Just yesterday RADAR announced the release of our new special report (.pdf file), "$1 Billion for DV Programs That Misuse Taxpayer Money and Place Victims at Risk".  Our report could hardly have been more timely.  Just today we've learned of a major campaign to pressure legislators to increase the VAWA appropriation in the President's 2009 budget.

Please contact your Representative on Capitol Hill and tell them that Violence Against Women Act funds have been subject to widespread waste and fraud.  Furthermore, scores of research studies show that a great many domestic violence programs are ineffective at best and harmful at worst.  The National Academy of Sciences describes these programs as "driven by ideology and stakeholder interests rather than by plausible theories and scientific evidence of cause."  Tell your Representative you want to see funding spent on programs that actually work.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Parents of two four-year-old boys in New York are suing officials after their sons were allegedly handcuffed for refusing to take a nap.

Lawyer Scott Agulnick says a substitute teacher took Jaden Diaz and Christopher Brito to an empty classroom.

Then, a school safety officer allegedly entered the room, cuffed the boys' wrists - and told them they would never see their parents again.'

This video clip interview with a $3,000 per hour prostitute is very interesting. Calling herself a "Ho-fessional," the twenty-eight year old female explains that she is a business woman making a half-million per year selling herself as a commodity and enjoying every minute of it.

This is the ultimate Raunch Culture Girl and she is the future of what little is left of femininity in America.

Story here. Excerpt:

'At least one in four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, or more than 3 million teens, according to the first study of its kind in this age group.
...
Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC's division of STD prevention, said the results are the first to examine the combined national prevalence of common sexually transmitted diseases among adolescent girls. He said the data, from 2003-04, probably reflect current rates of infection.

"High STD rates among young women, particularly African-American young women, are clear signs that we must continue developing ways to reach those most at risk," Douglas said.

The CDC's Dr. Kevin Fenton said given that STDs can cause infertility and cervical cancer in women, "screening, vaccination and other prevention strategies for sexually active women are among our highest public health priorities."'

Story here. Sen. Barack Obama's top strategist Tuesday demanded that Sen. Hillary Clinton sever ties with Geraldine Ferraro, a top Clinton fundraiser who said Obama was a major presidential contender only because he is a black man. Excerpt:

'(CNN) -- Geraldine Ferraro defended her controversial comment that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign was successful because he was black, telling an interviewer Tuesday that she was being attacked because she was white.
...
"Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"
...
"I said in large measure, because he is black. I said, Let me also say in 1984 -- and if I have said it once, I have said it 20, 60, 100 times -- in 1984, if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been the nominee for vice president," she said.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Gates mother of three who pleaded guilty to having sex with two teenage boys will do six months in jail. Today a judge sentenced Dena Greene and also gave her 10 years of intensive probation. She's also required to register as a level-one sex offender.'

Another one off-linked: Fairmont Woman Accused of Having Sex with Teen Boy. "The criminal complaint says Watkins admitted to having sex with a 14 year old boy two times last month..."

I read these four articles (click 'Read more' to get to the links) and my mind sort of boggled. It's amazing how ambivalent, confused, and "double-standarded" westerners are about such things. But all in all, and I think it's hard to dispute, the underlying message is still the same: It's OK for men to pay for "the company" of a woman provided it is not an explicit this-for-that transaction, and if it is, the woman is the victim and the man the evil-doer. In other words, there always has to be this uncertainty about the outcome, and then it's OK.

This system allows a woman to bail on the whole thing-- ie, it's OK for her to be uncommitted to any form of payment for time and trouble while it's OK for a man to be.

Story here.

"What has brought this on is a survey, published last week, which compared the perfect 1950s housewife with her 2008 counterpart and asked 2,309 men what kind of woman they preferred. The majority seemed to prefer living with feisty modern babes rather than glorified butlers who change for dinner. But can that be right?

Chez Millard, in any case, it is 1955. For one day. And we are about to put the survey to the test."

Check out the comments at the end.

Article here. Excerpt:

"Mothers could be offered a financial incentive to start up their own business after having children, in a Government attempt to boost the number of women entrepreneurs.

They would be given advice on how to run a firm, pitch for bank loans and prepare business plans under the enterprise strategy being launched tomorrow...

...The enterprise strategy will be aimed at women who are either young, out of a job, from an ethnic minority or eager to work after having children. Mothers using children's centres will also be targeted with business advice."

Interview here. Excerpt:

"I support a woman's right to have equal opportunity. But I do not applaud a woman's right to be just like a man. That is different. Increasingly, college women are - under the guidance of feminists - acting more and more like college boys who just want to get drunk and have sex without commitment.

I believe that feminism has become a political movement that seeks to obtain unlimited rights for woman without corresponding responsibilities via the suppression of feminism."

Fathers Are Great Teachers

"Once again, we were able to debut a new sign (far left in photo), countering the Father vilifying mainstream media. Once again, we were able to express our commitment to speak well of Fathers. February is President's month so who better than Abe Lincoln to emphasize the fact that "Fathers Are Great Teachers.""

Article here.

It highlights that gender based voting requirements may actually be a threat to democracy. Excerpt:

'"I paused for a long time," says McFadden. "Then I told her I voted for a boy - I wasn't going to lie." McFadden, who has worked on women's issues for twenty years, says the room went silent and the board chair chastised her. "It was clear that I had betrayed feminism by voting for Barack Obama. It became obvious - if you didn't vote for Hillary Clinton, you were less than a feminist and only marginally a woman."'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Hartford is poised to jump headlong into single-gender education, with an all-boys school being planned for the fall and a girls' school to follow a year later.

They would become the first entirely single-gender public schools in the state, said Tom Murphy, spokesman for the state Department of Education.
...
The girls take up an extra row at graduation ceremonies, Weaver High School Principal Paul Stringer said. "I think it's because there are so few male role models and fathers in homes of kids growing up in poverty-stricken areas." He said a school dedicated to boys could help, and he offered to return to such a school after he retires at the end of this year to mentor the principal, teachers and students.'

Video here.

"CNN's Sunny Hostin talks about the case against a mother caught on surveillance cameras power washing her toddler."

"We have no evidence to date that VAWA has led to a decrease in the overall levels of violence against women." –Angela Moore Parmley, PhD, U.S. Department of Justice

Very often, bad public policy accompanies bad fiscal policy. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is no exception.

The quote above comes from a Justice Department official with no ax to grind. VAWA is ideological public policy in which true debate is considered politically incorrect. None of the discussions in Congress leading up to the passage of the original 1995 VAWA bill, the 2000 reauthorization, nor the 2005 reauthorization involved any real debate about the merit, or lack of merit, of the programs to be funded. The predictable result is that VAWA is filled with waste, fraud, and abuse. In short, ideology has been given priority over efficacy, and Congress' expenditure of roughly $1 billion tax dollars per year on domestic violence programs is yielding very poor results.

These problems are outlined in RADAR's latest special report: $1 Billion for DV Programs That Misuse Taxpayer Money and Place Victims at Risk.