It's down to the wire. The senate is expected to vote on the Violence Against Women Act very soon.

Vice President Biden recalled recently that when VAWA was first passed, opponents warned that it would be misused in divorce. They were right.

One in six Americans know someone who has been falsely accused of domestic violence. The "silver bullet" in divorce, false allegations are sometimes used to obtain child custody. This despicable act removes fit and loving parents from the lives of their children.

Please take a moment as soon as possible, and speak out for the millions of children who are missing a falsely accused parent. And do it for the parents who are grieving for their children, stolen with a lie.

Find your senators here: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm. Take note of their party affiliation and phone number.

If your senator is a Republican, call, and ask them to support Sen. Grassley's Substitute Amendment to VAWA.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The attorney for the Board of Overseers of the Maine State Bar has recommended that Assistant District Attorney Mary N. Kellett be disciplined for her legal and ethical misconduct in her prosecution of Vladek Filler. On April 6, 2012, Bar Counsel J. Scott Davis recommended discipline for Kellett based on her violation of nine separate codes of conduct for Maine attorneys.

As readers of this blog will recall, Vladek Filler is the father who was accusedby his wife Ligia Filler, during the course of their custody battle, of sexual assault and child abuse. Despite the complete absence of evidence against him apart from his wife’s say-so, ADA Mary Kellett not only prosecuted Filler, but violated numerous ethical codes in doing so. She managed to get a conviction which was overturned by the trial court due to her prosecutorial misconduct.

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON, Apr 24, 2012 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- The Heritage Foundation has recently released a report that concludes the proposed Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization is "a gross distortion of the original law and is gravely flawed." The think-tank report, Violence Against Women Act: Reauthorization Fundamentally Flawed, highlights how the bill now being debated in the U.S. Senate, S. 1925, would fund abuse-reduction programs that are unproven, duplicative, and wasteful: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/03/the-violence-against-women-act-reauthorization-fundamentally-flawed

At the heart of the proposed bill, the report argues, lies an ideologically rooted attempt at social engineering:

Article here. Excerpt:

'But the most vigorous criticism has come from civil libertarians, who argue the Obama administration's guidance undermines the rights of the accused. They've focused on the requirement that colleges use a "preponderance of evidence" standard in such cases — essentially a belief guilt is more likely than not, and a much lower standard than defendants enjoy in criminal court.

Illustrating the dangers, they say, are cases like that of a former North Dakota college student who was found responsible for sexually assaulting a fellow student by a campus disciplinary board. Later, police investigating the incident cleared him and brought false-reporting charges against his accuser. Still, he struggled to clear his name and has yet to return to school.

Title IX, these critics claim, is a blunt legal weapon for addressing sexual assault on campus. They too see a threat to access to education — but for the accused.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'I don't know about you, but everywhere I go I run into men who don't feel like they have a real place in the world, thanks to the so-called "man-cession." Their eyes are hollow; they struggle for identity. They are all like the guys in Peter Gabriel's searing song, "Don't Give Up," about a man "whose dreams have all deserted," who struggles for work, for identity and a reason to go on living.
...
Today in the U.S., the tables have pretty much turned. Like fish without bicyles, women are enjoying more opportunities than ever, and they don't need men to realize their dreams of college and careers. They are putting off marriage and childbearing. They now enjoy a majority in colleges and graduate schools. They are also a majority in American workplaces, though they still generally earn less than men in comparable jobs.

Article here

'McKINNEY, Texas (AP) — Deion Sanders' estranged wife denies that she broke into his room in their Dallas-area home and attacked him in front of their children.

Pilar Sanders was arrested Monday on a misdemeanor domestic violence charge. She was released Tuesday and said she is innocent and that she's not being treated fairly because her husband is a Hall of Famer who played for the Dallas Cowboys.

Authorities haven't released details about the alleged attack. But Deion Sanders tweeted Monday that his children "just witnessed their mother and a friend jump me in my room."

Article here. Excerpt:

'Now we finally have the chance to stand up in a common call for all children in Sweden's right to both parents. This is thanks to Niklas Sundqvist who is the initiator of a joint protest. The first of its kind. It will be held in Stockholm on 13 May 2012. Do not miss this unique opportunity to show the leadership that we have had enough of their incessant violations of our and our children's right to family life.

The demonstration will be held in Sergel Square in Stockholm.
...
May 13, 2012 - Collection 12:00
Demonstration 13:00 to 16:00

Organizer: Niklas Sundqvist
Link for notification: http://www.facebook.com/events/315765661815373/

News submitted by

Ulf Andersson
PappaRättsGruppen
http://www.dads-r-us.se/

From Marc Angelucci of NCFM:

Today I spoke on the panel at the Earth Day Festival in San Francisco (the largest Earth Day festival in the U.S.) on behalf of the National Coalition For Men (NCFM). The organizers invited us, along with the National Organization for Women (NOW), to be part of a panel on the topic, "What is Green." The idea was to engage the community from various viewpoints. There were about 6 panelists. Here is the link to the "Our Team" with my name and brief bio.: http://www.earthdaysf.org/our-team.html

Article here. Excerpt:

'DAVAO CITY, April 22 (PIA) -- The local government of Davao is the first local government to address the issue of abused husbands.

Says Rene Estorpe, barangay captain of Agdao Centro and president of the Mr. GAD (Gender and Development) Federation, a group of 15 barangays in the city where GAD for men are being piloted.

Estorpe said that aside from Violence Against Women and Children, Mr. GAD seeks to look into the plight of cuckolded husbands who are also victims of abuses committed by their spouses. “Pareho rin ang mga kaso, may physical violence and verbal abuse.” (It has the same cases there is physical violence and verbal abuse). The barangay chief say that in these cases, the roles are reversed as the husbands themselves are the victims.

Estorpe said that in his barangay they are handling two cases of abuses, where the husbands are asking for barangay protection against their wives. Estorpe added.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'(CNN) -- Are men stupid? How else can we explain the endless parade of otherwise successful individuals, who by all appearances seem intelligent and competent, and yet risk destroying their careers and their personal lives over the chance to have a sexual escapade?

John Edwards crashing from the heights of promise to infamy, from presidential candidate to defendant in a trial after a secret affair; Secret Service agents ending their careers in disgrace over dalliances with prostitutes in Colombia, all join that long procession of men who managed to self-destruct, pulling a pin on the grenade of their careers and perhaps their personal lives for the sake of a little fun.

The pageant of legacy-killing misjudgment includes a president, several might-have-been presidents, a few governors, a World Bank director, a former Dutch prime minister, an Israeli president and one of the top golfers of all time. And that is only a partial list.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Springboro, OH (WKEF/CNN) - A 14-year-old boy faces rape charges after being accused of having sex with a 12-year-old girl at school.

The incident allegedly happened during school hours.

Both say it was consensual, but that doesn't matter under Ohio law.
...
These women say it's unbelievable that two students had sex at school.

The Warren County prosecutor says they were able to get out of class and hook up.

Now the boy is charged with rape because the girl is under the age of 13.

"I think it's a shame and if he's going to be charged she should be charged too because they both knew what they were doing," said Moore.'

Letter here.

'Recently a letter to the editor suggested that men should not be part of the abortion debate.

I still can't quite process that.

It takes a man and a woman to create a child. With that in mind, if the pregnant woman, the mother, is considering abortion the man, that is, the father, should have a say in the consideration.

If the pregnant woman decides to bear the child, the man may be expected to pay child support for a number of years.

Today it is the pregnant woman, who decides whether the fetus is a human being; whether the fetus will live or die; and whether the father will be expected to pay child support if the woman decides to bear the child.

Something is wrong with this picture. I know I am not the only person to see that.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'According to Zarki, the baby's parents asked him to look into the matter, and since he had already carried out three similar circumcisions, he agreed, even though he hadn't previously seen a penis as small in all his 24 years as a mohel.

"My goal (in tweeting the) tweet was to bring the matter to the public's attention, that you can carry out a halachic circumcision even when there is such a problem, which is complicated from a medical perspective, that was my message."

"Sometimes you see a baby that weighs four kilograms, where three of them are the penis and sometimes it's only a few grams. Medical literature recognizes the phenomenon of 'micro penises,' just like sometimes I also see macro (penises), but everyone knows that size doesn't matter," the rabbi added jokingly.

The rabbi's "humorous" tweet came on the same day that a different Brit ceremony carried out by a different mohel, ended in tragedy. An eight day old baby was rushed to hospital after a mohel cut off a third of his penis during a circumcision ceremony.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON - Women's life spans in the USA are improving at a slower pace than men's and are shorter in many U.S. counties than they were 20 years ago, according to a report released Thursday.

The trend is cause for alarm even though women are still expected to outlive men by four years, says the report by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research center at the University of Washington. The study is based on mortality data by age, sex and county from 1989 to 2009.

Life expectancy for U.S. men improved by 4.6 years on average, but only by 2.7 years for women. Life spans county to county across the USA range on average from 66.1 to 81.6 years for men and 73.5 to 86 years for women.

Article here. Excerpt:

'WiseGuyz, run by the Calgary Sexual Health Centre (which gave Mr. Spence his training), isn't just sex ed with an update. It's part of a new wave of initiatives to intervene in a young, male culture that is giving many adults cause for concern. Long-term, the aim is to combat the rates of domestic violence and sexually transmitted infections. Short-term, the goal is to tutor young men in healthy relations with women and non-destructive masculinity.
...
In many ways, these programs are a junior version of the Men Of Strength (MOST) Club: Now a decade old in the United States, the 22-week curriculum for 11-to-18-year-olds emphasizes “healthy, non-violent masculinity.” A college incarnation, Campus MOST, is now pushing bystander intervention in sexual assaults.