Coffee, then Scotch whisky

Had a cup of coffee at 6:15 p.m. so that I'd make it through a 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. meeting. Now at 10:30 p.m. I'm relaxing with a weegenerous dram of one of Scotland's finest single-malts so that I can get some reasonable number of hours of sleep tonight before heading back to the temp gig up the street tomorrow.

My time management was just fine today; it's the consciousness management that I don't think I've handled so well. Though I must say, a huge advantage of starting at 9:00 a.m. at an office that's a brisk 12-minute walk from home is that I can get quite a few chores done in the morning before I have to leave the house. Laundry ahoy!

Tell you what, the complete shitshow that is the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will not be helping me get to sleep tonight (PDF).

An apologia for avoiding an "inhumane result" in Sandusky's case

Philly.com op-ed by Drexel Law prof Daniel Filler fails to use the term "child rape" to discuss what Jerry Sandusky did and what Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, Gary Schultz, Tim Curley, and others (including the campus rent-a-cops) at Penn State failed to report to the police and the federal government:

But there is another lesson to be learned from this horrible story, and it's time we acknowledged it. Penn State's administrators might have buried the charges against Sandusky partly because our national anxiety about sexual abuse has resulted in a lattice of laws so toxic that people are afraid to report it. Although Penn State officials may have wanted Sandusky to stop, they also may have feared the overwhelming consequences of reporting the crime.

Oh, wah, wah, wah! Mike McQueary saw Sandusky raping a boy in the shower, and his bosses "feared the consequences"?

There's no doubt that Penn State administrators were trying to protect the university and its football program. But they were also trying to protect Sandusky and themselves from the tsunami that would follow. I take Spanier at his alleged word that he feared an inhumane result. He isn't alone: Some recent research suggests that some prosecutors shape their charging and plea-bargaining decisions to moderate the effects of current laws.

Here's where, if I were worse at my rhetoric, I'd say that I wish prosecutors seeking to moderate the effects of current laws would get child-raped themselves. But I don't wish that, really I don't. I don't even wish child rape on law school professors. What I'll do instead is point out that a law school professor would have ridiculed me for not distinguishing between a case where the result is "inhumane" and child rapist Jerry Sandusky's case.

An "inhumane result," as even the Georgia Supreme Court figured out, was Marcus Dixon's, where prosecutors won a conviction and a 10-year sentence on an 18-year-old charged with felony aggravated child molestation, rather than misdemeanor statutory rape, for having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend, and guess which one of the couple was white and which was African-American. Here, McQueary witnessed Sandusky raping a child in the shower in 2002, when Sandusky was 57 and his victim about 10. Sandusky remained unindicted for another 9 years and unconvicted until a year after that. Which is the "inhumane result" now?


Former president of Pennsylvania State University Graham "don't want to be inhumane, you understand" Spanier in 2003, 2 years after he learned that Jerry Sandusky was a child rapist but did not report the rape to police.

I've got a lot of friends and colleagues, and, you know, I'm not the president of a university with a very important football team, but I have to think that if I learned that a friend or colleague of mine were raping children, I'd report their ass to the police. But, hey, maybe that's a particular character trait of mine that explains why I've never been able to claw my way to the top of a Big 10 school with an endowment of over $1.5 billion (PDF). I've never been a law school professor, either.

Lynn and Sandusky parallels

As you may have heard, verdicts on 2 big cases just came down in Pennsylvania. While former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts ranging from inappropriate behavior to outright child rape, former Philadelphia Archdiocese cardinal's aide -- executive assistant, I guess -- William Lynn was convicted of just 1 count of child endangerment.

Both of these child predator cases involved decades of known criminal behavior and cover-ups ranging from negligent non-reporting to intentional hiding and destruction of documentation. The circumstances surrounding Sandusky's case include possible Clery Act violations, and more than one federal investigation is continuing. (Imagine Penn State losing its federal financial aid funding!) Lynn's case involved a list of abusers that the cardinal ordered destroyed but that one person, in a half-assed, ineffective gesture of minimal concern for the abused children, retained in a secret, locked location for years.

I bring up the Clery Act (text: flip down to subsection (f)) because it effectively makes school administrators "mandatory reporters" of campus crimes and creates a paperwork parallel between the Sandusky and Lynn cases. McQueary's statements to Paterno and the campus police guy should have gone onto paper and become part of the crime log and annual statistics, even if the head of campus police decided it didn't need to go to local law enforcement. And the list that Bevilacqua got should have gone to the parishes, not into a shredder as he ordered. I mean, let's be clear: Bevilacqua should have sent the list to law enforcement; but at the very least parish leadership should have had the information that they were being asked to welcome child rapists into their midst.

Here's Philadelphia D.A. and noted Catholic Seth Williams's take on the Lynn result:



("This should be a lesson, victims of sexual assault need to report the crime [to] law enforcement...not only to the institution that victimized them." Or, as The Onion put it, "Nation's 10-Year-Old Boys: 'If You See Someone Raping Us, Please Call The Police.'")

I'm not a fan of the victim-blaming phrasing in the first part of Williams's statement, but I agree with the overall message, and for both cases. In the face of obfuscation, denial, and vigorous legal defense of child abuse scandals in Massachusetts, Canada, Ireland, and Australia since the 1930s and earlier [1], pedophile priest victims and their advocates cannot reasonably conclude that the Church will ever go to the least trouble of trying to bring the abusers in its house to secular justice. But more than that, outside of church abuse situations, victims need to go to law enforcement way outside of their rapists' organizations. McQueary should have gone to the actual police, not the campus rent-a-cops, when he saw that nobody was looking to have Sandusky arrested for the child rape he witnessed and reported. Clearly, the campus cops are too intertwined with the school administration to act as disinterested law enforcement. I'm not saying that the Penn State campus police should be disbanded and replaced with local and state patrols, but I'm saying that the Penn State campus police should be disbanded and replaced with local and state patrols. What else do you do with a pile of cops whose response to a report of child rape is to ignore federal reporting requirements and merely ban the accused from a single facility?

Which was still better than the Church response. Here's my take on the parallels between the Lynn and Sandusky results:

If Penn State were the Philadelphia Archdiocese, Sandusky would have been quietly shipped parish to parish until he died (maybe in repentance), Paterno would have died peacefully in his sleep at home (oh, wait), and McQueary would have been a low-level church bureaucrat left to take the fall on a two-bit child endangerment conviction.

As one of the Sandusky victim parents said, no one wins. Because even that said, Penn State football will go on this fall and Paterno's estate is likely judgment-proof since the man met his own legal reporting duties, and the Vatican is continuing to hand out mealy-mouthed fake apologies and fight civil liability awards tooth and nail.

Maybe the Vatican wins.

What's killed me throughout both of these cases is the staggering number of people who knew what was going on and said nothing. Note that I don't say "must have known." I'm asserting that people actually knew that Sandusky was raping children and Lynn was a participant in Philadelphia archdiocesean cover-ups, and that these people didn't do anything. I wonder what really made McQueary so shaky and upset after he went to Paterno. Was it witnessing Sandusky raping a child in the shower, or was it having to be a whistleblower against a campus full of people who would riot and destroy property after Paterno was fired for failing to properly deal with (read: report, follow up, expose, fire) a child rapist in his organization?

And finally, if you were surprised that Sandusky's son is also a victim, you're part of the Penn State and Catholic Church problem. And that's not 20/20 hindsight. That's a reasonable interpretation of the facts when a man and his wife have no biological children but have adopted half a dozen boys and fostered other boys from a charity he founded for at-risk boys. (And the man fails a background check for an ordinary volunteer coaching job.) The parents I know who foster and adopt at-risk kids don't select by gender -- except for the molester who adopted my mom, choosing her specifically rather than the brother just a year older than her.

---

[1] Here, have some low-hanging fruit.

Pop quiz: Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board

Q: How many anonymous complaints about bottles of unregistered beers does it take for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to shut down three bars with no notice or opportunity to be heard?

A: One.

Q: How many murders, violent assaults, and non-anonymous complaints about noise, trash, and disorderly conduct does it take for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to shut down a bar?

A: Who knows?

Already this year, 12 people have been killed inside or directly outside of bars [in Philadelphia]. Only three had been killed at the same point last year.

With the increase in shootings, police districts have focused their attention on problem bars, especially at closing time.

But shuttering those truly troublesome bars is not something that happens quickly. It takes time, something that authorities blame on Pennsylvania's ineffective liquor laws.

Although police are forced to deal with numerous nuisance bars each weekend, the Public Nuisance Task Force - a unit of the District Attorney's Office - has shut down only three bars since 2008.

[ ... ]

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board can refuse to issue or renew a liquor license, but has no authority to close a bar.

The Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement investigates about 100 cases a month, said State Police Sgt. Bill LaTorre, but the bureau can only issue citations, conduct investigations and make arrests. An administrative-law judge can suspend or revoke a liquor license based on the citations brought against licensees by the bureau.

"The neighborhood has to be victimized for a matter of time in order for us to go into court," LaTorre said. "That's the system that's in place right now. The legislators need to look at the laws and update them. Until the law gets changed, nothing is going to change."

Clearly, the PLCB assigns more priority to enforcing paperwork in tony neighborhoods than to easing violent crime in sketchier ones.

Operation Rescue terrorists are targetting Pennsylvania

Domestic terrorist organization Operation Rescue, who did nothing to prevent the illegal charnel house run by Dr. Gosnell in West Philadelphia for over 30 years, has decided to target Pennsylvania now. Not soon, but now. They plan to do things like publish photos and addresses of practitioners and assistants -- and not in the hopes that you send the doctors a card at Christmas, because this is not an organization's purpose when its participants are called "foot soldiers."

Dr. Gosnell opened the Women's Medical Society in 1979. For 31 years, he performed illegal late-term abortions in filthy conditions, directing untrained and unlicensed assistants to treat women (long, graphic PDF). The result was permanent infertility of likely dozens of women, death for others, and infanticide of probably hundreds of near-term fetuses. He regularly treated minors without a parent's consent, and he would refuse to let women back out of the procedure if they changed their mind. Where was Operation Rescue all this time? By the time he was arrested, Gosnell was operating his clinic seven days a week. Why wasn't Operation Rescue there?

Now Operation Rescue is using the horrifying Gosnell tragedy to their own ends. But if they succeed, they won't end abortions. They'll simply end safe, legal abortions.

As Gosnell's practice proved, when abortions are too expensive, too far away, delayed because of state interference, or stigmatized in a woman's family or community, a woman will get an abortion anyway. If women can't get safe, compassionate care through Planned Parenthood or the other legal clinics in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, then supply will meet these women's demand, and other doctors and practitioners will work outside the law, without concerns for safety, and certainly without compassion to provide the abortions.

The way you prevent abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. If Operation Rescue truly wished to prevent abortions, they'd call upon their membership to step up contributions to Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide comprehensive sex education and reproductive healthcare to women. They'd adopt unwanted children and take in foster kids. Instead, they'll be unleashing their terroristic practices in Pennsylvania soon.

What will our elected leadership do? Senator Toomey (R) is a right-wing religious extremist who would imprison doctors who perform abortions (video). Governor Corbett has said he won't seek stricter anti-abortion laws in Pennsylvania solely because of the Gosnell clinic (PA Independent); but he is on record generally supporting the idea that abortions should be even harder to obtain in Pennsylvania than they already are (NRO). All this is to say, I don't see Corbett calling up the National Guard when the Operation Rescue terrorists get going.

Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics will be needing patient escorting personnel soon. If you have a spare couple of hours once per week, or just once per month, call your local clinic and ask about training for clinic defense. Like any other terrorist group, Operation Rescue is counting on fear, intimidation, and a lack of support for abortion patients to reach their goals. Clinic defense is about the best way to really put your money where your mouth is if you love, support, and trust women to make their own healthcare decisions for themselves.

Adventures in clinic defense: Introduction

Over the past 20-odd years, I've done a lot of feminist stuff. I drove a carload of pals down to D.C. for a big ol' gay rights march one spring. I organized a contingent to attend a big ol' women's rights march a decade later. I spent much of my 20s honing my socialist feminist worldview by dabbling in Radical Women, the Freedom Socialist Party, and unshaven legs. Later, when my daughter asked me how her new baby cousin got into her auntie in the first place, I explained it by reading the relevant sections in Our Bodies, Ourselves with her. I put myself through law school as a single mom. And while I was in law school, I counseled women seeking protection from abuse orders and minor women who were stuck having to seek permission from a judge to get an abortion.

It's been a little while since I've put my money where my mouth is, and with the inauguration of our new governor I'm living in a red state now; so I recently started doing clinic defense for an abortion provider in the Philadelphia area. When patients arrive at the clinic, I offer to walk with them to the front door, help them with a newspaper if the protestors are taking photographs, and remind them that they don't have to take any pamphlets that protestors may try to shove into their hands. And I keep an eye on the protestors to make sure they're staying off of clinic property and stuff. It's a two-fold thing: one, it's about enforcing the F.A.C.E. Act; but more importantly, it's about making sure that women get full access to complete healthcare. (News flash: Not all clinic patients who arrive during termination procedure hours are getting abortions. Some -- perhaps many -- are there for regular reproductive health visits like pap smears, or STI screening and counseling, or other reasons.) Abortion is healthcare and when women cannot control this part of their healthcare they do not have full control over their destiny. A million American women get an abortion every year, and I aim to help.

Clinic defense can be scary, so I'm not going to reveal any details that would give away where and when I'm volunteering: addresses, weather conditions that day, the number of protestors or what they looked like or what organization they were from, and so on. I'll aim to post my reports a little randomly, too, so that it's not clear what day of the week or what time of day I was there. But randomness and vagueness aside, I hope you'll enjoy the posts as much as I hope to enjoy my stint defending the clinic as a patient escort.

Election redux: welcome to bloody red Pennsylvania

So it's come to pass, now that the election is done and gone, that Pennsylvania is a red state. Here at Glomarization's homestead, that means one thing (well, of course it means a lot of things, but it means one huge thing in this household): we've gotta start seriously looking out for the right of women in Pennsylvania, and in the rest of the nation, to choose abortion when they want it.

Reproductive healthcare is healthcare. It's a subcategory of healthcare; it's not an entity on its own, like personal finance, or housecleaning, or anything else you'd hire a service provider for. Health insurance companies may say, essentially, that your teeth and eyes aren't part of your body, by not providing dental and optical coverage with their insurance policies; but they can't say the same thing about your uterus and ovaries. This is because reproductive healthcare is not a separate, carved-out part of women's health and bodies. It is fundamentally part of their daily lives. For the vast majority of women between the ages of about 15 and 45 -- or for about a third or half of their lifetime -- every single month there is an uncertainty. Am I pregnant, or did I dodge the bullet again this month? (Or the other side of the coin: did we manage to get pregnant this time, or will we be trying again?) Did I replace the spare pad in my purse after I used the last one a few weeks ago? Will I get a good roll of the dice when I schedule my week down the shore next year, or will I end up sitting on the sand in a pair of shorts? Why did I have to get my driver's license photo (or work ID, or school portrait) taken this week, when I have blemishes all over my chin from PMS?

Or less universal, but still very frequent, questions: How many days of work will I miss this month because of my debilitating cramps? Will I need another D & C for the fibroids that keep coming back? Why doesn't my state insurance commissioner require my health insurance provider to cover my pills? And is that a stroke I feel coming on from taking the Pill and smoking this cigarette at the same time?

I'm listing this stuff lightheartedly, but questions, concerns, and thoughts related to our reproductive healthcare are frequently on our minds, to one degree or another. For some of us, these thoughts are constantly on our minds. Why? Because our reproductive health and our overall health are so intimately intertwined that they are really the one and the same thing.

Republican extremist Senator-elect Pat Toomey would imprison doctors who perform abortions (video). At least he's somewhat intellectually honest: if abortion is murder, then abortion doctors are criminals. But you can't have an abortion without a woman who gets it, so she must therefore be an accomplice to the "crime" and should be in prison, too -- if you're being fully intellectually honest. And let's be clear: that would be a million American women per year.

A woman who cannot choose what to do about her reproductive health -- which is not an aspect of our overall health, but is integral to our overall health -- is not in full control of her destiny. When an American Senator would imprison women for obtaining healthcare, one million of them every year or a third of all American women over the course of their childbearing years, we have a problem in this country.

Time for vacation planning

Winter's clearly over; hot weather is here; oil is pouring into the Gulf of Mexico at an unstoppable, mind-boggling rate; city Dumpsters are detectable by odor a good half-block before they can be seen; and one's thoughts turn to the so very tempting idea of getting the hell out of Dodge.

It would be easier to plan a vacation if I had more paying work kicking around.

I think a long weekend up in the hills is not out of order, anyway. I'm thinking July in the Laurel Highlands, mostly because I really like saying "Youghiogheny."

Best court summary so far this year: DUI case in Commonwealth Court

From The April 5, 2010, Pennsylvania Bar News:

Marone v. DOT, No. 826 C.D. 2009 (Jan. 5, 2010) -- Reasonable grounds to believe licensee operating vehicle under influence of controlled substance when officer finds him passed out in driver's seat, slumped over center console with head inside fast food bag on passenger seat, and, upon reviving licensee, finds him belligerent, violent, having trouble standing and exhibiting bloodshot eyes and badly slurred speech, with contents of three open pill bottles strewn about interior of vehicle.

Since this is only a squib, I don't know the full story behind the result in this decision. But it looks to me like some truly zealous advocacy on the part of the licensee's lawyer.

"Franklin & Marshall" fashion from Italy

An Italian fashion house has created a line of "Franklin & Marshall MCMIC" branded casualwear. It has nothing at all to do with the college in Lancaster (1787), though. The designers apparently just thought it looked nicer than and would compete favorably against Abercrombie & Fitch. According to the company's website, the clothes are "inspired by the American Vintage College spirit" found at literally old-school institutions like F&M.

I gotta get me one of their "DELAWARE BEACH PENNSYLVANIA Franklin and Marshall Swim Champ 87" t-shirts. I'd provide a link but the site is all Flash and I can't gank an image or even give you the URL to their catalog -- which they call a "workbook," keeping with the American university theme.

"Give Barack a Day"

As part of my continuing effort to embody the extremist Christian right's worst nightmare -- I'm a radical feminist, atheist single mom putting myself through law school -- I'll be doing legal voter protection this Tuesday. I've been assigned to a polling place in West Philadelphia, in a neighborhood where the university students are urged not to try to find an apartment. I had considered bringing a bottle of champagne with me, as Mithras says he'll be taking to his assigned polling place, but my assignment is at a Methodist church.

Darn Methodists. Maybe I'll bring a bottle of that Martinelli's sparkling apple juice instead.

But my point, and I do have one, is that you don't have to be a lawyer, like Mithras (speaking of the extremist Christian right's worst nightmare), or a law student, like myself, to help get Senator Obama elected president. Anyone with a sturdy pair of shoes, a somewhat pleasant phone demeanor, or a sofabed can help. Please give Barack Obama a day of your time before or on Election Day, and let's make history. Obama is leading mightily in Pennsylvania polling right now, but that's an accurate prediction only if we get out the vote and monitor the polling places for shenanigans on Tuesday.

Senator Obama in Chester, Penna., on Tuesday

From my inbox this morning:

Change We Need Rally with Barack Obama

Widener University Main Quad
One University Place
Chester PA 19013

Public Entrance off of E 17th St

Tuesday, October 28th
Doors Open: 8:00 a.m.
Program Begins: 10:00 a.m.

This event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required; however, an RSVP is strongly encouraged.

For security reasons, do not bring bags or umbrellas. Please limit personal belongings. No signs or banners permitted.

"Hiding Behind Subordinates"

Mithras has provided a thoughtful and detailed explanation of how the national McCain campaign bears more responsibility than they'll admit for the recent "local young, white, female McCain supporter beat up by scary black Obama supporter" hoax:

To sum up, the McCain campaign and the Republican party in Pennsylvania have implied that a vote for Obama is a vote for Hitler, and that black Obama supporters will beat, sexually assault, and mutilate McCain supporters. They have done it in a way that leaves all the heat on local operatives, and insulates the national campaign.

And wraps up:

The best part: I predict McCain will drop 5 points in the polls here over the weekend.

Tom Ridge: Palin is causing McCain to lose Pennsylvania

If you ask Tom Ridge, former governor of Pennsylvania and first head of the Department of Homeland Security, the GOP would be winning the Commonwealth right now if only Senator McCain had picked Ridge as his vice presidential running mate. According to Ridge, McCain "had several good choices" but instead opted for Governor Palin in a "typical[ly] bold McCain-like choice." And the result? Today, Quinnipiac reports Senator Obama ahead 53% to 40%.

Sen. Obama is no longer the candidate of the young, the well-educated and minorities. He is now virtually the candidate of the "all." He is winning among all age groups in all three states. He wins women by more than 20 points in Ohio and Pennsylvania and is competitive among men in all three states. Whether voters went to college or not, they are voting for him.

So much for trying to get Senator Clinton supporters to knee-jerk vote for the female vice presidential candidate. Maybe Ridge will abandon the sinking GOP ship like so many other Republican rats and endorse Senator Obama now.