People own pit bulls to use as a weapon and if you are part of the few that doesn’t own a pit bull for a weapon, then know you’re amongst the majority of trash that does. Nobody thinks, “Gee, a pit bull would be a GREAT family dog.” A pug is a great family dog, a pit bull is not. In fact, why not just go out and get your family a bear or a tiger? And if you’re fortunate enough to live in an area where one of your neighbors owns one of these weapons of mass destruction, then do yourself a favor and move (your property value isn’t going to soar with pit bulls running around anyway) or get your village to sign an ordinance banning these animals. Children deserve better. People deserve better.

From the website dogbitelaw.com, here are some stats on dogs that kill:

As stated above, there are two problems that have been reported as though there is only a single problem, namely there are canine homicides (i.e., dog bite related human fatalities) and the dog bite epidemic. The dogs responsible for the bulk of the homicides are pit bulls and Rottweilers:

“Studies indicate that pit bull-type dogs were involved in approximately a third of human DBRF (i.e., dog bite related fatalities) reported during the 12-year period from 1981 through1992, and Rottweilers were responsible for about half of human DBRF reported during the 4 years from 1993 through 1996….[T]he data indicate that Rottweilers and pit bull-type dogs accounted for 67% of human DBRF in the United States between 1997 and 1998. It is extremely unlikely that they accounted for anywhere near 60% of dogs in the United States during that same period and, thus, there appears to be a breed-specific problem with fatalities.” (Sacks JJ, Sinclair L, Gilchrist J, Golab GC, Lockwood R. Breeds of dogs involved in fatal human attacks in the United States between 1979 and 1998. JAVMA 2000;217:836-840.) 

Other breeds were also responsible for homicides, but to a much lesser extent. A 1997 study of dog bite fatalities in the years 1979 through 1996 revealed that the following breeds had killed one or more persons: pit bulls, Rottweilers, German shepherds, huskies, Alaskan malamutes, Doberman pinschers, chows, Great Danes, St. Bernards and Akitas. (Dog Bite Related Fatalities,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, May 30, 1997, Vol. 46, No. 21, pp. 463 et. seq.)

Owners of such dogs should be aware that if their dogs attack a person, the attacks may be scrutinized by law enforcement. The reason is that irresponsible behavior with or toward a dog whose breed is known to bite has caused a rising and unacceptable injury and death toll, which authorities are determined to stem.

“Irresponsible behavior” is defined differently from place to place. In California, for example, it can be a felony for a person to possess a dog trained to fight, attack or kill that, because of the owner’s lack of ordinary care, bites two people or seriously injures one person. (See Felony prosecution of attack dog owners.)

In different parts of the United States at the current time, there are a number of parents who are on trial for manslaughter because their dogs have killed their children. In these cases, the prosecutors have taken the position that the parents behaved irresponsibly because they left their children in the company of dogs most likely to bite.

There is an 8 out of 10 chance that a biting dog is male. (Humane Society of the United States.) 

And here is the tragic story, brought to us by WTHR-Indianapolis, that tells a true account of just one out of thousands of tragedies that involve a child mamed or killed by a vicious dog each year. As a society, we fight for safer streets, safer schools, safer immunizations, safer foods, environment, homes, cars and so on, we need to keep ban dogs that are most likely to kill a child. People cannot be trusted to keep your children safe from their dogs. If you think the kind of person that chains up a pit bull or a rottweiler in their yard is of a level of sophistication that they keep innocent people in mind, then your are sorely mistaken.

Bookmark to:
   

Last week,  the subject of my weekly column was about the proposed policy to ban infant formula samples in Massachusetts hospitals (thereby making it the first state to implement such a ban). This raised serious concerns for me as special interest groups continue to try to legislate morality on both sides, however, this particular argument undoubtably comes from the left. America is in an ideological civil war between the advocation of socialism/communism and a the freedom in which this country was founded on.

Also last week, The Boston Globe reported that Mitt Romney had gained a victory over stopping the formula prohibition, for now…

In a victory for Governor Mitt Romney , the state’s public health commissioner announced yesterday that hospital maternity wards in Massachusetts can continue to hand out gift bags with samples of infant formula. Last winter, the Public Health Council had imposed a ban on the bags, but then, at Romney’s urging, it reversed its decision and ordered further study.

The five months of debate over gift bags with formula crystallized scientific and political issues regarding both breast-feeding and the Public Health Council, which governs the state Department of Public Health.

To public health specialists and powerful members of the Legislature, the episode demonstrates the perils of politics intruding into healthcare.

The battle in keeping your sacred right to make sensible parenting decisions that are best for your family are still on trial. The decision could easily be over-turned as Democrats step in to reorganize the Public Health Council of Mass. to make it more politically and special interest driven. This should concern breastfeeding advocates wanting to prohibit moms from receiving formula in hospitals. There is a very small step between formula prohibition and perhaps making something that they cherish, perhaps the lawful ability to breastfeed in public, and put that on trial with a panel of let’s say, formula manufacturers. What makes one acceptable parenting decision better than someone elses acceptable parenting decision?? Where are breastfeeding advocates telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing with my breasts?? Why are they trying to create policy and legislature that forces their political beliefs on me??

Government is overstepping their bounds here and even though it may feel like a victory to moms that think everyone should breastfeed, they should be careful what they wish for.

Quite frankly, it makes me feel totally violated. Formula feeding moms need to start sticking up for themselves and making a stink over their rights too, otherwise you can lay down and allow extremists to make your decisions and treat you as if you are too stupid and ignorant to make good choices. It’s insulting and nobody should tolerate it.

Now the Massachusetts government overturned the Govenors authority to appoint people to the Public Health Council in efforts to try to create a political climate where the government can and will make parenting decisions for you.  First we ban formula from hospitals, next it will be available by prescription only and then the women who truly need it will have to justify her actions in the court of zealotry and politcal scrutiny. If you disagree with the government, well then, you might just have to pay the price and be treated like the controlled peasant that you’re allowing yourself to be. Does this not concern anyone? Are we that lazy that we are just going to lie down and take it and conform to injustices just because we don’t have the will to fight back?

Thank goodness for people like Mitt Romney, otherwise this just might set a precedence that could lead this country down a slippery slope that further errodes democracy.

In April, Romney vetoed the proposal to change the composition of the Public Health Council, but the Legislature overrode him.

A Romney spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, said yesterday that the governor still objects to the future changes in the council’s composition, but that the administration will leave further consideration of the issue to the next administration, which will be in place when the shift happens.

“Our view is that it is clearly unconstitutional in that it transfers the governor’s appointing authority over executive branch functions to unaccountable private organizations,” Fehrnstrom said in an e-mail message.

Health Care for All , which advocates equal access to medical services throughout the state, will have a seat at the council’s table next year.

Its executive director, John McDonough , who spent a dozen years in the Legislature, said that starting with the administration of William F. Weld , the Public Health Council has been increasingly subject to political pressures.

“The appointees seem to have been appointed more for connections and political favors and less for the experience and talent they bring to bear,” McDonough said.

Bookmark to:
   

For you skeptics who don’t believe, snopes.com puts it all into perspective…

Click here to see picture

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. — John Stuart Mill

Bookmark to:
   

I’m going to start calling these suspended and light sentences, “rewards”. Even the Russians think we’re whacked, and this coming from a country where an astronomical amount of children are abandoned to orphanages.

If you’re not familiar with this story, an American woman and her husband adopted a Russian baby some years ago and then tortured the 2 year old with blunt trauma to the head and the abdomen. The toddler lived in pain and agony for one day after her adoptive mother attacked and murdered the toddler.

We are sending the wrong message to people that hurt, mame, torture and kill small children.

Suspended sentence? Are you kidding me???? Apparently, all it takes is admiting you’re an alcoholic and the moronic public deems it as an acceptable excuse.

For the murder of her 2-year-old adopted Russian daughter, Peggy Sue Hilt will serve 25 years in jail, under a sentence imposed yesterday by a Prince William County judge.

“I think your conduct, at its core, is inexplicable, completely inexplicable,” Circuit Court Judge William D. Hamblen said. “The child’s death was not the product of a single act, a single blow. Her injuries were the result of a course of conduct over an extended period of time.”

And only Hilt, he added, knows the extent of it.

Hilt, 34, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in March after telling police that she punched, kicked and choked Nina Hilt at their Wake Forest, N.C., home during a rage in July. The child died a day later in Prince William, where the family was visiting friends.

“I hurt Nina,” Hilt told authorities at the time. “I choked her, and I hit her and hit her.”

The Prince William case has affected other U.S. families hoping to adopt. Russian officials initially called for a moratorium on U.S. adoptions after the death of Nina, who was the 14th adopted Russian child killed in the United States. Several Russian journalists were at the courthouse yesterday.

“It took a long time to kill the child,” Ebert said, adding that it was “a horrible, horrible case.”

Bookmark to:
   

Baby Chic 101 turns parents on to the Fluerville highchair which makes a minimalist statement, combined with the high level of sophistication and maturity that every baby exudes in their infinite wisdom and interior design sense. It’s an accessory that’s bound to have other babies saying, “Well, la-dee-da!”

Click here to see the far-out highchair

Bookmark to:
   

As the SEMissourian reports that child abuse is on the rise in Missouri. I believe there needs to be a wake up call across America. Next time we humor or participate in the whining of middle class suburban women – crying about how mistreated they are because they aren’t allowed on the front lines of war or claiming unfair compensation or how violated farm chickens are, try some persepctive. Next time you hear the whining in protest of immigrants who can’t catch a break or how their genius kid can’t get special services beyond gifted classes or how as an everyday American, they aren’t getting their lives subsidized by the government, think of children that suffer day in and day out. Next time you hear someone bitch about how they are losing their freedom and thier civil liberties as they drive around in their Escalade, take a moment to think of those that are truly persecuted for no apparent reason. Stop focusing on made-up violations and autrocities and get real. Stop turning a blind eye and face the facts. Start protecting our children and stop trying to think of creative ways to justify it or excuse it. Try doing something about it instead of being all about you or made up injustices.

Children are dying, being hurt. Pass Jessica’s Law, advocate prevention strategies, stricter child abuse penalties and monitoring. Stop the violence against children now. 

The skull cracked. Twice.

She was 2 months old on that March day in Scott County. Police say her mother, apparently upset that the child would not sleep, violently shook her baby and slammed her head into a door, fracturing the skull.

Two months later in a separate incident in Scott City, a 7-year-old boy’s feet dangled in the air. His mother’s 250-pound boyfriend gripped the boy’s throat and punched the child several times, authorities claim. The child was severely bruised and suffered a lacerated pancreas.

These young victims, who both lived through their ordeals, are two cases among hundreds that will be reported in Southeast Missouri this year. According to experts, cases of sexual and physical abuse among children are on the rise, and officials are fighting hard to stop it.

“Abuse takes place by people who know and have access to children,” said Tammy Gwaltney, executive officer for the Southeast Missouri Network Against Sexual Violence. “It doesn’t discriminate.”

Beginning in 1997, the network, a not-for-profit organization based in Cape Girardeau, has seen the number of new child abuse cases reported to them each year rise from about 46 the first year to nearly 500 in a 10-county region. When the network began operating full time in 2000, it had 142 cases.

Bookmark to:
   

RJA’s Urf! explores his son’s film making cred and how it stacks up against M. Night Shyamalan’s :

JP announced his plans over the weekend. Well, not so much announced them as whispered them to his mother, but she can’t really keep a secret. He says that he and S are going to make movies. He already has the titles, the first is to be called I Keep Forgetting and the second will be called Not Very Smart. Naturally, I hope he succeeds with his filmmaking dreams, but I’m afraid there are a couple of deterrents that need to be dealt with before beginning. The first is that he has very little budget for one, let alone two, movies. In fact, he has no budget at all. There is some change laying around his room and he may be able to trade up on a Power Ranger action figure, but nothing in the quantity that JP will need to have his dream flourish. The second hindrance these projects have against their being made in the near future is JP’s almost complete lack of ability to write the alphabet. Now, granted, most Hollywood blockbusters these days require very little use of the English language to appreciate them, but if I know JP he is going to go for that smaller, arthouse feel, and for this reason command of the written word past the letter D may be crucial. Read the rest…

Bookmark to:
   

I’m shocked that this hasn’t happened sooner, or that it’s considered a novelty rather than the norm:  USA Today brings us to a school district in California in which ninth grades are required to take a course on religious diversity and religions of the world.

More interesting is the suggestion that school districts around the country avoid this subject in order to avoid law suits. Slowly we are creating socialistic values instead the freedoms granted by our rights. It is a fact that the more freedom of religion and expression people are allowed, the more tolerant they become as a society and the more willing they are to embrace their religious freedoms.

Americans have never been in greater need of understanding religious differences and cultivating respect for religious freedom. The events of 9/11 transformed America’s relationship with Muslims at home and abroad, a surge in immigration from Asia and Africa has increased the nation’s religious diversity, and cultural conflicts between secularists and religious conservatives occur like clockwork.

So you might think the last thing school districts would want is to bring religion into the classroom. Better to play it safe, and avoid lawsuits and angry parents by limiting any mention of faith to the private sphere. But school officials in Modesto, in Northern California, decided not to play it safe. In 2000, the religiously diverse community took a risk and, in an almost unheard-of undertaking for a public school district, offered a required course on world religions and religious liberty for ninth-graders.

INDEX:Focus on faith

As college professors and social scientists studying religious freedom in the USA, we wanted to know more. Could greater discussion of religious differences actually deepen cultural divides? From October 2003 to January ‘05, we surveyed more than 400 Modesto students and conducted in-depth interviews with students, teachers, administrators and community leaders. We granted anonymity to students so they could speak freely, but we recorded the interviews. No prior study on American teens’ views on religious liberty has scientifically surveyed such a large number of students.

To our surprise, students’ respect for rights and liberties increased measurably after taking the course. Perhaps more important, the community has embraced the course as a vehicle for fostering understanding, not indoctrination.

Limiting deeply held beliefs to the private sphere breeds suspicion and tension. True religious liberty prevails not only when people feel comfortable expressing their beliefs, but also when they learn to discuss religious differences with civility and respect. 

Bookmark to:
   

The Christian Science Monitor reports on the Russian Presidents offer to subsidize procreation as Russia faces one it’s largest problems ever — a rapid decline in population as women choose to have “only” children or no children at all, coupled with a staggering aboriton rate. One might think it prudent to examine why this is the case instead of holding an ovary lottery.

Can you imagine? Sounds very “The Handmaid’s Tale” to me. Creepy.:

 MOSCOW – Cash for babies is the Kremlin’s offer to women in its latest bid to reverse a population decline that threatens to leave large swaths of Russia virtually uninhabited within 50 years. President Vladimir Putin last week defined the crisis as Russia’s most acute problem, and promised to spend some of the country’s oil profits on efforts to relieve it. He ordered parliament to more than double monthly child support payments to 1,500 rubles (about $55) and added that women who choose to have a second baby will receive 250,000 rubles ($9,200), a staggering sum in a country where average monthly incomes hover close to $330

On Monday, young women at the Family Planning Youth Center, a nongovernmental clinic for northwest Moscow, said they liked the sound of more money, but suggested that Mr. Putin has no concept of their lives. “A child is not an easy project, and in this world a woman is expected to get an education, find a job, and make a career,” says Svetlana Romanicheva, a student who says she won’t consider babies for at least five years. She hopes to have one child, but says a second would depend on her life “working out very well.” As for Putin’s offer, she says “it won’t change anything.”

On Monday, young women at the Family Planning Youth Center, a nongovernmental clinic for northwest Moscow, said they liked the sound of more money, but suggested that Mr. Putin has no concept of their lives. “A child is not an easy project, and in this world a woman is expected to get an education, find a job, and make a career,” says Svetlana Romanicheva, a student who says she won’t consider babies for at least five years. She hopes to have one child, but says a second would depend on her life “working out very well.” As for Putin’s offer, she says “it won’t change anything.”Russia’s birthrate, falling for decades, has plunged in post-Soviet times, to just 1.17 in 2004 from 2.08 babies per woman in 1990 - far below the 2.4 children required to maintain the population - according to the Federal State Statistics Service. The average rate from 2000-05 in the US, by contrast, was 2.0, according to UN figures, while Mexico, for example, weighed in at 2.4 and Italy at 1.3.

Russia also has one of the world’s highest abortion rates. In addition, the death rate has climbed to levels seldom seen in peacetime, to 16.3 in 2002 from 10.7 per thousand people in 1988. The result is a population that is shrinking by an average of 700,000 people each year - and aging. A UN report last year predicted that Russia’s population, around 145 million in 2002, could fall by one-third by 2050.

Bookmark to:
   

Suburban Turmoil has me lost in fairy tales and Cinderella day-dreams…

A few weeks ago, 15 and I were dropping 12 off at a friend’s house when we saw him.

Cinderella. In the flesh. Sitting on his front porch.

Longtime readers will recall when I discovered that the lead singer from the 80s heavy metal band Cinderella lives in a cookie cutter subdivision a few houses down from one of 12’s best friends. This friend has regaled us with stories of garage practices and late night parties and young groupies smoking in the driveway. One day, the band even let 12’s friend and her brother check out their tour bus.

I had tried to get in on the Cinderella action by forcing the baby to trick-or-treat at their house. Unfortunately, a teenager in a witch costume answered the door and shouldered off my attempts to peer around her in an attempt to catch any Satan worshipping going on inside.

But now, I had another chance.

“Okay, 15, here’s the deal,” I said once 12 had gotten out of the car. “We’re going to drive up to the house and sing, “Don’t know whatcha got till it’s gone!” as loud as we can out the window! Then I’ll just drive away!”…Read the rest

Bookmark to: