AMAZING: PROTECTING CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIENS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROTECTING THE PUBLIC

Another government coverup of its own negligence and incompetence, basically -- with the judge in bed with the government

A federal District Court Judge has ruled that the privacy rights of illegal aliens convicted of heinous crimes in this country are more important than the public's right to know if the government is properly enforcing a key immigration law. Amazing as the ruling itself may be, what is even more stunning is the fact that U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Richard J. Leon was affirming the Bush administration's position in the case. President Bush nominated Leon in 2001 and the Senate confirmed him in February 2002.

Leon's Sept. 27 ruling was in response to an appeal by Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau of the Justice Department's refusal to make public information and data about thousands of aliens convicted of serious crimes in virtually every state. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are required by federal law to escort these criminals out of the country as soon as they are released from jail, but a 2002 investigation by Cox found hundreds who were released from Georgia jails but not deported. Despite having been convicted of crimes like murder, rape and armed robbery, the aliens who served time in Georgia jails were simply let go, free to roam the country and possibly commit more crimes.

Cox reporters Eliot Jaspin and Julia Malone knew the federal government reimburses local and state governments for much of their expenses in jailing convicted illegal aliens, so the journalists filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Justice Department, seeking names and other information about the released criminals. Justice refused, claiming release would violate the convicted aliens' privacy rights.

Cox appealed in 2003 because Jaspin and Malone believed, based on what they found in Georgia and the amount of money spent every year by Washington reimbursing lower level governments, that there could easily be thousands of cases across the country like that of convicted pedophile Miguel Angel Gordoba, who served a four-year sentence for molesting a 2-year-old girl in Alma, Ga., then disappeared following his release.

There are also concerns that there could be sleeper-cell terrorists among those released who came here in recent years and were subsequently convicted of crimes as they awaited orders to carry out their deadly plans.

Cox argued in its appeal, according to Judge Leon, that disclosure of the information would ". help determine whether governmental agencies are effectively communicating with each other in the management of the incarceration and removal of criminal aliens," and that "the public benefit of government oversight in this instance outweighs the privacy interests ." of the convicted aliens.

Leon's response? "I disagree." He held that "these privacy interests, and the privacy intrusion associated with disclosing this information clearly outweighs the public disclosure of this information." .....

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MORE UNPLEASANT FRUITS OF FEMINISM FOR BRITISH WOMEN

Millions of women now in their twenties face lives of loneliness as they enter middle age, according to new research. One in three will not be in a marriage or have a male partner by the time they hit their mid-forties, a Government forecast said. One in five will never have married. And many will face middle and old age with neither partner nor children and family to support them.

The projections of a bleak future for many women in the Bridget Jones generation were published by the Office for National Statistics. They showed that the chances for women of living out their lives as singletons are rising fast thanks to the decline of marriage and the growing popularity of cohabitation. Unlike marriages, cohabitations tend to last for only short periods. The ONS analysis shows that one in five women approaching their 50th birthday in the early 2030s will have known only short-term informal relationships. It said that 20 per cent of women aged between 45 and 50 in 2031 will never have married and will have no partner. Another 11 per cent will have divorced and will have no new male partner. At present, only 7 per cent of women aged 45 to 50 are classed as unmarried and without partners. Overall, only 22 per cent now live on their own in their late forties. Among all women over 16, more than four out of ten will have no partner. A quarter will never have married, and nearly one in five will be divorced and have no new partner.

Independent analysts said women themselves were to blame for the growth of loneliness among the middle aged. Jill Kirby of the Tory-leaning Centre for Policy Studies think tank said: "Many people will be lonely and unhappy because they have turned their backs on marriage. "Women are increasingly the victims and they will continue to be so." She added: "Women are accepting other forms of relationship which, with the best will in the world, are not lasting. We know cohabitations do not last very long. This means there will be a generation of women who risk losing the companionship of family and the financial security marriage used to provide. "The solution to this lies with women themselves. But a lot of the onus also lies with the Government, which has contributed heavily to this trend by removing support for marriage from the tax and benefit system."

The partnership projections show that 32 per cent of men in their late forties will also be without partners in the early 2030s. But middle-aged men are more likely to find new partners than women, and, unlike women, do not face an age bar on having children. According to the forecasts, by 2031 only 40 per cent of adult women will be married - while nearly as many, 39 per cent, will never have married. At present, more than half are married and fewer than a quarter have never married.

The tendency of people to forget marriage and live alone has been reinforced by Government policy, which says that marriage is a lifestyle choice no better than any other form of relationship. Married couples no longer get benefits in the tax system - while Gordon Brown's tax credit benefits have been shown to help mothers who live apart from their partners more than couples who stay together.

ONS figures, yet to be officially published, show that there are already 1.3million couples "living apart together" - they see themselves as couples but choose to live under different roofs.

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AUSTRALIAN WOMEN REJECT FEMINISM

When the television drama "Desperate Housewives" hit Australian screens earlier this year, feminist Anne Summers responded in characteristic fashion by slamming suburban values and full-time motherhood. The inner-city author of The End of Equality and Damned Whores and God's Police claimed in an interview that Australian women were "terrified" of conservative politicians pushing them out of the workforce and back into the "suburban stultification" of Kingswood country.

Research reported in The Australian this week shows that Dr Summers couldn't be more wrong. Not for the first time her views demonstrate a kind of elitism that shows contempt for the values of ordinary Australians, centred as they are around family, a home in the suburbs, the barbecue and cricket in the backyard. The research, drawn from Australia's Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, reveals that when it comes to family life in 2005, Australian women want to preserve a traditional family structure, derided by Dr Summers, with a husband as the breadwinner and a wife managing the role of homemaker and nurturer of children. According to Jan van Ours, the international researcher who presented the paper, Australian women want their men in full-time jobs and are happiest when they themselves work part-time, or not at all.

The "new radicalism" is how Susan Maushart labels the return of the homemaker in her recent book What Women Want Next. It's a slap in the face for a left-wing commentariat that hasn't updated its social agenda since the 1970s, a decade when the cultural cringe was in full swing and Australians were still turning their backs on suburbia down under to prove their worth overseas. While the latte set are still bemoaning the glass ceiling and insufficient childcare places, the HILDA study establishes that for most Australian women securing high-powered jobs and long days at the office is a low priority and that they are least satisfied when they work 50 hours a week. Women don't want to work more. Rather, middle Australia wants a work-family balance that combines family time with material advancement.

Just how out of step Dr Summers is with ordinary Australians becomes even more obvious in The End of Equality when she scoffs at a "breeding creed" in Australia that defines women foremost as mothers. With this prejudice in mind, two studies that illustrate women's continuing relish for motherhood make interesting reading. One, from Monash University's Centre for Population Research and Urban Planning, shows that while the rate of marriages is declining, the number of married women aged 35-39 with at least one child has not fallen from 85 per cent in almost 20 years. The second study, from the University of Adelaide, found that while education and career are important to the upcoming generation of women, the Year 11 and 12 girls involved in the study attach a similarly high value to marriage, children and achieving a balance between home and work.

It adds up to the kind of outlook described by London School of Economics sociologist Catherine Hakim, who is credited with influencing the direction of John Howard's family policies. Professor Hakim believes that a "one size fits all" approach is unrealistic. She says a minority of women are "work-centred" or "home-centred", while most women -- up to four in five -- mix jobs and family "without giving a fixed priority to either". Strongly pro-mother, she argues passionately for far greater social and financial recognition of the contribution mothers make. Spelling out her thesis to The Australian last year, she said that if policymakers wanted to stem the current "baby strike" they would have to drastically rethink the "dominant, taken-for-granted view that you don't need to pay women anything as a kind of compensation or reward for having a baby".

The fruits of Professor Hakim's impact on Australia were clear in research published this week that found the Howard Government's family-friendly policies are in large part responsible for our fertility rate rising last year for the first time in seven years. Australian National University demographer Peter McDonald said that increases in family payments -- including the $3000 baby bonus the federal Government introduced last year -- as well as community debate about women waiting too long to have children, were among factors behind the boost in the number of babies each Australian woman is expected to have, from 1.75 in 2000 to 1.77 last year.

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NOTE:

I put up a few posts on Tongue-Tied over the weekend that had some amusing bits in them