Day: October 2, 2002

There’s just no other way to say it — the New Jersey State Supreme Court is stupid. Okay, so even though the 51-day deadline for a candidate to withdraw has passed, the Democrats can replace Toricelli with Lautenberg. So can Forrester now pull out as well and be replaced by somebody who the Republicans think might be better able to beat Lautenberg? Stupid. Why did they bother even having primaries? Why not just put “TBA” on the ballot and have the actual candidates announced the day before the elections?

Especially infuriating was the New Jersey Supreme Court’s claim that the two-party system has some sort of special legal status which must be preserved at all costs. Why? So if the election were between a Republican and a Green candidate, it wouldn’t offer voters a real choice? Give me a break.

After complaining about Google’s “quirky” page ranking system, Dave Winer has a message to people who have been waiting for 6 months (and counting) for Userland to fix a major bug in Radio — hey, it’s been a rough year, give him a break. Dave says,

Some of the feedback has been less than kind. I think these people momentarily forget that behind every user interface are people with lives, and struggles. That goes double for UserLand. 2002 has been an unbelievably challenging year for this company.

Hey, you wanna see someone who had a bad year, talk to Charles Eicher. For asking Userland to fix numerous bugs he found in Radio, Dave banned him from Userland’s support forums.

Eicher ended up switching to Movable Type.

Over the weekend, Reps. David Bonior (D-Michigan) and Jim McDermott (D-Washington) gave an interview from Baghdad in which the duo said that the United States should take Saddam Hussein at his word, but warned that the president might try to deceive the American people. As an example, McDermott cited the Gulf of Tonking incident (emphasis added),

I believe that sometimes they [the Bush Administration] give out misinformation. Lyndon Johnson did it in the Vietnam War. Both David and I were in that war, and there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident. The President lied to the Congress about how many people he was going to put into Vietnam, or whether he was in Laos, or whether he was in Cambodia.

The major problem here — as this weblogger points out — is that McDermott never served in Vietnam. McDermott’s resume lists military service from 1968-1970, but as a psychiatrist at a military base in California.

I guess it depends on the meaning of “in.”

On April 1, 2002, model/actress/whatever Tawney Kitaen attacked her husband, then-Cleveland Indians pitcher Chuck Finley, while the couple were driving home from a dinner. In September, Kitaen entered a plea agreement in which she didn’t admit guilt but entered a spousal battery counseling program.

After she successfully finishes the counseling program, the case will be dropped. Kitaen also must not have any contact with her husband and must make a $500 contribution to a battered-women’s shelter (hmmm . . . would a battered woman’s shelter have provide Finley with help after the April 1 attack by his wife?)

Of course one of the more interesting thing about the case is how little media attention it has received. Not that the case hasn’t been reported in newspapers and television — it has. But certainly not to the extent that it would have been if Finley had assaulted Kitaen.

In that case, we would have been treated to at least 2 or 3 in-depth looks at domestic assault cases by sports stars, replete with domestic violence activists repeating bogus statistics and expressing concern that society doesn’t take domestic violence seriously enough.

But since the perpetrator here was a woman and the victim a man (and a sports star at that), there was nothing like that.

Source:

Tawney Kitaen Agrees to Plea Bargain. Associated Press, September, 19, 2002.

The Michigan Senate held hearings in September on proposed legislation that would allow men to stop paying child support if they DNA tests show they are not the father of the child in question. In Michigan, as in other states, cases are cropping up of men who are forced to pay support for children whom they did not father. The Michigan House has already approved four bills related to this and the Senate takes it up next.

A Detroit Free Press story featured some interesting quotes from John Ruff, a Michigan man who is forced to pay child support even though DNA tests show he is not the father. Ruff’s comments highlight one of the main problems with the current law — it is designed to encourage fathers to admit paternity, but in light of DNA testing the best option is now to deny paternity until it is proven by a DNA test. Ruff told the Free Press,

I hate to say it, but the whole part where I went wrong was the part where I tried to stand up and be a man and take responsibility for what I thought was my daughter. I should have been a jerk and tried to protest what she was saying.

When my second child was born a couple weeks ago, I happened to overhear a couple nurses in the hall who were rather disgusted that a man whose girlfriend had just given birth had chosen to not admit paternity. But in Michigan, admitting paternity after the birth of a child essentially waives any future right to dispute paternity. So the choice is either to go ahead and admit paternity once and for all or, as Ruff puts it, “be a jerk” and demand a DNA test.

Ultimately, I suspect the only adequate long-term solution to this problem will be to require DNA tests of men listed on birth certificates to prove paternity.

Source:

Not the dad? Pay anyway Wendy Wendland-Bowyer, The Detroit Free Press, September 16, 2002.