Bill Anderson's insightful LRC article on VAWA and its unholy proceeds.
I will add to this that there is a lot more mumbo-jumbo on this issue. For example, a woman can take out a restraining order in many states on zero pretext (just a story and a claim that she's "scared") - if she's living with the subject of the restraining order, he will find himself summarily evicted from his own home the moment the police serve him with the restraining order. Depending on how they choose to play dirty, the courts will either schedule the hearing several months out, effectively reducing the subject of the restraining order to a vagabond for the duration or they will schedule the hearing within 24-48 hours such that the subject does not have time to retain legal counsel, particularly if he works for a living.
In a wider context, I've noticed a strong similarity between the government's use of the word "crime" and the church's use of the word "sin." A sin is not necessarily an earthly harm. It is a historical fact that either occurred or did not. The evil of sin lies in the fact that it is an offense to God. That is, God is harmed by sin because, in some sense, existence itself has been polluted by the sinful deed being among the facts of history. God's omniscient eye is offended by the pollution of history. And the purpose of God's law and God's action in the world is to make sin not occur.
The state uses the word "crime" in a way that has many strong similarities. What makes something a crime? Well, it's definitely not that someone was harmed because many kinds of deeds are crimes which cause no one any harm, not even the criminal himself (e.g. money-laundering). Then there are all those victimless crimes. The concern of police, investigators and the prosecutor once they "charge" someone with a crime, is not to determine whether anyone was harmed but, rather, to establish what they call "the Truth". A crime - like a sin - is a historical event that either did or did not occur. What makes a crime odious is that it is an offense against "decency" or "Society" or whatever. The purpose of law is to make crimes not occur.
Clayton -
But I wonder if it has the same effect on TPTB. I wonder if the wives of TPTB ever threaten to accuse their husbands of any of these "anti-woman" crimes. If so, then what kind of power do they posses over their husbands and, thus, TPTB and, thus, the anti-"anti-woman" laws themselves.
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
I wonder if the wives of TPTB ever threaten to accuse their husbands of any of these "anti-woman" crimes.
Maybe they do.