What’s interesting in the news today?

Open thread, as always.

1. This one comes with a Hat/Tip to Karen O. Yesterday she posted a link about the story of the Pelletier family. It’s the story of a young lady taken from her family by a doctor with obvious conflicts, aided by a hospital, child welfare officials, and now the courts. To say it’s an example of govt. overstepping it’s authority is an understatement. The initial story was bad. The newer details are even worse. These details are only known because her father violated the judge’s gag rule in order to get the story heard. I don’t blame him,  a desperate father can, and will do what he feels necessary to reunite his family.

Here’s the link from WFSB  “A judge in Massachusetts ordered a daughter from West Hartford to be placed in foster care, denying a reunion with her family.

However, hospital officials insisted the 15-year-old’s problems were mental.

They said she was suffering from a condition called Somatoform Disorder. Doctors said that’s a mental illness where someone can actually experience physical pain.

Justina Pelletier’s family said she was experiencing physical pain, but the hospital brought in the Department of Children and Families. The state of Massachusetts took custody and said the teen’s parents were committing child abuse by not getting her mental health treatment.”

2. Now here is where her father shares more details,

From TheBlaze  “Jessica, 25, is the second-oldest of the Pelletiers’ daughters and has mitochondrial disease herself. The disease can manifest itself in various ways, but at its root, results from a defect in the mitochondria, an organelle inside cells that produces energy. Jessica’s diagnosis was established medically through analysis of the cells of her muscle tissue.

In Justina’s case, a doctor evaluated her symptoms, considered her family history — mitochondrial disease can be inherited — and gave her a clinical diagnosis of the disorder. Under the care of physicians at Tufts Medical Center, Justina was treated for mitochondrial disease. But when she got the flu and her parents were told she should be transferred to Boston Children’s Hospital, things changed.”

“The physicians at Boston Children’s Hospital disagreed with her diagnosis of mitochondrial disorder and wanted to take a different approach to her treatment. At first, Lou Pelletier said, “we were game to try a new approach.” But when the hospital laid out their plan to take Justina off all of her mitochondrial and pain medication, her parents balked.

That was Feb. 13, 2013. The next day — Valentine’s Day 2013 — Justina’s parents went to Boston Children’s Hospital with a couple of advocates intending to have her discharged and brought to Tufts. Instead, they were met with security guards and served a 51A, a report of alleged physical or emotional abuse.”

It gets worse from there. It’s unbelievable what they’ve put this family through. Please take the time to read the whole thing.

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3. The lawlessness from the top law enforcement official in America continues. Never mind the law, just refuse to defend it and it’s like it doesn’t really exist.

From TheNYTimes  “Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday injected the Obama administration into the emotional and politicized debate over the future of state same-sex marriage bans, declaring in an interview that state attorneys general are not obligated to defend laws that they believe are discriminatory.

Mr. Holder was careful not to encourage his state counterparts to disavow their own laws, but said that officials who have carefully studied bans on gay marriage could refuse to defend them.

Six state attorneys general — all Democrats — have refused to defend bans on same-sex marriage, prompting criticism from Republicans who say they have a duty to stand behind their state laws, even if they do not agree with them. 

It is highly unusual for the United States attorney general to advise his state counterparts on how and when to refuse to defend state laws. But Mr. Holder said when laws touch on core constitutional issues like equal protection, an attorney general should apply the highest level of scrutiny before reaching a decision on whether to defend it. He said the decision should never be political or based on policy objections.

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4. Yep, media bias is definitely a myth. 🙄

Christie gets a 24/7 onslaught for a couple of lane closures, but a real scandal goes down with barely a mention from the same media sources. Why? Because these folks are Democrats, the official party of the MSM.

From PubliusForum  “While the media gorges itself on the story of Chris Christie shutting down a bridge one day last year, a real political scandal is brewing in New Jersey filled with corruption, millions in fraud and waste, and a Democrat appointed official pleading the Fifth and the media? Well, the media is ignoring it all.

Even as Newark, New Jersey was laying off policemen and was pleading for more tax money and state bailouts, it has now been discovered that a heavily employed city contractor was stealing millions from the city with crony deals and bribery and it’s all tied to people appointed by Cory Booker–the man many Democrats think might be the “next” Barack Obama. There is even no-work jobs to buddies and other such criminal waste.”

“Linda Watkins-Brashear, the agency’s director and a political ally of former Newark mayor, now Sen. Cory Booker, wrote unreported checks to herself to the tune of $200,000, was awarded $700,000 in two severance packages, gave more than $1 million in contracts to her friends and ex-husband, and lost $500,000 in dubious stock ventures, the report states.

The director of the agency, Linda Watkins-Brashear, is now pleading her protections under the Fifth Amendment and reusing to say anything to investigators. But she did say through her attorney that she didn’t do anything that Senator Booker–who was Newark’s mayor at the time–didn’t know about.”

You tell me, which is the real scandal here?

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5. From CBSNews  “Gunmen from Islamist group Boko Haram stormed a boarding school in northeast Nigeria overnight and killed 29 pupils, many of whom died in flames as the school was burned to the ground, police and the military said on Tuesday.

“Some of the students bodies were burned to ashes,” Police Commissioner Sanusi Rufai said of the attack on the Federal Government college of Buni Yadi, a secondary school in Yobe state, near the state’s capital city of Damaturu.

Female students were spared in the attack, said spokesman Abdullahi Bego. The attackers went to the female dormitories and told the young women to go home, get married and abandon the Western education they said is anathema to Islam, he said. He was relating to The Associated Press what survivors and community leaders told Gov. Ibrahim Gaidam when he visited the now-deserted and destroyed Federal Government College at Buni Yadi, a secondary school 45 miles south of the state capital, Damaturu..

 Soldiers guarding a checkpoint near the government school were mysteriously withdrawn hours before the attack, said Abdullahi Bego, the spokesman for the governor of Yobe state.

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