RICHMOND, Va. - Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.

Almost a year ago, on the 40th anniversary of the Loving v Virginia decision, Mrs. Loving released a statement. Here’s part of what she said:

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

I hadn’t realized that Mildred Loving was a supporter of same-sex marriage rights. She’d be a hero regardless, but finding that out makes me admire her even more.

(I’m already wincing at the thought of the political cartoons that will be appearing. My guess is that several cartoonists will do Mildred and Richard, reunited at the Pearly Gates, while Saint Peter comments that no one will be able to keep them apart now.)

Related link: NPR page on the 40th anniversary.

Curtsy: Shakes.

Curtsy Feministing.

From the Sacramento Bee:

Older, sicker patients could be allowed to die in order to save the lives of patients more likely to survive a massive disaster, bioterror attack or influenza pandemic in California.

It’s not how nurses and doctors are accustomed to doing things, nor how Californians expect to be treated. But it is part of a sweeping statewide plan being praised for its breadth, even as it rankles providers who will have to carry it out.

The new “surge capacity guidelines” released by the state Department of Public Health, depict a post-disaster health care environment that looks and feels nothing like the system most Californians depend on.

It provides for scenarios in which patients could be herded into school gymnasiums for life-saving care or animal doctors could stitch up the human wounded and set their broken bones.

The 1,900-page document lays the practical – and ethical – groundwork for local and county health departments, hospitals, emergency responders and any able-bodied health care worker likely to be called upon in a catastrophe.

Striking in its specificity and its frank focus on the need to suspend or flex established laws and to ration health care, the plan is being hailed as a model for the rest of the nation.

You really need to read the whole thing to get a sense of how the plan would simultaneously limit patient protections and provide freer access to care.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

From the AP story:

A wrongly deported U.S. citizen who was missing for months in Mexico sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Wednesday.

Pedro Guzman, 30, who is mentally disabled, was deported last May after he was arrested and jailed on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. For nearly three months, his family searched for him in shelters, jails and morgues in Tijuana, Mexico, and the surrounding area.

During that time, he rummaged for food in garbage cans, washed himself in rivers and walked as far south as Ensenada — more than 60 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the lawsuit.

Guzman tried to return to the United States several times, but was turned away. He was found near the Calexico border crossing in August and reunited with his family.

“I will never forget what Peter looked like when he finally returned to the U.S. — exhausted and in terrible shape,” said Guzman’s brother, Michael. “Peter’s life is forever changed by what his government did to him.”

His lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, was filed in federal court in Los Angeles by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Guzman.

“Not only does Peter and his mother want some vindication, they want to make sure immigration officials understand they can’t do this,” said attorney Jim Brosnahan, who represents Guzman. “They should have apologized and said they would take steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

A statement released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a branch of Homeland Security, called the incident a “one-of-a-kind case” and added more than 1 million illegal immigrants have been deported since the agency’s inception.

See other posts on Guzman here and here.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

Through the appeals process, the decision to deny Robert Latimer parole has been overturned:

After seven years in prison for killing his severely disabled daughter, Robert Latimer will be freed on day parole this week.

The appeal division of the National Parole Board this afternoon overturned a parole board decision last December that rejected Mr. Latimer’s bid for parole.

The appeal division, following a month-long review, concluded Mr. Latimer does not in fact pose an undue risk to reoffend.

….

In its decision in December, a three-member panel of the parole board concluded: “You could not or would not describe the feelings or thoughts underlying your actions at the time of the offence…. You appear satisfied with the position that you and only you were able to determine her life or death, describing such decisions as beyond the law.”

The appeal division, however, found that although Mr. Latimer was at times unfocussed, he was not unwilling to answer their questions.

“The Appeal Division finds that the Board’s determinations in this regard are unreasonable and unsupported. Your responses at the hearing reveal that you did in fact demonstrate insight and were able to explain why you decided to end the life of your daughter.

The appeal division has applied two conditions to his parole: Mr. Latimer cannot have responsibility for, or make decisions for, any individuals who are severely disabled.

See previous post on Latimer here.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

From the Texas Supreme Court’s 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision regarding a Texas law which banned owning more than six sex toys:

“To determine the constitutional standard applicable to this claim, we must address what right is at stake. Plaintiffs claim that the right at stake is the individual’s substantive due process right to engage in private intimate conduct free from government intrusion. The State proposes a different right for the Plaintiffs: “the right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.”

Hilzoy points out that these sort of arguments about how to frame Constitutional questions come up all the time:

The Constitution does not mention Mormon Temple Garments, for instance, and it certainly does not explicitly grant a right to wear any particular style of underwear. But it does grant the right to freedom of religion, and absent some compelling state interest in regulating underwear, this means that Mormons have the right to wear their Temple Garments, however ludicrous questions like “do you mean to say that the right to wear a particular sort of underwear is guaranteed in the Constitution?” might sound. […]

I mention this only because I’m tired of hearing arguments of the form: The Constitution does not mention X, so how can there be a constitutional right to X? (For X equal to: abortion, medicinal marijuana, etc., etc., etc.)

The Court didn’t buy the state’s framing, by the way, so any Texas readers should feel free to buy any number of sex toys today.

If you missed last night’s Super Bowl, you missed a great game. I’ve gotten out of the habit of following sports since I moved to the east coast and could no longer follow my (original) home teams, but a few weeks ago, I decided to watch the NFL Conference championship between the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants. What attracted me to that game was the weather. It was held outdoors in below zero degree temperatures, and I wanted to see how they were going to play in those inclement conditions. That game was great, and of course, I was rooting for the underdog New York Giants, not because I live in New York, but because I enjoy a comeback story.

Given the excitement of the Conference Championship game, I was looking forward to the Super Bowl. Again, I was routing for the underdog Giants. I used to like the Patriots, but there is something very unsettling about the win at any cost attitude that has driven the Patriots success over the past few years. The Patriots are cheaters (or at the very least, folks who are willing to bend the rules). They spied on other teams practices to steal signals, and the NFL punished them with the loss of a draft pick, a team fine of $250,000, and a fine of a half million dollars for the coach. The Patriots were also undefeated and favored to win by almost two touchdowns.

The game didn’t disappoint. It was exciting and culminated with a game winning, touchdown drive by the Giants in the remaining two and a half minutes. The Giants were known for coming from behind and winning on the road, and they appeared to revel in the underdog position. They also emphasized team play over star power, and the often ignored defense was the primary difference in the game. To me this win was a victory for sportsmanship.

Since I was hyped-up from the game and couldn’t sleep, my mind started wondering to of all thing–politics. I realized that the parallels between politics and sports are numerous. Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, which is the Conference Championship of Presidential politics. On the eve of the contest, I figured a I’d share a few of my thoughts about Presidential politics and sports, focusing on the contradictory values that influence the ways Americans views sports and politics.

Religion

One of the more hilarious and dangerous commonalities with politicians and athletes is that they seem to think God is on their side. They pray before the contest, and thank God and Jesus after it. How many times have you heard people say, “Without God, this would not be possible?” I have a really hard time believing the God has a favorite sports team or politician. Do people lose because God is against them?

Underdog’s

The underdog is big in sports, and while I think it’s a little less popular in politics, it is still there. There is the old saying “throw the bums out,” but at the same time, most of us love the bums we elect. For example, right now the favorable rating for Congress is very low, but when you ask people about their own Congressperson, they are much more favorable. We are also willing to tolerate much more inappropriate behavior from our own bums than from other folks bums. Nevertheless, there are times, when we do want the underdog to get ahead. If the underdog makes us feel good about ourselves, if the underdog symbolizes change, if the underdog beats incredible odds to make it to the top, or if the underdog reaffirms our belief in the inherent fairness of the system, then the underdog can become a fan favorite. The problem with this is that every side has a few skeletons in their closets, and we often overestimate the extent to which the individual politician or team is really going to change the system.

Cheating and Dirty Tricks

Some people want to win at any cost. They smear their opponents; they lie, cheat; and steal. I’m not cynical enough to believe that everybody does this, but I am realistic enough to know that it is common place. My concern is that when we become too cynical we are all to willing to accept lying, cheating, and stealing as an acceptable part of competition.

Experience vs. New Blood

As a culture, Americans love both experience and new blood. During the Super Bowl, the announcers informed us every time a rookie made a great play. We also got to hear about the deserving veterans, who finally got their shot at victory. In politics, we have a love hate relationship with veterans. The career politician is loathed, and re-elected over and over because of name recognition and the power of incumbency. New blood politicians are treated a little better than rookies in the sporting arena. Many people associate new blood with lack of corruption, which is probably naive given the nature of campaigning and fund raising.

The Comeback Story

Rather than giving the comeback story too much time–I’ll refer to the discussions about Experience vs. New Blood and Underdogs. It seems that comeback stories combine both of these two sets of values.

Social Inequality

I think most people want to believe that just about everyone has a fair shot to make it sports and politics, and our level of denial about the realities of social inequalities (in particular those of race, class, gender, religion, disability, and sexuality) is almost humorous. This gets particularly absurd with race. In sports and politics, we can’t even talk about racism without somebody trying to shut down the discussion. You didn’t have to follow the Super Bowl closely to notice that both the quarterbacks were the classic white guy quarterbacks, both the coaches were classic white guy coaches, the defensive backs for both teams were all black, the offensive lines were nearly all white, and the defensive lines were nearly all black. I’m sure somebody is going to be mad at me for pointing this out. The person, who I anger, is going to note the exceptions to these patterns, and tell me to lighten up. The same is true for politics. We’re supposed to believe that two people Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama prove that we are somehow above racism and sexism. Rather than clinging to the reality of politics where white, heterosexual, Christian, guys with money run the show, we are supposed to focus on the exceptions. What’s also funny is that if you really want to add nuance to the discussion by pointing out both Obama and Clinton are only disadvantaged on one of these forms of social inequality, many folks play dumb and can’t get it. Instead, we’re supposed to deny, deny, deny–”the system is fair and if we worked hard enough we all have the same chance. Don’t rain on our parade by telling us other wise.”

Bringing It All Together

The irony of these values is that they often conflict with each other, and many folks are content with this, partly because they are wearing blinders and partly because many of our social norms require us to hold contradictory beliefs. I’m sure my own glee over the Giants wins is full of contradictions. Now, that the underdogs are on top, and I’m going to have to find another team that makes me feel that sports are fair.

Like most people I want to believe in meritocracy, even though I know it takes a lot more than merit to make it to the top. Even though I know that competition can bring out the worst in people, I want to believe that the “good guys” win in the end. Even the division of people into “good guys” and “bad guys” reflects an unrealistic dichotomy, but one that most of us use as a lens to view society. Nothing should remind people more of this sports and politics.

I still read various “marriage movement” blogs, out of habit and because it’s easier for me to walk on the treadmill if I can read something that pisses me off. A few have posted references to this story from Britland:

The harrowing story of twins who were separated at birth and married each other without realising they were brother and sister was revealed today. […] The couple’s plight was revealed by the former Liberal Democrat MP Lord Alton, who is fighting for children to have greater rights to know the identity of their biological parents.

The peer, who raised the twins’ story during a House of Lords debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, said: “I learned of this heartbreaking story from the High Court judge who dealt with the case.

As Heresy Corner argues, it seems likely that Lord Alton either made the story up (purposely or through mishearing) or credulously fell for an urban myth.

Lord Alton told the House of Lords that he had learned of the case from the judge who decided it. Later, pressed by the Sun, he admitted that the judge he spoke to might only have been “familiar” with the case. To date, no judge has come forward, even off the record, to confirm having had such a conversation with the noble lord. The senior Family Division judge stated, on the record, that he was unaware of any such case. In any event, annulment cases normally only reach the High Court when there are complex financial issues at stake, or the legality of the marriage is in real dispute. Neither is likely to have been the case here.

(I agree with Alton, by the way, that children should “have greater rights to know the identity of their biological parents.” But there are legitimate reasons to favor that policy; no need to drag in the scary campfire stories.)

From NPR:

The nasal spray is a drug called naloxone, or Narcan. It blocks the brain receptors that heroin activates, instantly reversing an overdose.

Doctors and emergency medical technicians have used Narcan for years in hospitals and ambulances. But it doesn’t require much training because it’s impossible to overdose on Narcan. […] New data compiled for NPR by researcher Alex Kral of the consulting firm RTI International show that more than 2,600 overdoses have been reversed in 16 programs operating across the nation. […]

But Dr. Bertha Madras, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, opposes the use of Narcan in overdose-rescue programs.

“First of all, I don’t agree with giving an opioid antidote to non-medical professionals. That’s No. 1,” she says. “I just don’t think that’s good public health policy.”

Madras says drug users aren’t likely to be competent to deal with an overdose emergency. More importantly, she says, Narcan kits may actually encourage drug abusers to keep using heroin because they know overdosing isn’t as likely.

Madras says the rescue programs might take away the drug user’s motivation to get into detoxification and drug treatment.

As Quirkybird comments, “Yes, because extreme compulsion is easily overcome by the thought that something bad might happen. That’s why people no longer have sex or commit crimes!”

This is an example of how the “war on drugs” — as well as the moral absolutism of the conservative movement (”drug users baaaad!”)– has undermined mercy, compassion, and common sense. Trying to make it more likely that people will die of an overdose, in the hopes that the threat of death will make them seek treatment, isn’t just incredibly ignorant of how people actually work; it’s a disgustingly callous indifference to human life.

By the way, according to the article, studies have found that the Narcan program makes it more likely that addicts will seek treatment. But even if the Bush administration wasn’t wrong on the facts, they’d still be wrong on the morality.

(Anyone else reminded of the conservatives who opposed the HPV vaccine on the grounds that if women have a lower chance of getting cancer they might have more sex before marriage?)

The story of Katie Jones has been circulating slowly on disability listservs and blogs since the December 9 article in the Chicago Tribune. FRIDA provided an early link to the story, and since then Crip Chick, Shiva, Bint, Trinity, Brownfemipower have all addressed aspects of Katie’s story and the larger issues. Comments everywhere have been… illuminating.

I haven’t written about this before now because these sorts of articles from the mainstream media — this one involving children, parental control of a child’s well-being, disability prejudice, personhood and consciousness, health care in the U.S., living with the aid of machines, “special needs” schooling, and “right-to-die” versus the right to not be coerced to die — contain so much information that is either misleading, incomplete or biased that I can’t think where to begin.

Katie Jones is a second-grader in Lake County, Illinois, who has severe cerebral palsy and whose parents have sent her to school with a DNR order (Do Not Resuscitate) prominently attached to the back of her wheelchair. Taking that much at face value, the implications for Katie, her parents, her young classmates and school employees are complex and profound.

Add to that some mind-boggling facts about both the case and the media coverage of it: The Tribune article portrays cerebral palsy as a terminal disease, and while I’m not well-versed on the very wide range of abilities and medical issues people with CP possess, none of the many people I have known personally have ever been about to drop dead. So that portrayal is dangerously and cruelly incomplete. The Tribune article doesn’t discuss the fact that Katie apparently does communicate thoughts and feelings beyond those independently interpreted by people around her. You must dig to the caption of photo 4 at a sidebar link to even learn she is capable of expressing her feelings at will. And this, at the article’s end:

Before the bus arrived, Beth Jones weaved a French braid into the school girl’s long brown hair, while Allie [Katie’s four-year-old sister] held up a feeding tube. A machine could do the job, but that makes group hugs difficult.

Besides, anything that beeps isn’t allowed in the Jones house.

“When we took her home from the hospital, where there were so many machines, we made the no beeping rule,” Beth Jones said.

The group hug part is completely untrue. I’ve had a feeding tube for two years now, and I can say with absolute certainty that there is nothing about attaching a thin plastic tube to the end of it and running that tube to a machine that makes it hard to hug or be physically close to people. It’s actually less a problem for physical intimacy than an IV in the top of the hand would be, whether that IV is connected to a hanging bag or a machine. Feeding through the tube manually is a perfectly reasonable way to use the tube since basically this just entails using a giant syringe or holding the tube up and letting gravity allow nutrients to travel gently into the stomach, but attaching falsehood and phobia to machines that do this same task contributes to the pervasive ableist belief that people are better off dead than using medical technology for the long-term.

And the “no beeping rule”? There’s the real reason for the DNR right there. Better dead than using a machine that might make some noise.

I understand machines are scary. I get that because I’ve needed to make my own adjustments to them and also because I see it in peoples’ eyes every day. And I do understand people have different points at which they might choose not to live beyond, though I’ll add that there seems to be little reflection upon or respect given to the people who live quite happily beyond those points.

I’d like to hear much much more about the Jones’ “no beeping rule.” Is it because Katie is terrified of the beeping? Does the beeping represent an identifiable point beyond which Katie’s parents don’t feel they can handle her care? Or is the beeping too public? Too intrusive? Too medical? Why is an alarm that can signal a problem that should be addressed juxtaposed against the myth that without machines Katie will die “peacefully” from choking or suffocation? Why is this type of beeping so forbidden in our technological age where cellphones and dozens of other machines chirp at each of us all day long?

It’s not really the beeping, of course. And the answer to Trinity’s question:

Now why is [info that Katie shares thoughts via a communication device] tucked away in the photoshoot and not right there by the article, which is written in a way that suggests she is not aware what is happening?

seems to be that it didn’t seem relevant to the point of the article. Katie’s consciousness and feelings were not important in an article about whether or not she lives or dies and whether or not she gets to go to school in the meantime. What her thoughts about all this might possibly be is not once pondered in the article.

Further discussion can also be found at Wrong Planet, an online forum for people with Asperger’s Syndrome.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

Ari Ne’eman, president of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN) that led the protest against the NYU Child Study Center’s “Ransom Notes” ad campaign, announces:

I am pleased to inform you that this afternoon the NYU Child Study Center announced that they will be ending the “Ransom Notes” ad campaign in response to widespread public pressure from the disability community. You can read that announcement here (at the NYU Child Study Center’s website). The thousands of people with disabilities, family members, professionals and others who have written, called, e-mailed and signed our petition have been heard. Today is a historic day for the disability community. Furthermore, having spoken directly with Dr. Harold Koplewicz, Director of the NYU Child Study Center, I have obtained a commitment to pursue real dialogue in the creation of any further ad campaign depicting individuals with disabilities. We applaud the NYU Child Study Center for hearing the voice of the disability community and withdrawing the “Ransom Notes” ad campaign.

Twenty-two disability rights organizations came together to ensure the withdrawal of this advertising campaign. Our response to this campaign stretched continents, with e-mails, letters and phone calls coming from as far away as Israel, Britain and Australia. The disability community acted with a unity and decisiveness that has rarely been heard before and we are seeing the results of our strength today. Our success sends an inescapable message: if you wish to depict people with disabilities, you must consult us and seek our approval. Anything less will guarantee that we will make our voices heard. We are willing to help anyone and any group that seeks to raise awareness of disability issues, but those efforts must be done with us, not against us. This is a victory for inclusion, for respect and for the strength and unity of people with disabilities across the world. It is that message that has carried the day in our successful response to this campaign. Furthermore, we intend to build on this progress, not only by continuing a dialogue with the NYU Child Study Center and using this momentum to ensure self-advocate representation at other institutions as well, but also by building on the broad and powerful alliance that secured the withdrawal of these ads in the first place. We are strongest when we stand together, as a community, as a culture and as a people.

Thank you to all of you who have made this victory possible. Remember: “Nothing About Us, Without Us!”

It didn’t look promising at first. This past weekend the images of the ads at the Child Study Center’s website were briefly taken down, but they were back up when the New York Times Sunday coverage of the ads quoted Koplewicz as saying the Center was determined to “stick with it and ride out the storm” and even expand the campaign to four other cities soon.

Kristina Chew, PhD., who blogs at Autism Vox and was also quoted in the NYT article, has been providing relentless commentary, coverage and linkage to dozens of blogs writing about the ads. To follow those posts chronologically go here, here, here, here, here and here.

Or check out Furious Seasons where Philip Dawdy makes some interesting connections in noting that Koplewicz co-authored a study of Paxil for the pharmaceutical company Glaxo SmithKline that apparently exaggerated benefits and downplayed adverse effects in treating adolescent depression. Koplewicz is one of dozens of co-authors of that study, but Dawdy wrote earlier this year:

“Some very smart people have taken on many of the issues around Study 329 and Paxil/Seroxat and, based upon the evidence, I’d have to say that it’s fair to assert that none of us in the patient world should trust anyone who had a hand in the study (unless they want to suddenly recant the work) on absolutely anything they say about mental illness. At a minimum, we should be wildly skeptical of any claims they make.”

Dawdy hasn’t been the only one to speculate about what corporate interests might have connections to the Ransom Notes ad campaign. Many commenters to the NYT article wondered about possible pharmaceutical backing for the ads, though I’ve seen absolutely no direct evidence of this. It seems to have been yet another case of do-gooders offering a message that didn’t take into account the experiences and feelings of those they set out to help.

In the Center’s announcement of the end of the ad campaign, Koplewicz writes:

Though we meant well, we’ve come to realize that we unintentionally hurt and offended some people. We’ve read all the emails, both pro and con, listened to phone calls, and have spoken with many parents who are working day and night to get their children the help they need. We have decided to conclude this phase of our campaign today because the debate over the ads is taking away from the pressing day-to-day work we need to do to help children and their families. They are and remain our first concern.

Our goal was to start a national dialogue. Now that we have the public’s attention, we need your help. We would like to move forward and harness the energy that this campaign has generated to work together so that we do not lose one more day in the lives of these children. We hope you will partner with us to bring the issues surrounding child and adolescent mental health to the top of America’s agenda. Work with us as we fight to give children and their families equal access to health insurance, remove the stigma that the term “psychiatric disorder” so clearly still elicits, and, most importantly, support the drive to make research and science-based treatment a national priority.

We invite all of you to continue this conversation online at a “town hall” meeting that we will hold early next year as we plan the next phase of our national public awareness campaign on child mental health. Look for details on our web site www.AboutOurKids.org.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

From the National Women’s Law Center blog:

Ending a protracted legal battle, the University of Colorado today settled with plaintiffs in a Title IX suit that accused the university of deliberate indifference to sexual harassment and assault by football players and recruits. […]

Under the terms of the settlement, the university will pay Lisa Simpson $2.5 million, hire a new counselor for the Office of Victim’s Assistance, and appoint an independent, outside Title IX advisor. The advisor will be available to all individuals reporting sexual harassment or assault, will address any concerns with the University’s response to complaints, will review issues relating to sexual harassment and Title IX compliance, and will make recommendations to the university regarding reforms to university programs to prevent future sexual harassment. […]

Ms. Simpson in 2002 filed a complaint against the University of Colorado alleging that she was raped at a football recruiting party in December 2001.

Good on Lisa Simpson!¹

One of the odd things about MRAs² is that we forget how much variance there is within the MRM³. From the perspective of most “Alas” readers, someone like Glenn Sacks seems pretty far “out there” — and justifiably so. Nonetheless, within the spectrum of MRAs, Glenn is actually very far left, since he objects to misogyny on occasion, and also takes positions such as favoring same-sex marriage — for which Glenn was attacked on Men’s News Daily because same-sex marriage “is the final embodiment of N.O.W’s plan for feminist supremacy.”

So it gets a lot nuttier than Glenn Sacks.⁴ That said, many of Glenn’s views are waaaaay out there. Which brings me to Glenn’s post about the University of Colorado case, which reeks of the MRA’s default assumption that when a man is accused of rape, the woman is probably a liar:

I have no idea whether the two women are telling the truth when they claimed they were raped at the party in 2001. However, it seems strange that with two different alleged victims, prosecutors were unable to get any kind of sexual assault or rape or even plain assault indictments against any of the alleged perpetrators.

It is axiomatic in criminal law that “you can indict a ham sandwich,” yet they could not even get a single meaningful indictment. […]

Perhaps the two women really were victims of a terrible crime. However, the Associated Press article above gives the impression that the real victims here may have been the school officials who lost their jobs and the taxpayers who picked up the tab for the lawsuit.

So although he admits to not knowing for certain, Glenn thinks the women probably weren’t “real victims,” because otherwise there would have been an indictment.

Huh?

DAs can almost always get an indictment, but they often won’t bother if they don’t think there’s enough evidence to win a trial. To suggest that not referring a case to a grand jury means the accusation was false — a position Glenn clearly implies, although he doesn’t quite say it — is lunacy.

The good news here is the court finding allowing Simpson’s lawsuit to go forward. Let’s hope colleges that tolerate rape and harassment have been put on notice by this case. Also good news that Lisa Simpson settled not only money, but for CU taking real steps to improve their campus atmosphere.

UPDATE: It appears that Glenn was relying on a badly-written AP story, which conflated two separate events to give the impression that a grand jury had examined the rape allegations and declined to press charges. See the comments for more.

UPDATE 2: Just reading through the comments on Glenn’s blog, and boy are some of his readers woman-hating sick fucks. A couple of examples:

You know, it should be obvious to anyone what happened here. I can’t believe anyone would want to give any credence to these disgusting perjurers.

I don’t know which is more revolting, the scum who would make false allegations for profit, or those who enable the practice.

You know, it should be obvious that someone who thinks “it should be obvious” that rape accusations against football players can’t be true, is more revolting.

My point in saying this is that if a girl/woman goes out picks up a guy, wines and dines with this guy all night long then agrees to go back to his place or takes him to hers, agrees to the idea of having sex, gets in bed with this guy of HER own free will, removes her clothing or allows her clothing to be removed then when the act is about to happen says NO!!!! how in the world can we say that the guy raped her?

How can we say that? Because she said “NO!!!”

It’s really not that fucking complex. But one of Glenn’s readers — this one — is such a woman-hating, rape-enabling empty-headed git that if a woman “allows her clothing to be removed” he thinks she’s no longer allowed to decline sex.

Two posters responded to the above garbage — one to say “If she says no, you have to stop” (a moment of sanity!) and one to say that “No jury in their right mind would call that rape, because the consent is so obvious.” (To this person, when a woman says “NO!!!,” that’s obvious consent.)

Another one of Glenn’s readers suggested that even if the alleged rapes took place, it’s the rape victims who should be blamed:

If anything was wrong all who were drinking should be arrested for under age drinking and the renters the girls in this case that alleged rape should be held more accountable because it was their house or apartment. They did not have to allow any of this to happen. They did not have to have a drinking party. Furthermore, I do not understand how only the girls were taken advantage of because of being lubricated by booze. It would stand to reason that these seventeen year old boys (pre-freshman/high school seniors, potential recruits [and since boys {according to society mature slower than girls} should make them less responsible for their actions than the more mature and older girls] were also lubricated by booze and impaired and made bad decisions because of this.

I don’t judge Glenn by his readers; he seems to pretty much not moderate at all, and for all I know he doesn’t read all the comments. But I think it says a lot about the pathetic state of the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM) that even on the blog of an unusually reasonable and moderate MRA, the comments are full of woman-hating, rape-denialist venom.

1. Simpson was actually one of two plaintiffs in the case, but the other chose not to disclose her identity. (back)
2. MRA = “Men’s Right Activists” (back)
3. MRM = “Men’s Right Movement” (back)
4. IMO, Glenn Sacks and Robin Steele are the two most sane self-identified MRAs. (back)

Piggybacking on Amp’s report of recent NYT statistics on prisons and prisoners in the U.S. is the news that prisoner suicides in Massachusetts state prisons are nearly triple the rate in other states. From the first part of a three-part series in The Boston Globe:

Last year alone, seven inmates killed themselves, and another’s attempt left him brain dead; four have taken their lives so far this year.

Department of Correction officials say the suicides are random and unrelated. But a Globe Spotlight Team investigation of the deaths and detailed reconstruction of how they occurred found that they were far from random.

Most of the suicides came after careless errors and dangerous decisions by correction officials and the staff at UMass Correctional Health. And the trail of violence is far wider than the number of dead would indicate, as hundreds more inmates each year have wounded themselves or attempted suicide.

In fact, such incidents are soaring.

So common has it been to find a man with a makeshift noose around his neck that some correction officers have taken to carrying their own pocket tools to cut them down. The tally of suicide attempts and self-inflicted injuries - 513 last year and more than 3,200 over the past decade - tells a story of deepening mental illness and misery behind the walls of the state’s prisons, despite repeated calls for better training of officers and safer cells for mentally troubled inmates.

The entire series is here.

h/t to Liz at The Trouble with Spikol

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

Some statistics swiped from the NY Times, which in turn based its article on a Department of Justice report released last week:

* At the end of last year, 1 of every 31 adults in the United States was in prison, in jail or on supervised release.

* An estimated 2.38 million people were incarcerated in state and federal facilities, an increase of 2.8 percent over 2005.

* Of that 2.38 million, 38% are Black.

* Of that 2.38 million, a bit under 5% are women. “The female jail and prison population has grown at double the rate for men since 1980; in 2006 it increased 4.5 percent, its fastest clip in five years.”

* About 15,000 people were held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, an increase of 43 percent over last year.

* “In several states, incarceration rates for blacks were more than 10 times the rate of whites. In Iowa, for example, blacks were imprisoned at 13.6 times the rate of whites, according to an analysis of the data by the Sentencing Project.”

* “Still, many prison systems are accommodating record numbers of inmates by using facilities that were never meant to provide bed space. Arizona has for years held inmates in tent encampments on prison grounds. Hundreds of California prisoners sleep in three-tier bunk beds in gymnasiums or day rooms. Prisons throughout the nation have made meeting rooms for educational and treatment programs into cell space.”

Although the article doesn’t mention this, an increase in shared dormitories is more-or-less guaranteed to mean an increase in prisoner-on-prisoner rape; getting rid of dormitory-style housing — in which prisoners never have any place they can go to be safe from other prisoners — is one way scholars suggest for designing less rape-prone prisons. (This is more of an issue for male prisoners than female prisoners, since male prisoners are typically raped by other prisoners, whereas female prisoners are typically raped by male prison staffers.)

Case #1 Renato Hughes

A few weeks ago I heard about a case in California where a man was being charged with murder, after he and two accomplices broke into the home of a man, who subsequently shot and killed the two accomplices. Just to make it clear the home owner was the shooter not the man being charged with murder.

Here’s a summary of the events surrounding this case from an AP article:

Three young black men break into a white man’s home in rural Northern California. The homeowner shoots two of them to death — but it’s the surviving black man who is charged with murder.

In a case that has brought cries of racism from civil rights groups, Renato Hughes Jr., 22, was charged by prosecutors in this overwhelmingly white county under a rarely invoked legal doctrine that could make him responsible for the bloodshed.

“It was pandemonium” inside the house that night, District Attorney Jon Hopkins said. Hughes was responsible for “setting the whole thing in motion by his actions and the actions of his accomplices.”

Prosecutors said homeowner Shannon Edmonds opened fire Dec. 7, 2005 after three young men rampaged through the Clearlake house demanding marijuana and brutally beat his stepson. Rashad Williams, 21, and Christian Foster, 22, were shot in the back. Hughes fled.

Hughes was charged with first-degree murder under California’s Provocative Act doctrine, versions of which have been on the books in many states for generations but are rarely used.

The Provocative Act doctrine does not require prosecutors to prove the accused intended to kill. Instead, “they have to show that it was reasonably foreseeable that the criminal enterprise could trigger a fatal response from the homeowner,” said Brian Getz, a San Francisco defense attorney unconnected to the case.

The NAACP complained that prosecutors came down too hard on Hughes, who also faces robbery, burglary and assault charges. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.

The Rev. Amos Brown, head of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP and pastor at Hughes’ church, said the case demonstrates the legal system is racist in remote Lake County, aspiring wine country 100 miles north of San Francisco. The sparsely populated county of 13,000 people is 91 percent white and 2 percent black.

There seems to be some contention over exactly what was happening when the two young men were shot; some have suggested they were shot “in the back,” but it is unclear if they were shot in the back while fleeing or while attacking Edmonds’ stepson. From several accounts, Hughes (who is black and Filipino) never entered the home, but he was the get-away driver. Depending on which account you believe, the three men went to the Edmonds’ home to buy or steal marijuana (and there was marijuana in the home). The Edmonds’ might have been selling drugs, but they are claiming the marijuana was for medicinal use. What is also clear is that Edmonds’ stepson was severely injured, and is now in a rehabilitation center because he suffered a brain injury in the beating.

So what do you think? Do you think the shooting was justified, or do you think that the shooter should be charged with a crime? Do you think that it is fair for Hughes to be charged with murder under the Provocation Act doctrine? My personal view is that the shooting appears to be justified, but I think the murder charge is not appropriate, especially given the fact that evidence seems to suggest that Hughes wasn’t even in the house. There was some debate about this over at field negro’s site, and Hughes got very little sympathy from most commenters.

Case #2 John White

John White is a black man and a father, who is being charged with manslaughter in the death of Daniel Cicciaro. Cicciaro and 4 other teenagers came to the White home, angry at Mr. White’s teenage son. Keith Boykin summarizes what happened before and after this confrontation:

One day a black teenager goes to a party where alcohol is served and a white teenage girl asks him to leave because she feels “uncomfortable” around him. He complies and goes home, but the girl then tells a male teenager at the party that the black teen had threatened her once before in an Internet chat room. The white teen then calls the black teen on his cell phone and yells at him using the N-word. Unsatisfied, the white teen then gathers four other white teenagers and they drive to the black teen’s house.

The drunk white teenagers pull up in the driveway of the house and block off the street. One of the teens is carrying an aluminum baseball bat. The black teen and his father then walk outside the house to the driveway. The father is carrying an unlicensed handgun. The black teen follows with a hunting shotgun. Words and threats are exchanged and eventually the father fires one shot into the face of the first white teenager. The white teen dies at a hospital an hour later.

Apparently, a “friend” made a fake Myspace page pretending to be White’s son Aaron.

Michael Longo, 20, told the court that he created a phony MySpace page - filled with insults and threats - and made it look like the work of Aaron White.

Aaron is the son of John White, who is charged with shooting 17-year-old Daniel Cicciaro Jr. to death on his lawn in August 2006.

On the bogus Web page, Longo posted messages under Aaron’s name that spewed hatred against a mutual acquaintance named Jenny Martin, he admitted on the witness stand today.

Those phony messages were soon spotted by the girl. One of them, which threatened rape, particularly disturbed her. She then told Cicciaro what she thought Aaron was planning to do.

White’s attorney claims that Mr. White viewed the young men as a “lynch mob,” and racial slurs were recorded when one of Cicciaro’s friend’s made an inadvertent cell phone call to a dispatcher.

Mr. White, who by all accounts is an upstanding citizen, says he accidentally shot Cicciaro when the teen grabbed his gun. Cicciaro’s friends claim he pushed the gun away, and then White shot him. The forensic evidence suggests that Cicciaro was shot at close range.

Initially, the prosecutor’s charged Mr. White with murder, but the grand jury subsequently reduced charges to manslaughter. Prosecutors have suggested that Mr. White should have locked his doors and called 911, rather than confronting the teenagers with a handgun.

So what do you think? Do you think the shooting was justified? What about the manslaughter charge: do you think it was fair? From what I can tell about the evidence presented so far, the manslaughter charge seems too harsh, and initial murder charge was way out of line with the circumstances of the case. I’m sympathetic to Mr. White, and surprisingly many comments on the Newsday links above where also sympathetic to him (I expected less sympathy since I have seen some really racist comments on that site in the past.).

Similarities and Differences in the Cases

One thing I find striking about both cases is that in both cases black men were charged with crimes. In one case, the black man was part of the home invading group, and in the other case the black man was the home owner. The cases also bring up the issues related to self defense, gun rights, and over zealous prosecution.

There are also differences. In the White case, the teenagers never entered the White’s home, unlike Hughes accomplices. The Hughes case seems to rest on an obscure legal principle that is not used in many states or nations, while the law used in the White case is a little more conventional.

What do you think?

End Note: Ann, let me know about a case in Texas that has some of the same dynamics; however, in this case the man shot people breaking into his neighbor’s home. She also has a follow up post with more info. You can go over to her site to comment.

From The New York Times:

Obesity rates in women have leveled off and stayed steady since 1999, long enough for researchers to say the plateau appears to be real. And, they say, there are hints that the rates may be leveling off for men, too.

The researchers’ report, published online at cdc.gov/nchs, used data from its periodic national surveys that record heights and weights of a representative sample of Americans. Those surveys, said Cynthia L. Ogden, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics and the lead author of the new report, are the only national ones that provide such data.

Dr. Ogden added that the trend for women was “great news.” Obesity rates have held at about 35 percent since 1999, convincing her that the tide had changed. “I’m optimistic that it really is leveling off,” she said.

Men’s rates increased until 2003, when they hit 33 percent and stayed there through 2005-6. Dr. Ogden said she would like to see a few more years of data before declaring that men’s rates had stopped increasing.

Here are some takes on the story suggested by Paul Ernsberger of Case Western . (Any mistakes here are probably my fault, not his.)

1) There are two government data sources being drawn on here; the frequently-updated Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance (BRFS) survey, and the less-frequent but more reliable NHANES survey.

Why is NHANES better? First of all, because the BRFS is a phone survey, it relies on people’s self-descriptions to get height and weight data; but self-descriptions can be mistaken or dishonest. NHANES measures and weighs its subjects to get the data, which is expensive, but more accurate.

Second of all, although both surveys attempt to measure a representative sample of Americans, BRFS excludes people without phones and people who just have cell phones, making it less representative.

Why does this matter? Because the evidence that there are marked increases in obesity (BMI > 30) in every state since 1999 is based on the BRFS; as I understand it, NHANES doesn’t show such an increase. But the BRFS is less reliable.

2) Obesity rates are equal between men and women now, even though statistically weight loss diets and other weight loss methods are used much less by men than by women. Like a lot of other evidence, this suggests that weight loss methods are not successful at reducing obesity rates.

3) A huge number of people will take credit for the plateau in weight. Every purveyor of weight loss advice and programs will claim credit.

4) From the point of view of promoting health, the most important issue is to promote weight stability, and to focus on health indicators other than weight, such as blood pressure and cholesterol.

From A Tiny Revolution, the Daily Show writers explain the premises of the writer’s strike with their usual flair and humor.

I first heard about this case when I was listening to BBC radio on Tuesday. I tuned in during the middle of of this story, and it seemed so bizarre that I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Well, now I got the chance to hear the whole story. It turns out that some foreign aid groups tried to take a group of 103 children out of the country. The aid workers are now accused of child trafficking and violating international laws.

Some members of the NGO Children Rescue/Arche de Zoe have been arrested for attempting to take the 21 girls and 82 boys - the youngest being about a year old and the oldest about 10 - out of Chad. The agency workers were French. Three journalists who were travelling with the volunteer workers and the Spanish crew who were to fly them back to France are also being held. In Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, a prosecutor on Wednesday also charged Jacques Wilmart, a Belgian pilot involved in the affair, with “complicity in abduction”, before sending him to jail.

Zoe’s Ark says it wanted to rescue children from Darfur, but French officials and UN aid workers say they believe many were from Chad and were not orphans.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called the attempt to separate the more than 100 young Chadian children from their parents and then take them to France for adoption an “illegal and totally irresponsible move.” The UN said the children had family in the country.

“They are not orphans and they were not sitting alone in the desert in Chad, they were living with their families in communities,” Annette Rehrl of U.N. refugee agency UNHCR told Reuters in Abeche.

UNICEF spokesperson Veronique Taveau told journalists in Geneva that what happened had violated international rules, such as The Hague Convention on international adoption and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Taveau said the case was not an isolated incident but one that was highly visible because of the size of the group of children.

L’Express reports the Europeans offered sweets and biscuits to encourage the children to leave their homes.

“My parents had gone to work in the fields. As we were playing some Chadians came and said here are some sweets, why don’t you follow us to Adre and then we’ll take you home. We were taken to the hospital in Adre,” said a young boy who gave his name as Osman. Adre is a town on the Chad-Sudan border.

“We spent seven days in Adre and I’ve been here in Abeche for more than one month. We were well fed by the whites, there was always food. I would like to go back to find my parents,” he told reporters at the Abeche orphanage where the children are being cared for by local and international aid workers.

Many European media outlets were putting a slightly more favorable spin on this, but as more information comes out, these so called aid groups are not looking good at all. The UN has said that most of these children were not orphans, which they found out from interviewing the older children. Now many of the children are separated from their families, and there are concerns that the youngest children may not be reunited because they are too young to talk. Needless to say this is not going over well with people all over Africa. As the International Herald Tribune article cited in this paragraph notes:

The scandal has sparked outrage and condemnation across Africa, where it has a deep resonance from the colonial era, when slave traders, missionaries and colonial officials blithely separated African families with little regard to their wishes. In Congo, government officials suspended all adoptions by foreigners to examine their procedures more carefully, according to The Associated Press, and protesters angry about the attempted kidnappings took to the streets in Chad.

The scandal has also raised tensions between Chad and France just as the European Union begins deploying a peacekeeping force in the region aimed at shoring up Chad, which has been increasingly drawn into the four-year-old conflict in neighboring Darfur.

This history is one reason why adoptions by Westerners are not common in African countries. Incidents like this contribute to the destruction black families, and I suspect these aid workers felt no need to respect the rights of poor black African families.¹

1. Why oh why am I having flashbacks to this old Rachel’s Tavern post/comment? I was so angry at that woman. I could barely contain myself. (back)

From Three Wise Men:

Crazy, racist, hate mongering Congressman Tom Tancredo has announced he will not seek re-election, regardless of the outcome of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. I pretty much can’t think of anyone in the House that’s more clearly a bad human being than him.

I agree. For more on Tancredo, check out these posts at Migra Matters: 1 2 3 4.

From Para Justicia y Libertad!:

Congratulations to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner who has become the first woman to be elected president in Argentina’s history. Kirchner, 54, is the wife of current President of Argentina, Néstor Kirchner and a former senator for Buenos Aires Province. In the Oct, 2007 general election, Mrs. Kirchner, she ran for president of Argentina, representing the ruling Front for Victory party, a center-left Peronist party.

Fernández is the second woman to be elected leader of a South American nation in two years, after Michelle Bachelet, who became Chile’s president last year. […]

Her election extends the trend of left-leaning elected governments in Latin America, although she is more moderate than the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. Mrs Kirchner is expected to maintain her husband’s friendly relations with Chavez.

Fernández has vowed to continue the work of her husband after winning a presidential election widely seen as a referendum on his economic policies. She has fiercely rejected the pro-market policies of the 1990s, which she blames for the 2001 crisis.