Miscellaneous News

The American Law Institute has decided to gut its death penalty framework by declaring it a failure:

The institute is made up of about 4,000 judges, lawyers and law professors. It synthesizes and shapes the law in restatements and model codes that provide structure and coherence in a federal legal system that might otherwise consist of 50 different approaches to everything.

In 1962, as part of the Model Penal Code, the institute created the modern framework for the death penalty, one the Supreme Court largely adopted when it reinstituted capital punishment in Gregg v. Georgia in 1976. Several justices cited the standards the institute had developed as a model to be emulated by the states.

The institute’s recent decision to abandon the field was a compromise. Some members had asked the institute to take a stand against the death penalty as such. That effort failed.

Instead, the institute voted in October to disavow the structure it had created “in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.”

_____

A young Sparks, Nevada, area woman is battling a rare skin disease which has caused her to give up career ambitions and forced her to go on disability:

n June 2009, Hail was diagnosed with hidradenitis suppurativa (HS), an extremely rare, chronic skin disease that creates blockages around oil glands and hair follicles of various areas on the body. It causes blotchy abscesses on the outside of the skin, embeds epidermic cysts under the skin and traps fluids created by the body’s sweat glands. Though its infections and inflammations look like typical acne, the disease is painful and nearly disfiguring to the body after multiple surgeries, which are often needed to remove the excess fluids.

Hail was diagnosed at stage three, the worst of the condition, and she has abscesses the size of baseballs, scarring and sinus tract formations.

Even worse, little can be done because so little is known about HS. Hail, now 21 and a Fernley resident, who said she’d been rather shy about it in the past, now wants to help raise awareness and education to help those who suffer from it and that the medical community perhaps one day might find a cure.

_____

Pepsi Throwback, the drink I love so much, is making a limited-time comeback for two months.

Production started last week.
_____

Of course the "G-spot" was nothing but a hoax. It was clear from the time that silly book from 1982 came out.

Some authors got rich off it, though.
_____

The Suleman octuplet's doctor is being accused of gross negligence by the state.
_____

An L.A. judge has set a hearing for the Polanski case.
_____

I'll provide this link in case anybody gives a shit about Warren Beatty.

Personally I find him disgusting.
_____

The Washington Post has a photo gallery of the world's tallest buildings.
_____

Despite the Public Outcry,

or perhaps because of it, Nadya Suleman got her wish to have a reality television program based on her record-breaking multiple birth.

Miscellaneous News

Nadya Suleman was indeed right when she decided to have a slew of kids in order to exploit them for money. She is slated to have her own reality television show.
_____

At least one anti-abortion fanatic has proven he cares about life when he shot Dr. George Tiller of Kansas dead in front of his church today.

Tiller was committed to his patients despite the threats on his life:

Since first performing abortions after the monumental U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, Dr. Tiller had been threatened, shot, his Women's Health Care Services clinic bombed.

Despite the assaults against him by people who believed what he did was murder, he continued to make available what he thought was right, friends say: a woman's right to choose.

"He was far too committed to what he did to let all of those situations -- and there were many and they were constant -- stop him because he had a commitment to his patients," said Peggy Bowman, who served as his spokeswoman in the 1990s.

Bowman said one only had to read the hundreds of thank-you letters lining the walls of his clinic, Women's Health Care Services, to know how he helped people facing decisions that others never face.

"Dr. Tiller always used to say that women are under the most stress at two times in their lives: when they are pregnant and don't want to be and when they want to be and can't," Bowman said.

He was 68 years old.
_____

Octupletgate

Snooping around Nadya Suleman's medical files cost some 15 people their jobs at Kaiser Permanente Hospital.

No scoops for the National Enquirer this time.

Weird News

Nadya Suleman continues to get all of the media attention she has been craving now that two of her eight babies have arrived home:

Video posted on Radaronline.com, where Suleman has been publishing a video diary, showed the SUV pulling into the garage from the inside, and screams can be heard for the photographers to get out. Laughter was audible from inside the vehicle after the garage door closed.

Suleman said on the video that she called police when she was driven into the garage.

"This was beyond anything I expected, they were completely swarming the car," she said of the paparazzi. "I was really, really worried about the safety of everybody."

Two caretakers in scrubs could be seen helping Suleman take the babies into the house after she showed them off to the camera, and Suleman's older children were shown kneeling and fawning over their baby brothers.

The other babies will be released in the coming days. Remember, this is the first time in medical history where all eight octuplets have survived.

Octupletgate

Nadya Suleman claims SHE is paying for the house her father reportedly is paying for:

In the video posted on RadarOnline.com, Nadya Suleman disputed earlier remarks by the house's listing agent, who said her father was buying the home.

Prudential Realty listing agent Mike Patel confirmed Wednesday that the home's title was made in the name of Ed Doud, who is Suleman's father. Patel also said the house was being bought, not leased.

In the video, Suleman said she made the initial payment on the house and that she was leasing with an option to buy. Her parents, she said, "had nothing to do with it."

No matter, it's still too small a house for her and her fourteen kids.

Octupletgate

Dad is going to bail his daughter out after all; however, the house isn't that big:

The mother of recently born octuplets may be moving to a new home and getting help to raise her brood.

Nadya Suleman's father, Ed Doud, is purchasing a $564,900 house in the city of La Habra in a deal is expected to close Friday, said Prudential Realty listing agent Mike Patel.

In a related development, television talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw said Monday that Suleman will accept a volunteer group's offer of nursing care for her children.

Octupletgate

Problems may develop for Nadya Suleman, and she expressed her concerns to Dr. Phil:

McGraw said the 33-year-old unemployed mother called him Tuesday, distraught that Kaiser Permanente officials told her they were concerned about the babies living at her home in suburban Los Angeles.

"What she is telling me is that unless and until she has a better living arrangement, that they are not likely to release the children to her," McGraw told the Los Angeles Times.

Suleman has taped two episodes of McGraw's "Dr. Phil" show. The first was scheduled to air Wednesday.

Assuming, of course, Suleman is telling the truth, and we all know how honest she is.

Meanwhile, she has an offer to do porn for a million and a year's worth of health insurance. She must have horrific stretch marks from her most recent pregnancy, however, judging from those well-publicized pregnancy photos.

Octupletgate

Nadya Suleman's father doesn't have very many good things to say about his irresponsible daughter. At the same time he believes his daughter and especially his grandchildren need help. He was on Oprah Winfrey's program.

Octupletgate

It looks like Nadya Suleman and the 14 kids could be out on the street thanks to a foreclosure on her mother's house.

At least I hope somebody takes the kids in.
_____

Octupletgate

Nadya Suleman now has an agent but no publicist. The public relations group decided to get out of the controversy because of death threats.

There are all kinds of sick people in the world. One can vehemently disagree with Suleman's choice without going to such idiotic extremes.

More Octupletgate

Nadya Suleman is finding out the downside for going public with her irresponsibility and now is reporting she is getting death threats.

If true, that is NEVER acceptable. The big concern, of course, should be about those 14 children.

Jeff Jacoby

is a fucking moron. The Suleman octuplet case has NOTHING to do with "regulation" of the so-called "freedom of choice." This has to do with the WELFARE OF THE CHILDREN. The children are already here because of her dubious "choice." THEY didn't choose to be brought into the world. Doesn't he understand deliberately having huge numbers of children without the resources to support them, to say nothing of the fact these pregnancies were ARTIFICIALLY INDUCED by a doctor who probably will lose his license and his career is completely different than Roe v. Wade? The children have a RIGHT to the best possible environment in which to be raised. After all, children are pulled out of neglectful and abusive households all the time because THEIR rights are being violated.

This is a crock of shit article that has NOTHING to do with the Suleman situation.

Octupletgate

If you are interested in leaving a donation for the Suleman family, there is this link.

There probably shouldn't be a place where people can leave comments, though.

Meanwhile, it looks like the taxpayers will be on the hook over this case.

The article mentions Nadya owes $50,000 in student loans. My, her priorities are certainly screwed on right.

Lowell Kepke, a spokesman for the San Francisco office of the Social Security Administration, said that a single parent with no income qualifies for up to $793 a month for each child with a physical or mental condition that results in "marked or severe functional limitations." That money is used for support and maintenance of the family, and Suleman would not be required to specifically account for how it is spent.

If Suleman's disabled children received the maximum payment, she would get nearly $2,900 a month in state and federal assistance, including the food stamps.

Suleman's octuplets qualify for Medi-Cal, California's healthcare program for the poor. Three sources told The Times that Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower had requested reimbursement for care of the eight premature infants.

About Nadya's disability:

Her workers' compensation file, obtained by The Times, indicates that a doctor hired by the state to evaluate her believes she is now eligible for permanent disability. The state stopped making temporary disability payments Aug. 28. But the records show that she would receive payment for permanent disability. State officials said no determination has been made yet about the amount or duration of her payments.

This "serial mom," if she really wanted children, could have adopted instead of going through an expensive, risky procedure.:

The impulse that has made fertility medicine such a large and lucrative specialty in American medicine is about something other than children; it's about the narcissistic assumption that one is "entitled" to "the experience" of childbearing and, more to the point, the notion that, somehow, if your particular strands of DNA don't live on into another generation, the species will be poorer for it.

That sense of entitlement and its enabling delusion are about a lot of things -- but none of them really involve children.

Is that ever true. Nobody is "entitled" to have children, and if somebody does, he or she has the duty to make sure those children are brought up in the best possible circumstances.


A transcript of her interview with Dateline is here for anybody interested, and readers can watch the entire broadcast here.

This is the first part:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

According to Nadya's father, she falsified the name of the babies' father on their birth certificates.

Octupletgate

The fertility clinic where Nadya Suleman reportedly received her IVF treatments has a low pregnancy rate, believe it or not.

This is going to make the taxpayers happy:

Suleman receives at least $490 a month in food stamps, and three of her first six children are disabled and receiving federal benefits. Moreover, Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower Medical Center has asked California's health plan for the poor to cover the enormous cost of medical care for the eight premature infants in its care, according to multiple sources familiar with the case.

The disclosures came as the identity of the doctor who provided Suleman, a 33-year-old single mother, with the in vitro fertilizations became public Monday. In an interview on NBC, she identified the clinic as West Coast IVF Clinic, which is run by Dr. Michael M. Kamrava.

Despite his clinic's very low pregnancy rate, Kamrava appears to have found a kindred spirit in Suleman:

This is not the first time he has faced controversy. At least two of his former employees have sued him, including Shirin Afshar, an office administrator who alleged that Kamrava engaged in systematic insurance and tax fraud. She also said he routinely asked her to participate in medical procedures even though she was not licensed to do so.

The suit said Kamrava required patients to pay in cash, which was given to Kamrava's wife, who "never entered the payment into the computer and never deposited the payment in the bank" so that Kamrava could avoid paying income tax on the money. The clinic kept two sets of books, one for insurance payments and one for cash payments, the lawsuit alleged.

Afshar also charged that Kamrava's office systematically defrauded insurance companies by double billing for procedures and by billing companies for unnecessary medication that Kamrava kept and then resold to other patients. The suit appeared to have settled in 1999, shortly before it went to trial.

Suleman says she will probably pay for the care of her infants with student loans.


Suleman's nanny service sticks up for her, probably the only people in the country, besides some wrongheaded "feminists," who support her irresponsible actions.

Octupletgate [Updated]

Take a look at the home where the Suleman octuplets are headed, unless something is done.

Nadya Suleman's mother says Nadya is not capable of raising 14 children.

Here is the video of the babies:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The AP mentions the fertility clinic where Suleman got her IVF treatments.

Here is the video from KTLA.

It never ceases to amaze me there are so-called feminists out there cheering this fiasco on, saying this is a matter of choice, of reproductive freedom regardless of the financial or mental health situation of the woman in question. Actually, children aren't the property of the parents; they are SOCIETY'S concern once those children are born. People can't expect to have children they can't care for and get away with it. Children have the right to be brought up in the best possible circumstances, circumstances which are not evident in the Suleman household.

It IS about the children, not about a woman's selfish "right" to have as many children as she wants without thinking of the consequences of her actions.

By the way, Nadya Suleman IS receiving public assistance, and three of the six children at home are disabled.

Octupletgate

I don't usually agree with Debra J. Saunders, but she makes a good point or two about the problems with the lack of regulations in the human fertility business.

She makes this point, too:

You can say her fertility doctors - whoever they are - should have refused to impregnate an overburdened single mother. They should have.

However, in August, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a San Diego fertility clinic had no right to refuse to inseminate a lesbian in a partnership on religious grounds. What happens if doctors refuse a single mom, who can sue based on state law banning discrimination based on marital status?

A side note: I believe if the Suleman octuplets survive, and it appears at this point they all will, it will be the first time to my knowledge this has ever happened in medical history (a look over at Wikipedia shows I am correct).

In the case of the Chukwu octuplets, born in 1998, seven out of the eight survive, and they are reportedly healthy fourth-graders.