“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” Winston Churchill wrote this over a century ago.
During my junior year in high school, the nuns asked about our plans for after we graduated. When I said I was going to attend State University, I noticed their disappointment. I asked my favorite nun, “Why?” She answered, “That means you'll leave four years later a communist and an atheist!"
What a giggle we girls had over that. "How ridiculously unsophisticated these nuns are," we thought. Then I went to the university and four years later walked out a communist and an atheist, just as my sister Katie had six years before me.
Sometime later, I was a young divorcee with a small child. At the urging of my sister, I relocated to NYC after spending years married to an American executive stationed in Southeast Asia. The marriage over, I was making a new life for my daughter and me. Katie said, "Come to New York. We're making revolution! Some of us are starting the National Organization of Women and you can be part of it."
I hadn't seen her for years. Although she had tormented me when we were youngsters, those memories were faint after my Asian traumas and the break-up of my marriage. I foolishly mistook her for sanctuary in a storm. With so much time and distance between us, I had forgotten her emotional instability.
And so began my period as an unwitting witness to history. I stayed with Kate and her lovable Japanese husband, Fumio, in a dilapidated loft on The Bowery as she finished her first book, a PhD thesis for Columbia University, “Sexual Politics.”
It was 1969. Kate invited me to join her for a gathering at the home of her friend, Lila Karp. They called the assemblage a "consciousness-raising-group," a typical communist exercise, something practiced in Maoist China. We gathered at a large table as the chairperson opened the meeting with a back-and-forth recitation, like a Litany, a type of prayer done in Catholic Church. But now it was Marxism, the Church of the Left, mimicking religious practice:
"Why are we here today?" she asked.
"To make revolution," they answered.
"What kind of revolution?" she replied.
"The Cultural Revolution," they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?" she demanded.
"By destroying the American family!" they answered.
"How do we destroy the family?" she came back.
"By destroying the American Patriarch," they cried exuberantly.
"And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
"By taking away his power!"
"How do we do that?"
"By destroying monogamy!" they shouted.
"How can we destroy monogamy?"
Their answer left me dumbstruck, breathless, disbelieving my ears. Was I on planet earth? Who were these people?
"By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!" they resounded.
They proceeded with a long discussion on how to advance these goals by establishing The National Organization of Women. It was clear they desired nothing less than the utter deconstruction of Western society. The upshot was that the only way to do this was "to invade every American institution. Every one must be permeated with ‘The Revolution’": The media, the educational system, universities, high schools, K-12, school boards, etc.; then, the judiciary, the legislatures, the executive branches and even the library system.
It fell on my ears as a ludicrous scheme, as if they were a band of highly imaginative children planning a Brinks robbery; a lark trumped up on a snowy night amongst a group of spoiled brats over booze and hashish.
To me, this sounded silly. I was enduring culture shock after having been cut-off from my homeland, living in Third-World countries for years with not one trip back to the United States. I was one of those people who, upon returning to American soil, fell out of the plane blubbering with ecstasy at being home in the USA. I knelt on the ground covering it with kisses. I had learned just exactly how delicious was the land of my birth and didn't care what anyone thought because they just hadn't seen what I had or been where I had been. I had seen factory workers and sex-slaves chained to walls.
How could they know? Asia is beyond our ken and, as they say, utterly inscrutable, and a kind of hell I never intended to revisit. I lived there, not junketed, not visited like sweet little tourists -- I’d conducted households and tried to raise a child. I had outgrown the communism of my university days and was clumsily groping my way back to God.
How could twelve American women who were the most respectable types imaginable -- clean and privileged graduates of esteemed institutions: Columbia, Radcliffe, Smith, Wellesley, Vassar; the uncle of one was Secretary of War under Franklin Roosevelt -- plot such a thing? Most had advanced degrees and appeared cogent, bright, reasonable and good. How did these people rationally believe they could succeed with such vicious grandiosity? And why?
I dismissed it as academic-lounge air-castle-building. I continued with my new life in New York while my sister became famous publishing her books, featured on the cover of “Time Magazine.” “Time” called her “the Karl Marx of the Women's Movement.” This was because her book laid out a course in Marxism 101 for women. Her thesis: The family is a den of slavery with the man as the Bourgeoisie and the woman and children as the Proletariat. The only hope for women's "liberation" (communism’s favorite word for leading minions into inextricable slavery; "liberation," and much like "collective" – please run from it, run for your life) was this new “Women’s Movement.” Her books captivated the academic classes and soon "Women's Studies” courses were installed in colleges in a steady wave across the nation with Kate Millett books as required reading.
Imagine this: a girl of seventeen or eighteen at the kitchen table with Mom studying the syllabus for her first year of college and there's a class called "Women's Studies." "Hmmm, this could be interesting," says Mom. "Maybe you could get something out of this."
Seems innocuous to her. How could she suspect this is a class in which her innocent daughter will be taught that her father is a villain? Her mother is a fool who allowed a man to enslave her into barbaric practices like monogamy and family life and motherhood, which is a waste of her talents. She mustn't follow in her mother's footsteps. That would be submitting to life as a mindless drone for some domineering man, the oppressor, who has mesmerized her with tricks like romantic love. Never be lured into this chicanery, she will be taught. Although men are no damned good, she should use them for her own orgasmic gratification; sleep with as many men as possible in order to keep herself unattached and free. There's hardly a seventeen-year-old girl without a grudge from high school against a Jimmy or Jason who broke her heart. Boys are learning, too, and they can be careless during high school, that torment of courting dances for both sexes.
By the time Women's Studies professors finish with your daughter, she will be a shell of the innocent girl you knew, who's soon convinced that although she should be flopping down with every boy she fancies, she should not, by any means, get pregnant. And so, as a practitioner of promiscuity, she becomes a wizard of prevention techniques, especially abortion.
The goal of Women's Liberation is to wear each female down to losing all empathy for boys, men or babies. The tenderest aspects of her soul are roughened into a rock pile of cynicism, where she will think nothing of murdering her baby in the warm protective nest of her little-girl womb. She will be taught that she, in order to free herself, must become an outlaw. This is only reasonable because all Western law, since Magna Carta and even before, is a concoction of the evil white man whose true purpose is to press her into slavery.
Be an outlaw! Rebel! Be defiant! (Think Madonna, Lady Gaga, Lois Lerner, Elizabeth Warren.) “All women are prostitutes,” she will be told. You're either really smart and use sex by being promiscuous for your own pleasures and development as a full free human being "just like men" or you can be a professional prostitute, a viable business for women, which is "empowering" or you can be duped like your mother and prostitute yourself to one man exclusively whereby you fall under the heavy thumb of "the oppressor." All wives are just "one-man whores."
She is to be heartless in this. No sentimental stuff about courting. No empathy for either boy or baby. She has a life to live and no one is to get in her way. And if the boy or man doesn't "get it" then no sex for him; "making love" becomes "having sex." "I'm not 'having sex' with any jerk who doesn't believe I can kill his son or daughter at my whim. He has no say in it because it’s my body!” (Strange logic as who has ever heard of a body with two heads, two hearts, four arms, four feet?)
There's no end to the absurdities your young girl will be convinced to swallow. "I plan to leap from guy to guy as much as I please and no one can stop me because I'm liberated!” In other words, these people will turn your daughter into a slut with my sister's books as instruction manuals. ("Slut is a good word. Be proud of it!") She'll be telling you, "I'm probably never getting married and if I do it will be after I've established my career," which nowadays often means never. "I'll keep my own name and I don't really want kids. They're such a bother and only get in the way." They'll tell her, “Don't let any guy degrade you by allowing him to open doors for you. To be called ‘a lady’ is an insult. Chivalry is a means of ownership.”
Thus, the females, who are fundamentally the arbiters of society go on to harden their young men with such pillow-talk in the same way they’ve been hardened because, "Wow, man, I've gotta get laid and she won't do it if I don't agree to let her kill the kid if she gets knocked-up!” Oppressed? Woman has always had power. Consider the eternal paradigm: only after Eve convinced Adam to eat the fruit did mankind fall. I.e., man does anything to make woman happy, even if it's in defiance of God. There’s power for ya! Without a decent womankind, mankind is lost. As Mae West said, "When women go wrong men go right after them!"
I’ve known women who fell for this creed in their youth who now, in their fifties and sixties, cry themselves to sleep decades of countless nights grieving for the children they'll never have and the ones they coldly murdered because they were protecting the empty loveless futures they now live with no way of going back. “Where are my children? Where are my grandchildren?" they cry to me.
"Your sister's books destroyed my sister's life!" I've heard numerous times. "She was happily married with four kids and after she read those books, walked out on a bewildered man and didn't look back." The man fell into despairing rack and ruin. The children were stunted, set off their tracks, deeply harmed; the family profoundly dislocated and there was “no putting Humpty-Dumpty together again.”
Throughout the same time these women were “invading” our institutions, the character of the American woman transformed drastically from models portrayed for us by Rosalind Russell, Bette Davis, Deborah Kerr, Eve Arden, Donna Reed, Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Irene Dunn, Greer Garson. These were outstanding women needing no empowerment lessons and whose own personalities, as well as the characters they interpreted, were strong, resilient and clearly carved. Their voices were so different you could pick them out by that alone. We all knew Rita Hayworth's voice. We all knew Katherine Hepburn's voice.
I dare you to identify the voices of the cookie-cutter post-women's-liberation types from Hollywood today. How did these “liberated” women fall into such an indistinguishable pile of mush? They all look exactly the same with few individuating characteristics and their voices sound identical, these Julies and Jessicas! My friend, Father George Rutler, calls them "the chirping fledglings of the new Dark Ages." The character of the American woman has been distorted by this pernicious movement. From where did this foul mouthed, tattooed, outlaw creature, who murders her baby without blinking an eye and goes partying without conscience or remorse come? And, in such a short little phase in history?
Never before have we heard of so many women murdering their children: Casey Anthony killing her little Caylee and partying-hearty for weeks; Susan Smith driving her beautiful little boys into a lake, leaving them strapped in the water to die torturous deaths; that woman who drowned her five children in the bathtub? “Hey, if I can kill my baby at six months of gestation why not six months post-birth, just call it late late-term abortion.”
I insist that woman always has been the arbiter of society and when those women at Lila Karp's table in Greenwich Village set their minds to destroying the American Family by talking young women into being outlaws, perpetrators of infanticide, and haters of Western law, men and marriage, they accomplished just what they intended. Their desire -- and I witnessed it at subsequent meetings till I got pretty sick of their unbridled hate -- was to tear American society apart along with the family and the "Patriarchal Slave-Master," the American husband.
We're all so busy congratulating each other because Ronald Reagan "won the Cold War without firing a shot" entirely missing the bare truth which is that Mao, with his Little Red Book and the Soviets, won the Cold War without firing a shot by taking over our women, our young and the minds of everyone tutored by Noam Chomsky and the textbooks of Howard Zinn. Post-graduate Junior is Peter Pan trapped in the Never Neverland of Mom's (she's divorced now) basement. Christina Hoff Sommers says, "Moms and dads, be afraid for your sons. There's a 'war on men' that started a long time ago in gender studies classes and in women's advocacy groups eager to believe that men are toxic… Many 'educated women' in the U.S. have drunk from the gender feminist Kool Aid. Girls at Yale, Haverford and Swarthmore see themselves as oppressed. This is madness."
If you see something traitorous in this, a betrayal of my sister, I have come to identify with such people as Svetlana Stalin or Juanita Castro; coming out to speak plainly about a particularly harmful member of my family. Loyalty can be highly destructive. What about Muslims who refuse to speak out right now? I was one of the silent but at last I'm "spilling the beans." The girls have been up to something for years and it's really not good. It's evil. We should be sick to our souls over it. I know I am. And so, mass destruction, the inevitable outcome of all socialist/communist experiments, leaves behind its signature trail of wreckage.
So much grace, femininity and beauty lost.
So many ruined lives.
Source
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Gynocentrist Carly Fiorina
Do men count with this VP? Apparently not. Gynocentricity to the left of me gynocentricity to the right. Here I am. Trump is starting to look better and better.
Carly Fiorina's cheapshot
Recently Mike Tyson endorsed Donald Trump for President. The first thing the Cruz/Carly camp do is attack Mike Tyson for his past. Tyson did his time. Did Carly Fiorina answer for her transgressions? Namely how she took Hewlett Packard and ran it into the ground. How she lived lavishly while her subordinates and ex-subordinates,those that lost their jobs due to Fiorina,had to share raman to survive. She attacks Tyson even though Tyson may have been falsely accused:
Thursday, April 28, 2016
This changes everything
Recently GOP Presidential hopeful Senator Ted Cruz said that Carly Fiorina is going to be his vice-presidential running mate. This is a game changer. We at the Men's Rights Blog do not support female political candidates. Females carry the manipulative gynocentric meme into the executive branch and there will be hell to pay if this happens. There were a lot of male politicians that are not white knights that Cruz could have picked but he didn't. He received some very bad advice. No one wants a woman in the presidency or anywhere near it. We've seen that with Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and with John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008. We are opposed to gynocrisy because it is gynocrisy that has caused this societal,cultural and institutionalized misandry that we all suffer from today. Fiorina's victim attitude is just as bad as Hillary's. If Ted Cruz is going to stick with a female candidate then we at the Men's Rights Blog withdraw our support for Ted Cruz. Trump is starting to look real good and if he doesn't nominate a female running mate he may be a man that an MRA can vote for.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Men are taught to die for women in the Anglosphere
Chivalry: A learned deathwish
April 25, 2016 By Paul Elam 79 Comments
Just after midnight last Friday, April 22, 2016, and a scant 4 or 5 miles from where I am sitting, 19-year-old Jason Cisneros stopped by his best friend Ivania’s apartment to see her. When he arrived, he heard a commotion near where he parked.
He sent a text to Ivania inside, saying, “’I’m outside. There’s a lady honking, and this guy wants to hit her. He wants to kill her.”
Jason then approached the woman’s car to intervene. Just a moment later, he lay dying on the street, with two gunshot wounds.
The news coverage on this, what little it will get, will paint a simple picture. A brave young man heard a woman in distress — a woman he did not even know — and lost his life trying to protect her.
Of course, the real story is not nearly so simple. What made this young man walk into the line of fire? Was it heroics? Why didn’t he just call the police? Why did he feel the pull toward intervening in the troubles of a female stranger?
Why have men like this, rushing in and dying to protect women they don’t even know, become their own crime statistic?
This is a sad event that illustrates so much of what is wrong with men’s story in the modern age.
With the narrative about men’s place in the world casting them in the role of a protective vassal, we have developed the expectation that this is what men ought to be.
Undoubtedly the news coverage will play this out as a senseless tragedy. Accordingly, most will eventually take refuge in the fanciful idea that Jason Cisneros died a hero.
The members of society, by and large, who read this story and watch the news video, will end up on a similar trajectory, toward glorifying the self-sacrifice.
They will not conclude that this was a young man who was set up, duped into putting his neck on the chopping block by a history and force he never had a chance to grow up to understand.
His parents will take solace in the idea that their son died doing something noble. His friend will apply a similar salve to her grief. Few, if any, will question the wisdom of his choice or the factors that drove him to make it.
Fewer still will wonder about the character of the woman he was trying to save, even though it was evident that she was in a relationship with a murderous thug, that her chickens had come home to roost that night, and that she wanted someone to rescue her at any cost.
Jason Cisneros
Jason Cisneros
Jason Cisneros died trying to protect a woman he did not know, who it turns out may have been no more worthy of protection than the man who killed him.
Our society will interpret his death as heroics, and thus teach more young men that this insanity is the model of manhood they should emulate.
We will deny our young men the truth. Jason’s impulse to rescue the damsel in distress is a dysfunctional mandate passed down from generation to generation living by a narrative that sees his life as easily disposable.
Was Jason a good man? Most probably he was, though I am loathe to use that term lightly anymore. There is too much pointless sacrifice that comes with it.
The small amount of information that I have indicates that he came from a loving, supportive and close-knit family. And he was, after all, doing what he believed to be the right thing.
I can’t even imagine the sense of loss his family feels right now. Parents burying a child instead of the reverse is a hugely painful deviation from the natural order.
But for the sake of preventing more funerals, it is important to push aside the misguided chivalry and false heroism of this event and recognize that Jason’s death is one of countless, pointless sacrifices that never should have happened.
There is nothing to glorify here. Not the death of a beloved son. Not the ill-fated choices of young women who are sexually excited by criminality and violence.
And not the false code of male honor inflicted on young men from the shadows of a warped social consciousness.
There is a lesson here for parents and for anyone else who has a young man in their lives whom they love.
Please ask yourself, if your son or other loved one encountered the same situation as Jason, what would they do? Would they intervene? If they did, is that what you would want them to do?
Would it make you proud? If it would, are you willing to bury them for the sake of that pride?
If you would not want your son to die like Jason Cisneros died, have you told him? Have you made it clear to him that dying for a stranger is not your idea of manhood?
Have the lessons from your family been about protecting his loved ones, protecting himself, or about protecting anyone at his own expense?
You know, this stuff matters. Today’s young men get copious amounts of messaging about manhood, most of it instructing them to accept their disposability by calling it a badge of honor.
Young men face a barrage of social messages to “man up” and be a “real man” and other shaming, exploitive instructions.
It even comes from the government. We see it in the “It’s On Us” anti-sexual assault campaign, which includes President Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden, along with stars like Common, Mike Roe, and others, telling young men that it is on them to intervene.
Just like Jason Cisneros did.
Please watch the “It’s On Us” video and think about the price Jason paid for making sure it was on him.
Doing that might make you stop to consider if you want to manipulate your son or another beloved man into playing unarmed and unpaid bodyguard, ever at the disposal of strangers.
And while you’re at it, you might ask yourself something else. Do you have any reason to think Common would risk his life for a stranger?
Do you think Joe Biden cares about your son — or the women’s vote?
When I look at what Jason’s story turned into, all I see is a devastated family, a grieving friend, and a decent young man with a life cut short on behalf of someone who in no way warranted that kind of sacrifice – not that any stranger ever does.
Perhaps there is a better social message we can send all people, young and old. It’s on you.
It’s on you to forge the ability to protect yourself. It’s on you to make sound decisions about people with whom you choose to get involved.
It is not the responsibility of strangers, and it is not a burden for another class of human beings to bear.
No one outside you, your family and the police have any obligation to take risks for your safety. If women don’t know this, the parents of young men certainly should.
Source
Warren Farrell weighed in on male disposibility in his book The Myth Of Male Power,how it reduces men to a lesser status than women and it makes men miscategorize their slavery as something heroic. This is misandry. This has to stop.
April 25, 2016 By Paul Elam 79 Comments
Just after midnight last Friday, April 22, 2016, and a scant 4 or 5 miles from where I am sitting, 19-year-old Jason Cisneros stopped by his best friend Ivania’s apartment to see her. When he arrived, he heard a commotion near where he parked.
He sent a text to Ivania inside, saying, “’I’m outside. There’s a lady honking, and this guy wants to hit her. He wants to kill her.”
Jason then approached the woman’s car to intervene. Just a moment later, he lay dying on the street, with two gunshot wounds.
The news coverage on this, what little it will get, will paint a simple picture. A brave young man heard a woman in distress — a woman he did not even know — and lost his life trying to protect her.
Of course, the real story is not nearly so simple. What made this young man walk into the line of fire? Was it heroics? Why didn’t he just call the police? Why did he feel the pull toward intervening in the troubles of a female stranger?
Why have men like this, rushing in and dying to protect women they don’t even know, become their own crime statistic?
This is a sad event that illustrates so much of what is wrong with men’s story in the modern age.
With the narrative about men’s place in the world casting them in the role of a protective vassal, we have developed the expectation that this is what men ought to be.
Undoubtedly the news coverage will play this out as a senseless tragedy. Accordingly, most will eventually take refuge in the fanciful idea that Jason Cisneros died a hero.
The members of society, by and large, who read this story and watch the news video, will end up on a similar trajectory, toward glorifying the self-sacrifice.
They will not conclude that this was a young man who was set up, duped into putting his neck on the chopping block by a history and force he never had a chance to grow up to understand.
His parents will take solace in the idea that their son died doing something noble. His friend will apply a similar salve to her grief. Few, if any, will question the wisdom of his choice or the factors that drove him to make it.
Fewer still will wonder about the character of the woman he was trying to save, even though it was evident that she was in a relationship with a murderous thug, that her chickens had come home to roost that night, and that she wanted someone to rescue her at any cost.
Jason Cisneros
Jason Cisneros
Jason Cisneros died trying to protect a woman he did not know, who it turns out may have been no more worthy of protection than the man who killed him.
Our society will interpret his death as heroics, and thus teach more young men that this insanity is the model of manhood they should emulate.
We will deny our young men the truth. Jason’s impulse to rescue the damsel in distress is a dysfunctional mandate passed down from generation to generation living by a narrative that sees his life as easily disposable.
Was Jason a good man? Most probably he was, though I am loathe to use that term lightly anymore. There is too much pointless sacrifice that comes with it.
The small amount of information that I have indicates that he came from a loving, supportive and close-knit family. And he was, after all, doing what he believed to be the right thing.
I can’t even imagine the sense of loss his family feels right now. Parents burying a child instead of the reverse is a hugely painful deviation from the natural order.
But for the sake of preventing more funerals, it is important to push aside the misguided chivalry and false heroism of this event and recognize that Jason’s death is one of countless, pointless sacrifices that never should have happened.
There is nothing to glorify here. Not the death of a beloved son. Not the ill-fated choices of young women who are sexually excited by criminality and violence.
And not the false code of male honor inflicted on young men from the shadows of a warped social consciousness.
There is a lesson here for parents and for anyone else who has a young man in their lives whom they love.
Please ask yourself, if your son or other loved one encountered the same situation as Jason, what would they do? Would they intervene? If they did, is that what you would want them to do?
Would it make you proud? If it would, are you willing to bury them for the sake of that pride?
If you would not want your son to die like Jason Cisneros died, have you told him? Have you made it clear to him that dying for a stranger is not your idea of manhood?
Have the lessons from your family been about protecting his loved ones, protecting himself, or about protecting anyone at his own expense?
You know, this stuff matters. Today’s young men get copious amounts of messaging about manhood, most of it instructing them to accept their disposability by calling it a badge of honor.
Young men face a barrage of social messages to “man up” and be a “real man” and other shaming, exploitive instructions.
It even comes from the government. We see it in the “It’s On Us” anti-sexual assault campaign, which includes President Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden, along with stars like Common, Mike Roe, and others, telling young men that it is on them to intervene.
Just like Jason Cisneros did.
Please watch the “It’s On Us” video and think about the price Jason paid for making sure it was on him.
Doing that might make you stop to consider if you want to manipulate your son or another beloved man into playing unarmed and unpaid bodyguard, ever at the disposal of strangers.
And while you’re at it, you might ask yourself something else. Do you have any reason to think Common would risk his life for a stranger?
Do you think Joe Biden cares about your son — or the women’s vote?
When I look at what Jason’s story turned into, all I see is a devastated family, a grieving friend, and a decent young man with a life cut short on behalf of someone who in no way warranted that kind of sacrifice – not that any stranger ever does.
Perhaps there is a better social message we can send all people, young and old. It’s on you.
It’s on you to forge the ability to protect yourself. It’s on you to make sound decisions about people with whom you choose to get involved.
It is not the responsibility of strangers, and it is not a burden for another class of human beings to bear.
No one outside you, your family and the police have any obligation to take risks for your safety. If women don’t know this, the parents of young men certainly should.
Source
Warren Farrell weighed in on male disposibility in his book The Myth Of Male Power,how it reduces men to a lesser status than women and it makes men miscategorize their slavery as something heroic. This is misandry. This has to stop.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
CSU student sues DOE for gender discrimination
A former Colorado State athlete who was suspended for sexual assault last fall is now suing the United States government for gender discrimination, while alleging that the Department of Education’s sexual assault guidance violates federal laws, therefore suggesting that every campus sex assault case decided under that guidance could be overturned.
According to the lawsuit, Grant Neal, a sophomore at Colorado State University-Pueblo (CSU-Pueblo) who played football and wrestled at the school, had consensual sexual intercourse with a female classmate, who is not named in the lawsuit, last October. The next day, a peer of that woman, who is also not named, reported to the school that Neal had raped the woman.
In December, after investigating, the school found that Neal was more than likely responsible for sexual misconduct—the standard that the federal Department of Education tells schools to use—and suspended him for as long as the alleged victim remained at the school. The woman said he never raped her, according to the lawsuit.
After the ruling, Neal apparently lost athletic scholarships and has found that no other school will admit him. His suspension had critics, and a petition for the university to overturn it has nearly 2,000 supporters.
The lawsuit names the university and several school officials, including its president, as defendants, and notably also includes the U.S., the Department of Education and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), as well as Secretary of Education John King Jr. and Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon—a first in such cases by male students accused of sexual assault, according to legal experts.
The basis for the lawsuit is the OCR’s controversial “Dear Colleague” letter, which it issued to colleges and universities in 2011. The letter stated that sexual violence at schools falls under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education settings. The OCR offered guidance for how schools should handle sexual assault and violence cases. It also said those that mishandle them would be in violation of Title IX and could lose federal funding.
Advocates for male respondents in campus sexual assault cases say the 2011 guidance led to an overcorrection on the issue in a way that discriminates against young men, is inherently anti-male and denies them due process. Neal’s lawsuit alleges that the OCR’s guidance violates the law.
“We believe the ‘Dear Colleague’ letter issued by the U.S. Department of Education is illegal and unconstitutional,” Andrew Miltenberg, who represents Neal and has become a go-to lawyer for male respondents in sexual assault cases, tells Newsweek via email. “By essentially encouraging male gender bias, the Administration’s directive has violated Title IX and created a new class of victims on campus—accused male students who have had their right to due process stripped away.”
Male students accused of sexual assault are increasingly suing their schools, and especially since 2013, more of them are claiming Title IX discrimination—the same violation that female sexual assault complainants have made, alleging that schools mishandled their claims in a way that goes against their Title IX rights. Most of these so-called reverse-Title IX cases have been unsuccessful: In March, a judge dismissed a high-profile case against Columbia University by Paul Nungesser, the student who was the subject of classmate Emma Sulkowicz’s “mattress” art project and protest. Nungesser has until April 25 to file an updated complaint. Miltenberg represents him too and has said he plans to file.
However, a handful of these cases have recently survived motions to dismiss, including ones against Washington and Lee University, Brown University and Brandeis University.
Neal is suing for violations of Title IX and due process and breach of contract. He also alleges that the “Dear Colleague” letter violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which mandates a notice and review process for when the government issues a new rule. The lawsuit claims that the OCR issued “binding law” under the guise of “guidance” without following the APA procedures.
Such a violation, the lawsuit alleges, means the “Dear Colleague” letter and all disciplinary decisions made under it are “unconstitutional, arbitrary and void.” A ruling in favor of that claim might open any campus sexual assault decision a school made since 2011 to a challenge.
Hans Bader is a senior attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit public policy organization, who practices education law and previously worked as an attorney at the OCR. He points out that a footnote to the “Dear Colleague” letter says it does not add to existing law, and yet “it requires colleges to follow those letters to the T,” he asserts.
“Requiring schools to apply that as gospel when they essentially made it up out of nothing—that’s a plain violation of the APA because you have an entirely new legal obligation without notice and comment, without even the pretext of any real basis,” he says.
Several advocates for male respondents have recently vowed to take on the OCR. Last week, Families Advocating for Campus Equality, a due process advocacy organization led by mothers of male students accused of sexual misconduct, filed testimony with a Senate subcommittee opposing a federal proposal to increase the OCR’s funding by about 30 percent. “Approval of such a dramatic increase in OCR’s budget will only reward OCR for its much-criticized overreach,” the organization said.
And earlier this month, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit that advocates for free speech and due process on campus, called for students to help challenge the OCR for the same “abuse of power” that the Neal lawsuit alleges. A FIRE spokesman says the Neal lawsuit is unrelated to the organization’s effort.
“When an administrative agency wants to promulgate a regulation that will force people to change their behavior in some way,” says Justin Dillon, an attorney who is working with FIRE on its effort, “the agency, No. 1, has to put out a notice that it’s thinking of taking this action, and No. 2, allow people to comment on this action, whether they’re for or against it.”
Those procedures, Dillon says, ensure that only federal employees with accountability to the voting public are the ones setting rules. “Agencies are not Congress. Agencies are unelected people,” he says. “The staff of the agency are just garden-variety federal employees with absolutely no democratic accountability. The idea is, you don’t want to have people who are not accountable to the voters basically making laws” without those review procedures.
Should a judge determine that the “Dear Colleague” letter is null and void, Dillon says, some “might argue that they have a right to reopen a case” under pre-2011 procedures—unless the ruling that vacates the letter only applies moving forward.
Dillon, who is not involved in Neal’s case, says he and FIRE are “very close to filing” their own lawsuit that makes a similar argument.
The OCR has been a defendant in at least one other lawsuit. In 2005, plaintiffs sued the OCR, alleging its investigation into a possible Title IX violation involving male and female high school hockey teams was flawed. A federal court judge dismissed the case in 2007.
A CSU-Pueblo spokeswoman declined to comment on pending litigation. A Department of Education spokesman declined to comment for the same reason.
As of April 13, the OCR is investigating 175 colleges for their handling of sexual violence cases.
“We’ve seen just a cataclysmic change around the country in terms of attention to the issue; responsiveness to it; and training, preparation for our students so that we can see safer campuses,” Lhamon, the civil rights assistant secretary, told Newsweek last year. She said the OCR had not yet rescinded funding from a school for mishandling a sexual violence claim but added, “I would absolutely be prepared to do it.”
Source
If this was me I would name the little fink who butted her nose in my business like she did and teach her a lesson. I hope he did just that.
According to the lawsuit, Grant Neal, a sophomore at Colorado State University-Pueblo (CSU-Pueblo) who played football and wrestled at the school, had consensual sexual intercourse with a female classmate, who is not named in the lawsuit, last October. The next day, a peer of that woman, who is also not named, reported to the school that Neal had raped the woman.
In December, after investigating, the school found that Neal was more than likely responsible for sexual misconduct—the standard that the federal Department of Education tells schools to use—and suspended him for as long as the alleged victim remained at the school. The woman said he never raped her, according to the lawsuit.
After the ruling, Neal apparently lost athletic scholarships and has found that no other school will admit him. His suspension had critics, and a petition for the university to overturn it has nearly 2,000 supporters.
The lawsuit names the university and several school officials, including its president, as defendants, and notably also includes the U.S., the Department of Education and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), as well as Secretary of Education John King Jr. and Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon—a first in such cases by male students accused of sexual assault, according to legal experts.
The basis for the lawsuit is the OCR’s controversial “Dear Colleague” letter, which it issued to colleges and universities in 2011. The letter stated that sexual violence at schools falls under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education settings. The OCR offered guidance for how schools should handle sexual assault and violence cases. It also said those that mishandle them would be in violation of Title IX and could lose federal funding.
Advocates for male respondents in campus sexual assault cases say the 2011 guidance led to an overcorrection on the issue in a way that discriminates against young men, is inherently anti-male and denies them due process. Neal’s lawsuit alleges that the OCR’s guidance violates the law.
“We believe the ‘Dear Colleague’ letter issued by the U.S. Department of Education is illegal and unconstitutional,” Andrew Miltenberg, who represents Neal and has become a go-to lawyer for male respondents in sexual assault cases, tells Newsweek via email. “By essentially encouraging male gender bias, the Administration’s directive has violated Title IX and created a new class of victims on campus—accused male students who have had their right to due process stripped away.”
Male students accused of sexual assault are increasingly suing their schools, and especially since 2013, more of them are claiming Title IX discrimination—the same violation that female sexual assault complainants have made, alleging that schools mishandled their claims in a way that goes against their Title IX rights. Most of these so-called reverse-Title IX cases have been unsuccessful: In March, a judge dismissed a high-profile case against Columbia University by Paul Nungesser, the student who was the subject of classmate Emma Sulkowicz’s “mattress” art project and protest. Nungesser has until April 25 to file an updated complaint. Miltenberg represents him too and has said he plans to file.
However, a handful of these cases have recently survived motions to dismiss, including ones against Washington and Lee University, Brown University and Brandeis University.
Neal is suing for violations of Title IX and due process and breach of contract. He also alleges that the “Dear Colleague” letter violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which mandates a notice and review process for when the government issues a new rule. The lawsuit claims that the OCR issued “binding law” under the guise of “guidance” without following the APA procedures.
Such a violation, the lawsuit alleges, means the “Dear Colleague” letter and all disciplinary decisions made under it are “unconstitutional, arbitrary and void.” A ruling in favor of that claim might open any campus sexual assault decision a school made since 2011 to a challenge.
Hans Bader is a senior attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit public policy organization, who practices education law and previously worked as an attorney at the OCR. He points out that a footnote to the “Dear Colleague” letter says it does not add to existing law, and yet “it requires colleges to follow those letters to the T,” he asserts.
“Requiring schools to apply that as gospel when they essentially made it up out of nothing—that’s a plain violation of the APA because you have an entirely new legal obligation without notice and comment, without even the pretext of any real basis,” he says.
Several advocates for male respondents have recently vowed to take on the OCR. Last week, Families Advocating for Campus Equality, a due process advocacy organization led by mothers of male students accused of sexual misconduct, filed testimony with a Senate subcommittee opposing a federal proposal to increase the OCR’s funding by about 30 percent. “Approval of such a dramatic increase in OCR’s budget will only reward OCR for its much-criticized overreach,” the organization said.
And earlier this month, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit that advocates for free speech and due process on campus, called for students to help challenge the OCR for the same “abuse of power” that the Neal lawsuit alleges. A FIRE spokesman says the Neal lawsuit is unrelated to the organization’s effort.
“When an administrative agency wants to promulgate a regulation that will force people to change their behavior in some way,” says Justin Dillon, an attorney who is working with FIRE on its effort, “the agency, No. 1, has to put out a notice that it’s thinking of taking this action, and No. 2, allow people to comment on this action, whether they’re for or against it.”
Those procedures, Dillon says, ensure that only federal employees with accountability to the voting public are the ones setting rules. “Agencies are not Congress. Agencies are unelected people,” he says. “The staff of the agency are just garden-variety federal employees with absolutely no democratic accountability. The idea is, you don’t want to have people who are not accountable to the voters basically making laws” without those review procedures.
Should a judge determine that the “Dear Colleague” letter is null and void, Dillon says, some “might argue that they have a right to reopen a case” under pre-2011 procedures—unless the ruling that vacates the letter only applies moving forward.
Dillon, who is not involved in Neal’s case, says he and FIRE are “very close to filing” their own lawsuit that makes a similar argument.
The OCR has been a defendant in at least one other lawsuit. In 2005, plaintiffs sued the OCR, alleging its investigation into a possible Title IX violation involving male and female high school hockey teams was flawed. A federal court judge dismissed the case in 2007.
A CSU-Pueblo spokeswoman declined to comment on pending litigation. A Department of Education spokesman declined to comment for the same reason.
As of April 13, the OCR is investigating 175 colleges for their handling of sexual violence cases.
“We’ve seen just a cataclysmic change around the country in terms of attention to the issue; responsiveness to it; and training, preparation for our students so that we can see safer campuses,” Lhamon, the civil rights assistant secretary, told Newsweek last year. She said the OCR had not yet rescinded funding from a school for mishandling a sexual violence claim but added, “I would absolutely be prepared to do it.”
Source
If this was me I would name the little fink who butted her nose in my business like she did and teach her a lesson. I hope he did just that.
Monday, April 25, 2016
The Georgia lawmaker taking on "dear colleauge" and the female bureaucrat who thought she was a queen
A Georgia lawmaker is suing the federal government on behalf of taxpayers for what he calls "illegal and unconstitutional directives" from the Education Department.
Republican State Rep. Earl Ehrhart, who chairs the influential Georgia House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education, filed the lawsuit along with his wife, alleging the federal government violated the Administrative Procedure Act when they issued a "guidance document" that included onerous new regulations for schools to follow. If schools fail to abide by the Department's Office for Civil Rights' ever-changing guidance, they risk losing federal funding.
Ehrhart has been a vocal critic of the Department's "Dear Colleague" letters, which began forcing colleges to spend more and more money to adjudicate felonies in 2011. In January, Ehrhart told school administrators: "If you don't protect the students of this state with due process, don't come looking for money." It was the strongest statement yet on the issue from a legislator.
In his lawsuit, Ehrhart claims the 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter imposed "unnecessary costs and expenses that flow directly to both Federal and Georgia Taxpayers, including Plaintiffs, under the threat of Federal funding being revoked for the schools' failure to comply."
"The illegal and unconstitutional directives issued in the Obama Administration's 'Dear Colleague' letter have resulted in a clear disregard for the due process rights of male college students and fostered an environment of male gender bias on campuses throughout the country," Ehrhart said in a press release. "As Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education, I have seen firsthand how colleges and universities, intimidated by [the Education Department's Office for Civil Right's] threat to their federal funding, have set up kangaroo court systems to comply with the Obama Administration's unconstitutional policies."
He added: "It is unacceptable that state and federal taxpayers in this country continue to fund these mandates and their attendant costs at higher education institutions."
The 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter demanded that schools adopt processes that make it easier to find accused students culpable without affording them much chance to defend themselves. Schools aren't required to allow them legal representation and lack subpoena power to obtain relevant evidence; and it's up to the schools what evidence is "relevant" or "exculpatory," meaning oftentimes accused students aren't made aware of evidence that could exonerate them.
It's all due to the Obama administration's agenda on looking tough when it comes to sexual assault. The belief that women are oppressed and victimized at large numbers in this country permeates the administration, and it has introduced policies that take self-reported, manipulated surveys as fact and eviscerates due process rights in pursuit of ending a non-existent "epidemic."
Ehrhart and his wife claim they have standing to sue as taxpayers of the state, who help fund the colleges and universities. The Ehrharts are also deeply concerned about the policies forced upon colleges because they have a son enrolled in the Georgia Institute of Technology, a school that has a horrendous track record on sexual misconduct accusations.
Ehrhart is represented by Andrew Miltenberg, Jeffrey Berkowitz and Tara Davis of Nesenoff Miltenberg Goddard Laskowitz, LLP and Jonathan Hawkins of Krevolin & Horst, LLC. Miltenberg is also representing a former Colorado State University-Pueblo student who was suspended for multiple years (essentially expelled) for sexual misconduct even though his alleged victim said she wasn't raped. The student in that case is also suing the Education Department.
"It is our hope that his case, together with the Grant Neal case (commenced earlier this week), have cornered the OCR, highlighting its abuses and providing a compelling narrative as we try to dismantle the OCR's continued assault on the rights of young men," Miltenberg told the Washington Examiner in an email.
Ehrhart told the Examiner that if he got the "right panel" on the Georgia court where his lawsuit was filed, "we could be in very good shape." And if they lose, he said, "we'll appeal. We'll take this right up to the Supreme Court."
Source
This is a man. Earl Ehrhart is perhaps one of the last of the men left in government. A brave man that is taking on the feminist juggernaut. Fine,we will stand beside him and let him know that there are men standing beside him. That we at the Men's Rights Blog stand with him and wish him the best as he rights this wrong and restores and gets justice for the wrongfully accused men whom this suggestion "dear colleague" has destroyed. In fact let's tell him ourselves: earl.ehrhart@house.ga.gov The more of us he hears from the better so let's let him know we appreciate what he is doing. After all he is doing this on our behalf as well so let's let him know today.
There is a second take on this story:
Georgia lawmaker sues Department of Ed officials for exceeding authority in campus rape rules
Greg Piper - Associate Editor •April 22, 2016
Our son could be ‘wrongly accused and found responsible’
The Department of Education and its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) have harmed not only students but their parents and taxpayers by enforcing unlawful rules in campus sexual-misconduct investigations, according to a lawsuit by a Georgia lawmaker.
State Rep. Earl Ehrhart chairs the Georgia House subcommittee that controls the purse for the state’s public colleges and universities, and he has used his position to pressure schools to restore due-process rights, with some success.
But in the suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Ehrhart and his wife Victoria spoke as parents of a son enrolled at Georgia Tech.
They have “heard countless stories of young men being accused, investigated, and subsequently expelled from Georgia colleges and universities without being provided appropriate due process protections,” owing to OCR’s 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges, the suit says.
They are “concerned that in the current regulatory climate” their son could, “like any other male college student, be wrongly accused and found responsible under the directives imposed by the Dear Colleague Letter.”
‘Imperative language’ means it is intended to be enforced
The Ehrharts’ lawsuit names Education Secretary John King and OCR chief Catherine Lhamon as defendants, as well as the agencies they lead and the United States government itself.
It was filed by the same lawyer, Andrew Miltenberg, who earlier this week sued Colorado State University-Pueblo on behalf of a male student who was functionally expelled for a sexual encounter that his partner has repeatedly said was not rape. That suit also named Department of Ed officials.
The core of the suit is that OCR did not follow the proper regulatory procedure in issuing substantive new rules, including the use of an “excessively low” evidence standard and the discouragement of cross-examination, while threatening the federal funding of schools that didn’t comply.
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires a notice-and-comment rulemaking for any substantive rules, which are often marked by “imperative language” such as “must,” the suit says. It points to the repeated use of “should,” “must,” “requires” and “strongly” throughout the letter.
When OCR’s Lhamon was challenged on the letter’s legality by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. and chair of the Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee, she claimed the Dear Colleague was “interpretive” because the Title IX statute went through notice-and-comment 44 years ago, the suit says.
All decisions from the past five years are ‘arbitrary and void’
The Ehrharts are calling for “all disciplinary decisions arising” from the Dear Colleague letter – five years of misconduct findings from proceedings that were tailored to OCR’s demands – to be rendered “unconstitutional, arbitrary and void.”
The 2011 letter “was not, in practice or effect, a genuine guidance document” that carries no force of law, because it “coerced the schools’ compliance” with rules that were not implemented in the last rulemaking in 2001.
Because it set up “quasi-legal” proceedings that “violate many civil liberties,” the Dear Colleague has become “a highly divisive document, criticized by law professors, lawyers, educators, journalists, civil liberties groups and members of Congress,” the suit says.
The Ehrharts argued that the Department of Ed and OCR couldn’t avoid judicial review, as provided by the APA, by simply calling the Dear Colleague a guidance document.
The letter “is a final agency action in that it is the consummation of the agency’s decision-making and has been carried out as binding law since its adoption in 2011,” with “direct legal consequences” for institutions that do not comply.
The suit notes that Lhamon has repeatedly said in public settings that she expects colleges to follow the 2011 letter and “I will enforce” it – a threat made good when Tufts University “balked” at agreeing to an OCR finding that its policies suddenly violated Title IX in 2014.
Georgia taxpayers and academic programs are threatened
Those threats have forced all Georgia public colleges to create Title IX enforcement offices and hire personnel, costing them millions of dollars, to avoid the risk that their federal funding could be cut – with taxpayers hit and academic programs slashed as a result, the suit says.
It contrasts the multi-billion dollar endowments of Ivy League schools that have each hired dozens of Title IX staff in response to the Dear Colleague, with the endowments of Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, which are “a shadow of their Ivy League peers.”
The suit notes Ehrhart’s own subcommittee hearings into how state schools handle sexual-misconduct investigations and says money can’t make students safer: The feds are demanding that colleges “micromanage the sex lives of students.”
The closest the suit gets to arguing that male students face inherent bias in post-Dear Colleague investigations – the core claim in lawyer Miltenberg’s CSU-Pueblo lawsuit – is its reference to the “rapid increase” in suits filed by students who were “wrongly disciplined.”
“Typically, these cases are brought by male students erroneously found responsible for sexual misconduct after being subjected to an arbitrary, biased and Kafkaesque investigation and adjudication,” it says.
Washington University Law Prof. John Banzhaf, who has called the 2011 Dear Colleague “unconstitutional,” said other states or municipalities could also challenge OCR in court by approving rules that contradict OCR’s, such as the right to cross-examination.
“Here it is not even clear that the [Title IX] statute authorized the Department of Education to have any involvement in the issue of rape complaints involving college students,” Banzhaf wrote in an email blast Thursday, “much less that it clearly intended to preempt any statutes individual states or municipalities might adopt. ”
Source
You know where this bitch came up with "dear colleague"? If it wasn't handed down to her then she reached as far up her ass as she could and pulled it out. It's not a law. It has no enforcement value yet she is acting like a smug little bitch about it. Let's see how smug she is with a congressional investigation looking up her ass. We'll see how smug she is then. Let's contact our Congressional representative and our Senators,especially Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator James Lankford. Let's teach this little bitch she can't just fuck with innocent men just because she feels like it.
Republican State Rep. Earl Ehrhart, who chairs the influential Georgia House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education, filed the lawsuit along with his wife, alleging the federal government violated the Administrative Procedure Act when they issued a "guidance document" that included onerous new regulations for schools to follow. If schools fail to abide by the Department's Office for Civil Rights' ever-changing guidance, they risk losing federal funding.
Ehrhart has been a vocal critic of the Department's "Dear Colleague" letters, which began forcing colleges to spend more and more money to adjudicate felonies in 2011. In January, Ehrhart told school administrators: "If you don't protect the students of this state with due process, don't come looking for money." It was the strongest statement yet on the issue from a legislator.
In his lawsuit, Ehrhart claims the 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter imposed "unnecessary costs and expenses that flow directly to both Federal and Georgia Taxpayers, including Plaintiffs, under the threat of Federal funding being revoked for the schools' failure to comply."
"The illegal and unconstitutional directives issued in the Obama Administration's 'Dear Colleague' letter have resulted in a clear disregard for the due process rights of male college students and fostered an environment of male gender bias on campuses throughout the country," Ehrhart said in a press release. "As Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education, I have seen firsthand how colleges and universities, intimidated by [the Education Department's Office for Civil Right's] threat to their federal funding, have set up kangaroo court systems to comply with the Obama Administration's unconstitutional policies."
He added: "It is unacceptable that state and federal taxpayers in this country continue to fund these mandates and their attendant costs at higher education institutions."
The 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter demanded that schools adopt processes that make it easier to find accused students culpable without affording them much chance to defend themselves. Schools aren't required to allow them legal representation and lack subpoena power to obtain relevant evidence; and it's up to the schools what evidence is "relevant" or "exculpatory," meaning oftentimes accused students aren't made aware of evidence that could exonerate them.
It's all due to the Obama administration's agenda on looking tough when it comes to sexual assault. The belief that women are oppressed and victimized at large numbers in this country permeates the administration, and it has introduced policies that take self-reported, manipulated surveys as fact and eviscerates due process rights in pursuit of ending a non-existent "epidemic."
Ehrhart and his wife claim they have standing to sue as taxpayers of the state, who help fund the colleges and universities. The Ehrharts are also deeply concerned about the policies forced upon colleges because they have a son enrolled in the Georgia Institute of Technology, a school that has a horrendous track record on sexual misconduct accusations.
Ehrhart is represented by Andrew Miltenberg, Jeffrey Berkowitz and Tara Davis of Nesenoff Miltenberg Goddard Laskowitz, LLP and Jonathan Hawkins of Krevolin & Horst, LLC. Miltenberg is also representing a former Colorado State University-Pueblo student who was suspended for multiple years (essentially expelled) for sexual misconduct even though his alleged victim said she wasn't raped. The student in that case is also suing the Education Department.
"It is our hope that his case, together with the Grant Neal case (commenced earlier this week), have cornered the OCR, highlighting its abuses and providing a compelling narrative as we try to dismantle the OCR's continued assault on the rights of young men," Miltenberg told the Washington Examiner in an email.
Ehrhart told the Examiner that if he got the "right panel" on the Georgia court where his lawsuit was filed, "we could be in very good shape." And if they lose, he said, "we'll appeal. We'll take this right up to the Supreme Court."
Source
This is a man. Earl Ehrhart is perhaps one of the last of the men left in government. A brave man that is taking on the feminist juggernaut. Fine,we will stand beside him and let him know that there are men standing beside him. That we at the Men's Rights Blog stand with him and wish him the best as he rights this wrong and restores and gets justice for the wrongfully accused men whom this suggestion "dear colleague" has destroyed. In fact let's tell him ourselves: earl.ehrhart@house.ga.gov The more of us he hears from the better so let's let him know we appreciate what he is doing. After all he is doing this on our behalf as well so let's let him know today.
There is a second take on this story:
Georgia lawmaker sues Department of Ed officials for exceeding authority in campus rape rules
Greg Piper - Associate Editor •April 22, 2016
Our son could be ‘wrongly accused and found responsible’
The Department of Education and its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) have harmed not only students but their parents and taxpayers by enforcing unlawful rules in campus sexual-misconduct investigations, according to a lawsuit by a Georgia lawmaker.
State Rep. Earl Ehrhart chairs the Georgia House subcommittee that controls the purse for the state’s public colleges and universities, and he has used his position to pressure schools to restore due-process rights, with some success.
But in the suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Ehrhart and his wife Victoria spoke as parents of a son enrolled at Georgia Tech.
They have “heard countless stories of young men being accused, investigated, and subsequently expelled from Georgia colleges and universities without being provided appropriate due process protections,” owing to OCR’s 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges, the suit says.
They are “concerned that in the current regulatory climate” their son could, “like any other male college student, be wrongly accused and found responsible under the directives imposed by the Dear Colleague Letter.”
‘Imperative language’ means it is intended to be enforced
The Ehrharts’ lawsuit names Education Secretary John King and OCR chief Catherine Lhamon as defendants, as well as the agencies they lead and the United States government itself.
It was filed by the same lawyer, Andrew Miltenberg, who earlier this week sued Colorado State University-Pueblo on behalf of a male student who was functionally expelled for a sexual encounter that his partner has repeatedly said was not rape. That suit also named Department of Ed officials.
The core of the suit is that OCR did not follow the proper regulatory procedure in issuing substantive new rules, including the use of an “excessively low” evidence standard and the discouragement of cross-examination, while threatening the federal funding of schools that didn’t comply.
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires a notice-and-comment rulemaking for any substantive rules, which are often marked by “imperative language” such as “must,” the suit says. It points to the repeated use of “should,” “must,” “requires” and “strongly” throughout the letter.
When OCR’s Lhamon was challenged on the letter’s legality by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. and chair of the Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee, she claimed the Dear Colleague was “interpretive” because the Title IX statute went through notice-and-comment 44 years ago, the suit says.
All decisions from the past five years are ‘arbitrary and void’
The Ehrharts are calling for “all disciplinary decisions arising” from the Dear Colleague letter – five years of misconduct findings from proceedings that were tailored to OCR’s demands – to be rendered “unconstitutional, arbitrary and void.”
The 2011 letter “was not, in practice or effect, a genuine guidance document” that carries no force of law, because it “coerced the schools’ compliance” with rules that were not implemented in the last rulemaking in 2001.
Because it set up “quasi-legal” proceedings that “violate many civil liberties,” the Dear Colleague has become “a highly divisive document, criticized by law professors, lawyers, educators, journalists, civil liberties groups and members of Congress,” the suit says.
The Ehrharts argued that the Department of Ed and OCR couldn’t avoid judicial review, as provided by the APA, by simply calling the Dear Colleague a guidance document.
The letter “is a final agency action in that it is the consummation of the agency’s decision-making and has been carried out as binding law since its adoption in 2011,” with “direct legal consequences” for institutions that do not comply.
The suit notes that Lhamon has repeatedly said in public settings that she expects colleges to follow the 2011 letter and “I will enforce” it – a threat made good when Tufts University “balked” at agreeing to an OCR finding that its policies suddenly violated Title IX in 2014.
Georgia taxpayers and academic programs are threatened
Those threats have forced all Georgia public colleges to create Title IX enforcement offices and hire personnel, costing them millions of dollars, to avoid the risk that their federal funding could be cut – with taxpayers hit and academic programs slashed as a result, the suit says.
It contrasts the multi-billion dollar endowments of Ivy League schools that have each hired dozens of Title IX staff in response to the Dear Colleague, with the endowments of Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, which are “a shadow of their Ivy League peers.”
The suit notes Ehrhart’s own subcommittee hearings into how state schools handle sexual-misconduct investigations and says money can’t make students safer: The feds are demanding that colleges “micromanage the sex lives of students.”
The closest the suit gets to arguing that male students face inherent bias in post-Dear Colleague investigations – the core claim in lawyer Miltenberg’s CSU-Pueblo lawsuit – is its reference to the “rapid increase” in suits filed by students who were “wrongly disciplined.”
“Typically, these cases are brought by male students erroneously found responsible for sexual misconduct after being subjected to an arbitrary, biased and Kafkaesque investigation and adjudication,” it says.
Washington University Law Prof. John Banzhaf, who has called the 2011 Dear Colleague “unconstitutional,” said other states or municipalities could also challenge OCR in court by approving rules that contradict OCR’s, such as the right to cross-examination.
“Here it is not even clear that the [Title IX] statute authorized the Department of Education to have any involvement in the issue of rape complaints involving college students,” Banzhaf wrote in an email blast Thursday, “much less that it clearly intended to preempt any statutes individual states or municipalities might adopt. ”
Source
You know where this bitch came up with "dear colleague"? If it wasn't handed down to her then she reached as far up her ass as she could and pulled it out. It's not a law. It has no enforcement value yet she is acting like a smug little bitch about it. Let's see how smug she is with a congressional investigation looking up her ass. We'll see how smug she is then. Let's contact our Congressional representative and our Senators,especially Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator James Lankford. Let's teach this little bitch she can't just fuck with innocent men just because she feels like it.
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Make the CDC reinstate funding for prostate cancer treatment and research
Apr 21, 2016, 08:40 ET from National Coalition For Men
SAN DIEGO, April 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — The Center for Disease Control (CDC) FY-2017 budget request is 11.86 billion dollars, an 87 million dollar increase.
Logo – http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160420/358069LOGO
No funds were requested for the existing 13.7 million dollar prostate cancer program even though, as explained in the budget narrative, “the evidence on prostate cancer screening remains unclear.”
Other than skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer for men. Only lung cancer kills more men than prostate cancer (American Cancer Society).
Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer deaths among white, black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Hispanic men; and the fourth cause of cancer deaths for Pacific Islander men (CDC).
Two large Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) trials recently published conflicting results. A European trial (the ERSPC) found a clear and significant reduction in mortality, but a US trial (the PLCO) found little benefit and even some harm.
PSAs reportedly have a high incidence of false alarms, but they produce accurate results as well. Either way, the results can be devastating for those tested.
“Given the uncertainty and conflicting data, it seems much more research, not less, is needed. The defunded program was an essential element of fighting prostate cancer, a cancer that robs the mental health, physical wellbeing, and lives of thousands of men every year, as well as the horrific impact on their families,” said Harry Crouch, President of NCFM.
NCFM asks for your support by calling your Congressional representatives and asking them to restore CDC funding for the Prostate Cancer program.
For a good discussion of related issues see here
Media Contact:
Steven Svoboda
510-827-5771
SOURCE National Coalition For Men
SAN DIEGO, April 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — The Center for Disease Control (CDC) FY-2017 budget request is 11.86 billion dollars, an 87 million dollar increase.
Logo – http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160420/358069LOGO
No funds were requested for the existing 13.7 million dollar prostate cancer program even though, as explained in the budget narrative, “the evidence on prostate cancer screening remains unclear.”
Other than skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer for men. Only lung cancer kills more men than prostate cancer (American Cancer Society).
Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer deaths among white, black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Hispanic men; and the fourth cause of cancer deaths for Pacific Islander men (CDC).
Two large Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) trials recently published conflicting results. A European trial (the ERSPC) found a clear and significant reduction in mortality, but a US trial (the PLCO) found little benefit and even some harm.
PSAs reportedly have a high incidence of false alarms, but they produce accurate results as well. Either way, the results can be devastating for those tested.
“Given the uncertainty and conflicting data, it seems much more research, not less, is needed. The defunded program was an essential element of fighting prostate cancer, a cancer that robs the mental health, physical wellbeing, and lives of thousands of men every year, as well as the horrific impact on their families,” said Harry Crouch, President of NCFM.
NCFM asks for your support by calling your Congressional representatives and asking them to restore CDC funding for the Prostate Cancer program.
For a good discussion of related issues see here
Media Contact:
Steven Svoboda
510-827-5771
SOURCE National Coalition For Men
Sunday, April 17, 2016
It’s Time To Defund The Out-Of-Control War On Due Process For College Students
Since 2011, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has blatantly violated college students’ rights to free speech and due process. Congress has done nothing to fix this abuse of power. Its members are, in fact, currently entertaining President Barack Obama’s proposal to increase OCR’s budget by $137.7 million of funding for the 2017 fiscal year.
When do we, as students, say enough is enough?
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is responsible for enforcing Title IX at federally-funded colleges and universities. Title IX is a federal statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in educational programs that receive federal funds. The Office for Civil Rights has authority over almost all of the nation’s colleges and universities because almost all of them receive federal funds for their educational operations.
The Office for Civil Rights often gives schools guidance on how to maintain compliance with Title IX’s mandates. In years past, such guidance properly balanced prohibiting acts of harassment with protecting the free speech and due process rights of students. In 2001, for example, the office’s guidance adhered to the Supreme Court’s legal definition of sexual harassment. In an effort to defend students’ rights to due process, the 2001 guidance also granted schools the ability to develop their own specialized procedures for handling sexual misconduct disciplinary hearings. The 2003 guidance explicitly separated Title IX enforcement policies from protected speech.
However, the guidance provided five years ago by the Office for Civil Rights guidance — in a now-notorious 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter — ruined this balance.
The policy promulgated in the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter lacked the well-crafted protections which enabled institutions to prohibit Title IX violations and promote free speech.
Obama’s Office for Civil Rights has redefined sexual harassment as mere “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.” Under “Dear Colleague” letter’s directives, single instances of “jokes,” “insulting sounds” and “degrading remarks” can constitute Title IX violations. The “Dear Colleague” letter has created an atmosphere in which sexual harassment no longer needs to be pervasive or even “objectively offensive.”
The 2011 directives are a drastic, radical shift from the Education Department’s past conformity to Supreme Court precedent and guarantee of First Amendment protections.
According to a federal judge, the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter also advised disciplinary proceedings which deny accused students the “most basic and fundamental components of due process of law.” The “Dear Colleague” letter has created a bizarre situation which strips America’s college students of many due process rights. Accused students no longer have the ability to see the evidence filed against them. They no longer have the right to an impartial decision-making panel. They no longer are availed the use of a standard of evidence that is consistent with the severity of the charges filed. They are denied the right to have an appeals process that allows a case to be completely reevaluated after the accused party has been found innocent.
The Office of Civil Rights claims that the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter is not binding upon all colleges and universities. In fact, however, the office has threatened to pull federal funding from those schools that do not comply with these policies. Thus, fearful college officials all over the country have adopted its restrictions on constitutional rights.
Prior to making a decision on the office’s funding request, the Senate Appropriations Committee adheres to a period of public commentary. During this period, citizens can submit their opinions regarding funding requests in the form of public testimonial.
I am a freshman at Tufts University. My fellow students at Tufts and my peers at schools around the country can no longer afford to allow Congress to further fund an agency that conducts itself in a way that fails to provide basic free speech and due process rights. I have drafted a letter of testimony asking the Senate to place a hold on the Office for Civil Rights funding request until it readjusts its policies to guarantee students’ rights to free speech and due process.
Thus far, Tamas Takata, James Grant, and I have accumulated over 320 student signatures of support for my testimonial. These signatures include the name of the supporting students and the schools they attend. If you are a college student who wishes to add your name to this testimonial in support, please contact me at jaketg19@gmail.com.
Source
If you click on "proposal" it will take you to a PDF page that shows members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The two that I contacted are Senator Thad Cochran and Senator Roy Blunt. The other two Senators Patty Murray and Barbara Mikulski are feminists so I wouldn't bother with them. The more of us that counter feminists lies the better so let them know today.
When do we, as students, say enough is enough?
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is responsible for enforcing Title IX at federally-funded colleges and universities. Title IX is a federal statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in educational programs that receive federal funds. The Office for Civil Rights has authority over almost all of the nation’s colleges and universities because almost all of them receive federal funds for their educational operations.
The Office for Civil Rights often gives schools guidance on how to maintain compliance with Title IX’s mandates. In years past, such guidance properly balanced prohibiting acts of harassment with protecting the free speech and due process rights of students. In 2001, for example, the office’s guidance adhered to the Supreme Court’s legal definition of sexual harassment. In an effort to defend students’ rights to due process, the 2001 guidance also granted schools the ability to develop their own specialized procedures for handling sexual misconduct disciplinary hearings. The 2003 guidance explicitly separated Title IX enforcement policies from protected speech.
However, the guidance provided five years ago by the Office for Civil Rights guidance — in a now-notorious 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter — ruined this balance.
The policy promulgated in the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter lacked the well-crafted protections which enabled institutions to prohibit Title IX violations and promote free speech.
Obama’s Office for Civil Rights has redefined sexual harassment as mere “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.” Under “Dear Colleague” letter’s directives, single instances of “jokes,” “insulting sounds” and “degrading remarks” can constitute Title IX violations. The “Dear Colleague” letter has created an atmosphere in which sexual harassment no longer needs to be pervasive or even “objectively offensive.”
The 2011 directives are a drastic, radical shift from the Education Department’s past conformity to Supreme Court precedent and guarantee of First Amendment protections.
According to a federal judge, the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter also advised disciplinary proceedings which deny accused students the “most basic and fundamental components of due process of law.” The “Dear Colleague” letter has created a bizarre situation which strips America’s college students of many due process rights. Accused students no longer have the ability to see the evidence filed against them. They no longer have the right to an impartial decision-making panel. They no longer are availed the use of a standard of evidence that is consistent with the severity of the charges filed. They are denied the right to have an appeals process that allows a case to be completely reevaluated after the accused party has been found innocent.
The Office of Civil Rights claims that the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter is not binding upon all colleges and universities. In fact, however, the office has threatened to pull federal funding from those schools that do not comply with these policies. Thus, fearful college officials all over the country have adopted its restrictions on constitutional rights.
Prior to making a decision on the office’s funding request, the Senate Appropriations Committee adheres to a period of public commentary. During this period, citizens can submit their opinions regarding funding requests in the form of public testimonial.
I am a freshman at Tufts University. My fellow students at Tufts and my peers at schools around the country can no longer afford to allow Congress to further fund an agency that conducts itself in a way that fails to provide basic free speech and due process rights. I have drafted a letter of testimony asking the Senate to place a hold on the Office for Civil Rights funding request until it readjusts its policies to guarantee students’ rights to free speech and due process.
Thus far, Tamas Takata, James Grant, and I have accumulated over 320 student signatures of support for my testimonial. These signatures include the name of the supporting students and the schools they attend. If you are a college student who wishes to add your name to this testimonial in support, please contact me at jaketg19@gmail.com.
Source
If you click on "proposal" it will take you to a PDF page that shows members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The two that I contacted are Senator Thad Cochran and Senator Roy Blunt. The other two Senators Patty Murray and Barbara Mikulski are feminists so I wouldn't bother with them. The more of us that counter feminists lies the better so let them know today.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
California State Senator wants to lengthen the statue of limitations for rape
ter wrenching testimony that included accounts from three alleged victims of comedian Bill Cosby, a Senate committee on Tuesday gave its first approval to a bill that would allow sex crimes to be prosecuted no matter how long ago they occurred.
The bill, SB 813, from state Sen. Connie Leyva (D-Chino), eliminates the current 10-year statute of limitations on rape cases. Leyva argued in the hearing that giving sexual assault victims more time to report incidents would hold more rapists accountable and provide closure to painful situations.
“A victim should always have the hope that they will be able to have justice,” Leyva said.
The accusations against Cosby provided a direct example of what the bill seeks to change. In recent years, more than 50 women have accused Cosby of sexually abusing them in incidents that, in some cases, were alleged to have occurred decades ago. District attorneys across the country have cited statutes of limitations as a reason they can’t pursue charges against Cosby, though he does face prosecution in Pennsylvania over an alleged incident in 2004. Cosby has denied all wrongdoing.
Lili Bernard, a Los Angeles actress who appeared on "The Cosby Show," testified that Cosby mentored her as a father figure before drugging her, suffocating her with a pillow and raping her in the 1990s. Bernard said she went to Atlantic City, N.J., where one of the alleged incidents occurred, with evidence of the crime and was told she had missed the deadline to file charges by a few months.
“War criminals, no matter how many decades have passed, cannot evade prosecution,” Bernard told the Senate committee. “I am asking you to do the same thing for us, rape survivors, who survived the war upon our body.”
Also speaking in favor of the bill were Victoria Valentino, a former Playboy model who alleged Cosby drugged and raped her at an apartment in the Hollywood Hills in 1969; a woman identified before her testimony as “Kacey," who worked with Cosby and said the actor sexually assaulted her 20 years ago in Bel-Air; and high-profile attorney Gloria Allred, who represents 30 Cosby accusers.
Opponents of the bill said during the 90-minute debate in the Senate Committee on Public Safety that the measure doesn’t address the core problems surrounding rape prosecution. They argued that law enforcement agencies aren't as aggressive as they could be in going after alleged rapists, citing a recent state audit that found that many existing rape kits hadn't been tested. The opponents, which included the California Public Defenders Assn. and some victims rights groups, also warned of an increased chance for wrongful convictions, given the length of time that might have passed after an incident.
“When decades pass between prosecution and a criminal offense, memories fade, witnesses die, evidence is lost,” said Natasha Minsker, director of the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “And it becomes impossible for a person accused of a crime to defend himself or herself.”
California is not the first state to weigh changing its statute of limitations on sexual assaults in the wake of the allegations against Cosby. Last year, Nevada lawmakers increased the statute of limitations for rape prosecutions from four years to 20 years after a Cosby accuser pushed for the change.
Leyva’s bill would not result in Cosby’s prosecution in California for any previous allegations. The bill would only apply to crimes committed after Jan. 1, 2017, or to incidents where the statute of limitations hadn’t run out by that date. The bill now moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Source
This bill is good example of a bad idea. What it will do is destroy the rights of every man accused of rape 15-20 years down the line. It must be fully opposed. If you are a California resident or someone who is registered to vote in California then contact your Senator and let them know you oppose SB 813 and that you want them to oppose it.If you live in California Senator Connie Leyva's district let her know that she is wrong and that she needs to respect the statue of limitations.
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Help give a reformed man a second chance
From Care2Petition:
When Sarah Colin-Neaves met Oceo Harris as an AmeriCorps volunteer, she was impressed with his commitment to serving his community. He earned a Master's degree in social work, and was presented with several awards honoring his service.
But the state of Florida won't allow him to work as a licensed social worker and counselor because 18 years ago, Oceo was convicted of nonviolent marijuana drug charges. He served his time and has gone above and beyond to reintegrate into mainstream society, but he's still being punished.
So Sarah started her first Care2 petition asking the Florida Department of Children and Families to allow Oceo to work. In less than a month, her petition collected more than 35,000 signatures. You can learn more about Sarah and Oceo's inspiring story here. (petition is at the bottom so scroll down until you see it)
I'm sick of this war on drugs. It is a dismal failure. If we condemn this man for his past and deny him the fruits of society even though he has done his time and turned his life around we still condemn him. I'll tell you something society. If we don't give him a second chance he will turn back to crime because that is the only way you'll allow him to feed himself. Florida you have no problem condoning female on male sexual assault but you won't give a man a second chance on a nonviolent crime that took place 18 years ago. A crime that this man has paid penance for and has turned his life around. Give him a second chance. It may be a good idea to contact Governor Rick Scott and tell him about it. Involving him is a good idea. If you live in Florida and/or are legally registered to vote there then contact your House Of Representatives member and your Senator and let them know too because they can be very helpful in situations like this.
When Sarah Colin-Neaves met Oceo Harris as an AmeriCorps volunteer, she was impressed with his commitment to serving his community. He earned a Master's degree in social work, and was presented with several awards honoring his service.
But the state of Florida won't allow him to work as a licensed social worker and counselor because 18 years ago, Oceo was convicted of nonviolent marijuana drug charges. He served his time and has gone above and beyond to reintegrate into mainstream society, but he's still being punished.
So Sarah started her first Care2 petition asking the Florida Department of Children and Families to allow Oceo to work. In less than a month, her petition collected more than 35,000 signatures. You can learn more about Sarah and Oceo's inspiring story here. (petition is at the bottom so scroll down until you see it)
I'm sick of this war on drugs. It is a dismal failure. If we condemn this man for his past and deny him the fruits of society even though he has done his time and turned his life around we still condemn him. I'll tell you something society. If we don't give him a second chance he will turn back to crime because that is the only way you'll allow him to feed himself. Florida you have no problem condoning female on male sexual assault but you won't give a man a second chance on a nonviolent crime that took place 18 years ago. A crime that this man has paid penance for and has turned his life around. Give him a second chance. It may be a good idea to contact Governor Rick Scott and tell him about it. Involving him is a good idea. If you live in Florida and/or are legally registered to vote there then contact your House Of Representatives member and your Senator and let them know too because they can be very helpful in situations like this.
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