Article here. Excerpt:

'HOUSTON—The mother charged in the beating death of her 4-year-old son was allegedly upset that the boy wet himself, according to CPS and court documents the I-Team reviewed.

Vastie Coleman, 27, was being held without bond Tuesday in the Harris County Jail for allegedly killing Kyron Barnes.

The boy’s two surviving sisters described routine whippings by their mother in court documents. One of them told investigators Coleman used a cord to whip Kyron, because "the belt was broken because mom kept whipping the kids so hard it broke into pieces."'

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Article here. Excerpt:

'This year, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is once again up for reauthorization, but this newest version of VAWA — loaded up with even more leftist provisions — has hit a snag. First signed into law in 1994 with bipartisan support and reauthorized in 2000 and 2006, the legislation has become both a failure and a boondoggle — lining the pockets of feminist groups, vastly expanding federal, state, and local bureaucracies, and becoming riddled with fraud.

This year there are competing bills in the House (H.R. 4970) and Senate (S. 1925), and in a climate of debt, deficit, and government waste, the legitimate bone of contention is how best to reform the law that has spawned dozens of failed programs. VAWA created a bureaucratic nightmare that targets the wrong women — those claiming nebulous "psychological harm" — instead of actually helping battered women. In addition to not helping the women it is supposed to serve, VAWA has morphed into a rigid, inhumane law enforcement tool that hurts and denigrates men.'

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'HIV-AIDS is affecting black gay men in the United States on a scale unseen among any other group in the developed world, said a report issued Wednesday ahead of the International AIDS Conference.

So grave is the crisis that in some US cities, one in two black men who have sex with other men are HIV positive, according to the report from the Black AIDS Institute, the only national HIV-AIDS think tank focusing on African Americans.

"AIDS in America is a black disease, no matter how you look at it," its president and chief executive Phill Wilson, who is himself HIV positive, said ahead of Sunday's opening of the six-day global conference.

"The best lens through which to figure out what AIDS looks like in America is to look at AIDS in black America," he said in an interview, adding that it was time to "jump-start a new conversation... and build a robust response" to the crisis.'

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'As concerned citizens of the world well know, the Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is currently inside the Ecuadorian Embassy, in London, England, having gone there to ask for political asylum. I want to add my voice to the many people of conscience around the world in urging President Correa of Ecuador to grant political asylum to Julian Assange.

The British courts shamefully refused Mr. Assange’s appeal against extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning accused of sexual molestation. No criminal charges have been made against him. Mr. Assange has said he is willing to answer questions relating to accusations against him, but only in England. He has good reason not to want to be extradited to Sweden, as he could find himself imprisoned in solitary confinement, and then very likely extradited to a U.S. prison.'

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'Who would leave a little girl behind to be raped? Pretty much no one. It’s inconceivable. So what happened with the boy? Was there some kind of repulsion that took hold of McQueary, something about a man and boy, some kind of homophobia-inflected disgust? Or do we imagine that, on some level, boys can take care of themselves and be strong? This is why so many male survivors of rape feel plagued by guilt: They’re ashamed to be victims because they don’t feel entitled to be vulnerable. This boy was vulnerable, and he needed a protector. Mike McQueary failed him.

I don’t know where this victim is, but I hope he has the courage to come forward. If I could speak to him, I’d say, “We support you, whoever you are. We stand with you. And this time, we won’t walk away.”'

We recently surveyed registered voters across America to see if they agree with recent reforms to the Violence Against Women Act. We specifically asked about reforms to stop waste, fraud, discriminatory practices, and false allegations.

Over-all findings:

1. Stop waste and fraud - 69.5%
2. Stop discrimination - 65.9%
3. Stop false allegations - 63.5%

The survey shows strong support for reform among key voting blocs including women and young people. One notable finding: About 7 in 10 persons who are a victim of domestic violence or who personally know an abuse victim support the proposed changes.

Survey methods and detailed findings: http://www.saveservices.org/campaign-2012/national-survey-on-vawa-reform/

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'Some people suggest that boys have very different brains from girls and have inherently weaker verbal skills. They should be given "informational texts" to read instead of the classics or any material containing emotion, which they aren't good at either. Leonard Sax, president of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, suggests that literature teachers should not ask boys about characters' emotions but should focus only on what the characters actually do.

But science is proving that none of this is true. The alleged great differences between the brains of boys and girls are a myth. Lise Eliot, associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School, did an exhaustive review of the scientific literature on human brains from childhood to adolescence. She reports in her book Pink Brain, Blue Brain that there is "surprisingly little evidence of sex differences in children's brains."

WASHINGTON, July 17, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A strong majority of registered voters participating in a national survey support reforming the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). These persons support measures currently being debated in Congress that are designed to curb the waste, discrimination, and false allegations which are occurring under the current VAWA law.

Commissioned by Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), a victim advocacy organization, the survey shows strong support for reform among key voting blocs including women, young people, and domestic violence victims themselves.

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'A Richmond woman has been arrested on a warrant charging her with a felony sex crime after an investigation determined she was impregnated by a 15-year-old Richmond boy, court documents said.

Jessica M. Thompson, 23, of 256 S.W. Third St. in Richmond was charged with sexual misconduct with a minor (a Class B felony). A warrant was issued Monday, and Thompson had an initial hearing Friday morning in Wayne County Circuit Court. A trial date was set for 9 a.m. Oct. 9.'

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'The masculinity police push women away from financial equality by engaging in systematic scorn for all that is perceived to be feminine and all this is supported by feminists. Women's efforts to level the economic playing field are discounted and dismissed. To maintain the perceived superiority of masculinity over femininity, the masculinity police work tirelessly to keep the substantial wage gap in place.

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'Children have to be old enough to give their consent to a religious circumcision, says leading pediatrician Maximilian Stehr. But the law does not need to be changed.
...
'Would you see the issue of the inability of the child to give its consent as a bigger issue than that of the child's physical integrity?

I don't think you can separate the two. Physical integrity is certainly the highest value. That goes without question. There are certainly medical conditions and situations in which people want to decide for themselves that they would like to change something about their body. That is standard procedure in cosmetic surgery - it's the same in pediatric surgery, for example, when we correct protruding ears. For that, the child has to be able to judge for itself the seriousness of the operation, as well as its risks and side-effects, and that is only possible when the child is 14 or 16 years old.'

Article here. Excerpt:

BERLIN, July 17 (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that Germany could become a laughing stock if it fails to overturn a district court ban on circumcision that has enraged Jews and Muslims.

Merkel's government has already criticised the Cologne court ruling and promised a new law to protect the right to circumcise male infants, but the conservative leader's strong comments underline how sensitive Germany is to charges of intolerance because of its Nazi past.

"I do not want Germany to be the only country in the world where Jews cannot practise their rituals. Otherwise we will become a laughing stock," the Bild daily quoted Merkel as telling a closed meeting of her Christian Democrats (CDU).'

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'Public schools are hereby ordered to meticulously log and report to a federal officer (in the interest of “broadening data collection”) the gender breakdown of their math and science classes. Virtually all public and private colleges (“grant-receiving universities”) will be held to a new standard.

If federal officials think your classes are too male-dominated, the government will order you to put more women in them (“help you to comply with Title IX rules”) until it likes the ratio.

Punishment for failure to obey will be severe (nice federal funding you have there — it’d be a shame if anything happened to it).
...
“While we’ve made some progress in closing the gender gap . . . at the higher-level classes,” explained Education Secretary Arne Duncan, “we still see underrepresentation of young girls, and we have to improve upon that going forward.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Gender disparities in a major are not the product of sexism, but rather the differing preferences of men and women. The fact that engineering departments are filled mostly with men does not mean they discriminate against women anymore than the fact that English departments are filled mostly with women proves that English departments discriminate against men. The arts and humanities have well over 60 percent female students, yet no one seems to view that gender disparity as a sign of sexism against men. Deep down, the Obama administration knows this, since it is planning to impose its gender-proportionality rules only on the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), not other fields that have similarly large gender disparities in the opposite direction.'