District officials are investigating an incident in which a substitute teacher allegedly reprimanded a student inappropriately, authorities said Friday.

Police were called to South Pasadena Middle School on Wednesday following a report that a teacher had assaulted a child, said Cpl. Craig Cooper of the South Pasadena Police Department.

After investigating, police closed the case, determining no abuse had occurred, Cooper said.

The teacher "used the tip of her finger and patted (the student) on the forehead," Cooper said. "She was all, `Come on, you, you can do better than that."'

School officials, who also made a complaint to Los Angeles County child services representatives, are continuing to look into the case, said South Pasadena Unified School District Superintendent Brian Bristol.

"There was a substitute teacher that engaged in conduct that we consider to be physically and verbally assaultive," Bristol said, declining to confirm details about the alleged forehead-tapping.

The incident was reported by students to other teachers, who told school administrators.

"She made a poor choice, and we do not tolerate that. Such conduct is unacceptable," Bristol said of the teacher, adding that she will not be allowed to teach in the district again.

Bristol declined to give the names of the teacher or student involved, citing privacy.

An Oregon [woman] is five months pregnant, according to a national magazine.

Thomas Beatie, who used to be a woman, appeared in the most recent issue of The Advocate, a magazine for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender readers, Portland, Ore., television station KPTV reported.

Beatie wrote the article, which includes a picture of [her] while [s]he was 22 weeks pregnant. According to the story, [s]he went through a sex change, but decided only to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy.

Beatie, who lives in Bend, wrote he was once pregnant with triplets, but the pregnancy was life-threatening and [s]he lost the fetuses.

Now, Beatie said [s]he and [her] [“]wife[“], Nancy, are expecting a little girl in July.

In the article, Beatie described some of the challenges [s]he and [her] [“]wife[“] have faced -- they said doctors won't treat them.

Whether or not the government bails out homeowners, it must institute extensive regulations on American indebtedness.

Companies buy and package shaky mortgages to use as collateral for securities to be sold to companies that borrow money to buy them; this money is also borrowed from companies that have borrowed money to lend. This inverted pyramid of paper balances precariously on mortgages taken out by the John and Jane Does who cannot afford them if the housing market corrects, as it did and will again.

We also should institute regulations on the credit card business, which works in ways analogous to recent mortgage lenders, encouraging precarious debt with severe penalties for inevitable defaults.

We seem content to continue to live in a fantasy land in which debts never come due. And, by the way, as a renter who did not irresponsibly buy a house he couldn't afford, I'm pretty ticked off at the notion that my tax dollars might be used for the purpose of inflating housing prices.

I have saved all my life and now depend on interest income to support my retirement. The Federal Reserve has been reducing interest rates; my income will fall by about 20% in 2008. These reductions were made solely to bail out the sub-prime fiasco and benefit all those who have overextended themselves foolishly. Why should I have to pay for this? I have acted responsibly and now have been hit.

My husband gets aggravated with romantic commercials on television -- the ones where men do sweet things for their wives, like putting jewelry on them while they sleep, or pulling out that special gift at the dinner table.

He says the commercials try to make men feel guilty because they aren't like the ones portrayed.

I have tried telling him that men are, indeed, this way, but I couldn't think of any examples other than my brother and my father, who are very romantic.

Don't most men know how to sweep a woman off her feet?

Gifts are not the only way to make someone special feel loved.

Commercials are created in order to manipulate the public into buying, and if the amount of consumer debt being carried by U.S. households is any indication, that strategy has been extremely successful.

While diamonds may be "a girl's best friend," most women know that a life partner who gives them attention, affection, praise and assistance when they need it is a jewel more precious than any stone could ever be.

I think Elizabeth Wurtzel's ideas are strange. Would an actual feminist portray a woman choosing to raise her children properly over the supposed opportunities of corporate grind as "opting out"?

This writer may be conflicted over whether she should be the madonna or the whore, but I'm having no such internal argument. Women like Wurtzel denigrate what women do and then bemoan the loss of the perky boobs they once allowed to be shown in every half-priced bookstore in America.

It's true, something has gone wrong with the "Girls Gone Wild" thing. But if I look over the top of my paper for only a moment, I see what women are up to: I see real art, healthy families, strong friends and even business leaders.

I have news for Wurtzel: This is 2008, and women can accomplish whatever they set out to do. Women were put into boxes in the 1950s, and now Wurtzel is disappointed that they don't want to be in her box.

Did it ever occur to her that women who opt out to raise their children do so because it brings them more fulfillment? Maybe that doesn't advance her agenda, but I thought feminism was about women making their own choices. I had a career before I had my son, and frankly, I don't miss the workforce one bit. Yet she calls that ruining my life. What arrogance.

I'll tell Wurtzel where she and her feminist lot went wrong. Instead of embracing women's unique qualities, they decided to be just like the worst of men. So, yes, promiscuity, casual sex and "Girls Gone Wild" are the new "world that feminism hath wrought."

The movement allowed itself to be co-opted by the strange and the strident, including women who wanted to eliminate "man" from the language, women who abused men for such acts of civility as opening a door and women who browbeat other women for wanting to be wives and stay-at-home mothers.

"Brett" and I have been married for six years. We have no children, although I would dearly love to have one. Brett has a child from a previous relationship.

When I bring up the subject of having a child, he agrees, but when I tell him I am ovulating, he says he's too tired to try, or he makes up another excuse.

I have asked for a divorce several times, but Brett says he will not divorce me.

He knows I am taking prenatal pills and buying ovulation kits. I have also threatened to get artificially inseminated or to adopt. I feel as if I'm living in hell. What do I do?

Forget about artificial insemination or adopting without your husband's support, unless you are ready to raise a child by yourself.

Your husband has serious issues about becoming a father again, and it's time you found out what they are. Marriage counseling might help you get to the bottom of it.

That said, you do not need your husband's permission to end this marriage. If you have reached your limit, consult an attorney who specializes in family law. If you married Brett with the understanding that there would be children, you may qualify for an annulment.

A panel of law enforcement experts convened by Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton to examine the department's elite SWAT unit concluded in an undisclosed report that the rigorous testing to get into the unit should be changed to make it more open to women, called for tighter supervision and criticized officers for relying too heavily on force over negotiations.

Am I the only one who feels that last week's news events prove that the women's movement has failed?

Even worse, because Silda Wall Spitzer is accomplished and beautiful, the whole scene serves as a grim reminder that even amazing women become sexually disposable after a certain age.

Is this the world that feminism hath wrought?

Walk onto the trading floor of any of the hedge funds that crowd the Lever House building in Manhattan and hardly a female face will be seen who is not a secretary or an assistant. Enter the software shops of Silicon Valley, go to the rows of terminals where geeky computer programmers design cleverly crafted new media. They are mostly smart boys, playing with their toys. Everything that keeps our economy running is run by men.

For all the dynamic, visible women who are chief executives -- like the CEOs of Xerox and Kraft -- only 16% of corporate officers and 17% of large law firm partners are female.

Meanwhile, women still make 80 cents on the man's dollar. And, for whatever reason, women who do the exact same work but are also mothers make 10 cents less, according to Anne Alstott of Yale Law School.

It seems that the only industries in which women earn more than their male counterparts are pornography and prostitution.

My Sunday night summer viewing, which once consisted of the slumber-party gab of "Sex and the City," is now the lad-happy cool of "Entourage." I really do love that show, but most of the women -- girls -- in it cannot even kindly be called sex objects: They are simply sockets.

I appeared topless on the cover of one of my books, a decision I stand by still. I am proud that Naomi Wolf published a book called "Promiscuities" and that Katie Roiphe wrote a book called "The Morning After." I am really proud that Susan Faludi came out with the brilliant "Backlash." But I don't think the idea that you could own your own orgasm was ever intended to teach college coeds that it is a good idea to spend spring break in a shower with your roommate in a motel room in Daytona Beach having a lesbian encounter for the cameras of "Girls Gone Wild." That's not feminism!

But there's a countervailing tendency: the much-discussed opt-out revolution, which many upper-echelon women have chosen as a way of ruining their lives all by themselves, no assistance from men at all. This phenomenon has been both well chronicled and thoroughly debunked. But whether or not you believe it exists, professional women are having babies and deciding not to go back to work because motherhood is a cult, or homemaking is meaningful, or the hearth has heat -- or, really and truly, because being in an office 40-plus hours a week kind of sucks. A lot of men don't like their jobs either. But it's only women who have decided the hell with it -- and, truly, the hell with feminism.

Somewhere between childbirth and a no-fault divorce, a lot of smart women have chosen to engage in some risky behavior. Opting out is not a feminist choice. It's mostly just a bad idea.