No relief yet

I told you the bitch was going to stonewall:

A decision by Texas District Judge Barbara Walther means that to regain custody, the 38 mothers who filed the complaint that led the Texas Supreme Court to reject the state’s massive seizure must personally sign an agreement their attorneys and state child-welfare officials have proposed.

That could add days to the process, attorneys for some of the other mothers likely affected by the decision said, because the women are scattered across the state to be close to their children in foster care.

“It’s not as simple as going across the street and setting up a booth,” said attorney Andrea Sloan, who represents several young FLDS women and minors who contend they should be reclassified as adults.

Walther had wanted to add restrictions to the agreement worked out by the parents’ attorneys and Texas Child Protective Services, but the parents’ attorneys argued that she didn’t have the authority.

The judge then said she would sign the initial document, but only after all 38 mothers involved in the case the high court ruled on signed it first.

Under the deal CPS released, the families won’t be able to leave Texas until Aug. 31 but would be allowed to move back to the ranch. It also calls for parenting classes and visits by CPS to interview children and parents in the child abuse investigation.

Walther wanted to remove the August deadline and provide for psychological evaluations of the children. She also wanted it specified that parents can’t travel more than 60 miles from their residence without 48 hours’ notice. She also wanted CPS to have access to the ranch and the children at all times necessary for any investigation.

So…let’s see…in spite of not having been charged and convicted of a crime, the mothers are basically treated as parolees, but Judge Babwa Wawa wanted tougher terms. What’s this “no farther than 60 miles” BS? The woman needs to lose her job, plain and simple.

Global warming hot air at La Scala

Italy’s premiere opera house has just commissioned on opera based on OwlGore’s “Inconvenient Truth” from Giorgio Battistelli, currently artistic director of the Arena in Verona. It’s not mentioned which librettist will have the duty of producing a drama from an alleged book of nonfiction, though Battistelli has done his own libretti, including that for Cenci (after Artaud), but not for the recent The Fashion (by Bob Goody) or Richard III (Ian Burton)

I’ve not heard a note of his music, which has been described as “post-modern atonality” and “a colourless gouache of synthetic sub-Birtwistle“. George Loomis of the International Herald Tribune wasn’t easy on his skills in the one non-negotiable of opera:

The chief fault of “Richard III” lies in its text setting. Proponents of opera in English — “Richard III” was written in English and performed with Flemish supertitles — argue that if only singers enunciate clearly and conductors keep the orchestra under control, words will come through. But Battistelli stacks the deck against them with heavy, though interesting orchestration, and angular vocal writing with long note values doesn’t help.

…though given that this is An Inconvenient Truth, the inept text-setting might help the project.

But the real issue here is plot. This being opera, we need a concrete love interest. Perhaps Battistelli could cast the prima donna as the goddess Gaia, and the lead tenor (or countertenor!) could sacrifice himself to her by being buried alive in a huge compost pile.

UPDATE 6/2: Comments from the composer here. There’s going to be a part for Al Gore; no information on whether it will consist of just one pitch.

TX Supremes to CPS: Give ‘em up!

To nobody’s surprise, the appeal of the Court of Appeal’s ruling left that ruling standing. My only surprise were the 3 justices that thought the seizure was OK in the case of pubescent girls. Volokh has a good analysis on how the decision depended on whether YFZ as a whole constituted “a household.”, giving as a counterexample neighborhoods where teen pregnancies are common. He’s got to be more circumspect than I do, so I’m going to take his idea and run with it. We have places in our cities where three generations of teen mothers on welfare are common, and where there is no social opprobrium for that, where girls are groomed for life as single parents. So, if the CPS logic is right, why not roll up the ghetto? Arrest every pubescent girl under the age of consent. Arrest the boys too, because they’re being groomed to be “playas”. Law and morals aside (I told you, this was CPS-think), such a deed is utterly impractical, first because there aren’t enough foster homes out there, and next because those parents won’t fall to their knees and pray when the big guns come; they’ll shoot back. “Racism” and “genocide” will be the cry. In that case, wasn’t the FLDS raid racism against white people, and indeed genocide in a cultural if not genetic sense, since the kids were being ripped away to be differently acculturated? It was certainly a violation of religious freedom: if a religion says that polygamy will get you favor in heaven, and you take boys away so they won’t be acculturated in that belief, how can it not be about religion?

Banks shutting down domestic ATMs

…AKA home equity lines of credit.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. But listening to the whiner is an interesting lesson in innumeracy. First, she thinks that the county assessment has anything to do with the value of her home in this volatile market. Our house was “worth” $110K when we bought it for $70K, and the first thing we did was have it reassessed based on the objective data of what it was worth, as established by the market. If it would have kept up the value of our house, we would have left it, but since that number doesn’t do that, we opted for lower taxes instead. If a random number establishes what a bank should lend her, why not go with Zillow’s $121.5K?

Second, her equity has nothing to do with what she paid in. Nobody has a problem with this concept while houses are appreciating, but nobody wants to believe they could lose what they’ve invested. Third, this woman wasn’t doing much money management. She’s a registered nurse; she makes some money. Assuming that she paid what the house is now worth per the county (which she certainly didn’t), and that it’s actually worth that (which, being in Bedford, it isn’t), she’s managed to accumulate $28K in equity over 11 years. That’s it. Granted, it appears she got a divorce, which can really screw up your finances. But you have to wonder what, at age 63, she’s going to do about retirement.

Tempest in teapot over Chardon HS military

Boortz is stirring up shit over a decision by Chardon High School to not let a pair of seniors graduate in their military uniforms. He got my goat with the first 6 words: “A government high school in Cleveland…” Sorry, Chardon ain’t Cleveland, not even the same county. Near Cleveland, maybe, if a 45 minute or so drive is “near.” But then there’s a bunch of inference that Chardon is disrespecting the troops, and that we need to have an exception to the dress code because…well, because our soldiers deserve to have their asses kissed. That indeed they do…as Chardon’s citizens well know:

When this issue was first brought to our attention we developed a compromise that would allow these two young men to be honored as members of our nation’s military and as graduating seniors of the Chardon High School class of 2008.

The plan was that the two graduating seniors would join the official Color Guard in their full military uniform and lead the graduation processional into the ceremony. After the salute to our Nation’s flag they would be introduced and recognized for their military accomplishments. They would then join their fellow classmates in cap and gown to be honored for their educational achievements.

This would allow these two individuals to be honored for their separate achievements, while at the same time providing for the traditional observation of wearing a cap and gown to receive a diploma.

Now, does that sound like a bunch of military-hating libruls to you? Me neither. And Chardon’s not the place for that kind of folks. But it’s not enough for McDonnell and Workman, who apparently do want us to kiss their asses. Now, I said the military deserved that. However, the equation changes when the military demands to have their asses kissed, because the military has the tools to ensure that gets done. And I’m not keen on the idea of kissing any derriere at gunpoint. These two boys are not acting like men, let alone warriors. They should graciously accept what they’ve been offered and shut up.

Another falls in Cuyahoga Falls

At least it was a ‘Pug … wouldn’t want to think that all the crooks in Ohio politics were Democrats,

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A state lawmaker from northeast Ohio has resigned amid allegations that he purchased Ohio State football tickets with campaign funds and resold them for a profit

State Rep. John Widowfield, a Republican from Cuyahoga Falls near Akron, submitted his resignation Wednesday in a two-sentence letter. … Legislative Inspector General Tony Bledsoe is looking into whether Widowfield sold the tickets on eBay for a profit after buying them at face value through a season ticket option available to state lawmakers.

On Ebay! How public! How low-class! You’d have thought that he might have asked himself, just once, if this could possibly be corrupt.

A totally unrelated stinking turd from TX CPS

Police have seized video tapes of [a] court-appointed advocate molesting as many as 20 children. He is being charged with aggravated sexual assault of an 8-year-old girl under his care earlier this month.

Billy Dan Carroll, a 53-year-old entrepreneur and founder of a court-reporting firm, filmed himself having sex with several kids between the ages of 3 and 15, the Austin American Statesman reported.

Yep, that’s in Texas. Where they just had a raid to prevent hundreds of kids from maybe being forced to have underage sex…where the next step would be to appoint people like Billy Dan Carroll to watch out for them.

The mind boggles.

Sharon Stone: the Fred Phelps of the left

Sharon Stone opines that the China earthquake might be God’s punishment karma for the Tibetan repression, and Rachel Lucas runs her through:

What’s funny is that when Jerry Falwell says stupid shit like this, it’s precisely people like Sharon Stone who completely freak out and calling him a flaming fucknozzle. I guess it’s okay to say the exact same kind of stupid shit as long as you use the word “karma” instead of “God.”

Not that we haven’t seen target-specific exemptions from civilized behavior from that quarter before.
UPDATE 5/29. That wasn’t karma, Sharon, this is.

LRC screws up on LP VP politics

Of course, the best match-up would be for Barr to not name a VP until after the GOP convention, then name Paul, but I don’t see it happening.

Neither do I — because the LP doesn’t do things that way; they elect a VP separately, and always have. That’s one reason they got the absolute loser they got for VP in ‘04. (What’s more futile than seeking the LP Presidential nomination? Running for “warm bucket of spit” under the LP banner). Barr got an ideologically-compatible running mate through old-fashioned horse trading, and it could easily have gone otherwise. I know there are a lot of people who consider LRC paleoconservative and not libertarian, but you’d think they could get that little fact right.

Barr/Root it is

I did manage to see the 4th-6th ballots on C-Span, at the ‘rents. I was taken sick shortly after that, and we decided to come home. So I’m reading the blogs this AM, instead of tonight.

I think we have two very strong candidates here, vastly better than ‘04. I don’t know if we have two libertarian candidates. But very clearly, the party is way different from when I was active in it, or I would not have called it for Ruwart. Now it’’s unity-time. The proper step if one wants to “save the party” is to recruit principled libertarians to dilute the influx of Republicans that Barr will bring in. Meanwhile, talk of “I’ll leave the Party”, of “Libertarians for McKinney” (!) or “Libertarians for Baldwin” is just crazy BS. I won’t be doing much besides voting, because I just don’t have time…and because ultimately, politics is a circle jerk. But ideologically, you can bet I’ll be holding Barr’s feet to the fire.