Josh Ellis – Email
DallasCowboys.com Staff Writer

IRVING, Texas – Jason Witten fought through injury after injury during the 2008 season, cracked ribs, ankle problems, you name it. But pain never slowed his efforts in contributing to the community during his downtime.

The Cowboys tight end was named The Home Depot NFL Neighborhood MVP in Tampa on Wednesday, while he and six other finalists for the philanthropic award helped volunteers build a KaBOOM! playground near the site of Super Bowl XLIII.

“It’s an honor to have been selected for this very special award representing the Cowboys, the NFL and Home Depot,” Witten said. “Participating in the Home Depot event in Dallas last fall was great for me personally because giving back to my community in Dallas and back home in Tennessee is a big part life for me and my family. Winning on the field is what we work towards as a team but for me, winning off the field and helping others is what I strive to do all year long.”
DallasCowboys.com

By Pete Aleshire

Two domestic violence cases in the past week have illustrated the scheduling and cost juggle posed by the most statistically dangerous of police calls.

In one case, a report of an assault in progress at 2:03 a.m. on Sunday drew all three of the police officers on duty — the first arriving within seven minutes of the call.

The other officer on duty and the supervising sergeant also responded, leaving no one in reserve in a department coping with three vacant sergeant positions and several vacant patrol officer slots.

In the other case, police responded to a call in Star Valley reporting that a woman’s separated husband had sexually abused and assaulted her, kept her in her home for several hours and brandished a gun he threatened to use on himself. Officers arrested the woman’s husband in Payson after talking to her and to witnesses.

Paysonroundup.com

By Stephanie Clifford

This month, three teenage girls, students at Greensburg Salem High School in Greensburg, Pa., were charged with disseminating child pornography.

They had sent nude pictures of themselves by cellphone to their teenage boyfriends, who were charged with possessing child pornography.

The legal consequences in this case may have been unique, but the behavior is not. About 20 percent of teenagers have posted or sent nude cellphone pictures of themselves, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit group.

Sending nude pictures, whether it is done under pressure or not, is part of a pattern of teenage behavior that the Family Violence Prevention Fund, a nonprofit domestic violence awareness group based in San Francisco, has labeled digital dating violence. The digital violence can include sending nonstop text messages or posting cruel comments on a boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s Facebook or MySpace page. The behaviors can be a warning sign that a teenager may become a perpetrator or a victim of domestic violence, according to the group.

NYTimes.com

The Texas Council on Family Violence (TCFV) and the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault (TAASA) invite you to participate in Capitol Day.  Domestic and sexual violence are issues that affect all members of our community including women, men, youth, and seniors.  Many communities across Texas support full funding for programs that offer vital services for sexual assault and family violence victims and want to show their support.

This is your opportunity to get involved.

What: TCFV/TAASA Capitol Day
Where: First United Methodist Church Education Center
1300 Lavaca
Austin, Texas
When: February 11, 2009 at 10:00 A.M.

TCFV and TAASA urge all members of the community to take a stand and speak out against violence by participating in Capitol Day on February 11.

No previous lobbying experience is necessary, only the desire to foster a safer community.

We will meet at the Education Center at the First United Methodist Church and conduct a brief activism training session before we march to the Capitol and hold a press conference.

Please consider creating and bringing Valentine’s Day themed signs, banners, and letters which contain anti-family violence messaging. Help us make a statement on Capitol Day.  Community participation is necessary to stop family violence and sexual assault.  For banner and signage ideas, review the photos below from Capitol Day 2007.

-Anna Quindlen

The welfare of women should be a key component of American foreign policy. And we’ve got the woman to make that happen.

As Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton begin to use their uncommon authority and intelligence to implement a new American international agenda, it might behoove them to read a speech given some years ago in Beijing. It read in part: “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights for one and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely—and the right to be heard. Women must enjoy the rights to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure.”

Secretary Clinton was first lady when she spoke those words at a United Nations conference on women in 1995. Some of the participants wept to hear an influential American commit to a view of the world so many of them shared: that the way for nations to prosper was to pay attention to women’s rights, women’s welfare and women’s concerns.

Newsweek.com

In early January the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a press release further clarifying requirements of new children’s product safety laws. The new safety law, which takes effect on February 10, does “not require resellers to test children’s products in inventory for compliance with the lead limit before they are sold.” For more detailed information on this issue, click here.

Oklahoma currently ranks 10th nationally in the number of women murdered as a result of domestic violence.     

Just over a week ago a young mother and her 4 children were murdered in their El Reno, Oklahoma apartment by the mothers ex-boyfriend.     

Another tragic result of domestic violence.  

KTEN.com