A Culture of Violence Against Women: More Than Rape Kits

Americans have recently learned that during the 1990s, Wasilla, Alaska, then under the mayoralty of Sarah Palin, charged victims of sexual assault for the rape kits used for evidence collection.

Attacks from progressives have been swift and harsh. There is good reason to hunt down the facts about the rape kits.  But the larger issue - of rape, sexual assault and how we deal with violence against women in this country - has been overlooked.

First the facts:

Bristol Palin: What a Difference Four Decades Makes

It was 1972 in San Francisco, in the era before legalized abortions, when bearing a child out of wedlock was still a scandal. In the closed world of the Catholic university we attended, it was an even bigger shame than in the rushing waters of the outside world, especially with hippies, free love, the pill, the sexual revolution, the women's movement and all the hallmarks of that permissive time. In that time and that place, my friend who I will call Jane, became pregnant by a foreign student with whom marriage was never a possibility.

US Military Keeping Secrets About Female Soldiers’ ‘Suicides’?

Since I posted on April 28 the article "Is There an Army Cover Up of the Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers," the deaths of two more U.S. Army women in Iraq and Afghanistan have been listed as suicides-the Sept. 28, 2007, death of 30-year-old Spc. Ciara Durkin and the Feb. 22, 2008, death of 25-year-old Spc. Keisha Morgan. Both "suicides" are disputed by the families of the women.

Surging in Afghanistan: Too Much, Too Late?

Despite George W.