Eideard

A couple prayed and rubbed olive oil on their sick infant rather than seek medical care for the dying boy, prosecutors argued in the latest criminal case against members of an Oregon church that believes in faith healing.

Dale and Shannon Hickman are accused of manslaughter in the death of their son David, who was born prematurely in 2009 with underdeveloped lungs. The boy developed a bacterial infection and lived for less than nine hours…

The Hickmans are members of the Followers of Christ church, a Clackamas County church that practices faith healing and rejects doctors. The trial is the fourth time in recent years that members have faced criminal accusations that they let their children get seriously ill or die.

When David’s skin turned ashen and he could barely breathe, the Hickmans did not call for help, prosecutor Mike Regan said during opening statements Wednesday. Instead, he said, Dale Hickman anointed the baby with olive oil, a common church ritual for treating the ill.

“They were never going to call — ever,” Regan said. “Failure to act is a crime…”

The Hickmans’ lawyers said witnesses to the boy’s birth will testify that the baby showed no sign of distress until minutes before his death. And even if the Hickmans had called 911, the infant would have died before help arrived, they said. The same defense used by church members in previous trials.

The couple was being tried for their faith, said lawyer Mark Cogan.

“You, ladies and gentlemen, are our protection against tyranny,” Cogan told jurors.

The tyranny of self-delusion, of religious ideology, letting superstition govern your behavior instead of ethics, reason, often leads to confrontation with common law. As the prosecutor, Mike Regan, said – Failure to act is a crime.

We have a responsibility to the society within which we live and function to act in the broadest sense. Letting a child die with no reasonable attempt to save that small life is not excused by ideology.

A Denver mom says she was singled out by a judge when she brought her six-month-old daughter with her to report for jury duty. Christine Kalata says she had no choice. She is breast feeding her child and breast-feeding mothers are not exempt from jury duty.

“I felt embarrassed. I remember looking down and thinking everyone’s going to be mad at me because I want to be excused,” says Kalata.

She says she was humiliated in front of other potential jurors in Denver court when the judge was not happy to see a baby in court.

“When I stated that this was my job she did not let me say anything else after that she just said to the jurors, ‘how many of you left a job? Please raise your hand,’” Kalata says.

She says Judge Claudia Jordan told the clerk to put her name back in the pool and then sent her home.

“After I left I cried all the way down the elevator. As I drove home I actually started to get angry,” Kalata says. “That’s when I started to think this is ridiculous.”

Then she got fired up and is now working on changing the law in Denver so breast-feeding moms can fulfill their civic duty while taking care of their children.

Kalata says she had asked for a deferment but the clerk told her no.

Contradictory crap like this has no reason to happen. Either the judge hasn’t a clue what the regulations say about jury duty – or the clerk advising Christine Kalata doesn’t know what their job is all about. I don’t know who has it wrong.

But, it gets worse in these tired old eyes when it turns out to be a lady judge. Whether you have children or not, you would expect a women judge to be somewhat sympatico to a nursing mother.

Security officers at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport confiscated a jar of baby food and a juice box when they tested positive for trace amounts of explosives, officials said.

“It just didn’t clear,” said Transportation Security Administration spokesman Luis Casanova. “We tried to clear it because we wanted to give the baby food back to the mom, but it wouldn’t clear. The only alternative was to hold it…”

“She was understandably upset,” Casanova said.

He said the food and drink were pre-packaged and did not appear to be tampered with, so it appeared the alert was a false positive…

The woman and her baby went on to their flight, he said. The TSA threw away the food and juice.

Apparently, TSA has the authority to toss materials into the trash that test as dangerous – but, not return them to the mother and infant transporting the terrorist commodities. Am I the only one who sees a bit of a contradiction here?

Juana Villegas [L] and Maggie Hernandez with her lawyer Elliot Ozment [R]

A federal judge has ruled in favor of a Nashville mother who triggered a national outcry after she was shackled during labor and after giving birth while in custody of the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office…

Nine months pregnant, Villegas was arrested July 3 and charged with careless driving and driving without vehicle insurance. She didn’t have a driver’s license. A check of Villegas’ immigration status found she had a previous deportation order to her native Mexico. Her water broke on July 5 and she delivered the baby at 1 a.m. on July 6.

In his decision Wednesday, Haynes wrote that Villegas was “neither a risk of flight nor a danger to anyone,” citing medical testimony. The judge concluded that shackling Villegas during the final stages of her labor and her post-partum recovery violated her civil rights…

She was separated from her newborn son for two days and was not allowed to have a breast pump or cream for lactating mothers in her cell…

The sheriff’s office declined to comment. In combating the lawsuit, it cited expert testimony on the danger of “illegal immigrants fleeing and engaging in illegal activities” to justify shackling the expectant mother to the bed…

Villegas, the mother of four U.S.-born children, has lived in this country for 17 years, returning quickly after a 1996 deportation to Mexico.

The fact of her undocumented status, of course, shouldn’t have had a damned thing to do with lousy treatment by Tennessee sheriffs. I hope the federal court throws the book at these thoughtless representatives of law and order.

A pensioner who has lived in Britain for 64 years returned from holiday to be told she is an illegal immigrant because she has never been granted UK nationality

Joan Wakely, 65, a grandmother from Shaftsbury, Dorset, has lived in the UK since she was six months old when her parents moved from Canada to Britain. However, when she arrived back at Gatwick Airport with her husband Mike, 64, after a holiday in Florida, she was classed as “an illegal alien” as she was travelling with her Canadian passport.

She has since applied for citizenship but faces being deported in February if her application is rejected…

Mrs Wakely has worked in this country all her life and has reared three children. She also has a National Insurance Number and draws her old age pension.

Her mother was English and her dad is Canadian and lives in a nearby nursing home. However, she has never before completed the correct forms nor had them done for her as a child.

She has now paid £840 to apply for full UK citizenship – which includes taking a test to prove she can speak English.

“Now at 65 I have been threatened with deportation from a country where I have lived since I was six months old.”

The UK Border Agency…spokesman said: “She is not actually British. She now has to apply for British citizenship. She has had to go through the process as has someone who has been here a year. It is the responsibility of everyone seeking entry to the UK to ensure they meet the requirements of our immigration rules.

Idiots. Another clot of bureaucrats living within the body politic, incapable of independent thought, unwilling to spend a single iota of energy on behalf of an ordinary citizen.

And this is aside from some dolt applying a law which didn’t exist when she arrived in the UK. Back in the day, she would have had automatic dual citizenship – English and Canadian.

She caught whooping cough – her infant son died
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

California health officials say a tenth baby has died of whooping cough in the state’s worst epidemic in 55 years.

The 6-week-old baby died last week after being treated at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego…

More than 5,270 cases of the highly-contagious illness have been reported in California this year. The previous record was set in 1955 when there were 4,949 cases reported.

All of the babies who have died were too young to be fully immunized against the disease, according to health officials.

Whooping cough is a highly contagious, cyclical illness that peaks in number of infections every five years. The last peak occurred in 2005 when California reported 3,182 cases, with 574 hospitalizations and seven deaths…

Jonathan Fielding, the county’s health director, urges parents and caretakers to get vaccinations to avoid any more deaths…

What the anti-vaccination nutballs don’t get is that those who may be outside the effective zones of infection also need to be vaccinated to inhibit transmitting the disease to the most vulnerable. This is something that’s been accepted medical practice since the days of Jenner – when the sum of peer review determined which disease vectors needed to be inhibited by any means. Vaccination happens to be just one of those that is most effective.

Individuals, whether caregivers or parents who refuse vaccination, decide to be Good Germans. They don’t set out to harm anyone else by their self-important act of “freedom”. Neither does the fool who drinks and drives. Both classes of egregious behavior serve in practice to put others in danger.

Health officials say most kids are once again susceptible to the disease by middle school.

A booster dose of the vaccine is recommended for people between the ages of 11 and 18, as well as for people who have contact with infants.

Infants born to women who received influenza vaccine during pregnancy were hospitalized at a lower rate than infants born to unvaccinated mothers, according to preliminary results of an ongoing study by researchers at Yale School of Medicine…

Influenza is a major cause of serious respiratory disease in pregnant women and of hospitalization in infants. Although the flu vaccine is recommended for all pregnant women and children, no vaccine is approved for infants less than six months of age. Preventive strategies for this age group include general infection control and vaccination of those coming in close contact with them. Few studies have examined the effectiveness of the flu vaccine during pregnancy…

“We found that vaccinating mothers during pregnancy was 80 percent effective in preventing hospitalization due to influenza in their infants during the first year of life and 89 percent effective in preventing hospitalization in infants under six months of age,” said Marietta Vázquez, M.D..

“These results not only have a positive impact on the health of susceptible infants, but also may be very cost effective, as it involves one vaccine providing protection to two individuals,” Vázquez added. “The findings may also help establish public health policy, increase awareness of the importance of influenza vaccination during pregnancy, and even help to overcome barriers to vaccination.”

Bravo! I don’t know if I can take so much good news in such a short article.

A mother in England was penalized financially for spending too long with her baby son’s body before it was cremated.

The crematorium, operated by the Milton Keynes Borough Council in Buckinghamshire, said the additional $145 charge is routine when a funeral runs overtime, The Daily Mail reported. The penalty was more than twice as big as the $54 fee for cremation for a baby…

“The vicar had asked if I would like to spend a bit more time saying goodbye,” Terrie Rouse told the newspaper. “I sat by the coffin for 10 minutes, telling my son how much we loved him and begging him not to be scared.”

Rouse’s son, Zane, died in April of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at the age of 5 weeks. Her partner, Lee Smythe, said the funeral was delayed because of tests done on the boy’s tiny body.

“It was distressing enough having to wait for the funeral because we were left in limbo, but this has just made it all worse,” Smythe said. “If we had overrun by 30 minutes and had held up proceedings for other people I would understand but this was 10 minutes.”

After this all hit the news, the council said the penalty will not be charged because of “extenuating circumstances.”

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

A 20-year-old woman in Hannibal, Mo., used her 1-year-old son as a shield against a stun gun during an arrest, police allege.

Hannibal Police Capt. James Hark said Maliea A. Martin attempted to protect a man from possibly being shot with a Taser gun by holding her baby in front of him, The Hannibal (Mo.) Courier-Press reported…

The responding officers said that while talking with Martin, 22-year-old Joshua A. McAtee, who lives in Martin’s apartment complex, approached them and began issuing threats.

The officers said when their attempts to calm the man failed one officer threatened to use his Taser on McAtee.

Martin then held the baby in front of McAtee, the officers said.

Martin was charged with endangering the welfare of a child and McAtee was charged with resisting arrest.

There really is nothing like mother’s love.

New Zealand police are investigating whether a woman abandoned her baby after giving birth aboard a flight to Auckland from Samoa.

Initial reports say the woman, believed to be a 30-year-old Samoan, left the baby on the plane upon landing.

The baby was found by an airline worker in a toilet compartment more than an hour later, local media reported.

Mother and child have since been reunited and are being cared for in hospital, an airline statement said.

The woman was trying to exit the airport but had misplaced her passport, New Zealand TV quoted airport sources as saying.

When she sought the help of the authorities, they noticed she was pale and her clothing was blood-stained.

The newborn was found shortly afterwards by an airline worker. One source said the baby was found in the toilet rubbish bin.

There are many flavors of post-partum dementia. Be glad that everything appears to have worked out OK – so far. I hope she gets sufficient care over the next few months at a minimum.