He has to show signs of pragmatism before he runs in the seventh.

This is the first step.

Are there nappies under those britches? :-)

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

His mom or somebody wrote that for him.
He's just not smart enough to render such a piece of proposed legislation by himself.

That much is obvious.

Amazing. I agree that I doubt he wrote it himself. The clue is that it actually makes sense.

Pam Strickland

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut

That is a horrible bill. First of all, how many people will it affect? How many men have visitation rights and are also in the military? I'm going to presume no women are in those circumstances because a woman usually has to be pretty irresponsible to not have custody of her children and would likely be too irresponsible for the military too. Either way, we are talking about a tiny fraction of the population impacted by this bill.

Second, who are these proxy parents going to be? How will the courts determine whether the proxy parent can be trusted with the children? It seems like only in the case of a really ugly divorce would it even be necessary to appeal to the courts, as opposed to just saying, "My parents are willing to take the kids every other weekend while I'm in Iraq." If something like that can not be worked out and the courts need to get involved, you likely have a volatile situation.

So this bill's primary impact will be to further entangle the courts in a handful of messy divorces. Since divorce courts will hear appeals to modify the terms of custody, is this bill even necessary?

...Campfield didn't think, either, to exclude HOMOSEXUALS from those eligible to become "proxy parents."

My gawd, this bill could be a travesty!

(Sarcasm.)

Good analysis, Rikki. It certainly sounded like one of his "oppressed deadbeat baby daddy" protection bills, but not as onerous as some others.

Such as:

http://www.knoxviews.com/node/3800

Plus, if you oppose this one you aren't supporting our troops. Clever.

It's a dumb bill. The Court of Appeals has held that, as a general proposition, it is not in a child's best interest for the child's time with one parent to be diminished in favor third parties other than the other parent. See, e.g., McDaniel v. McDaniel, Western Section Court of Appeals, Dec. 18, 2008.

What is Campfield's obsession with government micro-managing everyone's life with such broad strokes? We have a whole branch of government staffed with people who are very qualified to determine what is best for individual children on a case-by-case basis. I wish Campfield would try to legislate about something he understands, like landlord-tenant law. Oh wait....

www.herstonlaw.com

I nominate this thread title for best KV thread title of all time.