Strollerderby : minnesota

FOX Considers Staging Fake Kidnappings

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

A Minnesota FOX News affiliate is taking an intensely hands-on approach to reporting the news. To answer the question, “How easy is it to abduct a child?,” Fox 9 News planned to…try to abduct children. Reporters were going to drive around in an unmarked SUV and ask kids for directions. How’s that for hard-hitting investigative journalism?

I think they were planning to stop at the actual abduction part—kind of a, “You’re a candid camera!” type stunt—but I’ve been surprised many a time at how far FOX is willing to go in the service of the news (read: sensationalism and fear-mongering).

Fortunately, parents and school administrators have a lot more commonsense than the good folks who bring us the news. After FOX informed police of their intentions—the last thing these hard-working reporters need is to get arrested for kidnapping, after all—police sent a message to the local school. The principal, in turn, sent out an email to parents, which read, in part:

This message details information about a "news" story KMSP Fox 9 will be "creating". Thanks...

Molly Anderson of the Edina Police Department just informed the district that KMSP Fox 9 will be driving around Edina neighborhoods between 2:00-4:30 p.m. today to "ask children for directions." She indicated that the reporter, Trish Van Pilsim will be driving a 2004 silver Ford Explorer or Expedition.

The police indicated while there is nothing illegal with this, they do not endorse this activity.

As you can imagine, the parents of Edina did not endorse this activity either, and they flooded FOX with complaints, succeeding in getting the station to abandon the story.

Thank goodness. I don’t even want to imagine how terrifying it would be for a child to be approached by a stranger in a truck on his way home from school. Not to mention that trying to abduct a kid, then saying, “Just kidding! We’re actually the news,” is not the best way to instill stranger safety in children. FOX News, ever heard of a little story called The Boy Who Cried Wolf?

Image: Fox 9 News

FOX News Hates Kids In Political Videos--Except When They Don't

Responsible Parenting Law is Unconstitutional

JeanneSager — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:01:00 GMT

Can I hear an Amen from every writer of "Bad Parent" here on Babble?

Oh wait, I'm part of that contingent - so AAAAAMEN!

A law passed by Davenport, Iowa that would have made it illegal to be an "irresponsible parent" (close enough) was taken to the courts by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa, and has now been deemed unconstitutional because it was "is overbroad and denies due process rights."

You think?

The law would have required parents to be sent a strict letter of admonishment the first time their child was caught committing a crime or even breaking the town curfew. The worse their kids got, the harder the penalties levied against the parents would be, including fines and mandatory parenting classes.

I was an all around pretty good kid with parents who did some pretty heavy supervision. But on occasion (very rare, of course!), I screwed up royally. Would you blame my parents? No - blame me, I was the idiot. It's no wonder kids take little responsibility for their actions - first their parents hire lawyers to fight the big mean teacher that gave them a B and now the government is willing to pass the buck on to mom and dad.

I'm glad to see this one knocked down, but Lisa Belkin of the Motherlode pointed out in a recent column that there are a fair amount of attempts still in the works to bully parents into being good at their "jobs" with legal threats. North Dakota parents face fines if their kids skip school, Minnesota parents can't smoke in cars with kids.

Do you think the laws can ever really change bad parents into good ones? Or will more laws simply mean more bad parents sitting in jails?

Image: Zazzle

Babble Podcast for January 12, 2009

Brett Singer — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:24:00 GMT

Here is the eighth Babble Podcast.

You can either listen right here

or download the MP3 file by clicking here.

On today's episode:

1. Quick news update:
- Barack Obama is a celebrity? How about Bristol Palin?
- Al Franken won – maybe.
- The Jets didn’t make the playoffs, which is worse than the Giants losing to the Eagles. Not much worse. But worse.
2. The Week in Blog
- A six-year-old driving to school alone, extra nipples, and Jett Travolta.
3. Comment of the Week
- Nobody ever claps for parents. Today, we fix that.
4. The Last Word
- The Wii Fit lets me work out in my living room, away from the freaks at the gym.

Notes on this podcast:

Songs parodied:
- The Knack, My Sharona

Songs mangled:
- Led Zeppelin, Immigrant Song

Posts mentioned:

Parents Wait a Decade to Report Missing Child

Six-Year-Old Drives Himself to School After Missing Bus

Mom-to-Be Has Two Vaginas, Two Uteruses

Tripp Palin's Name Explained

Extra Nipples, Anyone?

Yup, This is a Fairy Door

Sasha Obama Brought Something Ugly To School

Update: John Travolta Son's Death Details & Statements

John Travolta's Son Dies

Funeral For Jett Travolta In Ocala

Stuff You Never Thought You'd Say -- Winter Edition

UPDATE: Kid Kissing A Pig - The Musical

Should Homeschooling Parents Be Certified?

Mom Saves Kids From Sinking SUV

More News About Missing Child Adam Herrman

Past Podcasts:

Babble Podcast for December 15, 2008

Babble Podcast for December 8, 2008

Babble Podcast for November 24, 2008

Babble Podcast for November 17, 2008

Breaking News: Senator Franken Certified

Shannon LC Cate — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:45:00 GMT

The MInnesota Canvassing Board has certified the results of the 2008 senatorial race. That is, they have certified that AlFranken got the most votes. The incumbant senator, Norm Coleman has seven days to file a lawsuit challenging Franken's win. He plans to do so. Until the issue is resolved, a winner will not be certified and until a winner is certified, he can't be seated in the Senate. Sorry Minnesota, I guess the fat lady is still warming up!

Babysitter Made Pornographic Film With 2 Year Old

Brett Singer — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 19:45:00 GMT

This is a really hard one to write. It's basically every parent's worst nightmare, or at least one of them. Actually, it probably can't really be called your worst nightmare since that implies the thought would have actually occurred to you.

Basically, 23-year-old Aaron Jay Lemon of Little Canada, Minnesota ran an ad on Craig's List looking for a job as a babysitter. He was hired by a St. Paul couple to watch their 2 year old. Then he made pornographic videos with the child.

The one positive seems to be that Lemon pleaded guilty, so there won't be a trial. I know that's not much of consolation but with a story like this, I'll take what I can get.

This happened back in 2007, and it appears that Lemon was exchanging child pornographic videos with someone else, which led to an investigation and his eventual arrest. He lived with his mother, who had no comment for the press.

There's also a very scary quote from Erin Hammill, the owner of a company called Above and Beyond Nannies. "There is no way that you can tell a sex offender. You don't just trust…But if you checked four references, you would have a sense of who they're dealing with." Her company checks pretty thoroughly – "10 character references, five employer references", a credit check, and more. Hammill went on to say, "I think that people are using Craig's List because the economy is so poor…But no one should use Craig's List for a baby-sitter. That's just playing the victim role. That's like saying, 'Oh my gosh, I'm walking down a dark alley, and I'm carrying my life savings in my wallet.' "

I tend to agree, although I don't know that I could muster up a scolding if I were talking directly to the parents who just experienced this horror. (As far as I know, Hammill just gave a quote to a reporter and wasn't speaking specifically to the parents of the 2 year old.)

"There is no way that you can tell a sex offender." That definitely got to me.

Again, the one teeny little positive thing here is that the guy is caught, pled guilty, and will go to jail. The maximum sentence is 30 years. That doesn't seem like enough.

Source: TwinCities.com

Rite Aid Says They Will Stop Selling Expired Baby Products

Toddler Dies Suddenly 10 Days after MMR Vaccination

No Worker's Comp For Son of Woman Murdered

Chicago Woman Lived With Dead Siblings For 20 Years

Would You Give Gifts Bought At Wal-Mart Where Man Died?

Grown Kids Try Forcing Dad To Divorce Second Wife In Court

High School Student in Hospital After Scavenger Hunt

Ad Against Al Franken is Comic Book About Rape, Porn

JeanneSager — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:51:00 GMT

Hey kids, want to read about rape and porn? Thanks to Minnesota Republicans (via Gawker), now your kids can check out cartoony pictures of a little girl and her puppy alongside slams against former SNL star Al Franken.

It’s not hard to see how kids would pick up the mailer, sent out to on behalf of Norm Coleman, Franken’s opponent in the Minnesota Senate race. The drawings are all in cartoon form, with a rendering of a little girl with pigtails and a doggy’s face . . . right next to a “warning” that Franken “has written so-called comedy routines about raping women.”

The opening page of the leaflet shows a charicature of Franken poking his head out from behind a door. The inscription on the door reads, “Come on in kids . . . Senator Franken’s going to tell a few jokes.”

We get it, he’s supposed to be a pedophile inviting kids over for a little inappropriate content a la late night TV comedy.
Except the comic book-like brochure, with the words “come on in kids,” was distributed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. They’re throwing words like “raping” and “pornographic” around like fearmongering is going out of style.

So the kid who just learned to sort the mail and grabs the magazine that came just for them can get a taste of comedy Republican-style. And the horrified parent who hears them sounding out, “por, por, porna, porna . . . pornographic,” can vote Democrat this year.

Images: Gawker

GOP Shows Obama With Fried Chicken and Watermelon

Hey Sarah Palin, Make Your Kids Go to School

Anti-Palin Ad Targets Parents With Teenage Rape Victim's Plea

Is Mandy Moore Being a Homophobe or a Normal Daughter?

Tape of Ten-year-old's Death Released by Police Department

North Carolina to become Home of a Radical Homosexual Agenda?

Fugitive Mom Comes Back To Face the Court

Amy Kuras — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 23:01:00 GMT

Reading the story of Holly-Ann Collins this week, I was struck by the old cliché that there are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth.

This much is not in dispute: That Collins and her three children fled the country in 1994, and have lived in the Netherlands since. There was a warrant out for her arrest because she unlawfully left the country with her kids, defying the custody order that placed the children with their father.

Collins’ daughter backs up her account: that the children’s father was abusive, and battered her and their children. Collins claims the court was hoodwinked by her ex husband into believeing that she had turned the children against them – the same “parental alienation” defense Alec Baldwin is currently using to justify his bad behavior.

According to her, the children were ordered by the authorities to not show their mother the bruises inflicted by their father, and they would leave her secret notes inside books asking her “Help us.”

Meanwhile, the father accused her of having Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, in which a parent fabricates diseases in their children.

Then, inspired by another case, Collins tried to get her children (the youngest of whom was fathered by another partner after her divorce and was an infant when she fled) to New Zealand. They were stopped at a layover in Amsterdam, and Collins approached the military police there asking for asylum.

She was able to convince them that she and the children would be in grave danger if she returned home, and she says she was granted asylum by Dutch authorities. Only problem is, the Dutch government says that never happened.

In the Netherlands, Collins apparently adopted several children she met while staying in a refugee camp, started a new relationship, and was roundly hated by her neighbors, one of whom tipped off the FBI after seeing a wanted poster of her and the children. She pled guilty to contempt of court in Minnesota this week, saying she only had contempt for a court that failed to protect her and her children.

I just don’t know what to believe here. Thoughts?

Mixed Messages On Mercury

Amy S.F. Lutz — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:31:00 GMT

Last month, two states passed two very different laws involving mercury. Minnesota became the first state in the country to ban the use of mercury in all cosmetics - even those that conform to federal mercury standards. New Jersey also had groundbreaking legislation - only what that new law mandated was the injection of mercury into each and every preschooler in the state.

The flu shot is the last vaccine that still uses thimerosol, a mercury based preservative. On December 14, the New Jersey State Health Commissioner approved a measure requiring preschoolers to get a flu shot every year. Although there are thimerosol-free versions of the flu vaccine, those generally have to be special ordered, so children whose parents don't specifically ensure otherwise will be dosed with mercury on an annual basis. And mercury accumulates in the body over time, so even though the amount in each shot is small, it will add up over time.

Mercury is a toxin that's been implicated in the development of Alzheimer's disease, and more recently, autism. And even if you think the whole autism - thimerosol theory is a lot of hooha, it's still relevant to note that mercury is so poisonous that Minnesotans don't want it in their mascara. As Minnesotan state senator John Marty, who sponsored the bill, noted, "Mercury does cause neurological damage to people even in tiny quantities . . . Every source of mercury adds to it. We wanted to make sure it wasn't here."

Amazing! Kids Don't Prefer Junk Food After All!

Karen Murphy — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 00:04:00 GMT

Hey, you know all those studies saying that kids don't know their asses from a Big Mac and that they'd rather eat said Big mac than a plateful of broccoli? And the conventional "wisdom" that says kids would rather eat fat and that to make healthy school meals for kids would just cost too much so why bother because kids won't eat it?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

At least, wrong according to another! new! study!

(And I'll bet also wrong according to what goes on in your kitchens and dining rooms).

Yep, a University of Minnesota study has found that school lunch sales don't decline when healthier meals are served, and that more nutritious lunches don't necessarily cost schools more to produce. Wow, rocket science! Amazing! And true: good food doesn't necessarily cost more than junk (unless you're talking organic free-range meats or wild-caught fish, and somehow I don't think we're talking those in the same sentence as "school lunches").

But some people need a study in order to believe things, so this is for them.

5 years of data for 330 Minnesota school districts were studied, and in the end everybody agreed that the schools serving the healthiest meals had no drop in demand. Which totally proves the old phrase "if you put it in front of them, they'll eat it." (which works in most cases)

And, it was found that the healthy food didn't cost any more in the long run than the junk: labor costs to prepare it were higher but the cost of the raw materials of real food versus processed junk was lower. And schools opting to start serving healthier meals will have to train staff to actually cook rather than open bags of frozen stuff, but all in all it's a good deal for Minnesota kids. And I hope it catches on.

Custody Court Tells Mom to Stop Breastfeeding Toddler

Karen Murphy — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 16:50:00 GMT

A custody court is telling a Minnesota mom that she must stop breastfeeding her 15-month old toddler because of the medications she takes for migraines, complications from an auto accident, and sleep problems. While the pharmocopeia ingested by nursing mom Christa Burton is certainly an issue, what concerns me more is that her behavior is being examined more closely simply because she's involved in a custody dispute of son Carter, born 6 weeks premature, and that a court is telling a mother what she can and cannot do.

If presumably Christa and her doctor checked out her meds (I was unable to find much on them other than discovering at Kellymom that her sleep medication, Ambien, is considered "generally regarded as safe" by the AAP), then what's the big deal? It seems to me that the medication issue may be being used as an excuse to cover the fact that the court has discomfort with a mother breastfeeding a toddler.

In my own custody court experience, the need to continue nursing my then-two-year-old was questioned, and the trend there seemed to reflect society's discomfort with breastfeeding older children. I wasn't ordered to cease but would have been if he hadn't weaned at about that time anyway. Certainly my son's developmental need to remain connected with me through nursing wasn't considered important. In Christa Burton's case, breastfeeding was recommended because of son Carter's delays due to being born prematurely.

So which is it? The medication issue or the toddler issue?

Minnesota Getting Tougher on Would-be Foster Parents

Karen Murphy — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 18:04:00 GMT

Hey! Want to help out one of the almost 15,000 Minnesota kids needing foster care? Well, get your fingerprints ready...those wishing to become foster parents in Minnesota are about to have a much tougher time of it if the new requirements that are being proposed go through. The changes, part of a $1.2 million-a-year overhaul of the foster parent system, are being proposed partly to comply with federal standards designed to keep sexual offenders from preying on children. Lest you think that the Land of Garrison Keillor is rife with child molestors who become foster parents, apparently only 1/10th of one percent of Minnesota foster kids were found to have been sexually abused in 2005. That's obviously 1/10th of one percent too many for the children tragically involved, but statistically is insignificant and certainly doesn't warrant the new changes which are said to not be enough to have flagged a warning in the recent case of Perry Wayne Pfitzer who has pleaded not guilty to molesting his two foster daughters, ages 4 and 6, last summer, and became a foster parent despite a 1982 indecent exposure conviction. So why these sweeping changes, keeping a new team of about a dozen workers busy checking records and requiring fingerprints even from family members who wish to foster, while forcing kids into shelters while they await the results of this laborious process?

Because anybody who's ever been sexually abused knows how helpless it makes you and everyone around you feel. But throwing legislation at the problem isn't going to make it go away, and my fear is that good people who truly have the best interests of children at heart may be scared away by the new regulations, leaving children without homes.

No-Name Calling Week Draws Ire of Homophobic Parents

Patti — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:14:00 GMT

Thirty miles south of the site of the third largest annual celebration of GLBT pride in the country, a few parents protested an anti-bullying event sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network. It's not that these Farmington, Minnesota parents are in favor of bullies, no sirree ("We understand that's a problem," says parent Michael Keifer). What they're against is the association with homosexuality, however indirect and vague. Because even thirty miles south of one of the gay-friendliest cities in the nation, there are still people who think that good information is tainted if it comes from a source with different values.

No Name-Calling Week is a week-long program GLSEN developed with publishing company Simon & Schuster, which helps schools open dialogue with students about bullying of all types. The parents in Farmington who oppose the program claim that their opposition is completely due to GLSEN's involvement. "We believe that the needs of the students would be better served by the ... program being conducted independent of involvement with an agenda-specific group such as GLSEN", as Justine Jacobsen puts it. GLSEN's "agenda", for what it's worth, is to strive "to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression". Why, I am ~~just shocked and appalled~~ not seeing the problem here.

To their credit, Farmington administrators responded to the homophobic parents with surprise and a bit of eyerolling. "We're not sure why it matters who came up with the good idea," said principal Barbara Duffrin. The program continued as scheduled.

In Minnesota, Child Support Will Be Determined By Both Parents' Incomes

thezeroboss — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 12:04:00 GMT

And yea and verily was there much rejoicing amongst the future non-custodial parents of Minnesota, who are getting a belated gift from St. Nick on January 1st. As of 2007, all new child support cases in the state will be calculated on both parents' income. In the past, Minnesota (like most states) based child support only on the income of the non-custodial parent.

The article in the Winona Daily News has an open comments thread, with parents on both sides of the aisle spouting off about the change. It's hard to gather a consensus from the thread as many of those commenting, sadly, are morons, but it seems that opinion is fairly split, with some custodial parents arguing that their deadbeat spouse shouldn't get a "break" on support when she has all the burden of child care. Which is a fair cop: if a dad, for example, doesn't ever see his kids or take an active role in raising them, why offset the bastard's support? Hell, make him pay double for the luxury of being able to take an uninterrupted bubble bath!

Good thing I never became a family court judge. I'd be shot dead before my first term expired.