So that's who's behind it

College association calls civil-rights agency a ‘Star Chamber’

It may have confused some observers why a constitutional law professor-turned-president would preside over the most blatant denial of due process rights to college students in recent history.

An intriguing Washington Post analysis might have the answer: President Barack Obama ceded all responsibility for campus sexual-assault to his vice president before they were even in office.

And Joe Biden has proven a zealot without any regard for the rights of students who face accusations bereft of any evidence beyond an accuser’s oft-fuzzy memory:

Biden said he spoke to Obama about the issue even before they won the White House in 2008, requesting a staff to work on violence against women “within the office of the vice president,” rather than at the Justice Department.

“He said, ‘Okay.’ He knew how strongly I felt about it,” Biden said, adding that over time Obama became more engaged with the issue.

Biden’s influence has apparently led the White House to judge all colleges that provide a fair process for accused students as cavalierly harboring rapists:

According to White House officials, top members of the administration — including the president, the vice president, their wives and members of the Cabinet — will not visit institutions whose leaders they consider insufficiently serious about pursuing sexual-assault allegations and punishing perpetrators.

Biden told the Post he also wants the feds to “take away their money” if schools provide basic fairness to accused students.

That echoes the federal funding threats made by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) when universities don’t immediately turn their adjudication proceedings into a fait accompli, as happened at Tufts University in 2014.

An official with the American Council on Education, which represents 1,600 college and university presidents at the federal level, aptly characterized OCR as “a Court of Star Chamber, with arbitrary rulings, no rights for those under investigation and a secret process” governing schools who fall under Title IX investigation.

Meanwhile, the legality of OCR’s “guidance” on Title IX is the subject of at least three federal lawsuits by students or their parents – meaning it’s likely that whoever succeeds Obama and Biden will have to clean up the legal mess they left.

Source

Let's thank Cantor for standing up to Biden

The 112th Congress has adjourned without reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

SAVE has consistently advocated for improvements to VAWA. We have worked hard to educate legislators. Among other things, we held several lobbying events throughout the year. We even wrote our own language, the Partner Violence Reduction Act (PVRA) to show that we can serve all victims of domestic violence while reducing waste, fraud and false allegations.

We are happy to report that some of SAVE's key reforms were included in HR 4970, the House version of VAWA. Rest assured, our efforts to achieve VAWA reform will continue in the next session of Congress.

Please call House Leader Eric Cantor today, and thank him for his principled and courageous support of VAWA reform. Call: (202) 225-2815

Looking forward to 2013,

teri

Teri Stoddard, Program Director
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments
www.saveservices.org

You can also email him and thank him. It took someone with guts to go against Biden and we all win because of his courage. I'm writing in,just like on all my activist postings I participate with you. Will you write in as well?

VAWA goes down in flames

House GOP blocks Violence Against Women Act
By Steve Benen - Wed Jan 2, 2013 2:13 PM EST

Associated Press
Sen. Patty Murray has been the Democratic point person on the Violence Against Women Act. Congress had a lengthy to-do list as the end of the year approached, with a series of measures that needed action before 2013 began. Some of the items passed (a fiscal agreement, a temporary farm bill), while others didn't (relief funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy).

And then there's the Violence Against Women Act, which was supposed to be one of the year's easy ones. It wasn't.

Back in April, the Senate approved VAWA reauthorization fairly easily, with a 68 to 31 vote. The bill was co-written by a liberal Democrat (Vermont's Pat Leahy) and a conservative Republican (Idaho's Mike Crapo), and seemed on track to be reauthorized without much of a fuss, just as it was in 2000 and 2005.

But House Republicans insisted the bill is too supportive of immigrants, the LGBT community, and Native Americans -- and they'd rather let the law expire than approve a slightly expanded proposal. Vice President Biden, who helped write the original law, tried to persuade House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to keep the law alive, but the efforts didn't go anywhere.

And so, for the first time since 1994, the Violence Against Women Act is no more. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Democratic point person on VAWA, said in a statement:

The House Republican leadership's failure to take up and pass the Senate's bipartisan and inclusive VAWA bill is inexcusable. This is a bill that passed with 68 votes in the Senate and that extends the bill's protections to 30 million more women. But this seems to be how House Republican leadership operates. No matter how broad the bipartisan support, no matter who gets hurt in the process, the politics of the right wing of their party always comes first.

Proponents of the law hope to revive the law in the new Congress, starting from scratch, but in the meantime, there will be far fewer resources available for state and local governments to combat domestic violence.

As for electoral considerations, Republicans lost badly in the 2012 elections, thanks in large part to the largest gender gap in modern times, but if that changed GOP attitudes towards legislation affecting women, the party is hiding it well.

Update: Reader AG asks about the House version that was approved several months ago. As I reported at the time, the House gutted the bipartisan Senate bill with a watered-down version, which was widely seen by everyone involved as a joke that undermined the interests of victims. It had no support in the Senate and drew a White House veto threat. House Republicans knew this, and instead of revisiting the issue and/or working with the Senate on a compromise, GOP leaders simply decided the law was not a priority. The result was this week's outcome.

Source: click here

Now this truly is a belated Christmas gift. We did it. With everyone's help is getting the message out and the truth about VAWA we were able to let everyone know that we mean business. The second good news is the incoming Congress is more libertarian minded than the outgoing Congress was which means that their best chance of passing VAWA just left town. That doesn't mean we get complacent not by any means. If VAWA should rear its ugly head again we take it down. Until then pat yourselves of the back for a job well done.