is a good thing according to Hepola, but why not dad? Why not "being close to your parents..."? "Parents" is as easy a word to type as "mother," so why not do it? But when it comes to the mother's bad behavior, all of a sudden it's time to bring in dad even though there's no evidence he was involved. Just yesterday I was reading in the Broadsheet letters how outrageous it was in the past that husbands tried to control their wives' behavior. But in this case, based on nothing, the husband simply MUST have been responsible somehow for his wife's outrageous and childish acts. The concept of gender equality continues to elude Broadsheet.

The main problem with Warner's piece is that she says there's an "overparenting" problem. Is there? Why does she think so? She cites no studies. What indeed does "overparenting" mean? Certainly there are bad parents out there and certainly some of their bad behavior could be classified as "overparenting," but is it generally a problem or is it just something that, when it happens, attracts the ghouls of the popular press who then make it look like a big problem because of the ubiquity of their coverage?

We're quite a bit off topic here, but the article you mention refers to a very, very old phenomenon. Welfare payments to mothers are recouped by finding a man(sometimes any man will suffice), and making him pay. The purpose is to repay the state, not to pay the mother. That's the whole mission of the Office of Child Support Enforcement and a huge amount of what state attorneys general do. The efforts the OCSE goes to to get poor mothers to name fathers (whether they're actually the father or not) makes for interesting reading.

I had a client in the 90s who got a letter from the state informing him that he owed it $45k for a child he'd never seen or even known existed. It seems he had a one-night stand 17 years previously which resulted in pregnancy. The mother opted not to inform him of his child, received welfare benefits and, after a 16-year delay, the state sent him the bill. What a surprise to him, his wife and children! He had to take out a second mortgage on their house to pay up.

So this isn't exactly a new development, but according to the press, it's news.

You're right. As I said in my response to SusanS, that's the whole mission of the OSCE. But it's not just biological dads who must pay. It's fairly common for a woman to name a man as the father, the state tries to locate him, finds it can't, gets a default judgment against him and then miraculously finds him and moves against his assets. When he tries to claim he's not the father, he finds the issue is res judicata and thus not challengeable. C'est la guerre.

has for years raised money exclusively for female candidates. The candidates need to be liberal generally and pro-choice, but men who meet those criteria need not apply. Only female candidates receive support from Emily's List. Is it possible TC-F has never heard of Emily's List? She would have us believe so, but I don't buy it.

the Bush Admin couldn't get any more unreality-based, the Press Secretary reveals she has no idea of what the Cuban Missile Crisis was. Just amazing. The peasants remain in control of the castle.

These clowns actually want us to believe that homosexuality causes AIDS. There's no other way to read what Huckabee said. I've read a book by John Podhoretz that says the same thing. It's really shameful stuff.

What Huckabee said was that "we" now know that homosexuality "can pose a dangerous public health risk." That is a false statement and it does indeed demonize gay people. There is nothing unique about homosexuality that makes it moreof a public health threat than any other kind of sex. Homosexuality does not cause AIDS despite what many of these people want us to believe. In the case of AIDS and other sexually transmissible diseases, sex itself, whether straight or gay can transmit the virus. The fact that this virus first found a human host who was gay (at least in the U.S.) and that the homosexual community is sexually fairly insular meant that the disease got started among, and killed mostly gays, particularly in the first years. As such, straight people can thank our lucky stars for the accident of fate that established AIDS in the gay community.

I don't know if you remember, but the first news articles about AIDS reported that gays and Haitians were the ones afflicted which fact the medical community was struggling to figure out. Would it be reasonable for Huckabee to have said that some "Haitian lifestyle" posed a dangerous risk to public health?

running back, third-on-the-depth chart QB. Think Kordell Stewart. Will Vick get a look? Of course he will, and my bet is that he'll land a job.

a couple of weeks ago, an 11-year-old girl had sex with two boys aged 9 and 10. They were charged with statutory rape and she was charged with, that's right, nothing. The point being that statutory rape laws sometimes produce some odd results, like making everyone involved both perpetrator and victim, both rapist and raped.

is to rebel, violently if necessary, against their oppressors. I wonder if the Fox show will include something like that. Hmm. Somehow I doubt it. Almost every revolution against oppression has been led and manned by, well, men. The one going on now in Burma is a notable exception. So if this TV show doesn't include something like that, it'll suggest motives other than those stated by the press release. Misandric motives. But the show hasn't aired yet, so we'll just have to see.