babble » blogs » Strollerderby
Strollerderby
The Powell Family in Happier Times
It’s a tragic end to a sordid tale. Over the weekend, Josh Powell allegedly killed his two young sons and himself in what looked like a murder suicide at his home in Tacoma, Washington.
Josh Powell had been a person of interest in the disappearance of his wife Susan Powell after she went missing two years ago. Their two sons Charlie, 7, and Branden, 5, were living with Susan’s parents and Josh had been battling in court to regain custody of them. Just last Wednesday a judge said that they would not return the boys to Josh until he underwent a psycho-sexual evaluation that had to do with something they found on his computer.
The court had worries about Josh Powell and apparently so did Susan Powell’s parents. Susan’s dad Chuck Cox said… Continue reading »
The former governor of Illinois in happier times.
Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to fourteen years in prison this afternoon for corruption in the attempted selling of President Barack Obama’s former Senate seat. He has 90 days before he has to report to jail.
The Chicago Sun-Times says the judge in the case believed Blagojevich accepted responsibility for the crimes for which he was charged, and gave him slightly less than the full sentence of 15 to 20 years.
In a new book called “Sex Panic & The Punitive State,” professor and author Roger N. Lancaster says that sex offender registries are a waste of time and that current punishments for sex offenders in the US are too harsh.
While sex offender registries in the US now collectively list three quarters of a million people, Lancaster argues that many of those listed are being unfairly treated as public pariahs. End up on a registry and you’ll be told where you can and can’t live, and will find it impossible to get a job. While certain criminals may deserve such punishment, he believes there are quite a few who shouldn’t even be on the lists, explaining in a Washington Post interview that registries now include those convicted of sex crimes who “… had consensual relations with near-adults. Others appear to have been falsely accused and accepted a plea bargain. Some were themselves minors who had consensual sex with their girlfriends or boyfriends. A random sample of one state’s listings shows that two-thirds of the registrants were convicted of non-violent first offenses — and their crimes may have involved no physical contact.”
Should couples be able to buy custom-made babies?
Surrogacy has become a well-established road to parenthood for many couples.
Surrogates form agreements with couples stipulating how and when the surrogate will become pregnant, with whose eggs and sperm. They agree about where the birth will take place. They agree on compensation to the surrogate for her time and the burden of carrying a pregnancy.
In the normal order of things, all these details are sorted out and signed into a contract before the baby is conceived.
A group of prominent fertility advocates have now been accused of reversing the order of operations: they would hire a woman to become pregnant, and then shop her fetus around to prospective parents.
Little boys can be a wee bit wild. They’re prone to make mistakes from hitting a baseball through a neighbor’s window, tearing their sister’s Barbie’s head off or even torturing the family’s cat. But some take their adolescent angst too far. Jordan Brown of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania is one of those boys.
Due to his actions on a cold February day in 2009 – when he was just 11-years-old – he is looking at life in prison without parole. He’d reportedly be the youngest person ever to receive that harsh of a sentence.
What did he do to deserve this potential fate? Continue reading »
When a child commits a serious crime, should he or she be put in prison for life? According to the Supreme Court, that depends upon the crime.
In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court said yesterday that except for in the case of murder, a sentence of life without parole for minors violates the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment. Continue reading »
A court has ruled three police officers innocent of using excessive force after they Tasered a visibly pregnant woman pulled over for a speeding ticket.
Run that by me again? What is it about “shooting electricity into a fetus” that sounds reasonable? Continue reading »
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
The Walt Disney Company supports Babble as a platform dedicated to honest, engaged, informed, intelligent and open conversation about parenting. However, the opinions expressed on this site are those of individual parents/writers and do not reflect the views of Disney. In addition, content provided on this site is for entertainment or informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or safety advice.
1