then-Gov. Gary Locke in 2004 after questions arose about his conviction. Among other problems, prosecutors withheld medical exams that showed no evidence of abuse, even though Krause claimed the abuse was repeated and violent.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats praised Sonia Sotomayor as a judicial pioneer, but Republicans questioned her impartiality and President Barack Obama's views as well Monday at confirmation hearings for the nation's first Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court.

Even so, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Sotomayor, "Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to get confirmed."

"And I don't think you will" have a meltdown, he added quickly.

Graham spoke after Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, praised Sotomayor in remarks that opened confirmation proceedings in a packed Senate hearing room. "She's been a judge for all Americans. She'll be a justice for all Americans," he said.'

Like a replay of the McNair case only with an accent. Story here.

'RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)—Brazilian police investigating the death of former boxing champion Arturo Gatti are working on the assumption his wife strangled him with her purse strap.

But police spokeswoman Milena Saraiva says Monday nothing is being ruled out in the investigation, including the possibility another person may have been involved. Gatti was found dead early Saturday in a seaside tourist resort.

Saraiva says police in the northeastern state of Pernambuco are focusing on Gatti’s 23-year-old Brazilian wife, Amanda Rodrigues. She is in custody and has been accused by police of killing Gatti. Rodrigues has yet to be charged and has denied any involvement in the death.'

So a room-bandit busted into their room, bashed his head in and then strangled him with his wife's purse, then forcibly drugged her so she would forget the last 10 hours.

Yeah, that's it.

Congress spends approx. 1 billion taxpayer dollars each year with the stated intent of eliminating domestic violence, the largest portion of that amount being the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). They are poised to increase funding even further next year when they vote on a 5 year reauthorization of VAWA. One would think that this much money should have greatly reduced domestic violence by now. But VAWA spending has had little or no effect on reducing domestic violence.¹

Since the passage of VAWA is a virtual slam-dunk, those who benefit financially from this law are emboldened to demand more and more with each reauthorization. So legislation that's only tangentially related to domestic violence – legislation that could never pass on its own merits – finds it way into VAWA.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Few studies have focused on men’s involvement in safe and unsafe heterosexual sex, far more research on the heterosexual transmission of HIV centres on women than on men, and very few education campaigns are aimed at straight men. There are good and bad reasons for this. On the one hand, this reflects feminist achievements in identifying AIDS as a women’s issue. On the other hand, men’s absence reflects the status of maleness as normative and invisible and perpetuates the allocation of responsibility for safe sex only to women. Women’s inclusion in AIDS policy and education is a valuable achievement, and there are sound feminist reasons for directing attention also to heterosexual men.
...
Heterosexual men’s complaints about ‘showers in raincoats’ demonstrate a privileging of the penis as an important site of sexual sensation and erotic pleasure. To the extent that these complaints inform heterosexual men’s reluctance to use condoms, they privilege men’s pleasure over prophylactic and contraceptive safety.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'But all of that aside, I think it's about time for men to take more responsibility for their bodies and sex lives. Women, I am told, have to constantly think about protecting themselves. They have to give more thought to what situations they end up in. Who they're sleeping with, and who they're entering into a relationship. Rape and physical abuse always hangs in the air. Men, I think because of sheer physical strength, believe that we don't have to think this way. We think we can take few shots at the bar, screw whoever, wake up at nine, hit the waffle house, and then drive home with a great story to tell.
...
I don't want to blame McNair for his own death, but the fact is that men who are reckless, often leave behind families to pick up the pieces. I can't imagine the personal work his wife will have to do reconcile all of this, and then explain it to their four sons.'

Story here. Excerpt:

Story here. Excerpt:

'Gaurav Sharma has just lost his house to his estranged wife, and he is not the only man ordered by the court to surrender his home as courts seek to crack down on domestic violence.

Life took an ugly turn for Sharma when a Delhi court asked him to vacate his newly bought house in Gurgaon near Delhi and hand over possession to a wife who had left him three years after marriage.

The dramatic development took place after his wife slapped a case of domestic violence. Sharma pleaded with the court to be lenient but was forced to move to a rented accommodation.

The Domestic Violence Act of 2006 seeks to provide protection and compensation for all kinds of abuse at home directed at women — including physical, sexual, verbal, emotional and economic.'