From Marc A.:

Interesting quotes from intactivist rabbis and other Jews. Sample from Rabbi Binyamin Biber:

"We're seeing [circumcision's] decline, and we're seeing Rabbi's like me and others in other communities saying these practices are not warranted and we're seeing a generational shift away from them. One of the things that I think that's also critical is the growing popularity, and I think a rightful popularity of natural medicine and natural childbirth ideas. And I think that this is clearly seen as inconsistent - not consistent with natural childbirth, natural health. ... Inflicting a wound on an infant is clearly not one of those....“

Link here. Excerpt:

'Your heart relies on arteries to feed it blood. When plaque builds up in these crucial blood vessels, it's bad news. But it may be even more of a threat for women.

In a new study, researchers included 480 people who were having severe chest pain. Doctors gave all of them a high-tech test that took pictures of their heart to check for plaque.

Having a lot of plaque buildup in the heart's arteries had a different effect in men and women. It put women at a higher risk of major heart problems like a heart attack or dying of a heart-related cause down the road.

These findings show that having extensive plaque buildup is more worrisome for women than men, according to one of the researchers.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Radical feminists recently suffered a rare setback when a U.S. senator decided to back away from proposed legislation that would have denied college students basic civil rights.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) has dropped the "preponderance of evidence" standard that was to be added to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Phil Cook of Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), an organization that dedicates itself to protecting victims and stopping false allegations, tells OneNewsNow what that would have meant for college students accused of a sex crime.

"The standard is it's more likely than not a sexual assault occurred -- that's what 'preponderance of evidence' means," he details.

But even though the clause has been removed, the SAVE spokesman says there are still many unresolved issues involving the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, such as a Department of Education directive that requires schools to set up tribunals to judge students accused of sex assaults.

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON (Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011) – Nearly 20 years after the Violence Against Women Act was first signed into law, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced bipartisan legislation Wednesday to further strengthen and improve the programs authorized under the landmark law to assist victims and survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. The legislation is cosponsored by Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).
...
“These dollars go directly to woman and children who have been victimized by domestic violence,” Crapo said. “The reauthorization of VAWA provides critical services to these victims of violent crime, as well as agencies and organizations who provide important aid to those individuals. I have been a strong supporter of prevention and elimination of domestic abuse since coming to Congress, and I intend to continue to fight to keep these funds intact for women and children.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Section 102, “Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies and Enforce Protection Orders” calls for the development of “multidisciplinary high risk teams” focused on reducing sexual violence and homicides by developing “evidence-based indicators to assess the risk of homicide.” Oher than the ambiguous “evidence-based indicators,” there is no mention in the bill that a complaint by an alleged victim must be made before such assessments can take place. Absent a complaint, how does one justify government surveillance in order to gather “evidence”?

Another troubling clause concerns eligibility for grants in which the grantee, “with the exception of the courts,” must demonstrate that their ”laws, policies, or practices and their training programs discourage dual arrests of offender and victim” (italic mine). Offender and victim as defined by whom? Absent physical evidence, domestic violence cases are often he said-she said affairs. Dual arrests are often necessary in order to ferret out the truth, and this item would appear to inhibit that.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'Paternity has been pushed into the national spotlight by the recent allegations toward teen pop star Justin Bieber. While tabloids buzz with celebrity paternity stories, thousands of men across the country face the same issue daily and turn to DNA paternity testing to either confirm or refute their relationship to children. According to DDC (DNA Diagnostics Center), the largest provider of private paternity testing worldwide, questions about paternity testing from men have increased annually and now account for about 40% of all inquiries.

“As one of the leading companies in DNA testing, we’re seeing an increase in calls by men seeking paternity answers, especially for cases where there are disputes or where chain of custody is important,” said Dr. Michael Baird, chief science officer for DDC. “In the case of DDC, we’re an accredited AABB laboratory that maintains a chain of custody reporting structure to ensure results of a test can be presented in court, if needed.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'They believed that their son was innocent but were afraid that Virginia's penal system would grab hold of him and never let go.

So Cherri Dulaney and Edgar Coker Sr. told 15-year-old Edgar Jr. to plead guilty to raping a 14-year-old friend. Their court-appointed attorney told them that was better than risking adult charges and a lengthy prison term.

Two months after their decision, in November 2007, the girl admitted that she had lied.

The Cokers have been fighting ever since to rescue their son from the consequences. He served 17 months in a juvenile prison. He remains on the Virginia sex-offender registry, and the family moved to avoid harassment from neighbors.

The Verizon Foundation has produced a frightening video titled Monsters. The video's perverse message can be summed up in this slide: "She's afraid of her dad."

The video revels in powerful yet destructive stereotypes: fathers as abusers, wives as victims, and young boys as future abusers. The video tells the impressionable viewer:

"The child who lives with domestic violence... is afraid of the monster just down the hall," a girl's voiceover intones, while frightening images of a hunchbacked monster-dad flit across the screen: http://www.multivu.com/mnr/52044-verizon-foundation-national-domestic-hotline-video-launch-monsters

To be honest this video is not just biased, it's awful. Tell Verizon (politely) to clean up its act.

Contact Bob Varettoni, Executive Director of Media Relations:

Email: robert.a.varettoni-at-verizon.com

Please email today - thanks!

Sincerely,

Story here. If this were a man, it would have been front page news in Boston.com with several other articles that would overview the case in detail. Also, the woman got out of harsher charges because she invoked her her neo-feminist jurisprudence override and claimed she was "abused". Funny how these issues get worked out very differently in public opinion and sentencing. Excerpt:

'A Lowell mother has pleaded guilty to raping her four children, putting an end to a 16-year-old case that was reactivated last month when the Massachusetts Appeals Court overturned her conviction.

Nancy Adkinson, 49, was convicted in a jury-waived trial in Middlesex Superior Court in 1997 and given a sentence that would have kept her behind bars until she was 70 years old. However, the appeals court ruled last month that Adkinson was a battered woman whose husband, Corby Adkinson, also controlled the trial strategy that led to her conviction. The court ordered a new trial.

Link to media release here. Excerpt:

'The outstanding achievements of Australian Nobel Laureate Professor Elizabeth Blackburn have been recognised through a new fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) awarded to top female Research Fellows.

This important new NHMRC Fellowship was announced today by Minister for Health and Ageing Nicola Roxon and Minister for Mental Health and Ageing Mark Butler.

“The NHMRC Elizabeth Blackburn Fellowships will foster the career development of female scientists excelling in biomedical, clinical and public health research,” Ms Roxon said.

“Professor Blackburn’s stellar international career, which includes the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2009, has inspired the NHMRC to recognise the next generation of Australian women in science.”

Column here. A one-sided response from Amy Dickinson. She blames the husband as does the wife. The husband did say "I could never have kids." Amy does not say a word about the wife's deceit when she tried to subvert her husband's desires by secretly going off the pill. Apparently both Amy and the wife think women have a right to do this. Excerpt:

'I knew it was wrong, but I would accidentally-on-purpose skip days of my birth control, eventually ceasing to take the pills at all. I knew that if we had a child, my husband would grow to love it.

The problem was that, after months of this, I never conceived. A few weeks ago, I finally decided to broach the topic again with my husband.

I discovered that he had a vasectomy a year before we met!
...

Dear Seeking: When your husband stated "I could never have kids," it sounds like he seems to think this is the same thing as saying, "I had a vasectomy."

Link here. Excerpt:

'A new study is challenging the widely held notion that men's minds are preoccupied with one topic: sex.

The research in college-age participants suggests that while men do think about sex more often than women, the subject crosses their mind an average of only about 19 times per day, compared to 10 times per day for women.

The results seem to disprove the popular notion that men think about sex every seven seconds, which would total more than 8,000 thoughts about sex in 16 waking hours, the Ohio State University researchers said.

Press release here. Excerpt:

'Washington, DC/November 29, 2011 — A domestic violence video produced by the Verizon Foundation distorts the facts, plays on emotions, and serves to alarm and frighten young children. Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), an advocate for domestic violence victims, has communicated with Verizon executives about the numerous factual errors, but the company refuses to correct its dangerous misinformation.

Titled “Monsters,” the video revels in powerful yet destructive stereotypes: fathers as abusers, wives as victims, and young boys as future abusers. “The child who lives with domestic violence… is afraid of the monster just down the hall,” a girl’s voiceover intones, while frightening images of a hunchbacked monster-dad flit across the screen: http://www.multivu.com/mnr/52044-verizon-foundation-national-domestic-hotline-video-launch-monsters.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Short version: Washington Department of Social and Health Services seized Maile Metalwala, the 4-year-old daughter of Solomon Metalwala, away from her unfit mother, Julia Biryukova, and put Maile in foster care. It is a common but unjust practice for child welfare agencies to put children in foster care instead of giving them to their fathers. Moreover, the Washington court separated Maile from Solomon based on spurious abuse allegations from a now thoroughly discredited accuser.

We want you to contact all relevant Washington authorities and demand that Solomon and little Maile be reunited--to email and fax them a letter, click here.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A COURT in France has ordered a man to pay 10,000 euros in damages to his long-frustrated ex-wife after he failed in his marriage "duties" by withholding sex from her for years. In the May ruling, published overnight in the Gazette du Palais judicial review, an appeals court in the southern city of Aix-en-Provence upheld an earlier decision to award the damages for "absence of sexual relations".

The couple, who are both 51, married in 1986 and have two children. They divorced in January 2009 in Nice.

In its ruling, the court said the man's wife deserved the damages due to the suffering she endured because of her sexless marriage.

"The wife's expectations were legitimate in the sense that sexual relations between married people are an expression of their mutual affection and part of the duties that proceed from marriage," the court said.