Article here. Excerpt:

'Australia’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has responded to news of the collapse of her support amongst Australia’s voting public with an air of denial that has even stunned her harshest critics.
...
Senior federal Labor MPs are warning Ms Gillard that she needs a strategy to win back the hearts and minds of middle Australians, especially males, otherwise Labor faces being decimated at the next federal election.
...
And a policy that has received little news media coverage but has caused significant grass roots upheaval has been the recent 2011 Family Law amendments, which have effectively dismantled Australia’s popular and broadly successful shared parenting laws, and replaced them with what is largely perceived to be anti-male, anti-fatherhood policies, many seeing this as Gillard cowering to feminist ideologues.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A John Lewis sales assistant claimed she had been raped because she was so embarrassed about a sado-masochistic sex session, a court heard.

Kirsty Sowden, 21, met her victim online after advertising herself as a 'BDSM princess' - standing for Bondage, Domination and Sadomasochism - on a no-strings attached website.
...
But Sowden, who was trying for a baby with her boyfriend at the time, was so guilt-wracked that she called police shortly afterwards and told them she had been raped.

Police eventually untangled the dominatrix’s web of lies and charged her with perverting the course of justice. The investigation had already cost nearly £14,000 and wasted a staggering 376 hours of police time.'

Article here. Vice President Joe Biden shows his disregard for the civil rights of men once again. Excerpt:

'Vice President Joe Biden suggested on Wednesday that the GOP’s opposition to the Democratic version of a domestic violence bill will give the green light to male violence against women.

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was passed in 1994 and was reauthorized in 2005. Approval of an updated law is stalled because Republican and Democratic senators disagree over what provisions should be added to the law.

“Just ask yourself, what message does it send to our daughters, to every women imprisoned in their own homes … if the law is not reauthorized,” Biden declared today at a White House meeting of feminists and groups that are funded by the law.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Indiana’s new state law lowers the cutoff age for children receiving child support from 21 to 19. It exempts support for education expenses and provides an exemption for a child who is incapacitated. Sen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford, said the law takes effect July 1 and applies to all child support orders.

Warrick County Superior Court Judge Robert Aylsworth said Enrolled Act, Senate Bill 18 shift of the emancipation age to two years earlier is "an enormous change" that's going to result in a surge of petitions seeking to modify support orders. “I think we are going to see a run on the courthouses.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (CBS St. Louis/AP) — A prison inmate in South Dakota is suing a hospital for performing a circumcision on him nearly 30 years ago.

Twenty-eight-year-old Dean Cochrun is imprisoned at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls for kidnapping. He’s suing Sanford Hospital, previously known as Sioux Valley Hospital, for performing the circumcision when he was an infant.

Cochrun says in a complaint filed Friday in federal court that he was “recently made aware of the fact that I had been circumcised,” and that the procedure has left him feeling inadequate and unable to fully enjoy sex.'

PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Teri Stoddard
Telephone: 301-801-0608
Email: tstoddard@saveservices.org

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison Applauded for Principled Stand on VAWA Bill

Washington, DC/April 18, 2012 – Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison recently announced her support for an alternative to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization bill S. 1925, which had been introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. The Texas senator’s announcement has earned her praise from advocates for victims of domestic violence.

In a letter to the Des Moines Register, Sen. Hutchison outlined a number of objections to S. 1925 and indicated that she is working with Sen. Chuck Grassley and Sen. Amy Klobuchar on an improved domestic violence bill. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120406/OPINION/304060009/-1/SPORTS12/Grassley-plan-will-strengthen-anti-violence-law-women

Article here. Excerpt:

'Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people, but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in many cases they knew were troubled.

Officials started reviewing the cases in the 1990s after reports that sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable forensic evidence in court trials. Instead of releasing those findings, they made them available only to the prosecutors in the affected cases, according to documents and interviews with dozens of officials.

In addition, the Justice Department reviewed only a limited number of cases and focused on the work of one scientist at the FBI lab, despite warnings that problems were far more widespread and could affect potentially thousands of cases in federal, state and local courts.'

I enjoy Spring, the season of new beginnings and hope. My hope is that we give domestic violence law a new beginning, starting with the reform of VAWA (S.1925) to protect civil rights.

Easter break has passed, and the Senate is back in session. As of this writing, there has not been a vote on VAWA. Word has it the delay is due to some Senators behind the scenes demanding amendments to S.1925 in return for their vote. This is great news for us!

I hope you realize that your calls give these senators the motivation and strength to speak out on your behalf. Please don't let them down now, not when they need your support the most. Let's do another round of phone calls today.

Please contact your two senators and ask them to be sure the new VAWA respects civil rights, esp. the requirement of the 4th Amendment to have probable cause before a person can be arrested.

Article here. Excerpt:

'It is hoped the new treatment, which involves heating only the tumours with a highly focused ultrasound, will mean men can be treated without an overnight stay in hospital and avoiding the distressing side effects associated with current therapies.

A study has found that focal HIFU, high-intensity focused ultrasound, provides the 'perfect' outcome of no major side effects and free of cancer 12 months after treatment, in nine out of ten cases.

Traditional surgery or radiotherapy can only provide the perfect outcome in half of cases currently.

Experts have said the results are 'very encouraging' and were a 'paradigm' shift in treatment of the disease.'

Article here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a US non-profit organisation dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, has named men’s rights activists (MRAs) as a hate group in its latest quarterly publication.

In an issue entitled The Year in Hate and Extremism, the SPLC, based in Montgomery, Alabama, explores how MRAs spread false claims about women:

Misogynists in the men’s and fathers’ rights movements have developed a set of claims about women to support their depictions of them as violent liars and manipulators of men.

Some suggest that women attack men, even sexually, just as much as men attack women. Others claim that vast numbers of reported rapes of women, as much as half or even more, are fabrications designed to destroy men they don’t like or to gain the upper hand in contested custody cases.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Women make less money than men for the same work. It's a proven fact.

Or is it?

Tuesday is Equal Pay Day, designed to highlight the gap between men's and women's wages. The idea is to point out that the average woman would have to work through all of 2011 and into early 2012 -- through Tuesday -- to earn what the average man took home just in 2011.

The wage gap has the attention of Nevada's congressional delegation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pushed the Paycheck Fairness Act, which aims to close the gap, to a Senate vote in 2010, but a Republican filibuster blocked it.

The act has since languished, likely because supporters see little chance of passage with a Republican majority in the House, said Michele Leber, chairwoman of the National Committee on Pay Equity, the Virginia advocacy group behind Equal Pay Day.'

Article here. Excerpt:

Story here. Courts botch cases and it can pay to know your rights. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON — Albert Holland Jr., a death row inmate in Florida, has no legal training and seems to be suffering from a mental illness — “perhaps a disorder involving paranoia or delusional thoughts,” a federal judge wrote recently.

But he turns out to be a pretty good lawyer. Two years ago, in allowing Mr. Holland a fresh chance to make his case after his court-appointed lawyer blew a crucial deadline, the Supreme Court praised Mr. Holland’s legal acumen. Indeed, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote, Mr. Holland had had a better understanding of the complicated time limits for challenging death sentences in federal court than his lawyer had.

Mr. Holland made good use of the opportunity the Supreme Court gave him. A couple of weeks ago, he won a decision granting him a new trial. In the process, he opened a window on the astoundingly spotty quality of court-appointed counsel in capital cases.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'I have just had the privilege of taking my 9 year old son and 7 year old nephew to a carnival in Sydney, Australia.
...
To my utter despair, on a very cold autumn day in Sydney which required winter clothing for me and the boys, one of the earliest sites we saw while waiting in the queue for our tickets was countless young girls, aged between eight years up to their mid-teens, with skimpy-sized, ‘Daisy Duke’ cut-off jeans, not only exposing the length of their legs, but their buttocks too.
...
I was left asking ‘in a society that prioritised above everything else the protection of children against sexual influence of any kind, what kind of social pressures, or perhaps social incentives, really do exist in our society that compels young girls to expose themselves in such cold weather, in such a sexually affronting manner?’