...dad being an idiot with his kid while mom shows contempt for him and corrects him. Watch Hanes' groundbreaking ad "Paste" here.

From Tennessee we go now to Canada on the continuing topic of equally shared parenting.  In both the state and the nation, there are bills pending before the legislatures that would establish the presumption of equally shared parenting.  And in both, the presumption could be rebutted by a showing that one parent was violent or otherwise unfit.  And both bills have substantial backing and momentum, although their ultimate fate remains unknown.

But what a difference a thousand miles or so can make!  This article on shared parenting actually deals honestly with some of the issues involved, particularly the issue of domestic violence (The London Free Press, 3/10/10).

(As a brief aside, let me point out that the entire debate about equally shared parenting sometimes seems like nothing more than a debate about domestic violence.  In that way, the anti-dad crowd has successfully highjacked the terms of the discussion.  And that's a shame since actual incidents of physically harmful DV are fairly rare.  As but one example, about three months ago, the government of Scotland published its most recent findings on DV in that country.  It found that about 5% of men and 5% of women in intimate relationships had experienced some form of DV in the previous year.  Seventy-nine percent of those had suffered no injury whatsoever or simply a "minor cut or bruise.")

If the article is any indication, people in Canada and specifically in Ontario, are starting to take seriously the many ways in which allegations of domestic violence can be used as a weapon in child custody matters.  In fact, the London Equal Parenting Committee is sponsoring a talk by former MP Roger Gallaway about that very topic.  The article quotes Gallaway as follows:

"What I find distressing is the lack of objectivity around this whole subject," says Gallaway, who represented his riding for the Liberal party from 1993 to 2006. "There has to be some type of balance put into the discussion. And it's sadly lacking."

Gallaway regrets that none of the 1998 report's recommendations -- including a call for stricter rules regarding the reporting of abuse -- were ever adopted.

"An allegation of violence is a weapon," he says. "And in Ontario we have a zero-tolerance policy, which generally speaking says that when allegations are made, it's the male who's removed (from the residence). And that then casts the die for what will occur in terms of child custody or access."

Gallaway adds that more and more people are starting to realize that more and more deserving fathers are being shortchanged when it comes to contentious custody battles.

"There's a growing constituency . . . that sees what's occurring and knows these men aren't bad people," he says. "So the doubt about what is being said about (so-called) violent men is growing."

The article illustrates Gallaway's point with this story:

One man I spoke to, for instance, says his ex-wife falsely accused him of slamming a van door on her leg. And even though that assault charge was later withdrawn by the Crown attorney, the man says the allegations damaged his reputation during proceedings with a family court judge who restricted his access to his kids.

It's a familiar story.  Family courts have always shown an overwhelming tendency to grant child custody to mothers.  Now that men are starting to understand the value to themselves and their children of hands-on fathering, they're trying to assert what parental rights they have.  The law places an enormously powerful weapon - allegations of DV - in the hands of mothers and they use it.  Sometimes they use it unscrupulously.

As a counterpoint, the article quotes DV advocate Peter Jaffe as saying that false accusations of DV are "rare."  Actually, in the U.S. studies have shown that as much as 71% of DV restraining orders were either unnecessary or received under false pretenses.  Other studies show that over half involve not even the allegation of physical violence.  In Canada, reports of child maltreatment are deemed to be unsubstantiated or without evidence in 55% of cases according to the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect.  So what Jaffe said looks to be far from the truth.

And Jaffe himself long ago proved his bias in matters of domestic violence by confining his research cohorts to women in DV shelters and then pretending that his findings can be extrapolated to the population at large. 

Little by little, state by state, country by country, the value to everyone of equally shared parenting is gaining understanding and acceptance.
 

Sometimes it seems that we just can't get away from outrageously bad "journalism."  In just the past two days I've been astonished at the frankly false data reported by the Bangor Daily News about child maltreatment.  The article completely ignored easy-to-find accurate data published yearly by the Administration for Children and Families of the Department of Health and Human Services.  That data directly contradicted the article's main point which was that fathers commit more child abuse than anyone else.  In the history of the statisitics gathered by the ACF, that has never been true in any year.

Now we have this piece about the bill before the Tennessee Legislature currently being vetted in committee (Jackson Sun, 3/10/10).  It would establish a presumption in law that equally shared parenting would be in the best interests of the child.  Of course the bill includes many exceptions to equally shared parenting, such as a history of violence on the part of one parent, unfitness by one parent or an agreement between parents to have something other than equal parenting responsibilities.  In short, it's similar to other equally shared parenting legislation around the country and the world.

So what's the Jackson Sun's take on the bill?  According to that paper, it would create "mandatory joint custody" after divorce.  That's right, a bill that would do no more than establish a presumption that could be rebutted in numerous ways and that parents could simply agree to ignore is in some way "mandatory."  The piece uses the term several times throughout.

But, not content to frankly misrepresent the effect of the proposed legislation, the piece then turns its blurred vision on supporters of the bill, describing them as

those who have been to court in child custody disputes and have been disappointed in the outcome. Perhaps they received weekend visitation, which they believe to be insufficient.

Fathers who have testified for the bill believe that the courts have an inherent bias for mothers, and these fathers who have been denied joint custody are angry.

So naturally, those who support a father's right to time with his child and a child's right to time with its father are portrayed as nothing more than petulent men who are angry that they didn't get their way.

Both the article and the WPLN audio piece it links to at the bottom make much of the fact that in 95% of cases, the parents agree on custody.  Now, assuming that figure is correct, (and I have grave doubts that it is based on data from studies outside of Tennessee), did it occur to anyone that fathers agree to accept "visitation rights" because they know that's all they'll get under the current regime?  Countless family lawyers have told their male clients some version of "You can pay me a lot to try to get custody and end up with visitation every other weekend, or you can pay me a little and end up with visitation every other weekend.  It's your choice."  Faced with that prospect, of course fathers agree.  But to the fine folks at the Jackson Sun and WPLN, that's proof that the system is working fine.

That brings me to the fact that, as bad as the piece is for what it says, it's actually worse for what it doesn't say.  And that goes for the WPLN audio piece too.  In both pieces,

• there's not a word about the radical discrepancy in child custody under the current system in which 84% of custodial parents are mothers;
• there's not a word about the actual need, established by five decades of social science, that children have for their fathers;
• there's not a word about how the current system of primary custody/visitation strongly tends to separate children from their non-custodial parent regardless of who the parent is;
• there's not a word about the widespread refusal by family courts to enforce even the meager visitation rights they give to fathers;
• there's not a word about the benefits to children of having as much contact as possible with both parents;
• there's not a word about how mothers can benefit from greater father involvement with children by being freed to achieve and advance more in their careers;
• there's not a word about the fact that supporters of equally shared parenting include not just disgruntled dads, but countless psychologists, sociologists, social workers, mothers, fathers, judges, attorneys, politicians and many others who understand the value of fathers to children;

In short, in an article that's supposedly about equal parenting, there's not a single word about the many virtues of having both parents involved in a child's life after divorce.  Those are, after all, why there's such a wave of support for equal parenting worldwide.  The audio piece briefly acknowledges the broad and deep support equal parenting has, but treats it as some sort of bizarre phenomenon, incomprehensible by reason.

When you think about it, it's funny how many things opponents of equally shared parenting have to ignore in order to maintain their opposition.  That's understandable since their brief for clinging to the status quo is thin-to-non-existent.

It's understandable alright, but it's sure not journalism.

No sooner have we finished with Santa Clara Deputy District Attorney Ben Field's suspension from the practice of law due to prosecutorial misconduct, but this comes across our desk (San Jose Mercury News, 3/11/10).

Last year I reported on a Santa Clara Hospital that the county's prosecutors used to analyze evidence in cases of alleged sexual abuse.  Back then some 3,000 videotapes of examinations of alleged sexual assault victims came to light.  It seems that the woman who conducted the examinations recorded them as well.  She didn't tell prosecutors about the tapes, and when they found out about them, they, er, neglected to inform defense attorneys.  One man's conviction was overturned and apparently "dozens" of others may be.

Now,

Attorneys have uncovered a second, critical trove of evidence that has been withheld for years by medical investigators in hundreds of Santa Clara County sex-assault cases, prompting a wholesale review of procedures at the county's public hospital.

The emergence Tuesday of previously unknown forms documenting interactions between medical personnel and suspected victims comes after prosecutors discovered more than 3,000 videotaped medical exams of children last year that were also improperly withheld from the accused.

So once again possibly exculpatory evidence has been withheld from defendants in alleged sex crime cases.  And just like in the Ben Field case, we hear echoes of the Duke Lacrosse case.  Here's how it works:

Prosecutors are required by law to turn over exculpatory evidence in their possession to defendants and their attorneys.  But the key words there are "in their possession."  In the Duke case, tissue samples had been collected and DA Mike Nifong sent that material, not to a state-run laboratory, but to a private one.  That way, the tests could be conducted and if they indicated guilt, the lab reports could be given to the DA who would then turn them over to the defense.  But if they indicated innocence, the results stayed in private hands.  Therefore, the DA's office would not have exculpatory evidence "in its possession," and therefore it wouldn't be required to turn it over to the defense.  It maintained "plausible deniability."

The same thing looks to have been happening in Santa Clara County, which is why,

Two years ago, an appellate court ruled that the hospital examiners were part of the "prosecution team," making the District Attorney's Office responsible for ensuring that evidence is turned over to defendants.

By adjudicating the hospital officials to be, in effect, an arm of the DA's office, the court was trying to prevent prosecutors from doing what Mike Nifong had done - hiding evidence from the defense in a purportedly neutral place. 

What's now come to light are intake forms in which people alleging sexual victimization tell hospital personnel what happened.  Obviously, in some cases, their statements then could tend to prove the innocence of a person subsequently charged.

Interestingly, hospital personnel who are part of the Sexual Assault Response Team continue to stonewall not only defense lawyers but prosecutors as well.  Last year, when the scandal about the withheld videotapes came to light, prosecutors swore that there was no other missing evidence beyond the tapes.  That was because hospital personnel had told them that.  Now that turns out once again to have been false.  One defense attorney, Michael Kresser,

praised prosecutors for acting quickly, but expressed concern about their lack of knowledge about Sexual Assault Response Team procedures, including the existence of the forms.

In other words, this time it's not prosecutors who are subverting justice and putting innocent defendants behind bars, it's nurses and other hospital personnel.  And it seems only to be a problem in allegations of sex crimes.

Here's my guess: someone at the hospital (and it may be several "someones") is a "believe the woman" adherent.  That is, there's someone who's swallowed whole the notion that women or children who complain of sexual abuse can't lie.  Therefore, since all allegations must be true, withholding exulpatory evidence is acceptable because it jails a man who's guilty even if there's evidence tending to show he's not.  I'd put money on it; there's one of those (or more) at Valley Medical Center in Santa Clara County, California.

To anyone familiar with the false allegations of rape levelled at three members of the Duke Lacrosse team in 2006, the following should be well-plowed ground.  One of the signal features of the Duke imbroglio was the fact that the prosecutor, Michael Nifong, ended up both losing the case and having the defendants declared not merely "not guilty," but "innocent."  That's an accomplishment few state's attorneys can claim.  But Nifong didn't rest on those laurels; he got himself disbarred as well.

One of the principal ways he managed that was by withholding evidence of the defendants' innocence from them and their lawyers.  Prosecutors are generally required to turn over to defense attorneys all exculpatory evidence, and Mike Nifong failed to do that repeatedly.

Now it's Santa Clara, California Deputy District Attorney Ben Field's turn.  Read about it here (California Bar Journal, March, 2010).  He's had his license to practice law suspended for four years for doing the same thing.  In fact, the state bar originally charged him with 25 counts of professional wrongdoing in four separate cases.  He was convicted by a judge of several of those counts and now an appelate court has upheld his suspension.  Apparently the most important charge against Field came in a sexual assault case against two men.  They were convicted, but filed a motion for habeas corpus.  As the state's bar journal describes it, Field

intentionally withheld a witness’ statement that was favorable to the defense in a 2003 habeas corpus proceeding involving a sexual assault. The judge found that he committed a discovery violation. 

In that matter, the review panel found that Field’s misconduct escalated over time and constituted “a calculated scheme to hide evidence favorable to the defense.”

Two men who were convicted of sexual assault had filed petitions for writ of habeas corpus and provided a declaration by a witness who claimed the 15-year-old victim had made false accusations because she missed curfew.

Field’s investigator found and interviewed the witness but did not notify the defense. In addition, he instructed his investigator to prepare a misleading declaration and filed it with the court, filed a statement with the court implying he did not know the witness’ whereabouts, and then waited five months before disclosing the interview, only after opposing counsel learned of the interview and had filed a motion alleging prosecutorial misconduct.

(I'll only note in passing that even the State Bar of California doesn't seem to understand that a person - in this case a 15-year-old girl - who falsely accuses another person of a crime, is not a "victim."  In fact, it is the men she accused who are her victims.  We might excuse a journalist who makes that mistake, but you'd think attorneys would know better.)

But what's described certainly echoes the Duke case and Mike Nifong's outrageous behavior.  Here as there, a false allegation of sexual assault was made to cover the accuser's own behavior.  Here as there, the prosecutor engaged in patently unethical, illegal and deceptive practices in order to get a conviction of men he had good reason to know to be innocent.  He then resisted, again by unethical and illegal means, the last realistic means they had of getting out of prison and clearing their names.  Sound familiar?

Well, it may be about to become more familiar still.  This article says that, for the first time, the State Bar is taking a hard look at allegations of prosecutorial misconduct (San Jose Mercury News, 10/17/08).  The Bar is starting to use its grievance procedures to scrutinize prosecutors' conduct, to which I can only say, "it's about time." 

For many years now, we've had a "jail 'em and throw away the key" attitude toward criminal defendants in this country.  Every imaginable act seems to be a crime these days, and the prevailing sentiment has given prosecutors a virtual carte blanche.  They seem to routinely overcharge defendants and go for the maximum sentence whether it's warranted or not.  There was a time when prosecutors had the sense to know which defendants were truly bad actors who needed to be in prison and those who weren't.  Now there seems to be no such concept among Assistant DAs.  So it's no surprise that the U.S. has more people behind bars than any country in the world and has many different organizations like the Innocence Project devoted to proving the innocence of people states have put away.

Certainly prosecutors like Mike Nifong and Ben Field aren't the only ones to blame for our out of control system of criminal justice, but, as the judges who upheld Field's suspension said,

“Although our system of administering justice is adversarial in nature and prosecutors must be zealous advocates in prosecuting their cases, it cannot be at the cost of justice,” wrote Judge Catherine Purcell, who was joined in the decision by Judges JoAnn Remke and Judith Epstein.

“Field lost sight of this goal,” Purcell continued, “ … and in doing so, he disregarded the foundation from which any prosecutor’s authority flows — ‘The first, best and most effective shield against injustice for an individual accused … must be found … in the integrity of the prosecutor.’”

Frail as that reed may be, it's an important one.  With luck, state bar associations across the country will take heed and start to hold prosecutors to their legal and ethical obligations.

Thanks to Scott for the heads-up.
 

This article weighed in with some disinformation about child abuse, neglect and death.  Its headline - "Most Often Children Die at the Hands of Young Men" - gives a taste of what's to come (Bangor Daily News, 3/6/10).  That is, the article itself contains some important misstatements of fact.

The piece is all about homicides that have children as their victims.  It quotes a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Public Safety, Stephen McCausland, as saying that about two children per year are victims of homicide in Maine and that usually they're under the age of three when they die and that most of the perpetrators are parents.

Without knowing the Maine statistics in detail, none of that is surprising, because the same is true nationwide.  According to the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 80% of homicides with children as the victim are perpetrated by parents.  There are about 1,300 of those nationwide.

McCausland goes on to say that,

The vast majority are children who died at the hands of a young man, usually the father or the mother’s boyfriend.

That's a defensible statement.  The facts are these:

• From 2005-2009, 11 children under the age of 18 were the victims of a homicide in Maine;
• Three were killed by fathers, three were killed by mother's boyfriend; two were killed by mothers; two were killed by other children and one was killed by a step-father;
• One of the boyfriends was mentally incapable of criminal wrongdoing and was committed to a psychiatric institution.

So in Maine, over the years McCausland referred to, seven of the 11 children were killed by a father or boyfriend.  This is a very small sample size, easily subject to fluctuation, but it is 63%, and if that constitutes a "vast majority," so be it.

But where the article really goes wrong is with its next expert, Dr. Lawrence Ricci who tries to bootstrap the Maine statistics to the national level by saying,

That’s certainly the case in Maine, and it’s certainly the case nationally.

Actually, that's certainly not the case nationally.  The ACF tracks child maltreatment including homicide yearly.  And every year since at least 1997, women have killed significantly more children than have men, regardless of their relationship.

For example, in the ACF's report of state data for 2007, some 56.5% of child homicide was committed by women while 42% was committed by men, with the sex of the remainder of perpetrators being unknown.  Ten years before, the figures were about 63%/37%.

But Ricci doesn't stop there.  He goes on to claim that nationally,

the perpetrators of serious physical child abuse or homicide are most likely fathers, next are nonbiological father figures such as stepfathers or mothers’ boyfriends, and then sitters, Ricci said.

Mothers are the fourth-most-likely perpetrators and “well down on the list,” he said.

Again, that's just flat-out false.  The most likely perpetrator of child injury or death is the child's mother.  Referring to all injury to children, the 2007 ACF states,

Victim data were analyzed by relationship to their perpetrators. Nearly 39 percent (38.7%) of victims were maltreated by their mother acting alone (figure 3–6). Nearly 18 percent (17.9%) of victims were maltreated by their father acting alone. Nearly 17 percent (16.8%) were maltreated by both parents.

The same report found that 27.1% of child homicides nationwide were committed by a mother acting alone while 16.3% were committed by a father acting alone.

The figures for all child maltreatment over the years are these:

• 2006: Mother acting alone - 39.9%; Father acting alone - 17.6%
• 2005: MAA - 40.4%; FAA - 18.3%
• 2004: MAA - 38.8%; FAA - 18.3%
• 2003: MAA - 40.8%; FAA - 18.8%
• 2002: MAA - 40.3%; FAA - 19.1%
• 2001: MAA - 40.5%; FAA - 19.3%
• 2000; MAA - 40.0%; FAA - 16.6%

In other words, for none of those years was child abuse by a mother less than twice that of a father.

Prior to 2000, the AFC didn't break down abuse into categories like "mother only" or "father only," so here are the figures for male and female child abuse for the three years before 2000:

• 1999: Female - 61.8%; Male - 38.2%
• 1998: Female - 60.4%; Male - 39.6%
• 1997: Female - 62.3%; Male - 37.7%

I've emailed Ricci to find out his response to these data, but he hasn't responded.  How he figures that fathers commit more child abuse than do mothers is anyone's guess.

If you want to email the Bangor Daily News, the editor-in-chief is Michael J. Dowd and his email address is mdowd@bangordailynews.net.  If you want to email the article's author, Dawn Gagnon, go to the article and click on her name.

Thanks to Tatyana and Jeremy for the heads-up.

India's upper house of Parliament has passed a bill that would amend the country's constitution to require that 30% of MPs be women.  Read about it here (New York Times, 3/9/10).  Just how that would be accomplished, I don't know; the logistics alone look either farcical or enraging depending on my mood.  But however I may feel about it, the bill was passed and it's just the first step of four required for a constitutional amendment to become effective.  The bill would need to pass the lower house, be ratified by at least half the states and be signed by India's president.

Passage of the bill plunged the upper house into what the article variously calls "chaos" and "pandemonium."  Factions opposed to the bill threatened to desert the ruling party, leaving it with a razor-thin majority.

Amazingly, the article makes no mention of the fact that such a provision is facially anti-democratic.  The very concept of democracy means that the people choose who governs them.  A law "reserving" 30% of parliament's seats to a certain group solely based on their sex plainly disenfranchises voters.  What if they don't want Ms. X to hold office?  Tough, she holds it anyway, not because she was voted in, but because of a pre-established quota.

Now, "reserving" seats may make sense if those who benefit are a minority.  The argument would be that they can never achieve what they need by voting because there aren't enough of them.  The same cannot be said of women who, not being a small minority, can vote themselves into office if they choose.

As in the United States, although women in India are roughly half the population, they make up nothing like half the elected MPs.  But the appropriate response to that is not to fix the game - or even 30% of it - in their favor.  The appropriate response is for women to work harder as candidates so they can appeal to more voters.

The other appropriate response is for Indian women to be perceived as the equals of men.  That is, they must be legally equal and must also be thought of that way.  That's a cultural change that must take place in order for true equality to reign.  Just to state the obvious, goading Indians to view women as the equals of men is ill served by granting them more and more special rights and privileges. 

I've often thought that, in the United States, one of the keys to greater female representation in local, state and federal offices is military service.  If women were required to register with the Selective Service System and serve in combat units, the perception of male/female equality would be much enhanced.  Like it or not, military service can provide a candidate for office a leg up on his/her opponent.  But beyond military service, I think there's a broad public perception, on the part of both men and women, that women are still a privileged class, shielded from many of the rigors of life that males have to deal with.  And until that perception no longer exists, women will remain a minority in elected offices.

Back to India, one of the comments to the article linked to pegs the legislation as a stalking horse for Brahmin caste elites edging lower caste MPs out of office.  One of the comments about the piece makes enough sense that I quote it in full.  It's by a gentleman named Ghulam Muhammed.

"Caste based" political parties in fact are protecting the majority of lower caste people of India, which are cleverly sidelined by the Brahmin caste comprising of mere 3% of the population together with the other upper castes of Kashtriya and Vaish, and have been ruling India in the name of a fake majority. The stranglehold of these highhanded upper castes is directly linked and strengthened by the new much publicized women's reservation bill.

The Bill in practice will make it that much impossible for lower caste political groupings to get even a proportion of their proportion of voting strength in Parliament and State Assemblies. So the propaganda of women's rights should not fool anybody.

The line up of 3 major political parties --- Congress, BJP and Communists --- to pass the bill is proof enough that all these Brahmin led political parties have ganged up to drive out the lower caste parties like Samajwadi Paty, RJD and BSP from the political arena. This is an open coup d’etat camouflaged as ‘Women’s Reservation Bill’.

The high-caste commentator with The Times of India, Dileep Padgaonkar translated his triumphalist comment to herald the 'last gasps of Mandalisation' --- Mandal reservations gave the lower caste the chance to enter the political arena.

It is shameful of Congress, the opposition Hindutva extremist BJP and the so-called secular Communist parties, to defraud the people as well as the world at large, by moving this retrograde anti-democratic legislation in the name of women. Only the high-caste women will end up further strengthening the upper caste stranglehold in India's power politics. The deprived cannot hope for any remedy from India’s skewed democracy and may resort to violent protests.
 

In other words, the 30% women's reserve is just a political ploy.  That many women are going along with it says a lot.  It says that they're having the wool pulled over their eyes; it says they value political expediency over democracy; it says that they don't see the obvious damage such a provision could do to their own cause; it says they're willing to kick their lower caste "sisters" to the curb (reminiscent of white suffragists doing the same to black suffragists in the early 20th century in the U.S.); it says that class makes more difference than sex, and it says that they still have some idea that privilege and equality can coexist.

Thanks to Mike for the heads-up.

In recent days, we've been treated to New York State NOW chapter president Marcia Pappas demanding that the governor resign.  I've written before about the antipathy so many public feminists feel for the concepts of democracy and due process of law. 

When New York State Senator Hiram Monserrate was charged with assaulting his girlfriend, Pappas immediately proclaimed that he was unfit to hold the office to which he'd been elected.  That was long before anyone knew the facts of the case and longer still before Monserrate had been charged with or convicted of anything.  For Pappas, mere allegations were sufficient for her to flick aside the desires of the voters of his district and the concept that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

Well, she's back.  (Did she ever leave?)  This time she's demanding New York Governor David Paterson's immediate resignation (Legislative Gazette, 3/8/10).  This is an elected official who has announced his intention to not seek another term and so has only a few more months yet in office.  More importantly, this is an elected official who's been neither charged with nor convicted of any form of wrongdoing.  As the matter stands, an aide to Paterson may or may not have assaulted a woman last year.  Regarding whether the man did or did not do what the woman claims, there've been no charges filed and, obviously no adjudication of those allegations.  In fact, that's exactly what they are - allegations.

What's all that got to do with Paterson?  Well, it now seems that he may have intervened, through staff members, to get the woman to not pursue charges.  Apparently one staffer talked to the woman and another attempted to contact her but failed.  Clearly, if Paterson did intervene in an onging criminal investigation, he's violated his oath of office and very likely violated criminal laws on witness tampering.

Governor Paterson denies any wrongdoing.

So if there was a DV incident and if Paterson pressured the woman to refuse to testify or assist police, then he should face the appropriate consequences.  But right now, all we and Marcia Pappas have are those big ifs.  As in the past, allegations are all she needs to demand punishment.  For her to claim now that Paterson should resign, before a single finding has been made by anyone about any aspect of the case, in the face of his categorical denials, is outrageous.

It shows once again her arrogant disdain for due process of law and for the will of the people.  It's not the first time, and I'm confident that it won't be the last.

As a brief aside, the article linked to is a rather astonishing piece of agitprop masquerading as journalism.  It is in fact, nothing but a forum for Marcia Pappas.  Did the reporter bother to contact the office of the people's executive in Albany?  Did she ask anyone anything about the facts of the case?  Did she ask Marcia Pappas about the propriety of demanding that an official of state government resign his office based on nothing but allegations?  Did she wonder rhetorically about the impact on democracy of such a thing? 

All those look like pertinent questions to me, but none of them were asked.  In violation of Rule 1 of journalism - get the other side of the story - the Legislative Gazette chose to do nothing but channel Marcia Pappas and her invariable disdain for democracy and due process of law.

Meanwhile, we have former super model Naomi Campbell (pictured) once again assaulting an employee.  She seems to make a habit of it and has been sued several times by people on her payroll.  Sometimes she varies her routine by assaulting police officers instead of employees.   She's been convicted of criminal assault at least twice and paid civil damages several more times.   Well, I suspect she'll be paying up again.

As this article says, Campbell was being driven through Manhattan by her hired driver when she struck him from behind violently enough that his head hit the steering wheel causing bruising under his right eye (Associated Press, 3/2/10).  He pulled over and talked to a traffic agent who called the police.  By the time they arrived, Campbell had left the scene, leaving underlings to explain things.

Apparently the driver isn't interested in pursuing a criminal complaint.  Strangely enough, neither are the police.  The article linked to makes reference to the fact that, because the police didn't witness the incident, they can't arrest Campbell or charge her with anything.  That, of course, is the purest bunk.  How many DV assaults do police witness?  Very few, but they have no problem arresting people in those cases.  For that matter how often do the police actually witness any of the crimes they charge?  Seldom, but they charge people with offenses anyway.  The simple fact is that they have a witness who says he was assaulted and who has the injury to prove it.  That's probable cause to arrest, charge and prosecute.

And it's not exactly like she's "learned her lesson."  Previous criminal convictions have resulted in minor sentences like 100 hours of community service.  So, far from taking a more lenient approach, you might think the police would take an ever-harder line against a woman who so far hasn't gotten the message that assaulting other people is criminal.  But you'd be wrong.  Maybe the next victim will get the attention of police and prosecutors.  Maybe they'll actually put her in jail.

One interesting aspect of the article linked to is its semi-reverential description of Campbell's "feisty temper."  Ooooh, she's a tiger, that Naomi.  Can anyone imagine the same term being used to describe a male celebrity with a lengthy history of beating up his employees?  Can anyone imagine the feminist outcry in such a case?  After all, that's a movement that routinely calls for the ouster of politicians and even football coaches for the merest allegation of violence.  Can anyone hear the faintest peep from feminists about serial abuser, Naomi Campbell?

Fathers & Families' legislative representative Michael Robinson was instrumental in the 2009 passage of  California SB 285, a bill to protect disabled parents from child support and alimony abuses in California. California laws have an enormous impact on those of other states, and now similar legislation is on the move across the country.

Indiana's HB 1165 is moving rapidly through the Indiana legislature and is expected to be signed by Governor Mitch Daniels within the next few weeks. The force behind the bill is activist Lisa Wilken, who modeled her legislation on California SB 285.