Story here. Excerpt:

'At a town hall meeting here on Monday, Obama praised the women responsible for his upbringing and outlined his record of pushing to address issues important to women. The only men in the room were reporters, campaign aides and Secret Service agents.

As the working-class women in the audience nodded, Obama continued: "Too many of America's daughters grow up facing barriers to their dreams, and that has consequences for all American families. It's harder for working parents to make a living while raising their kids. And we know that the system is especially stacked against women."'

Senator Barak Obama gave a speech on the importance of fatherhood the same week that the National Fatherhood Initiative released a report, "The One Hundred Billion Dollar Man," on the taxpayer costs of absent fathers. The good news is that more and more policy makers and organizations are starting to understand the impact of absent fathers. The bad news is policy makers do not really understand the causes of the fatherhood crisis.

As one of the few mainstream journalists who understand the government's role in creating the fatherhood crisis, Kathleen Parker, pointed out in "Obama's Incomplete Plea on Fatherhood," Obama failed to mention that "the problem of absent fathers, especially in the black community, is tied in part to well-intentioned social programs such as ... domestic violence prevention." Since "the state's punitive powers, permitted without due process, are mind-boggling to consider" and not every allegation of domestic violence is legitimate, "[o]nce the system is engaged and injunctions issued, even innocent fathers are unlikely to see much of their children. Perhaps never."

This is good news. Excerpt:

'Lautar is under court order to pay nearly $800 a month in child support and other expenses, despite the fact his ex-wife has admitted in Allegheny County court papers that Lautar is not the girl's father. The child was born during their marriage. After the couple divorced, the mother married the girl's biological father. The mother, the father and the daughter live together in Moon, according to papers filed in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

"I'm stuck in this rip-off, this fraud," said Lautar, 40, of North Strabane. "It's paternity fraud, is what it is. ... And the state is enforcing this fraud."

Obama's recent Father's Day speech vilifying dads got me wondering what more is on his official web site. To be brief, his entries under "Issues" for women and families might have been copied directly from the National Organization for Women.

Obama's site repeats the "1-in-4 women will be abused" myth, along with the "77-cents on the dollar" pay gap fiction. If elected, he pledges to create a new $25 million DV fund to create "partnerships" between DV agencies and Fatherhood programs. He applauds the progress made from VAWA.

He supports a Responsible Fatherhood & Healthy Families Act that will "crack down" on men in arrears for child support.

Other pledges are to more aggressively promote women in science and math, support passage of an Equal Pay Act, and further strengthen Title IX.

Article here.

Apparently, the patriarchy has launched an attack against the poor, long-fingernailed women who have difficulties using the iPhone.

Erica Watson-Currie of Newport Beach, Calif., wanted a stylus. She and other women who have long nails -- as well as some people of all genders with chunky fingers -- have trouble typing on the iPhone.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Mothers will be offered £40 a week to go back to work under plans unveiled by Gordon Brown.

The scheme would give a couple with children £40 if one parent works and the other, usually the mother, agrees to look for a job. If both work the couple would get £80.
...
But critics said the £40 payments did too little. Chris Grayling, Tory work and pensions spokesman said: ‘Gordon Brown just doesn’t understand that what Britain needs is not yet more pointless tinkering with the benefits system for working mothers but real action to tackle family breakdown in a nation where millions of people are trapped in benefit dependency.’'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk said the report of a "pregnancy pact" has not been confirmed.
...
However, Sullivan has now told officials he can't remember what his source of information was.

At a news conference Monday, Kirk said the principal was "foggy in his memory about how he heard about the information."'

Article here. All right, makes sense to a point. However I can't imagine it being good for anyone to be dosed with artificial oxytocin regularly. It serves a purpose and to overload the body with it seems as bad as overloading it with any number of other artificial hormones.

That said, if you read the article all the way to the end, you will see this:

"However, despite the many potential benefits of the research projects, some scientists have sounded warnings over the negative potential uses the hormone offers.

They say oxytocin could have potential as a date-rape drug as it is involved in both trust and sexual arousal."

I do believe the next date rape drug scare will be aspirin.

Story here. Excerpt:

"A bus spotter has decided to give up his lifelong hobby of photographing buses because people fear he is a terrorist and even a paedophile.

Rob McCaffrey - who calls himself an omniboligist - has been taking pictures of buses all over the world for forty years but has only ever faced problems in Britain.

But Rob says that in politically correct Britain he is finding it increasingly difficult to continue his beloved hobby because of the fear and suspicion he causes among onlookers.

In the last year he has been questioned twice by the police and had to give all his personal details after people who saw him innocently snapping buses on public roads reported him."

Story here. Excerpt:

"A 'greedy and wicked' estate agent, who hoped to pocket a fortune kidnapping and torturing her former boss, was jailed for 10 years today.

Ambreen Gul, 23, was so furious when she was fired that she recruited another sacked colleague and two other thugs to make her ex-boss pay.

Having lured Waqas Malik to her flat, the unsuspecting businessman was kicked, punched and pistol whipped repeatedly.

During seven hours of suffering one of his captors stood on his head, while another warned he had he would never see his family again unless he raised £200,000 ransom.

He was told failure would result in the executions of both himself and his 13-year-old son."

Article here. Currently it's the first item in their rotating story box on the MSN home page. Excerpt:

'Keep it to yourself. In a pre-divorce situation, there is a fine line between deception and self-preservation. Though you may intend to leave, Woodhouse cautions against telling your spouse before you are prepared. "It would create a great deal of turmoil," she says.
...
Karen Kerbaugh, an administrative assistant in Haltom City, Texas, got married in 1996, "and from almost the first month I realized I had made a grave mistake in marrying him," she says.

Story here. Excerpt:

'BERLIN - A German court has ruled against a woman who cited an unusual phobia in asking that her child support benefits be restored. The phobia: fear of the contents of official letters.

Evidence in the case before a court in western Rhineland-Palatinate state said the woman, who it did not identify, was sent a letter in May 2007 asking that she supply evidence to support continued payments for her daughter.

After she failed to respond, she was notified in July 2007 that the money was being cut off and that she was being given one month to appeal.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Thousands of primary pupils were prevented from making Father's Day cards at school for fear of embarrassing classmates who live with single mothers and lesbians.

The politically correct policy was quietly adopted at schools "in the interests of sensitivity" over the growing number of lone-parent and same-sex households.

It only emerged after a large number of fathers failed to receive their traditional cards and handmade gifts.

Family rights campaigners last night condemned the policy as "absurd" and argued that it is marginalising fathers, but local authorities said teachers need to react to "the changing pattern of family life".'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A British mother has been arrested in Spain after she allegedly left her five-year-old son to burn on a baking hot beach for 12 hours while she went to work.

The boy's mother, aged 19, reportedly left him playing in the sand at the popular resort of Benalmadena, in the Costa del Sol, where he suffered serious sunburn and had to be later admitted to hospital.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Officials at West Kent College in Tonbridge, Kent, sent an email to all pupils warning that the behaviour was "totally unacceptable", and saying any students caught harassing contractors would face disciplinary action.
...
The email read: "It has come to the attention of the college that some female students have been making comments to, or whistling at, the builders both whilst on site and as they walk around the campus.
...
Meanwhile new laws could see wolf-whistling builders placed on the sex offenders register. The Sexual Offences (Scotland) Bill will create a new offence of "communicating indecently", punishable by up to 10 years in jail.

The legislation is intended to punish sexual harassment by text, emails and letters, but ministers also aim to include sexually explicit comments to strangers. It is expected that the law would only apply to persistent offenders.'