NPO Blog Archive

New York, NY–A little dose of misandry from the Wall Street Journal‘s “Pepper…and Salt.”

Reno, NE–Background: In June 2006, Darren Mack (pictured), a wealthy Nevada father who was involved in a divorce, stabbed his estranged wife to death and then executed a well-planned murder attempt on a Nevada judge. Mack shot and wounded the judge but failed to kill him. According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, when police searched Mack’s residence they found he “had bombmaking materials in his bedroom” as well as “several boxes of firearm ammunition.” At the time of Mack”s murder spree, I wrote:

“I condemn without qualification the crimes allegedly committed by Darren Mack in Nevada last week. Mack was angered by his divorce and custody case. Some on the not insubstantial lunatic fringe of the fathers’ rights movement see Mack as some sort of freedom fighter. Most of the commentary by other fathers’ rights advocates seem to be of the ‘he couldn’t take it anymore and snapped” variety.

“I don’t buy it. Though everyone is focusing on Mack’s attempted murder of a judge, everyone seems to forget that he first stabbed and killed his estranged wife. After murdering her, he shot the judge through the judge’s third-floor office window with a sniper rifle from over 100 yards away. That’s not ‘snapping”–that’s premeditated murder. Mack is not a good man trapped in a bad system. He is a bad guy. Because of men like him the system had to create protections for women, and unscrupulous women have misused those protections to victimize countless innocent men. Men like Mack aren’t the byproducts of the system’s problems–they are the problem.’

It wasn’t the rope and a tree that Darren Mack deserved, but it was close enough. Friday Darren Mack–who stabbed and killed his estranged wife as his little daughter played with her toys upstairs–was sentenced to life in prison.

Mack first tried what I called the Mary Winkler defense, making the unlikely claim that he slashed his wife’s throat in self-defense. It was a brutal killing–Charla Mack’s head was almost severed from her body. How Mack defending himself against Charla necessitated then driving to the courthouse and trying to kill a judge in a well-planned, methodical way was never explained.

Douglas Herndon, the Nevada judge in the criminal case, explained that he let Mack speak for quite a while before his sentencing, and that Mack expressed “no remorse” for his crimes. According to the Associated Press:

“In handing down the sentence, Herndon cited the heinous nature of the crimes and Mack’s lack of remorse.

“‘The truth is Mr. Mack is guilty of these crimes, but he doesn’t want to hear anything about that,’ the judge said.

“Mack on Thursday reiterated claims that he acted in self defense when he slashed his wife’s throat in the garage of his southeast Reno townhouse.

“He also has argued that he was coerced by his former lawyers into the plea deal, and suggested the attorneys, prosecutors, investigators and law enforcement officers who investigated the case were corrupt.

“Herndon said while he allowed Mack to go on at length, he never said what the judge hoped he’d hear: ‘I’m sorry.'”

My position on Mack has inspired a lot of hostility from some posters on other men’s and fathers’ rights blogs, which tells you more about some of these guys than you’d like to know. One of the many idiotic statements made is that, based on my position on Mack, when fathers are mistreated in the family law system, I don’t think they should resist.

Ludicrous–I sure as hell do think they should resist. They should resist like David Chick. They should resist like Gary LaMusga. They should resist like Jolly Stanesby and John Brumbaugh and Benoit Leroux and Daniel Sims. More importantly, we need to work to build a viable fatherhood movement.

My sympathies are with the guy who did the best he could to be a good husband and a good father and who got shafted anyway. The good dad who can’t see his kids, or who can only see them four days a month while mom turns them against him the other 26. The guy whose kids were dragged halfway across the country for no reason, or whose child support obligations impoverish him. That isn’t Darren Mack.

Mack didn’t even take his marriage seriously, apparently resisting giving up the swinger lifestyle he knew was endangering it, and then, even after being given joint physical custody on a week-on, week-off basis, going on a murderous rampage. I’ve no more sympathy for him than I do for Mary Winkler or Mazoltuv Borukhova.

My coverage of Darren Mack is below, as is the Associated Press article. Also, see the Reno Gazette-Journal’s Darren Mack Blog.

Darren Mack’s Mary Winkler Defense

Blowback on Darren Mack (A response to a MensNewsDaily.com writer’s criticism of me)

The One Year Anniversary of Darren Mack’s Killing Spree

Murderous Florida Father Deserved a Necktie Party, not Shared Parenting

Nev. Man Gets Life Term for Killing Wife
By SANDRA CHEREB
Associated Press
RENO, Nev. (AP) — A former pawn shop owner was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for the killing of his estranged wife and shooting of the judge who handled their bitter divorce.

Darren Mack, 46, will be eligible for parole after 36 years. Mack pleaded guilty in November to first-degree murder in the June 2006 stabbing death of his wife, Charla, and entered an Alford plea to a charge of attempted murder of Washoe Family Court Judge Chuck Weller.

Mack admitted in court that he shot Weller through a courthouse window the day he killed his wife but invoked the Alford plea, in which a defendant acknowledges there is enough evidence for a conviction without admitting guilt. Weller has recovered from his wounds.

New York, NY–George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley has some interesting things to say about the appalling Borukhova murder case in his recent blog post Wife Pays Hitman to Drill Dentist Husband. In that case, a mother apparently had her husband murdered after she was unable to drive him out of his daughter’s life by making allegations of sexual abuse in their custody battle. The father was murdered in a playground in front of their 5-year-old daughter.

Turley writes:

“Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova in Queens has been arrested for paying a hitman $20,000 to kill her orthodontist husband, Dr. Daniel Malakov. What is most striking about the attempted hit is how sloppy it was with a trail of money and evidence leading back to the wife.

“It appears that Hell hath no fury like a doctor scorned. Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova wanted Malakov killed on a playground in front of their 5-year-old daughter amid a custody battle. She allegedly used a relative, Mikhail Mallayev.

“The whole effort no doubt has the Russian mob recoiling in embarrassment. The wife left a phone record of 90 phone conversations in the weeks before the shooting and three more shortly afterward.

“Then there was the bank deposits totaling $19,800 in 10 different bank accounts.

“Then there was the botched hit itself. The assassin used a makeshift silencer, which was left at the scene with Mallayev”s prints on it.”

The Associated Press article on it is below. Any ideas on what her defense will be?

Prosecutors: Wife Paid Suspected Gunman
By TOM HAYS

NEW YORK (AP) — A woman charged in the execution-style slaying of her orthodontist husband exchanged scores of phone calls with the suspected gunman, then paid him nearly $20,000 after the shooting, authorities said Friday.

Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova was arrested at her Queens home on Thursday and ordered held without bail on charges she conspired to have Dr. Daniel Malakov killed on a playground in front of their 5-year-old daughter amid a custody battle.

One of Borukhova’s relatives, Mikhail Mallayev, was arrested in November on charges he was the triggerman.

“We believe she paid the shooter, Mikhail Mallayev, to kill Daniel after the couple separated and he won custody of their daughter,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a news conference.

District Attorney Richard Brown said evidence against the wife included phone records showing she and Mallayev had 90 phone conversations in the weeks before the shooting, and three more shortly afterward.

Bank records also show that, following a meeting in Borukhova’s office, Mallayev deposited a total of $19,800 in 10 different bank accounts.

Borukhova’s attorney did not immediately respond to a phone message Friday. Both Borukhova and Mallayav have previously denied any wrongdoing.

A gunman using a makeshift silencer and wearing a black leather jacket and a dark hat, shot Malakov in the chest in broad daylight on Oct. 28 and vanished, police said.

The victim had gone to the Queens playground to take his 5-year-old daughter to see his ex-wife, a specialist in internal medicine. The couple’s daughter was placed in foster care following her father’s death.

Police said they recovered the silencer at the scene and later determined that Mallayev’s fingerprints were on it.

Sacramento, CA–Attorney Marc Angelucci of NCFMLA wrote the Letter to the Editor below concerning comments by a San Francisco prosecutor about pending California domestic violence legislation. Angelucci’s letter appeared in the February 7 issue of Capitol Weekly.

To his credit, prosecutor Jim Hammer did provide a meaningful response, and explained, “I do refer to ‘women’ victims, because in my years as a prosecutor the majority of victims I saw were women.” The problem with this, of course, is that the reason he saw mostly women domestic violence system is largely due to the anti-male bias with which both the law enforcement system and our society as a whole treat the domestic violence issue.

Angelucci wrote:

Dear Editor,

It is unfortunate that San Francisco prosecutor Jim Hammer chose to leave male victims of domestic violence and their children invisible in his sexist comments on AB1771 by referring to the victims only as “women.’ (“Bill would create Web site of domestic violence convicts,’ Jan. 31.) No doubt Hammer would say “men and women’ regarding soldiers or firefighters. Don”t domestic violence victims deserve the same dignity?

I work with men who have been stabbed, cut with glass and had their teeth knocked out with objects by female partners. They and their children are then stigmatized, ignored, downplayed and told they”re oddball class. In reality, they”re not rare at all; they”re just less likely than women to report it, which makes crime data unreliable.

Harvard Medical School just announced a nationwide study that found half of heterosexual domestic violence is reciprocal and women committed 71 percent of the non-reciprocal violence and initiated most reciprocal violence, while men suffered significant injuries. (Click here to learn more.)

In fact, virtually all sociological data shows women initiate domestic violence at least as often as men do, that men suffer one-third of the injuries and that self-defense does not explain away this violence, as California State University Professor Martin Fiebert demonstrates in his online bibliography here.

Meanwhile, California Health and Safety Code Section 124250 still excludes male victims and their children from the definition of “domestic violence,’ leaving male victims and their children with no outreach and few services from state-funded shelters, even though men pay over half the taxes that fund these programs. Male victims in Southern California travel hundreds of miles to Valley Oasis in Lancaster because nobody else will help them even with a hotel arrangement or legal services.

On Feb. 15 and 16, a global coalition of concerned experts called the National Family Violence Resource Center will host a groundbreaking domestic violence conference in Sacramento called “From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence’ to promote positive solutions to this politically driven problem. CE credit is available, and registration forms are at http://www.nfvlrc.org.

Marc E. Angelucci, Esq.,
Los Angeles

Jim Hammer responds:

I agree with (Mr. Angelucci) that all victims of domestic violence, men and women, should receive equal treatment under the law. Although at times when speaking about domestic violence, I do refer to “women’ victims, because in my years as a prosecutor the majority of victims I saw were women, I would like to make clear that the proposed law would apply equally to men and women violators. In my opinion, men and women should have access to reliable information about past convictions for crimes involving serious domestic violence, so that they can make smart, informed choices about whom they wish to enter into intimate relationships with.

I appreciate the chance to clarify this point and thank Mr. Angelucci for his letter.

Macon, GA–“In the front yard of his well-kept home, officers told Craig Donahue to get out of his car and began to question him about the reported domestic incident. “‘I didn’t know what they were talking about. My wife was sick, really sick. We thought she was dying. I told them this wasn’t domestic, it was a medical emergency,’ he said. “Brande Jordan and Cora Jordan also exited the vehicle, trying to help Donahue clarify what really was going on. “Brande Jordan approached an officer, pleading to take her mother to the hospital, but was asked to step away. “As Bridgett Donahue screamed to her husband for help from the backseat of their car, Craig Donahue decided to drive away from the officers and head for Coliseum Medical Centers. “He didn’t get far.
“Within seconds, squad cars surrounded Donahue’s vehicle near the intersection of Shurling Drive and Walnut Creek Drive. “Officers pulled guns on Donahue as they ordered him out of the car with his hands up and legs spread.” In this story, a loving husband and father is trying to help his wife in a medical emergency but, due to the hazards of LWM (Living While Male), he ends up spread-eagled on the ground, with guns pointed on him, while his wife’s medical emergency goes untreated. The article is below–thanks to Tony, a longtime reader, for sending it to me. The reporter, Ashley Tusan Joyner, did a nice job on the story–feel free to commend her at ajoyner@macon.com or at (478) 744-4347. Husband says Macon police used too much force By Ashley Tusan Joyner Macon Telegraph, 2/8/08 One east Macon family’s 911 call went awry early Wednesday, in a case police are calling miscommunication. A husband, mistaken for an abuse suspect, tried to rush his sick wife to the hospital. He ended up being pulled out of his car by officers with their guns drawn. It was about 5 a.m. Bridgett Donahue, 45, awoke at her Cumberland Drive residence. She needed to use the restroom. While washing her hands, she glanced up at the mirror and discovered a reflection that horrified her. “My face was barely recognizable. My cheeks, my jaws, were all swelled up. My lips were all cracked. My tongue was swelling by the second. I looked down and my arms and legs were swelling too. They got to be about the size of balloons. I started to have difficulty breathing,” she said during an interview at her home Thursday. Donahue, in the initial stages of recovery from a surgical procedure Monday, was having a severe allergic reaction to pain medication prescribed by her doctor. “I screamed so loud everybody in the house woke up,” she said. At 5 a.m., a 911 dispatcher at the Macon-Bibb Communications 911 Center received Donahue’s call. Donahue stated her address, “2528 Cumberland Drive.” She said her body was swelling up. She requested an ambulance.

Evansville, IN–It’s hard to get police to arrest a female offender on a domestic disturbance call, but if she’s drunk, screams at the police officers, and the victim is a famous baseball player, you’ve got a decent chance.

Former New York Yankee first baseman Don Mattingly is lucky his estranged wife blew it with her over-the-top behavior, just as actress Tawny Kitaen did in 2002 when she attacked her baseball spouse, former California Angels pitcher Chuck Finley.

(Tawny had substance abuse problems and was prone to violence and, according to her nanny, had endangered her kids. Her punishment was a horrific injustice–they (gasp) treated her like they treat a fit, loving father, as she lost custody to Finley and got every other weekend visitation. Of course, it was really all Finley’s fault–Tawny reminded me of this herself a few years ago after I criticized her on my radio show).

Mattingly is lucky–he could’ve ended up like former baseball pitcher Scott Erickson, who in 2002 was arrested for his girlfriend attacking him–no, that’s not a misprint–who was arrested for his girlfriend attacking him, and was humiliated in the national media over it.

Mattingly’s estranged wife arrested after refusing to leave his home
Associated Press
February 5, 2008

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — The estranged wife of Los Angeles Dodgers coach Don Mattingly was arrested and charged with public intoxication and disorderly conduct after police say she refused to leave his property in Indiana.

Police arrested 45-year-old Kim Mattingly after they were called to the home of the former Yankee first baseman to investigate reports of a person refusing to leave on Saturday, a probable cause affidavit said. The affidavit, signed by a Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Deputy Chad Howard, said she smelled of alcohol and screamed at officers.

The couple filed for divorce in November on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. The divorce has not been finalized, and no further action has been taken.

Kim Mattingly was released from the Vanderburgh County Jail after posting $50 bond shortly after her arrest and made her first court appearance Monday on the charges. She is scheduled to appear next on March 3.

Her lawyer, Angela Freel, did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Kim Mattingly told investigators that Don Mattingly had taken her phone and she wanted it back, the affidavit said. Police spoke to Mattingly, who said he did not have the phone.

Police had told her not to go to the house earlier in the day, Howard said in the affidavit.

On Monday, Don Mattingly filed for a protective order against his wife, which the court granted. In the petition, Mattingly cited three examples of his wife appearing at his home, including an incident on Jan. 22 during which she tried to kick down his door.

Read the full story here.

New York–Background: Recently New York State NOW president Marcia Pappas excoriated Ted Kennedy for his endorsement of Obama over Hillary. I criticized her for this, writing:

“Ted Kennedy has been a huge advocate of women’s and feminist issues for decades, but like a carping wife with a memory that never forgets, Pappas feels compelled to remind him of every time he apparently didn’t snap to fast enough for New York NOW. Pappas says that, graciously, ‘women have forgiven Kennedy.’ But now that Kennedy has chosen one liberal candidate (Obama) over another (Hillary), it is ‘the greatest betrayal,’ the ‘ultimate betrayal,’ and ‘abandonment.’

“Note that Pappas does not mention any political differences between Hillary and Obama–it’s all about voting for a woman. This is particularly ridiculous because here the contest is between a white woman and a black man. Despite women’s struggles, white women have always had and continue to have it vastly better than black men.”

To learn more, see my blog posts NY NOW’s Pappas Throws Baby Fit over Kennedy’s Endorsement of Obama over Hillary–and This Woman Defeated Us?! and NOW: ‘Gang Raping of Women is Commonplace in Our Culture both Physically and Metaphorically’.

One might think that Marcia would have calmed down by now and would respond with something more reasonable and accommodating, but this lady is a slow learner.

In the letter below to the Albany Times Union, Marcia justifies her infantile behavior by saying, “Social change isn’t made with tempered voices.” She may be right, but social change is made with sane voices. Marcia doesn’t qualify.

What’s particularly offensive is her comparison to Sojourner Truth–a heroic 19th century abolitionist and feminist. Marcia Pappas bears as much resemblance to Sojourner Truth as I do to a ballerina.

One positive on this–many other feminists didn’t like Pappas’ comments and said so, including the ladies at Feministing.com, who I’ve often criticized.

The letter is below–thanks to Dan, a reader, for sending it to me.

Social change isn’t made with tempered voices
Albany Times-Union, February 7, 2008

My response to Kathleen Parker’s Feb. 3 criticism of the Jan. 28 NOW-NYS press release (and while I am at it, my response to anyone who believes I should have kept my mouth shut about Sen. Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama), I say the following:

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Alice Paul and most other feminist leaders had their critics, even within their own movement.

There will always be those who speak their truths and, on the other hand, those who temper their voices to please others. I am not the latter.

Anyone who knows me knows that I, along with my NOW-NYS organization, will continue to speak the truth without apology.

No social change was ever made by those who compromise their beliefs.

If the great activists of the suffrage movement had listened to their more timid “temper your voices” sisters and brothers, women would still not have birth control, abortion, or the right to vote. Indeed: “Well-behaved women rarely make history.”

MARCIA A. PAPPAS
President NOW-NYS
Albany

Los Angeles, CA–The other day my dad told me that he remembered that Charlie Chaplin (pictured) had been a victim of paternity fraud during the 1940s. We looked it up and sure enough, it was true. According to Wikipedia:

“Chaplin had a brief affair with Joan Barry (1920-1996) in 1942, whom he was considering for a starring role in a proposed film, but the relationship ended when she began harassing him and displaying signs of severe mental illness (not unlike his mother).

“Chaplin’s brief involvement with Barry proved to be a nightmare for him. After having a child, she filed a paternity suit against him in 1943. Although blood tests proved Chaplin was not the father of Barry’s child, Barry’s attorney, Joseph Scott, convinced the court that the tests were inadmissible as evidence, and Chaplin was ordered to support the child.

“The injustice of the ruling later led to a change in California law to allow blood tests as evidence. Federal prosecutors also brought Mann Act charges against Chaplin related to Barry in 1944, of which he was acquitted. Chaplin’s public image in America was gravely damaged by these sensational trials.”

The Mann Act itself was often employed against men, quite unfairly. To learn more, see below or click here.

The Mann Act (via Wikipedia)

The United States White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 prohibited so-called white slavery. It also banned the interstate transport of females for “immoral purposes.’ Its primary stated intent was to address prostitution, immorality, and human trafficking. The act is better known as the Mann Act, after James Robert Mann, an American lawmaker.

The first person prosecuted under the act was black heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who encouraged a white woman, Belle Schreiber, to leave a brothel and travel with him to another state. Though he later married the girl, and took her away from a brothel, he was nevertheless prosecuted and sentenced to a year in prison.

Thomas’s academic career at the University of Chicago was irreversibly damaged after he was arrested under the act when caught in the company of one Mrs Granger, the wife of an army officer with the American forces in France, although he was later acquitted in court.

British film actor Charles Chaplin was prosecuted in 1944 by Federal authorities for Mann Act charges related to his involvement with actress Joan Barry. Chaplin was acquitted of the charges, but the trial permanently damaged his public image in the US, and contributed to his departure for Switzerland in the early 1950s.

Canadian author Elizabeth Smart describes being arrested under the Mann Act in 1940 when crossing a state border with her lover, the British poet George Barker, in her (partly fictionalised) book By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. She memorably intertwines the callous police interrogation aimed at arresting her under this law with quotations about love from the Song of Songs.

In the late 1950s, Kid Cann, a notorious organized crime figure from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was prosecuted and convicted under the Mann Act after transporting a prostitute from Chicago to Minnesota. Although his conviction was later overturned on appeal, Kid Cann was later prosecuted and convicted of offering a $25,000 bribe to a juror at his trial under the Mann Act.

Wisconsin–Background: Recently I asked you to help Wisconsin Fathers for Children and Families try to get their shared parenting bill out of committee. To learn more, click here.

Sharon, a reader, sent a letter via my site to the Wisconsin legislative committee titled “I do NOT Support Wisconsin’s Equal Placement bill AB-571.” I asked and received her permission to share her views on shared parenting with my readership–her letter to the committee is below.

Dear Wisconsin Representative:

Equal parenting / shared parenting ONLY works when BOTH parents can cooperate for the best interest of the child.

I have a drunk for an ex-husband who abused me both physically and emotionally throughout my entire short marriage. We have a 2 1/2 year old son that is being cut in half emotionally and tortured every weekend he is forced to spend under his father’s care. I have termed this abuse of my son to be “Solomonizing”.

It is clear through psychological studies that children thrive in happy homes consisting of 2 loving parents. They can also thrive in happy homes of a single parent. And they can thrive in broken homes with split parents that both love and focus on them. They do not, however, thrive in situations where they are taken away from their mother and picked up by an aunt and left at grandma’s while dad gets drunk. They do not thrive in situations where medical information is withheld because the parent doesn’t want to risk being held accountable for neglecting the child. They do not thrive in situations where telephone calls are restricted and refused and tampered with to prevent the baby from talking to mommy when he is away from her.

If the divorce is a custody battle full of lies and horrific accusations, and the parents can not even handle a possession transfer at the child’s home, and has to be mandated to transfer the child at a police department, then forced shared parenting is not going to work. It becomes a license to take away the civil liberties of the custodial parent and put that parent on county arrest until the child turns 18.

Arizona–Background: I recently discussed McCain’s candidacy in Reflections on Super Tuesday, Part I: The Far-Right’s Hysterics over John McCain & Immigration. To learn more about my views of the presidential election, click here.

Now that John McCain is apparently going to be the Republican presidential nominee, several readers have written to me asking how I think he’ll be for fathers and noncustodial parents. I don’t know, of course, but from what limited information we have, the answer is not a positive one. I’ve heard McCain refer to the issue once and only once, in the incident described below. If anyone else knows of McCain expressing an opinion on the issue, please let me know.

Below I reprint the posting I made right after the McCain/Fathers’ Rights incident last March.

Aspiring Republican presidential candidate John McCain contemptuously dismissed fathers’ concerns over family law at a mid-day town hall meeting in Cedar Falls, Iowa today. Shared parenting activist Tony Taylor asked McCain if he “would be bold enough to address the issue of equal access to children for fathers that have gone through divorce.” McCain testily replied:

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, I am not going to overturn divorce court decisions. That’s why we have courts and that’s why people go to court and get a divorce. If I as President of the United States said this decision has to be overturned without the proper appeals process then I would be disturbing our entire system of government… But for me to stand here before all these people and say that I’m going declare divorces invalid because someone feels that they weren’t treated fairly in court, we are getting into a, uh, uh, tar baby of enormous proportions.”

In other words, McCain is saying, “the family court issue is a mess. Given the power of the women’s groups and the lack of power of fathers’ groups, there’s nothing for me to gain and much for me to lose in tackling the issue.”

It”s unfortunate, but McCain’s assessment of the politics of the issue is probably accurate at this point, and is one reason why we often can”t get politicians to meaningfully act on our issues. And as unfortunate as McCain”s response is, to be fair, he at least answered the question honestly. Whereas most politicians will give some vague, meaningless answer designed to appease the questioner into thinking he was going to do something about the issue, McCain made it clear he had no interest in the issue.

Also typifying the weakness of our movement, McCain’s remarks have been very controversial, but not for the right reason. McCain referred to the issue as a “tar baby,” meaning a sticky mess, which reforming family law certainly is. Yet “tar baby” also has a racist connotation, and Tony Taylor is black, perhaps the only black person in the room. McCain’s use of “tar baby” is being widely reported, and McCain apologized for using the term.

To watch video of the incident, which begins right after Taylor asked his question, click here (Note: It is now available by subscription only–GS). To learn more, see the CNN story McCain apologizes after using the phrase ‘tar baby’.

Taylor, to his credit, has been traveling around confronting candidates’ on fathers’ issues. He told me that as of today he has yet to receive a meaningful, positive response to his questions from any candidate.