As reported on by BBC News, women in Germany can now join combat units of the armed forces, after a woman took the law to court and won. Could this be an opportunity for greater equality of responsibility, or will it turn into another disaster of sexual harassment suits, as has happened with the U.S. military? Time will tell.

In a surprising ruling, a New Jersey court ruled that a mother could move across the country with her daughter, and have the father "visit" with her through internet videoconferences. This is an awfully shallow form of "visitation," and the father is justifiably upset over this. David Levy, president of the Children's Rights Council, is disturbed by the precedent set by the case, calling it "unacceptable." Father's rights groups now have yet another issue to protest. Salon.com reported on the story at this link.

An Anonymous Reader writes, "Philip Cook, author of Abused Men - The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence will appear on an upcoming Montel Williams Show. Taping is set for Weds. Jan 10th. Show will air in about two weeks after that date, but no air date has been set yet. Watch your local listings in late January and
February. Cook will also appear on the O'Reilly Factor, Fox News Network on January 22nd. This show usually airs the same day, but it may be next day." Mark your calendars!

The Washington Times had a great, in-depth article about how several countries are eliminating the military draft, and the reasons for its demise. From the article: "'The draft was very efficient if what you needed was a large mass of semiskilled labor to deal with a direct and massive threat to your homeland,' said Philip Gold, director of defense studies at the Discovery Institute...'That does not even remotely describe the threat that the United States and its European allies are facing for the foreseeable future.'" Economic concerns as well as the social unpopularity of the draft, demonstrated during the Vietnam War, are other reasons that the draft is coming to be seen as obsolete.

The UK Telegraph has an article stating that the boy who recently slapped a 13-yo classmate's butt could be facing two years in a juvenile detention center for the incident. Note that both mothers of the children involved in the case do not feel this is necessary. So why is this madness continuing?

Although this is from Dec. 20, I only recently found a web link to this story and want to include it for the sake of thoroughness on the Bill 117 saga. The Ottawa Citizen printed another article on the Bill, also by Dave Brown. In it he mentions, "Reader reaction [to his original article] was the heaviest I've experienced in more than 30 years of column writing. Many refused to believe it. They thought I must have my facts wrong." Unfortunately - and frighteningly - the media seems to be completely ignoring this issue.

There's some surprising info from the Massachusetts News about William Pollack, who "joined the feminists at Wellesley College and Harvard's Graduate School of Education in their attempt to alter the nature of men by starting with boys in public schools across the country." Have a read of it right here. And there are some excerpts from his book, Real Boys. Of course, by "changing men," he means to make them more like women. Also, they included some soundbites from The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers to balance Pollack's claims, which was unexpected but a very fair move.

Fred Reed's latest column is a commentary on the recent news of a boy who could be charged with a felony for slapping a girl's butt. Fred provokes insight into the story with his usual humor and sarcasm. "Do you suppose Chief Salazar doesn't have enough to do?...The prissy confused in Espanola are teaching Sally that sexual attention from boys is sick, reprehensible, and a cause for calling the police. Gee, that'll make for happiness later in adulthood. And, dead serious, they may put the boy in juvie for two years, destroying his life forever. They're teaching Bobby that females are dangerous, that a man should never trust them."

A team of scientists in Japan have successfully cloned the embryo cells of mice and turned them into sperm cells. The UK Sunday Times reported on the story here. From the article: "The team, from the Machida district of Tokyo, also believe they will be able to reprogramme male cells into producing eggs so that men can both father and 'mother' children." The research is also controversial due to the use of cloning technology, and while the sperm haven't yet been used in creating a mouse offspring, it is widely believed among scientists that it would work.

CNN is reporting on the new Ohio law that allows men who were tricked into paternity to stop paying child support and sue to recover past payments in the event that a DNA test proves that they were not the father. It is great to see more coverage of this issue, and there are several anecdotes in the story from men who've been tricked into fatherhood and are still forced to pay. Interesting fact: "Lab directors say that in about one-third of the welfare cases and 10 percent of other cases, the father named by the mother turns out not to be the biological parent."

Bill Kuhl pointed me to this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article and writes, "My gut reaction to the article is that on the one hand it's good to see men coming together to try and help each other with their problems, and to hear about Latino men for a change, but on the other hand the support groups referred to in the article sound as though they were born out of a gender feminist ideology - perhaps these men should be reflecting on the word for Spanish word for 'hypocrite' instead of 'macho'." The article is about profeminist men's groups that subscribe to myths about domestic violence and try to "keep men in their place" by reinforcing the male workhorse role with chivalrous sympathy and subtle shaming. I share Bill's mixed feelings about these groups.

Bill Kuhl writes "On the NBC Nightly News on New Year's Day there was a segment debunkng the myth that following marriage, on average, the quality of men's lives improves while the quality of women's suffers. The recent study was done by sociologist Linda J. Waite of the Univ. of Chicago. Previously, as NBC pointed out, experts in the field had agreed that, after getting married, men's health tended to improve while women tended to become depressed. (I just can't help but wonder, how were they able to compare their sampling with a cloned group of unmarried men and women? There are too many variables that could have brought about the changes in the two groups' quality of life.) Nonetheless, kudos to Dr. Waite and to NBC for reporting on the politically incorrect study. I might add that the segment mentioned a number of areas in which the quality of women's lives tend to improve. A summary of Dr. Waite's findings can be
found at this link. Perhaps the nicest tidbit that NBC reported was that
only 4% of the married female respondants said they had 'unhappy marriages,' certainly not the picture of marriage that the media and academia would have us believe."

IHF sent in this link to a UK Independent story about the fact that Ministers are planning to have the DIY DNA testing kits regulated "to outlaw DNA testing by fathers using samples from mothers and children which are not verifiable or gained with consent." That's right - it's not being done due to civil liberties concerns, but because the kits can threaten the best interests of children. When are people going to go to the root of the problem, women who are tricking men into paternity, instead of forcing men to foot the bill for children who aren't their own? Do men simply exist to financially support women and children? With news like this, one has to wonder.

The Salt Lake Tribune printed this story about a court ruling which denied a full time college student exemption from paying child support. Judge Orme said that "A child's right to ongoing support should not be held hostage to a parent's desire to get a higher education...Contemporary college students are not forced to choose between earning an income and getting a higher education -- they can do both." This is more evidence that denying men reproductive rights has long term negative effects. I know too many men that can barely feed themselves and pay their child support, let alone attend a tech school or university.

This posting from Men's Health America gives an annual report of men's health issues in 2000, and what work the organization does. Ed Bartlett's group is very large and extremely active, and men's health is a fairly non-controversial issue that we can really hope to break some ground with. Join Ed's group to help "eliminate the life span gender gap and other disparities affecting men's health."