Scared to Death

by Allison Kasic
August 28, 2008, 10:55am

The Chilling Effect recently posted part one (hopefully that means we'll get a part 2?) of an interview with Christopher Booker and Richard North about their fab book Scared to Death.  Check it out here.

The blog also recently gave a shout out to Michelle Bernard's article in the Washington Examiner about climate change.

I'll Second That

by Allison Kasic
August 28, 2008, 10:53am

From Grace Marie Turner via the Wall Street Journal:

The slide toward a government-dominated, taxpayer-supported health sector will continue unless the 45.7 million Americans who don't have insurance now are given more opportunities to buy private coverage.

States could help by lightening their regulatory burdens to encourage greater competition for more attractive and affordable coverage. The federal government needs to do its part by updating today's tax policies to better fit a mobile, 21st-century economy.

More here.

Duke Lacrosse Rape Accuser Gets Book Deal

by Allison Kasic
August 27, 2008, 9:23am

Details here.

What's next, a book deal for Mike Nifong?

More on Title IX and the Olympics

by Allison Kasic
August 27, 2008, 9:22am

Phyllis Schlafly weighs in over a Townhall.com with a good column on the subject.  As Phyllis points out, in many ways U.S. athletes won in spite of Title IX, not because of it.  Take gymnastics and wrestling for example: 

Title IX regulations have forced educational institutions to eliminate men's teams until the number of men and women on sports teams is the same ratio as the number of men and women enrolled in academic classes. In the numerous colleges that are now 60 percent female in academic enrollment, Title IX requires that men's teams be eliminated until only 40 percent of the athletes are men.

Title IX quotas have caused the elimination of all but 19 men's college gymnastics teams. This deprives boys of the scholarship incentive to take up gymnastics as a sport in high school and takes away the competition needed to improve their skills in college.

The effect of this injustice hit us hard in Beijing. The Chinese (who are not restricted by feminist nonsense) destroyed our men's gymnastics team and won seven out of eight gold medals, while our men's gymnastics team failed to win a single gold medal in eight events.

Then there is men's freestyle wrestling, a sport that the United States had repeatedly dominated at the Olympics. Over the years, we had won a very high percentage of medals in wrestling.

But Title IX's gender quotas have forced the elimination of 467 wrestling teams from our colleges. This has nothing to do with lack of funding, since wrestling is one of the most inexpensive of sports, it's due to feminist ideology that demands eliminating macho sports in order to meet the foolish Title IX quotas.

The devastating outcome in the 2008 Olympics was predictable. America won only one medal...

More here.

Video of Sex Tourism and Trafficking

by Halima Karzai
August 26, 2008, 12:42pm

Shared Hope International, a organization that actively works to fight human trafficking has an extraordinary documentary featuring investigative footage of the dark and hidden world of sex traffickers, pimps and buyers. DEMAND. exposes the men who buy commercial sex, the vulnerable women and children sold as commodities, and the facilitators of the sale within the marketplace of exploitation.

Click here to view either the 45-minute or 16-minute condensed version of the documentary. 

Podcast Alert: Paycheck Fairness Act

by Stacy Chin
August 26, 2008, 12:04pm

Allison Kasic and Amy Watson discuss the Paycheck Fairness Act and discrimination in the workplace.

LISTEN HERE!

Union Disses Students

by Allison Kasic
August 26, 2008, 10:51am

Exploiting students and secret backroom deals -- just business as usual for the Service Employees International Union.  Get the scoop here.

Missing the Point on Title IX

by Allison Kasic
August 26, 2008, 9:40am

Check out this jab at Title IX reformers in Sally Jenkins' WaPost column about the U.S. women's basketball team:

The next time some fool argues that Title IX should be rewritten, just show them the highlights of the U.S. women's basketball team at this Olympics, and of Lisa Leslie in particular. Twelve years of playing for her country, not a single loss and four gold medals. Think she was worth the funding?

Just three short sentences, but, wow, there so much wrong in there.  According to Jenkins, Title IX reformers are "fools" who don't want to fund women's athletics.  Sophomoric jabs aside, Jenkins completely misses the point when it comes to Title IX reform.  Other than scholarship money, Title IX makes no demands on schools in terms of athletic funding.  But it does regulate the number of participants, through it's proportionality requirement.  Schools are forced to adapt their programing to this one-size-fits-all quota system and the results have been a mixed bag.  As Jenkins alludes to, many female athletes have thrived in the post-Title IX world.  But many men haven't had that same opportunity to succeed because their programs have been cut to meet the demands of proportionality. 

I don't think it's at all foolish to ask that Title IX's enforcement mechanisms be reformed to allow both sexes to prosper.

“Violence against women is the fastest-growing crime in India”

by Halima Karzai
August 25, 2008, 4:39pm

In India, an increase in opportunities for women appears to also be drawing an increase in violence against them.  The Washington Post reports:

Chaudhry is one of the brightest students in her working-class district. But since several local men started following her to class, she sometimes stays home now. She has friends who have been raped or are constant victims of "Eve teasing," when men on the street spew lewd comments or aggressively paw women's bodies.

"We thought opportunities were getting better for young Indian women. But the harassment only seems to be getting worse," Chaudhry said, as friends gathered at a recent "self-respect and self-esteem session" held by the nonprofit Smile Foundation.

For India's middle-class urban women, the past decade has brought unprecedented opportunities to advance in a social order long dominated by men. But a powerful male backlash has accompanied the women's revolution, an upwelling of resentment that has expressed itself in sexual violence and harassment.

Read full article here.    

The Olympic Pipeline

by Allison Kasic
August 25, 2008, 2:06pm

Finally, someone notices the affect Title IX is having on the Olympic sports pipeline:

The U.S. won more medals here than it has in any nonboycotted Olympics, but even with that haul, its days of dominance may be numbered.

That is in part because U.S. colleges, the primary breeding ground for the country's Olympians, have eliminated hundreds of teams in Olympic sports in recent years.

"We used to have a lot of kids going for the Olympic dream," says Scott Barclay, coach of the men's gymnastics team at Arizona State University. "Without the carrot of a college scholarship, a lot of kids give up, or their parents won't support them as much," he says. Mr. Barclay took out a personal loan several years ago to build a private gym as a way to keep his team alive as a club sport after ASU cut the varsity program.

More here.

Encouraging News on School Choice

by Allison Kasic
August 25, 2008, 10:15am

Adam Schaeffer points to polling numbers indicating widespread support of education tax credits.

State Projects Might Create Jobs, But They Don't Create Wealth

by Allison Kasic
August 22, 2008, 9:30am

Read and learn.

Who's Looking Out for the Boys?

by Allison Kasic
August 22, 2008, 8:28am

That's the question on Clarence Page's Page's mind:

...what's happening to the guys, especially the underachievers piling up at the bottom end of the grading and test scores?

While some boys' scores have never looked better, others could hardly be doing worse. The days of fretting over lagging girls' achievement have faded into a "boy crisis" headlined on the covers of Time and Newsweek and numerous new books.

Stories and statistics describe unmotivated, easily distractible boys who are falling behind in test scores, forgetting their homework or, when they finish it, forgetting to turn it in -- or unable to find it in their disorganized backpacks.

When their grades slip back and their adolescent concepts of manhood are crushed, they would retreat to video games or even less productive escapes, rather than ask for help.

These problems are particularly acute for black males, judging by studies like the recent report on dropouts by the Schott Foundation for Public Education, an educational think tank in Cambridge, Mass. It found that fewer than half of black male students across the country are graduating from high school.

More here.

IWF on boys in education here.

Title IX at JMU

by Allison Kasic
August 21, 2008, 1:07pm

The push to reinstate 10 sports teams took a hit in court yesterday.

Alarmist Predictions Won't Solve Climate Change

by Allison Kasic
August 21, 2008, 9:03am

Bjorn Lomborg explains.

Single-Sex Education in Kentucky

by Allison Kasic
August 21, 2008, 9:02am

I have an article in the current issue of the Christian Science Monitor about a lawsuit threatening single-sex education in Kentucky.   

Check it out here.

Pakistan: Friend or Foe?

by Allison Kasic
August 21, 2008, 8:58am

Halima Karzai and Delna Sepoy have a new piece on Pakistan's role in the war on terrorism.  Among other things, they urge the U.S. to have stronger mechanisms for accountabilty in regards to aid sent to Pakistan.  

Check out their article here.

New Student Fact Sheets

by Allison Kasic
August 20, 2008, 4:34pm

We've posted a few new fact sheets on the IWF campus page.  So, head on over to the campus corner to get the need to know info on:  

Title IX and Athletics  

The Wage Gap  

Women in STEM Fields (Students)  

Women in STEM Fields (Teachers)

13-year-old drinks bleach to escape marriage

by Halima Karzai
August 20, 2008, 2:11pm

Al-Arabiya reports:

A 16-year-old Saudi girl drank a bottle of bleach in an attempt to commit suicide to escape a forced marriage to a 75-year-old man, press reports revealed Sunday.

The girl identified only as, Shaikha, said her father was forcing her to marry the old man so that he could marry his 13-year-old daughter in an exchange deal, Bahrain's Tribune reported.

Shaikha described how her father took her to meet the old man and his 13-year-old in a marriage office where they all had pre-marital tests done, the Tribune quoted the Saudi Gazette as reporting.

Shaikha told the paper how she begged and pleaded not to be forced into marriage but both of the men ignored her pleas.

The 16-year-old appealed to the National Society of Human Rights to intervene and stop the marriage, the Tribune said, adding Shaikha, whose parents are separated, asked to live with her mother.

Shaikha's mother said she should be protected from her father and demanded the marriage contract be cancelled because Shaikha was threatened to marry the man, the paper said.

"Judges can punish men who force their daughters to marry like this," Sheikh Abdul Mohsin Al Obeikan, Shura Council member said, adding the marriage contract was void because it violated Shariah law, the Tribune reported.

Islamic law states that for a marriage to be legal both parties must consent. If a marriage is performed without consent or under coercion the union is considered void and must be annulled.

Paying Women to Take Science Classes

by Allison Kasic
August 20, 2008, 9:52am

While we debate whether or not to apply Title IX to STEM fields here in America, some universities in England are taking a different approach:  paying women to enroll in science classes.   

Hat tip: Texas Swimming

Finally

by Allison Kasic
August 20, 2008, 9:50am

From the WaPost:

A 66-year-old security guard whose lawsuit overturned the District's handgun ban is now officially authorized to keep a revolver in his Capitol Hill home.

Dick A. Heller was given his handgun registration certificate at D.C. police headquarters yesterday.

He applied for it last month, a few weeks after the June 26 landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling favoring gun-ownership rights, and he had been waiting for police to complete a background check.

Heller recently sued the city again, saying the registration rules adopted by the D.C. government after the ban was overturned are too cumbersome and violate the spirit and letter of the court's decision.

Podast Alert

by Stacy Chin
August 19, 2008, 11:30am

New IWF podcast with Amy Watson and Allison Kasic on gas prices and the push for increased domestic drilling.

LISTEN HERE!

Recreational Hook-ups or Emotional Hang-ups?

by Allison Kasic
August 19, 2008, 9:37am

Over in the Herald-Sun, IWF junior fellow Kylie Harrell takes on the hook-up culture at Duke University.  Check out her article here.

Putting Things in Perspective

by Allison Kasic
August 19, 2008, 9:31am

Investor's Business Daily has a great op-ed putting Exxon Mobil's recent record-breaking profits in perspective:

Though Exxon Mobil set a record for nominal profit, the oil industry isn't actually making the biggest profits.

In the first quarter of this year, the profit margin for oil companies was 7.4%. That trailed the electronic equipment industry (12.1%) and the pharmaceutical and medical industry (25.9%).

Last year, 63 industrial groups posted bigger profit margins than the oil industry.

Also obscured by the moaning over Exxon Mobil's profit is the fact that investors expected higher earnings from the company. After second-quarter profit was announced, the company's stock price fell almost 5% because of its disappointing performance.

That's not an aberration for this corporate behemoth that is ruining everyone's lives by selling them the gasoline they need.

Since May 20, less than a month after its first-quarter profit - then the fifth highest in history - was reported, Exxon Mobil stock has fallen 18%, from 94.56 to 77.45 at Thursday's close.

Falling stock prices aren't good news for Exxon Mobil shareholders, those average Americans trying to finance their futures, retirements and kids' educations. And with more than half of all Americans owning stock, that means millions are poorer when Exxon Mobil shares fall.

But in the eyes of the political class and media know-nothings, those invested in Exxon Mobil should be making less on their investments.

Read the whole article here.