The article doesn't have a lot of details, but what's there is good--actress Reese Witherspoon (pictured) says she respects and protects the relationship between ex-husband Ryan Phillippe and their two children.

Excerpted from Reese Witherspoon Shares Kids With Ryan Phillippe Over Holidays (Associated Press, 11/1/708):

Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Philippe's divorce was made final in June.

Reese Witherspoon's holiday comedy "Four Christmases" focuses on the hoops her and Vince Vaughn's characters have to jump through to satisfy the couple's blended families. It turns out its something with which Reese, who has two young children with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe, has had some firsthand experience.

"I think the most important thing is to be a grownup," Reese tells People.com. "And not let any kind of feelings affect how you deal with your children."

Witherspoon, 32, and Phillippe, 34, make sure the lines of communication are open, and that the kids always come first. "I think the most important thing is the children," says Witherspoon. "What do they want, what makes them feel comfortable?"

Excerpted from Man pays for county mistake: He lands in jail and loses job over wrong ID in support case (Patriot-News, 11/16/08):

When Walter Andre Sharpe Jr. signed for a certified letter from Dauphin County Domestic Relations in 2001, he didn't know he was signing on for a seven-year nightmare.

Since then, the Philadelphia man has been thrown in jail four times, lost his job, become estranged from his four children and spent more than $12,000 to support the child of another man.

It finally stopped in May 2007 when a judge reversed a finding that he was the father.

But the same judge has since ruled that Sharpe is not entitled to any compensation, not even the money he was forced to pay to support the child.

Sharpe's attorney, Tabetha Tanner, said the county Domestic Relations office "stole" Sharpe's identity by exchanging his date of birth, address and Social Security number for that of the father.

The agency fought Sharpe's attempts to have DNA testing and said it determined he was the father "after reasonable investigation."

Yet it took The Patriot-News less than an hour to track down the real father, Andre Sharpe, who said the girl that Walter Sharpe has been paying support for has been living with him for the last four years.

But in court papers, Domestic Relations blamed Walter Sharpe, a former trash collector, for not filing the proper motions in court to "disestablish paternity."

"What type of investigation were they doing if you can track this guy down in less than eight hours?" Walter Sharpe asked. "It just pisses me off. I tried my best to clear myself of this case, and it fell on deaf ears. It's like I'm guilty until proven innocent. I'm just another man crying, 'I don't know this person. I don't have their kid.' It's a routine they're just used to."

When Walter Sharpe received the certified letter on Feb. 6, 2001, he knew the complaint for child support was a mistake.

Andre Sharpe had a different date of birth, a different Social Security number and different previous addresses.

Andre Sharpe also had an 11-year-old daughter with a woman in Harrisburg, and Walter Sharpe knew he had been to Harrisburg only once, to register a car. He also knew he hadn't fathered a child to a woman named Terri Jones on that trip.

So he ignored it.

Big mistake.

The letter required Andre Sharpe to attend a Domestic Relations conference on March 6, 2001.

On May 29, 2001, since neither man attended the conference, Dauphin County Judge Scott A. Evans, as required by law, issued a ruling finding that Walter Andre Sharpe was the father.

A month later, Domestic Relations entered an order requiring him to pay $447 a month support along with $5,730 in arrears.

When the agency attached his wages at the trash company J.P. Mascaro & Sons, Walter Sharpe told his boss there was a mistake. He then received a notice from Domestic Relations telling him to come in to verify his claim of mistaken identity.

Instead of fixing the error, the office changed the personal information on the case to match his, Tanner, his attorney, said in court documents.

"Incredibly, without any order of court or hearing, Domestic Relations stole the identity of [Walter Sharpe] by willfully substituting his biographic information for that of the biological father's," Tanner said in those documents...

Walter Sharpe couldn't keep up. He had been paying child support for his four children from a former marriage in Montgomery County, but the new burden overwhelmed him.

When he fell behind on support for his real children, their mother inquired about it and believed he had fathered another child while they were married. She cut back on his contact with his children, he said.

Then Walter Sharpe started getting locked up on contempt charges for not keeping up with support payments. He was sentenced to six-month jail terms four times -- Nov. 15, 2001; Dec. 23, 2003; March 23, 2004; and Aug. 16, 2005.

Read the full article here.

No doubt the child support system's defenders will blame the victim, saying he didn't do enough to clear himself. Of course, he did do a lot, but even if he didn't, so what? The government now has the right to demand that a totally innocent man participate in a court procedure, and if he doesn't recognize its importance, make him an indentured servant for 18 years?

Make sure to call or write reporter Pete Shellem and commend him for writing a fine article on this important, oft-overlooked issue. He can be reached at (717) 255-8156 or pshellem@patriot-news.com.

"Hilmar points to events surrounding the election of Barack Hussein Obama as reminiscent of the way the Nazi regime came to power."

Tom Horn, CEO of Anomalos Publishing, recently sent out the mailing "Former Hitler Youth to Appear on The Savage Nation with Michael Savage to Discuss Similarities Between President-Elect Obama and the Rise of Totalitarianism Under Hitler." It reads:

Nationally-syndicated talk show host Michael Savage is set to interview former German member of the Hitler Youth, Hilmar von Campe this Tuesday, November 18

MEDIA ADVISORY, November 17 /Christian Newswire/ -- The program will focus on similarities, which von Campe sees between the rise of totalitarianism under Hitler and the current social and political trends inside the United States.

"Every day brings this nation closer to a Nazi-style totalitarian abyss," writes von Campe, now a U.S. citizen, and author of "Defeating the Totalitarian Lie: A Former Hitler Youth Warns America."

"Today in America we are witnessing a repeat performance of the tragedy of 1933 when an entire nation let itself be led like a lamb to the Socialist slaughterhouse. This time, the end of freedom is inevitable unless America rises to her mission and destiny."

Hilmar points to events surrounding the election of Barack Hussein Obama as reminiscent of the way the Nazi regime came to power.

In a specific example, von Campe takes strong issue with Obama's position that America after World War II became similar to Nazi Germany because the Supreme Court has not established wealth distribution as a constitutional guideline. Just the opposite is true according to von Campe. "The word 'Nazism' was invented by the Soviets to get the word 'Socialist' out of sight," he wrote in a WND commentary this week. "Obama knows nothing about Germany. The national Socialists, called Nazis, come from the same Marxist/Socialist/Communist tree as he himself. His approach to the subject is the same as the one the Communists used when they took over the religious Theology of Liberation in Latin America and transformed it into a subversive political movement."

The Savage Nation is listed in the top 3 syndicated talk shows alongside Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, reaching 8 million listeners on 400 stations throughout the United States daily.

Tom Horn can be reached at tomhorn@anomalospublishing.com or 417-723-0610.

"Hilmar points to events surrounding the election of Barack Hussein Obama as reminiscent of the way the Nazi regime came to power." Oh, really? Tell me, are Jews or other minorities being attacked and beaten in the streets by Obama's jackbooted thugs? Are their business and homes being vandalized or attacked? Are workers who support labor unions being terrorized? Does Obama have an army of hundreds of thousands of stormtroopers in the streets beating, attacking, and threatening all who disagree with him?

To even compare the two is to paper over and dismiss what happened to the Jews of Germany. I'm a pretty mediocre Jew and I'm not normally sensitive to anti-Semitism, but this is too much.

I would also add that I'm damn glad the U.S. has the Second Amendment, and I regret that the Jews of Germany and the territories it conquered and occupied didn't have sufficient arms.

Hitler's S.A. and particularly the S.S. almost exclusively attacked unarmed civilians, and were perhaps the two greatest groups of cowards in all of human history. They were good at gunning down unarmed people--as they did to half my family in Bialystok, Poland in the summer of 1941--but many wouldn't have had the courage to fight armed Jews.

The biggest slaughter occurred in Poland and in German-occupied USSR. The SS "men" carrying it out greatly preferred fighting an "enemy" who couldn't shoot back, as opposed to fighting the Soviet Red Army, which inflicted the overwhelming majority of the Wehrmacht's causalities and was largely responsible for Germany's defeat in World War II. (In the photo above, Soviet troops who helped capture Berlin are holding 200 captive German military banners and standards.) (Yes, I know about the Waffen SS.)

To draw a line connecting Hitler and Obama is beyond ludicrous, and Christian Newswire should be embarassed for colluding in it.

As a minor aside, Hitler was no socialist, and the Nazis backed up the traditional power of the German industrialists against the working class, who supported the German Communists and Social Democrats. Hitler's main political enemy in Germany was the German Communist Party (KPD), and they were the first ones he destroyed upon seizing power.

It's a common tactic of the right to pretend that the Nazis were on the left, as a way of discrediting the left. The Nazis were on the extreme right, analogous to the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S.

Glenn's E-Newsletter/Week in Review (11/17/08): Protester Jolly Stanesby Jailed, DART Campaign Update, Madonna's Appalling Divorce Behavior

Hero Father Jolly Stanesby Jailed for Protest

"When one man says 'No', all Rome begins to tremble."--Spartacus, gladiator and leader of the largest slave rebellion in ancient history

Jolly Stanesby, a divorced father of one, has carried out numerous daring, creative protests.

He handcuffed himself to the English anti-father "Children's" Minister Margaret Hodge at a family law conference in Salford in November, 2004.

He spent seven days on Tamar Bridge in Plymouth, England in January, 2004, refusing to come down from his freezing perch despite being told "you could die up there," and then enraging British police by cleverly eluding capture.

Stanesby is a registered child care provider and is thus allowed to care for any child in England except his own, who he is barred from calling and is allowed to see only four days a month. Stanesby became a registered child minder in the hope he could spend more time with his five year-old daughter.

In 2006 he helped take over the live National Lottery TV show, and in 2007 made international headlines by climbing Stonehenge dressed as Fred Flintstone with a banner demanding that family law be taken "out of the Stone Age."

Last week Stanesby was jailed for his role in a rooftop protest at the home of Deputy Prime Minister Harriett Harman. (He is pictured to the right while on the roof).

English fatherhood activists are organizing a campaign to "FREE JOLLY." Leave a message of support for Jolly by clicking here.

Jolly's email address is freejollystanesby@yahoo.co.uk.

To learn more, click here.

DART Campaign Update

Our DART campaign continus to draw media attention nationally. I discussed our campaign against Dallas Area Rapid Transit's anti-father bus ads on the nationally-syndicated Mike Gallagher Show recently. According to Talkers Magazine, Gallagher is the eighth most listened-to talk radio host in America and has over four million weekly listeners.

Gallagher was very sympathetic, and tied the ads to what he described as the general disparagement and unfair stereotyping of fathers. As an example, Gallagher pointed to the Vincent Romero case in Arizona, where an 8-year-old boy shot and killed his father and another man.

Gallagher played clips of numerous TV guests asserting that the father must have abused the boy in order for the boy to shoot the father. Yet according to today's New York Times:

Although investigators initially said they thought the boy might have suffered severe physical or sexual trauma, they have found no evidence of abuse, said Roy Melnick, the police chief in St. Johns, Ariz., where the shootings occurred.

Read more here. For an update on other events in our DART campaign, go to our campaign page here.

Madonna's Appalling Divorce Behavior

"But as Guy held his two boys close for the first time in weeks, his estranged wife tightened her grip from the other side of the Atlantic."

The list looks like someone's parody of what a vindictive, controlling eco-mom/ego-mom might do. Who knows, maybe the Daily Mail is wrong and it is a parody. The details in the story below, however, are chilling.

From Mama don't preach: Madonna lets Guy see his boys... on 12 conditions (Daily Mail, 11/11/08):

After weeks apart, an emotional Guy Ritchie was reunited with his sons Rocco and David at a London airport this morning.

The director's children were back on English soil after being whisked away to the US by Madonna, who is in the throes of her Sticky and Sweet tour.

But as Guy held his two boys close for the first time in weeks, his estranged wife tightened her grip from the other side of the Atlantic.

The Mail has learned that the 50-year-old has issued a list of demands that Ritchie must meet while the children are with him in London. It includes a ban on TV, non-organic food and clothes not sent by her.

Eight-year-old Rocco looked delighted to be back in his father's company and threw his arms around him after walking through the gates at Gatwick.

Guy also shared a hug with David, three, whom he adopted from Malawi in 2006, later hoisting him on his hip as they made their way through the terminal.

An onlooker says: 'Rocco shouted, "Dad!" in the loudest voice.'

'Both he and David were smiling. Guy literally threw his coffee aside to free up his hands and run over. You could tell they were all so excited to see each other'...

Rocco and David have barely seen their father since Guy and Madonna announced their plans for divorce in mid October...

Madonna is understood to want leave the family's London base and move back to the U.S...

I previously discussed Madonna's divorce in my blog post Madonna Plays Victim in Divorce Battle.

Dad learns about putative father registries the hard way--by losing his son

[Note: Reader Robert Franklin, a retired business attorney, is joining the blogging team at www.glennsacks.com. All of Robert's posts are available here.--GS]

In Part I, Robert discussed the case of Idaho father Tyson Sherwood. He wrote:

Tyson Sherwood was engaged to be married. His fiancée was pregnant and, for unknown reasons abruptly broke off the relationship and refused further contact with Sherwood. He called the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare to find out what he could do to preserve his parental rights. Their answer:  “Nothing until the child is born.” That turned out to be false.

What he could have done, indeed the one thing he HAD to do, was file a form with the state’s Putative Father Registry claiming paternity of the child. Care to guess which Idaho state agency is responsible for maintaining its Putative Father Registry? If you said the IDHW, go to the head of the class. Why the IDHW lied to Sherwood about a matter clearly within its knowledge is one of the many mysteries of this case.

What happened in this case is what happens in so many adoption cases; the mother decided she didn’t want to keep the child and she didn’t want the father to have him either. So she refused to tell the adoption agency Sherwood’s identity or whereabouts and, since he hadn’t filed with the Putative Father Registry, no notice of the adoption was given him. The child was adopted by parents unknown and Tyson Sherwood will never see his son.

Read Part II here.

Some of the other issues I'm covering this week include:  

Two Pro-Fatherhood Legislators Win

Woods Case Amicus Brief: 'Only a couple shelters out of 2,000 help male victims and their children'

'When women behave badly, we seek to understand; when men behave badly, we condemn them'

The Rape Claim Was False but It's no Big Deal...

He took her breath away...

'She said the kids didn’t like him anyway, but I bet they liked his child support'

Glenn Discusses DART Campaign on WIBA AM 1310

Woods Case Amicus Brief: 'Abusive use weapons and assault when their partners are preoccupied or asleep'

An Interesting Perspective from Jay Leno on...

An Example of 'Slut Shaming'?

Mothers Forced to Repay Money They Defrauded out of Duped Dads

Reflections on Veterans Day, 90 Years Later (Part I)

Reflections on Veterans Day, 90 Years Later (Part II) 

Lesbian Social Mom Target of Ex's Alienation Campaign--and the Christian Right Helps

To comment on what I've written or to join the lively discussion on my website, simply click on the "comments" link below each blog post on my website.

Best Wishes,
Glenn Sacks

"When one man says 'No', all Rome begins to tremble."--Spartacus, gladiator and leader of the largest slave rebellion in ancient history

Jolly Stanesby, a divorced father of one, has carried out numerous daring, creative protests.

He handcuffed himself to the English anti-father "Children's" Minister Margaret Hodge at a family law conference in Salford in November, 2004.

He spent seven days on Tamar Bridge in Plymouth, England in January, 2004, refusing to come down from his freezing perch despite being told "you could die up there," and then enraging British police by cleverly eluding capture.

Stanesby is a registered child care provider and is thus allowed to care for any child in England except his own, who he is barred from calling and is allowed to see only four days a month. Stanesby became a registered child minder in the hope he could spend more time with his five year-old daughter.

In 2006 he helped take over the live National Lottery TV show, and in 2007 made headlines by climbing Stonehenge dressed as Fred Flintstone with a banner demanding that family law be taken "out of the Stone Age."

Last week Stanesby was jailed for his role in a rooftop protest at the home of Deputy Prime Minister Harriett Harman. (He is pictured above right while on the roof). According to one press report:

Fathers 4 Justice activist Jolly Stanesby was today jailed for two months...fellow protestor Mark Harris, of Elford Crescent in Plympton, was given a conditional discharge.

Members of the group, which had disbanded in September of this year, said they would be staging further protests on the Minister's roof and at the Prime Minister's home in Kirkaldy & Cowdenbeath within the week to protest at what they described as a 'politically conceived show trial.'

Spokesman Mark Harris said: "I am shocked that Mr. Stanesby has been imprisoned and know that fellow campaigners will be taking his place on Miss Harman's roof within days if not hours. The court has made a serious error in committing him to prison and in doing so incited angry dads to take further direct action."

The pair climbed on to the roof of a house in Herne Hill on June 9 this year and unfurled a banner reading ‘A father is for life, not just conception’

I've previously expressed my tactical disagreement with protesting at the houses of judges or court officials, but regardless I salute Stanesby for his courage and dedication. There are many articles about him in Google News--click here to see them.

English fatherhood activists are organizing a campaign to "FREE JOLLY." Leave a message of support for Jolly by clicking here.

Jolly's email address is:

freejollystanesby@yahoo.co.uk.

Jolly Stanesby is now in the 19th century HMP Wormwood Scrubs prison (pictured). His Prison number is WR8198. Messages can be sent to Jolly on a postcard to the address below:

WR8198
HMP Wormwood Scrubs
P.O. Box 757
Du Cane Road
London, England
W12 OAE

Please address all mail using the above number. The prison's hpone # is Tel: 020 8588 3200

A couple weeks ago Terri, a reader, was commenting on the sexual harassment issue and whether women like male attention or not. She posted this comment on my blog:

Alas, my days are long past and I miss them but I don't begrudge other young women their time in the sun.

The comment caught my eye because I believe this sensitive subject is an important issue for women. Men in general don't understand it very well and in one form or another the issue often trips men up in their relationships with women.

I asked Terri (aka "Perspicacious" on my blog) to write a column about it for my blog. That column is below. She touches on many, many relevant issues for men.

On Women & Aging
By Terri

Because men and women are both biologically and psychologically different, I may have some trouble trying to explain this clearly. Hopefully what I say will open up a dialog where men can ask questions without having to be concerned about being attacked or misunderstood. Comments from women, whether in agreement or disagreement, are also welcomed and encouraged.

In his book, The Evolution of Desire, David Buss cites studies that found men in nearly all cultures tend to place significantly higher value on physical appearance in a partner than women do. Women generally place more importance on a man’s earning ability.

Men in almost all cultures also tend to prefer younger women. It is theorized that fertility has much to do with this preference. Women on average, become most fertile at the age of 25. From there fertility declines until it reaches zero by the age of about 50.

That is why I call menopause “the great equalizer” among women. During and after menopause, women who in youth enjoyed the advantages of natural beauty tend to lose those advantages after menopause. Despite their best efforts to avoid it, women begin to look old during or after menopause.

When a person is seen as attractive, assumptions are automatically made. In many cultures, what is beautiful is also assumed to be good. Allegations have been made that attractive people tend to have certain advantages over unattractive people, including the ability to get jobs and promotions more easily, receiving better treatment from authorities, having more romantic choices, and marrying into wealth.

Attractive women are also generally pursued by a greater number of men. Attractive women can also more easily replace a spouse if their spouse doesn’t live up to the woman’s expectations or if the couple’s general situation changes.

A woman may use enhancing tactics to get an edge on other women such as makeup, dressing seductively, and flirting. Naturally the successful outcome of any of those tactics is far greater for pretty women than for plainer women.

Men tend to compete with other men for the attention of women by doing things, such as entering athletic competitions, while women compete with other women for the attention of men by altering their appearance. This reinforces my belief that women instinctively know that physical appearance is the playing field where women have to compete in order to win a man’s attention and, eventually, a marriage proposal.

On that particular playing field, as on any other, the game may become too emotional, too heated, and too personal. Jealousy often rears its ugly head. Some women internalize the angst they feel about their body and their looks.

Others take it out on their competition. This usually comes in the form of spreading untrue rumors and gossip in the hopes of tarnishing their opponent’s reputation if they can’t compete with her good looks. This behavior seems to be seen more often among groups of women while few men engage in such tactics in an attempt to level their competitive playing field.

After women marry, the previous fixation with keeping their looks up often vanishes, sometimes slowly and sometimes not so slowly. Not all women let themselves go after marriage but it happens often enough to make note of it..

Why women in general would suddenly devalue the importance of keeping up their appearance after marriage is an interesting question. Perhaps some women believe once they’re married they’ve “won” the game and can retire, but most women inherently understand that the competition is still out there and as fierce as ever, regardless of marital status.

Recently we discussed a tremendous victory, as the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento ruled in Woods. v. Shewry that California’s exclusion of men from domestic violence services violates men’s constitutional equal protection rights.

Marc Angelucci, Esq. was the lead attorney in the case, and the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center (led by legislative advocate Michael Robinson and John Hamel, LCSW) penned a powerful amicus brief in support. The brief was co-authored by some of the world's leading experts on domestic violence.

Robinson identified the case's lead plaintiff, David Woods, a disabled Sacramento-area veteran who, along with his daughter, was the victim of his wife's domestic violence.

I will be publishing several excerpts from the amicus brief in coming weeks. In one section on DV services, the authors write:

When men are denied services, their children are denied services. Currently, only one or two shelters out of nearly 2,000 in the United States offer beds to male victims and their children. Outreach efforts from established domestic violence organizations target exclusively females, as evidenced by the almost total absence of male victims in video, film, radio and print media. Thus, under current policy abused men are both denied services and told, essentially, that they don’t even exist.

Ignoring male victims is not only a human rights issue, but also a public health issue. Until all perpetrators of family violence are held accountable for their actions, regardless of gender, our efforts will be limited, with serious implications for future generations.

Read the full brief here. The Court's Opinion in Woods can be read here.

(To read Woods' powerful story, see my co-authored column Domestic Violence Lawsuit Will Help Secure Services for All Abuse Victims, Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, 12/28/05, as well as Woods' daughter's heart wrenching letter about her childhood here.)

[Note: Reader Robert Franklin, a retired business attorney, is joining the blogging team at www.glennsacks.com. All of Robert's posts are available here.--GS]

In Part I, Robert discussed the case of Idaho father Tyson Sherwood. He wrote:

Tyson Sherwood was engaged to be married. His fiancée was pregnant and, for unknown reasons abruptly broke off the relationship and refused further contact with Sherwood. He called the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare to find out what he could do to preserve his parental rights. Their answer:  “Nothing until the child is born.” That turned out to be false.

What he could have done, indeed the one thing he HAD to do, was file a form with the state’s Putative Father Registry claiming paternity of the child. Care to guess which Idaho state agency is responsible for maintaining its Putative Father Registry? If you said the IDHW, go to the head of the class. Why the IDHW lied to Sherwood about a matter clearly within its knowledge is one of the many mysteries of this case.

What happened in this case is what happens in so many adoption cases; the mother decided she didn’t want to keep the child and she didn’t want the father to have him either. So she refused to tell the adoption agency Sherwood’s identity or whereabouts and, since he hadn’t filed with the Putative Father Registry, no notice of the adoption was given him. The child was adopted by parents unknown and Tyson Sherwood will never see his son.

Robert's Part II is below.

Putative Father Registries, Part II

Following up on the case of Tyson Sherwood, the Idaho man who lost his son to an all-but-unknown law, I spoke with Sherwood’s attorney, Allen Browning.  Browning said that Tyson Sherwood is a fine man who was ready, willing and able to care for his child.  As soon as his pregnant fiancée cut off contact with him, he did everything he could to secure his parental rights.

Everything, that is except file a form with the Idaho Putative Father Registry. As an experienced adoption lawyer, Browning told me that the existence of the Idaho Putative Father Registry is a closely guarded secret. Basically, if you’re not an adoption attorney, you don’t know about it. Browning isn’t sure if it’s even taught in law school.

I contacted the Idaho Bureau of Health Policy and Vital Statistics and they told me that, in 2007, there were a total of 6,353 births to non-married women in Idaho. That same year, a grand total of 44 men filed the form with the Registry. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 0.69% of single fathers who preserved their parental rights, or 99.31% who are at risk for losing their children. It looks like Browning was right. It also looks like Idaho doesn’t do a lot to let men know about the loss of their parental rights. No one at the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare could tell me anything the state does to let men know about the registry or its possible effects on their rights.

Maybe that’s why Tyson Sherwood didn’t know. When his fiancée broke off their engagement, he contacted the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, of which the Bureau of Vital Statistics is a part, to find out what he needed to do to secure his parental rights. He was told that he could do nothing until after the child was born even though Idaho law says exactly the opposite.

What that meant in Sherwood’s case and what it means in all cases in states with putative father registries, was that, when the mother placed the child for adoption, the court didn’t have to notify Sherwood that his rights were being terminated.  All it had to do was consult the Registry and, when it didn’t find his name there, terminate his rights without telling him.  Tyson Sherwood never had a chance to tell the court, “this child is mine and I want to be its father.”

For more about this case, click here.

[Note: Reader Robert Franklin, a retired business attorney, has joined the blogging team at www.glennsacks.com. All of Robert's posts are available here.--GS]

Here’s another case of a mother apparently killing her children. Although we don’t know exactly what happened, we do know it’s a terrible tragedy. The story is here.

From where I stand, there are two issues about the way this is reported. First the article says nothing about the boys’ father. Is he alive? Where is he? Did he play any part in these children’s lives? If not, why not? It’s a powerful condemnation of the society we live in that fathers seem to be so marginalized that they don’t even bare mentioning in stories like these.

Second, note the way the mother is referred to. Her behavior, according to the story was “a cry for help.” If a father had murdered his toddlers, would we say he was crying out for help? I’ve never seen it and I frankly don’t expect to.

So this story falls into the familiar pattern – when women behave badly, we seek to understand why; when men behave badly, we judge and condemn them. One approach is love and understanding; the other is condemnation. The difference is based on the sex of the bad actor.

That sexism is destructive in itself, but it’s worse than that, for both men and women. By failing to treat equally the bad parenting of mothers and fathers, the media, pundits, etc. promote the idea that women are qualified to be parents and men are not. (This article does more than just suggest that the mother was a perfectly good parent in need of help.)

In doing so, they encourage women to engage in the role of parent and men not to. That obviously encourages the wide array of discrimination men face in family courts today. After all, if men aren’t good parents, why enforce their parental rights?

It also tends to turn women away from work as their primary occupation which results in the lower wages and savings, fewer promotions and greater vulnerability to financial risk in old age we see in women today. Every article like this is a two-sided coin for women. The side we see is the one that extols women as parents; the side we don’t see is the one that nudges them away from work and financial equality.

For parents of both sexes, it’s a lose-lose proposition. Equal treatment of men and women in the media benefits both sexes.

...not anything worth going to jail over--not even for a day. And let's not let the fact that "Court documents say she earlier pleaded guilty to falsely reporting that her ex-husband sexually assaulted her" stand in the way of her rush to freedom...

From the Associated Press Minn. Woman Who Lied To Police Gets Probation:

A woman who lied to police about being kidnapped has been given credit for 30 days at a psychiatric center and has been put on probation.

Deborah Lee Monson, of Dent, Minn., apologized in court Monday.

Judge Steven Marquart sentenced the 26-year-old Monson to a year in jail with all but 30 days suspended, but gave her credit for time in the psychiatric center. He ordered two years of supervised probation.

Monson told police in April that she was kidnapped at knifepoint in Moorhead, Minn., and taken to Fargo, but later recanted the allegation. She pleaded guilty to a charge of providing false information.

Prosecutor Leah Viste recommended 90 days in jail, citing an earlier false information conviction. Court documents say Monson earlier pleaded guilty to falsely reporting that her ex-husband sexually assaulted her.