Shot In The Dark

Sign of Reform?

In North Dakota, there's a billboard battle going on between supporters and detractors of "Measure 3", areferendum on imposing a presumption of joint physical custody in cases of divorce , unless there's a compelling, empirical reason not to. The North...

Feet Firmly Planted In The Clouds

Don't get me wrong; I like Mona Charen. She's a fine writer, an excellent commentator, and one of the precious few conservative opinions to occasionally leak into the Star/Tribune. But her latest column illustrates a conundrum that faces social conservatives....

Interview With A Baby

Katie from Yucky Salad compares the plights of Harry Whittington and Sean Preston Spears-Federline in this interview. While Whittington's got it bad enough, Katie gives the nod to the baby:"Please. You lived 78 years before you found yourself on the...

Just What We Need

Remember back in the nineties, when "Militia" became a dirty word? Notwithstanding that "militia" is recognized in the Constitution itself as the "good guys", that the Militia won the American Revolution, and its eldest son the state volunteer army freed...

Men: Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Via Peg at What If?, I found this piece by Selwyn Duke at Ameircan Thinker, "The Dehumanizing of Men." There's nothing new here - if you've been following this sort of thing - but in our PC age, it's amazingly...

PBS: "Fathers; Guilty Until Proven Innocent"

Fatherhood doesn't catch a lot of breaks. The courts routinely dismiss its importance, denying fathers custody or, often, meaningful visitation as a matter of course. Politicians? Quick - go through the campaign literature of many "feminist" politicians, and see how...

Alito and the Elephant In The Family Room

As I was driving in to work today, I listened to NPR's coverage of the Alito nomination. As always, I don't have a digital recorder in my car (note to self...) so I'll have to paraphrase. However, I think the...

Shred of Justice

King sent me this story, about a court case that, maybe, is starting to set some things straight that desperately need it. The way "Family Court" law is currently set up, a woman basically needs only to tell a court...

Reforms Overdue

On last week's NARN, Captain, King and I had an hour-long discussion about the current decay in the institution of the family. It started with the current fad of the mean-nothing wedding vows, and moved on to divorce via Covenant...

Parents Might Defend The Guy

Dan from Northern Alliance Wannabe relates this bit:It seems that a woman in Dallas called 911 because she was having difficulty controlling her 12 year old daughter. The operator, failing to see the "emergency" in the situation, quipped: "OK. Do...

Machinations

The good news: Mark Yost at the Pioneer Press is the first major media figure in the Twin Cities who has an interest in fairly covering the debate over family court reform in Minnesota. The bad news: There is so...

Presumption of Fairness

I talked with Representative Rob Eastlund yesterday. Eastlund represents District 17A, the Cambridge/Isanti area in the far north Metro. According to Eastlund - sponsor of HF1191, which if enacted would create a presumption of joint physical custody in divorce cases...

Famlaw Blogs?

As you may have noticed from the post below, I have a bit of an interest in Minnesota's family law system. Not in the same way most divorced fathers do, thankfully. I have joint custody of my kids. Things work...

Hearings

Three bills are having public hearings today at the Capitol, each of them aimed at reforming Minnesota's family court system. Two of them are good bills that need to be passed. One of them is a biased mess. Read on....

Worlds of Hurt

A couple of personal blogosphere notes. Emperor Misha's family troubles are finally out in the open. He's filed his divorce papers. He's looking for help. IS the Nature of the Imperial Trouble?" href="http://www.nicedoggie.net/archives/004700.html#004700">Here's the story. And Wog has been having...

9/11 Story

Flash at Centrisity talks about his own 9/11 experiences, in a very moving post (apparently the first in a series). It begins:September 11, 2001, has multiple meanings for me. Most people think of the tragedy that shocked our nation. So...

Sanity?

America's divorce, child custody and child support systems are massive, stupid jokes. We've spelled out some of the horrors this system has inflicted over the years. Finally - some Is A Defense" href="http://weekendpundit.blogmosis.com/lastweekend/025634.html#025634">sanity? (Via Dean Esmay)...

Serial Stupidity

Today's Doug Grow column presents a number of thorny questions. It's a story many of us have heard before: 25 year old woman hooks up with a good-for-nothing layabout. She exhibits less than perfect common sense:A short version of her...

Finish What You Started

If there's a topic that's close to my heart - closer than firearms rights, closer than government's role in our lives, closer than anything - it's the topic of divorce and father's rights. A few weeks ago, James Lileks wrote...

Who's The Villain Here? -

It was interesting to read the story yesterday of the LA teen who solved his own kidnapping by Googling his name for a class project. His mother took him 14 years ago, as in many such cases, because the...

Life on Lam Ends

In a story that echoes one we covered in this space some time ago, a St. Paul woman has been arrested for hiding her child from her ex-husband. It was a secretive life for the women and Elluara. "I don't...

Hidden War

Who needs "reality TV", when America's most sordid drama is going on under our noses? The endless saga of parental kidnapping continues. Underground Watch is a small grassroots organization that tries to locate abductors. One of their targets is Atlanta...