What a f%cking nut-bar. This is nothing short of abuse of position -
for which this judge should be thrown from the bench in disgrace, and
be barred from practicing law for good.

A dad finally comes clean, but the judge feels the need to "teach him
a lesson". I wonder if the judge gave any consideration to the precise
lesson that has been taught to this man????

Lord knows, the judge has certainly sent a clear message - don't get
married, and don't have children or the system will treat you with
more distain than a murderer.

To me, the message came across as "purposefully ignore a court order and
fail to meet your obligations for a decade and end up in jail". And I
hardly see how being thrown in jail for six months equates to "more
distain [sic] than a murderer". I think the judge was more than fair.

Do you think if a bank robber offered to give the money back to the bank
the judge would just say "ok, you can go now. Thanks for returning the
money"?

The difference here is that society has an interest in people having
children, and unless you want to restrict childbearing only to the wealthy,
then you'll have to deal with people of lesser means having them. Note that
if the parents were married, the government would not be able to intervene
even if he were financially irresponsible. A man who does not earn a lot of
money is now risking prison time simply because he couldn't keep up his
child support payments.

How is it in the best interest of the child to have his father destroyed
like that? How is it in society's best interest to have men's survival
instincts (our strongest) override our reproductive instinct (our second
strongest) by pitting them against each other?

A more analogous situation would be if the man owed back taxes. Unless he
was sitting on a large pile of cash and thumbing his nose at the system, the
IRS would usually just get the money, close the file, and move on. Interest
and penalties were more appropriate than prison time here.

--
"Google maintains the USENET." -- The Honorable R. Barclay Surrick, Eastern
District of PA Judge
From Parker v. Google, E.D.Pa. #04-cv-3918