September 16, 2005 by s.z.

WO'C Babe of the Week

Here's an interesting fact for you: the email address used by our new friend "Scottie Dinkle" seems to belong to Rachel Alexander, the author of that handbook on Getting Custody to Avoid Paying Child Support. (At least, it's the email address Rachel used to organize "a debate on illegal immigration between conservatives and libertarians" in June of this year.)

So, in honor of our new Wo'C commenter, here's some info about Rachel.

First, Rachel is a former "Republican Babe of the Week," meaning she belongs to the same  illustrious company as Debbie Schlussel and Rachel Marsden.

Here's part of her Babe bio:

Rachel is an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Arizona, practicing Commercial and Administrative Law. She also does pro bono work for the Alliance Defense Fund, a religious constitutional rights organization in Scottsdale, Arizona. Rachel has appeared on Focus on the Family's radio program discussing constitutional issues.  

Okay, futher research indicates that she's not so much an "Assistant Attorney General" as she is a "Special Assistant/Deputy County Attorney" (I think this means that she's Maricopa County's Serena Southerlyn).  And this piece in the Phoenix New Times from January 2005 explains that she got her job after conservative Andrew Peyton Thomas was elected to the position of District Attorney (and presumably wanted to stock his office with babes, just like on "Law & Order"). 

Thomas also appointed Tom McDermott, Brad Smith, Tim LaSota and Rachel Alexander as special assistant/deputy county attorneys. The quartet has little experience in the practice of law, with Alexander having held a bar license for the longest time -- four and a half years.

[...]

Before his election to office last November, Thomas, a Harvard-educated attorney, was probably best known for inflammatory screeds on such topics as child care, abortion, and other societal issues. He's certainly a kindred philosophical spirit with new special assistant Rachel Alexander, whose Web site intellectualconservative.com is replete with her musings on the evils of the "Left." 

And here's a little bit about Mr. Thomas, from another piece in the Phoenix New Times (it's from back when it seemed like Mr. Thomas was too wingnutty to get elected).

In his cruel and unusual 1994 book Crime and the Sacking of America: The Roots of Chaos, Maricopa County Attorney hopeful Andrew Peyton Thomas wrote this:

"By publicly incarcerating drug dealers and other criminals, displaying them before their neighbors in large, open-air holding pens with their names and crimes prominently displayed, a modified stockade program could provide specific deterrence at marginal cost and general deterrence for the community."

What the Harvard Law School-educated attorney was talking about, basically, is a latter-day version of putting criminals in stocks on the public square.
[...]

He clearly believes what he says and writes -- and writes and writes! And because he's been published so often, Thomas' positions on everything from day-care centers (bad!) to the homeless (really bad!) to abortion rights (the worst!) to corporal punishment in schools (good!) to the death penalty (super!) are a matter of public record.

His core base of supporters consists of folks to whom the words illegal immigrants, welfare, right-to-choose, homosexuals, defense attorneys, activist judges, non-Christians and -- hold on tight now -- LIBERALS -- evoke conniption fits.

His opinions on day care are especially, um, colorful.   Here's a snippet from a piece in Reason magazine which quotes him:

In a 1995 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Arizona assistant attorney general Andrew Peyton Thomas castigated career-minded parents who put their children in daycare. Thomas called them "more respectable, less violent versions of Susan Smith," the North Carolina woman who drowned her two sons in a lake because they were interfering with her post-divorce love life 

In a later piece for the WSJ, he said that "Children raised in day-care centers and similar institutions are often emotionally and mentally impaired, and he called day care "psychological 'thalidomide.'"  He castigated mothers who return to work, saying that this results in "the warehousing of infants for the increased accumulation of material goods."  So, Rachel better not have any kids and plan to keep her job.

Anyway, Thomas is a relatively young, ambitious guy who knows how to grandstand for the media, so I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot more about him in the coming years. 

And what does Rachel do for D.A. Thomas?  I'm not sure what her official duties include, but she does seem to spend a lot of time doing web PR for him  For instance, she submitted her glowing review of his latest book, The People v. Harvard Law: How America's Oldest Law School Turned Its Back on Free Speech to just about every low-rent wingnut site on the internets.  She also gave it 5 stars at Amazon.  (Oddly enough, none of these reviews mention that Thomas is her boss.)

And lately she's been promoting his upcoming conference on illegal immigration.  As the blurb for it that she submitted to FreeRepublic says, "The conference will feature many well-known experts and commentators representing a wide spectrum of viewpoints, including Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, Stephen Moore and John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, John Leo of U.S. News & World Report, Sheriff Larry Deaver of Cochise County, Arizona, and many others that you will recognize" -- to include fellow Babe Debbie Schlussel.  So, if you attend, you'll get to hear a wide spectrum of viewpoints about how we should place multitudes of armed soldiers along the borders, and should deport anyone who looks foreign  It sounds like fun for the whole family!

But back to Rachel.  Why is she so down on divorced mothers?  There may be a clue in this 2002 Men's News Daily piece announcing her father's write-in candidacy for a position on the Washington State Supreme Court: Judge Steve Alexander.

Unlike the other candidates, who have both received 100% ratings from the Washington National Abortion Rights Action League, Alexander is a fiscal and social conservative who believes in the sanctity of family and fatherhood.

"Fatherhood issues are very important to me," Alexander told Men's News Daily. 

[...]

Judge Alexander's daughter, Rachel Alexander ... is his most visible supporter.

"If my dad wins," the younger Alexander told Men's News Daily, "he will tip the balance in favor of conservatives on the Washington Supreme Court."

Ms. Alexander noted that the likely winner of the election, feminist candidate Pamela Loginsky, has received a 100% endorsement from the Washington National Abortion Rights Action League (WA-NARAL).

"My dad is awesome on men's issues," said Ms. Alexander.

So, she became a lawyer like Daddy, she's a far-right conservative like Daddy, and she apparently believes in "the sanctity of fatherhood" like Daddy.  And for some reason she believes that the way to sanctify fatherhood is to bash mothers. 

Speaking of which, let me now share with you portions of her column "Child Custody: Where Men Hit a Glass Ceiling." 

Two of the most important factors include who is better able to "take care" of the child and whether there has been domestic violence by one of the parents. Well, these factors "sound" good, but in reality, they have been specifically selected for their heavy bias against fathers.  [...]

"Take care" of the child has little to do with being able to financially support the child. It should, since almost as many women as men work outside of the home now, but because a lot of women with children who split up with the fathers aren't very ambitious and sit around the house watching soap operas, the law has been crafted to label this as "taking care" of the children, instead of earning money. [...]

The child support laws are crafted not just to provide for the cost of raising a child, but to bring the parent receiving the support to the level she would have been at if she were still with the father! The absurdity of this situation can be seen in this all too common example: A woman cheats on her husband and then files for no-fault divorce. She gets custody of their children, AND the benefit of his salary and payraises until their child turns 18 (25 in Massachusetts). [...]

Do we really want to heap benefits on mothers who split up with the fathers, essentially giving "reward" money to women who have sex, instead of letting them suffer the consequences? Everyone knows that sex without true commitment leads to broken down homes and emotional trauma, particularly for any children involved. Everyone also knows that when you have sex, you may get pregnant. In some ways, child support is merely a disguised form of prostitution - women are encouraged to have sex and receive money from any man who succeeds in impregnating them. [...]

So what should the solution be? For starters, how about ending child support between parents who both want custody of their children? If someone really wants their children, they will find a way to make ends meet. It just doesn't cost that much to raise a child, no matter what people whine. The message we should be sending is, if you can't afford a child, then abstain from sex!  ... Why not let the parent who wants to care for the child, and is more financially capable, have the custody, or at the very least cut out the child support?

I'm not going to say anything about the above, since I find it too sad for commentary, but please feel free to express your thoughts on it. And anyway, "Scottie" seems to need the attention.
7:42:27 AM