Archive

Posts Tagged ‘California’

Governments and Rent-A-Cops Harass Photographers

June 29th, 2009 No comments

Readers of our website know we’re concerned about the erosion of Constitutional rights in the United States. It’s commonplace for American governments to violate Constitutional and federal law protections for due process, equal protection under the law, unreasonable search and seizure, and innocent until proven guilty in cases involving alleged child abuse and divorces with contested child custody. But the erosion of civil liberties is spreading far beyond family law.

While researching another article I’m writing, I ran across an article from the Washington Post which really disturbed me. Whether you’re an architecture student or common citizen, you now have reason to be fearful of government oppression if you snap a picture of a building while taking a walk on a public sidewalk or a drive on public streets. Taking such pictures is in no way unlawful. First Amendment rights and court cases have established that taking photographs from public areas, especially outdoors, is lawful. But that doesn’t stop law enforcement and especially security guards who sometimes illegally impersonate police officers for intimidating and even assaulting photographers who are not breaking any laws.
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Personal DNA Sequencing “More Affordable” at $48,000

June 18th, 2009 No comments

Illumina Corporation, a San Diego biotech firm, on June 16, 2009, announced the advent of relatively low-cost personal full DNA sequencing. For the low price of $48,000, you can have your entire DNA sequenced for use in detecting genetic diseases. Someday, that data may be useful for creating gene therapies and custom drugs to improve your health. $48,000 might sound like a lot of money, but it is really a bargain. Until this month, Illumina charged $96,000 for the same service.

Just several years ago, it cost billions of dollars and many years of work to get the same information. Consider the Human Genome Project to see how it took 13+ years and $3+ billion to sequence 92% of the human genome for the first time. Celera Genomics, founded by Craig Venter, developed shotgun DNA sequencing technology that brought down full DNA genome sequencing to $300 million and a few years, and companies like Illumina have improved and cost-reduced the technologies even further.
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Chromosome Ends and Aging

May 19th, 2009 No comments

If you enjoyed our article Is TA-65 the Means to Immortality? about TA-65 telomerase activation therapy and the involvement of chromosomal telomeres in the aging process, you might also enjoy this video from Professor Elizabeth Blackburn of University of California at San Francisco. She discusses the relationship between telomeres, cell division, and aging-related diseases including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer.
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Pandering Anti-Family Politicians Abuse Children and Fathers

May 12th, 2009 No comments

What do President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and California Assembly Member Jim Beall have in common?

The first thing that may come to mind for many is that they are all Democrats. But that’s not nearly so important as that they are all politicians who curry favor with victim feminists and other women voters by engaging in father-bashing and supporting pro-child-abuse and pro-male-abuse legislation. Unfortunately for American families, especially children and their fathers, these politicians are all too happy to berate fathers. They encourage the abuse of children and their fathers in exchange for votes from the pro-child-abuse lobby consisting of disreputable organizations such as National Organization of Women (NOW) and the misleadingly named California Protective Parents Association. Such organizations are mostly comprised of feminists gone insane, but a vote is a vote for these politicians.
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Beall’s Attempt to Support Child Abuse is Defanged

May 7th, 2009 3 comments

(Please see the comments to this article that indicate the California state legislative website contains misleading information that may have resulted in my wrongly concluding the Judiciary Committee voted on the pro-child-abuse version of this bill on April 28 rather than the significantly cleaned up version that is being listed with a revision date of May 5, 2009.)

This is an update to our previous article California Democrat Jim Beall Supports Child Abuse. When we started writing that article, AB 612 pro-child-abuse legislation. Despite minor changes, it was still pro-child-abuse when the Judiciary Committee voted to approve it on April 28. However, somebody in the California Assembly significantly watered it down on May 5 to a version that is no longer pro-child-abuse. These changes weren’t made until after the Judiciary Committee vote approving the bill.

You can find the the revision history of AB 612 complete with text and changes and votes at AB 612 Revision and Voting History.
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California Democrat Jim Beall Supports Child Abuse

May 7th, 2009 1 comment

(Click here for an update to this post.)

A California representative, Democrat Jim Beall, has reintroduced legislation as Assembly Bill 612 (AB 612) to ban the discussion of parental alienation in child custody evaluations. California judges, psychologists, and family law attorneys all oppose this legislation because they know that parental alienation is a real problem that is harming children in many families, especially in high-conflict divorces. So do the many California parents who have been alienated from their children. And so do the grown children who are victims of parental alienation and recognize it for the damage their alienating parent caused in their own lives.

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Help Kids Avoid Type 2 Diabetes: Eat Less Sugar, More Fiber

May 2nd, 2009 2 comments

Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC) conducted a 16-week study to see if slightly modifying the diets of Latino teenagers would affect type 2 diabetes risk factors. The findings were reported in the April 2009 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Latino Teens Have High Obesity and Diabetes Risks

The research participants were Latino teenagers because previous research showed almost 40 percent of Mexican American children ages 12 to 19 were found to be overweight or at risk of developing diabetes.

“Latino children are more insulin resistant and thus more likely to develop obesity-related chronic diseases than their white counterparts,” the authors write. “To date, only a few studies have examined the effects of a high-fiber, low-sugar diet on metabolic health in overweight youth, and to our knowledge, none have tested the effects of this type of intervention in a mixed-sex group of Latino youth.”

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How to File For a DV TRO (Domestic Violence Temporary Restraining Order) in California

April 28th, 2009 1 comment

The way that DV TROs are issued varies widely, with every state and nation having somewhat different protocols. This article focuses on how to file a DV TRO in California courts. The general ideas here should apply to most other locations in Western nations, but the rules and especially the forms are going to vary.

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Book Review: “A Promise To Ourselves” by Alec Baldwin

April 28th, 2009 1 comment

Until you have personal experience of divorce and child custody litigation, it would be difficult to understand or appreciate what Alec Baldwin (with Mark Tabb) writes about in his book A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce.

Many, I think, would consider his book as being some far-fetched Hollywood gossip and a way to gain more celebrity status, or even a way to defend his case and blame it on the ex. I suppose it’s hard not to be influenced by the roles actors play in movies and what you read in trashy magazines and newspapers. To me, Alec Baldwin certainly doesn’t have the “nice guy” reputation — if anything, it’s more like the “womanizer”. Then again, Kim Basinger is no angel, either.
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Man Falsely Convicted of Child Sexual Abuse Awarded $2 Million from New York State

April 22nd, 2009 1 comment

Amine Baba-Ali was falsely convicted of child sexual abuse against his four year old daughter based upon false accusations from his ex-wife, lies from a doctor, and prosecution fraud by the New York City Queens District Attorney’s Office. Although his conviction was overturned in 1992 and he was released from prison, he continues to be persecuted due to the false conviction. The persecution has continued for two decades, despite the conviction being overturned. It has even extended to Mr. Baba-Ali being turned down for a job with the Census Bureau on account of the false conviction. The $2 million awarded to Mr. Babi-Ali in March 2009 by the New York State Court of Claims just barely begins to make up for what the government wrongfully did to ruin this man’s life and deprive his daughter of a father.

Vindicated, but Still Not Freed From Court’s Injustice
(excerpted from New York Times)

Amine Baba-Ali, a father wrongly convicted of raping and molesting his 4-year-old daughter, is the first person ever held by a state court to have satisfied every facet of the unjust-conviction law that he sued New York State under, according to the court’s decision. His lawyers proved that the Queens district attorney’s office fraudulently prosecuted him for a crime he did not commit. The court awarded him $2,093,428.

But Mr. Baba-Ali, 52, cannot shake the sense that this case will haunt him for a lifetime, not least because his daughter, now 26, was forever removed from him once he was convicted. He has not seen her for two decades, and has no idea where she is living.

“Though I am thankful, the fact of the matter is that I’ve lost my daughter,” Mr. Baba-Ali said in an telephone interview from his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday. “I’ve lost the most important part of my life.”

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