Story here. Excerpt:

'HAMILTON — As one of the few police departments in the area that offers training for carry-conceal weapons permits, it’s no surprise that Hamilton city police have hit another milestone.

In June, it held its first women-only CCW class, which is proving popular based on the number of enrollees.

“Some ladies called us and said they were interested. We’ve had quite a response,” said Hamilton police Detective Daniel Stevenson.

The current class has around 30 women, up from the typical five to 10 in a co-educational class.

“The ladies told us they felt a little more comfortable in an all-ladies setting. We were just trying to take care of these ladies.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The recession has radically changed the amount of time many dads spend with their children because fathers are either home much less or a lot more.

It's a two-sided coin: Many American fathers are working harder than ever as their managers try to take care of business with fewer workers. On the flip side, many dads who've lost their jobs are finding that they're becoming the new Mr. Moms.

According to a recent survey from CareerBuilder.com, modern times are prompting dads to search for a new balance.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Recent data from the Department of Child Protection in Western Australia (WA) has debunked a common misconception about fathers and violence. The data shows that natural mothers are far more likely to abuse children than their natural fathers, other than in sexual abuse, where mothers were responsible for only 13% of cases.

The past practice of lumping together de factos, live-in boyfriends and overnight male guests together with fathers as "male carers" has led to skewed beliefs about who abuses children. In releasing these recent figures that identify natural fathers separately, the DCP has provided a clearer picture of who is likely to abuse children.

The figures - obtained under Freedom of Information provisions - provide a clearer picture of who is likely to abuse children in families. The data show that there were 1505 substantiations of child abuse in WA during 2007-8.'

Journalist Philip Cook observes that "there is more false, falsely framed, or disingenuously deceptive information about domestic violence than any other significant public and social issue."

RADAR's new special report, Fifty Domestic Violence Myths (.pdf file), debunks some of this misinformation, including the following myths:

Article here. Excerpt:

'Camille Paglia observed: “As I drove across the Verrazano Bridge, I thought, ‘Men built this.’ As I looked towards the New York skyline, I thought, ‘Men built that.’ If women were in charge of culture, we would still be living in caves. Well-decorated caves, but caves.” That story may be apocryphal, but correct. Men continue to create civilization. All cultures, without exception, were built by Patriarchy.

Article here. Excerpt:

'(WOMENSENEWS)--I suppose it's a good thing Judge Sonya Sotomayor's confirmation hearings have been a little boring and uneventful. I keep waiting for the scandalous hidden love affair to emerge, but nothing. No affair, unpaid taxes or skeletons to derail her confirmation.

Hats off to the team that vetted her nomination.

What has become a sticking point, though, are Sotomayor's comments in the past when she had the nerve to refer to herself as wise.
...
How dare she? Everyone knows white men set the bar when it comes to making fair and impartial decisions. They never allow their background or experience to influence their judgment.
...
It was obvious from the majority opinion that none of them had been in the position of having their work devalued because of their gender.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'It's no secret that men have been hit hard by the recession. From November 2007 to November 2008, the U.S. economy lost over 2 million jobs – 82 percent of those losses were male jobs and only 18 percent female jobs. The reason is because men are concentrated in the sectors devastated by the downturn: manufacturing and construction.

This employment gap prompted University of Michigan economist Mark Perry to dub the downturn a "man-cession in the lipstick economy."

So in his Inaugural address, Barack Obama glowingly promised, "We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together."
...
As soon as Obama released his stimulus proposal, the National Organization for Women and other feminist groups swung into action. They knew the head of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, Lawrence Summers, would be a push-over following the putsch at Harvard University.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) - U.S. teens are getting sex education, but most are not learning about birth control from their parents, new government data showed on Thursday.

And rates of infection with sexually transmitted diseases reflect this -- the annual rate of AIDS diagnoses for boys aged 15 to 19 years has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, and rates of syphilis are also up.

The numbers show that U.S. youth need better sex education, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The new administration of President Barack Obama has been dropping some of the more controversial policies of the former Bush government, including an emphasis on abstinence-only education.'

Story here.

'CARROLLTON, Ga. — Carrollton police found a baby sitter accused of feeding a 9-month-old boy wine, causing his blood-alcohol level to exceed four times the legal limit for an adult.

Carrollton police Sgt. Tony Johnson says authorities have found 40-year-old Tammy Demice Truitt of Carrollton. She was being sought on charges of first-degree cruelty to children and reckless conduct.

Police say Truitt was called to watch the baby and four other children ages 3 to 9 earlier this week when their mother had to leave town to care for a sick relative who has since died.

Doctors said the baby's blood-alcohol content of .33 was considered a life-threatening condition.

Johnson said the baby was released from the hospital on Wednesday and is doing fine.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Judged against the standard of the U.S. Senate, maybe Sonia Sotomayor has a point. "A wise Latina" certainly came across smarter than most of those white men on the Judiciary Committee.
...
This was par for the course. Patrick Leahy of the Boutique of Vermont seemed confused most of the week, garbling his questions and misquoting Mzz Sotomayor. Reprising her famous remark that "Latinas" are inherently smarter than white folks -- "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life" -- the senator told her that she had "said, quote, you 'would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would reach wise decisions.' " Not remotely accurate, but no one could blame the nominee if she felt no need to correct him. Several aides, always hovering over their senator to show him how to take a cell phone call, find the men's room or the way back to the office, winced.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'DELTA COUNTY -- A Gladstone woman could face prison time for allegedly making a false rape and kidnapping report to police back in February of 2008.

Wednesday, 27-year-old Amanda Miller-Tryan pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted false report of a felony, which is a two year felony. Four other false report charges were dismissed with the plea agreement.

Miller-Tryan said she and her husband concocted the story about a fake sexual assault and kidnapping after they had a physical altercation, and she felt she needed hospital attention.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'NEW YORK (Reuters) - Men and women handle their personal finances much differently, research shows, with men more likely to keep a close eye on their spending and investments and to pay their bills on time.

The gender gap emerged in the results of financial planning questionnaires filled out by some 3,500 U.S. workers nationwide for Financial Finesse Inc., an employee benefits company.

The data showed two-thirds of men but just one-third of women said they regularly pay their credit card balances in full, said Liz Davidson, chief executive of the company based in Manhattan Beach, California.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Woman’s organizations immediately denounced this as “Macho Stimulus” and about 600 feminist economists and 1000 feminist historians managed to press the president to scrap his “sexist bailout”. The anti-stimulus feminist action group called WEAVE – Women’s Equality Adds Value to the Economy was a huge success. They managed to get the Obama administration to completely rewrite his stimulus along gender-correct lines with 42% of new jobs going to women. Yet since women had only held 20% of the jobs lost in recession the stimulus as it passed through Congress on February 17 skews the creation of new jobs heavily towards women. And its working: Labor Department’s latest June data revealed a 2.5 percentage-point gender gab for women over men.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The problem is that phthalates suppress male hormones and sometimes mimic female hormones. As I’ve written before, chemicals called endocrine disruptors are believed to explain the proliferation of “intersex fish” — male fish that produce eggs — as well as sexual deformities in animals and humans. Phthalates (pronounced THAL-ates) are among the most common endocrine disruptors, and among the most difficult to avoid. They’re even in tap water, and levels soar in certain plastic water bottles.

They probably are not harmful to us adults, but it is another story for children. In girls, some research suggests that phthalates may cause early onset puberty. Most vulnerable of all, it seems, are male fetuses in the first trimester of pregnancy, just as they are differentiating their sex. At that stage, scholars believe, phthalates may “feminize” these boys.

Video report here. Caption:

'Prosecutors allege it was a "calculated seduction." A math teacher is accused of having sex with a teen student.'

A very nice change I am seeing here: A year ago, there would have been a lot of sympathetic pseudo-questioning of the defense position by the reporter. We didn't see that in this clip at all. In fact, he was very direct with the matter at hand and pointed out how the "She didn't know he was under 18" defense wouldn't fly if the sexes were reversed. Progress!