33 years

…for having marriage customs different from society at large.

Are the FLDS heretics? Sure. Are the guys just into it for the pussy? Maybe…how can I know that? There are easier ways these days than marrying, for sure.

But that’s 10 years more than the highest presumptive sentence for murder in Oregon., 6 times what the average murderer actually serves, about the same as you get in Illinois for first degree murder. Just sayin’…

I believe, I guess

Carey Cockerell, commissioner of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, will leave his post on Aug. 31.

I don’t know whether he was making any operative decisions in the YFZ Ranch fiasco. But I suspect that, beyond any earlier plans he may have had, it’s a good time to avoid being splattered with the blood of your underlings.

A fashion statement for your children

Dress ‘em up here. A little spendy maybe, but hand-made by American mothers, and the money goes to a good cause.

I found out about it here. Bill Medvecky has some literacy issues, but he’s passionate and creative. He’s been covering the Teresa Jeffs/Natalie Malonis dispute:

When Theresa was still in the shelter, she got a visit from her at 10:30 at night. She did not leave the girl until 1:00 in the morning berating and yelling at her the whole time. The girl is afraid of this women and hides from her whenever she can.

The girl is being used by the “Judge” and her Attorney to persecute the adults at the Ranch.

This is the same Attorney that stood on the steps of the Courthouse and declared that Theresa had had a baby and the baby was kidnapped from her and was in hiding. CPS claimed that Theresa was pregnant. She is the last of the 31 original “Children” who were either pregnant or had a child.

Theresa has been examined by a gynecologist.

She is not pregnant.

She has never had a baby.

She has never had sexual relations, she’s a virgin.

If there is any baby on that Ranch that has Theresa’s DNA as her Mother, we’ve had the second Immaculate Conception in history, and we need to get that psycho off her back.

We’ll forgive the Protestant heretic for confusing a Virgin Birth with an Immaculate Conception.

The trouble with court-appointed lawyers

…is that there’s an essential conflict-of-interest given who they work for, as Teresa Jeffs is finding with hers.

Teresa Jeffs denies allegations by her attorney that she was forced into a spiritual marriage at age 15 with an older man and that she has a baby. She told The Associated Press on Sunday that she wants a new lawyer.

But the court-appointed attorney, Natalie Malonis, believes Jeffs is being swayed by a church official.

On Friday, Malonis successfully sought a restraining order against church spokesman Willie Jessop, who she said was intimidating and improperly influencing the girl.

“I believe that (the girl) was avoiding service because of coercion and improper influence from Willie Jessop,” Malonis wrote the judge.

Malonis sought the protection order after the girl asked State District Judge Barbara Walther to release her from the case and appoint another attorney.

Jessop, a Utah-based member of the church, denies trying to influence Jeffs and criticized restrictions that prohibit her from visiting the sect’s Yearning For Zion ranch near Eldorado, Texas.

Teresa Jeffs says she doesn’t need and didn’t approve of the restraining order and doesn’t want Malonis as her lawyer anymore.

“I have asked her many times to please step aside,” Teresa Jeffs told the AP by telephone on Sunday from Texas. “I need more help. I want my attorney to listen to me.”

Sounds like a reasonable request. But not when you’re a child, or a pligger bitch.

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.

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?

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.

Yee-ha! TX appeals court whups CPS butt!

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — In a ruling that could torpedo the case against the West Texas polygamist sect, a state appeals court Thursday said authorities had no right to seize more than 440 children in a raid on the splinter group’s compound last month.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin said the state failed to show the youngsters were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court action.

This technically only applies to 38 of the 200 mothers, but lawyers for the others are expected to join in. The ruling gave a lower-court judge 10 days to release the youngsters from custody stonewall, but the state could appeal to the Texas Supreme Court and block that.

One of the “underage mothers” was 27! There are grandmothers out there that old!

Volokh is very on it, with a link to the decision, and some lawyerly piss-in-the-pudding.

I suspect there are a few people in CPS management who are spending a quiet evening at home, updating their resumes. I don’t think that’s necessary to get a job making licence plates.

FLDS Update

Nice comment, here:

What would the reaction be if the Muslims held in Guantanimo were denied access to the Koran, made to wear western clothing, denied access to anything with Muslim references and told they were not allowed to even utter the name “allah”? The ACLU would have court papers filed before the sun set. There would be protesters camped outside the gates night and day and government officials would be on television demanding an investigation to make sure the rights of these people were not being violated.

That pretty much sums up current treatment of the FLDS kids. They can’t have their scriptures and the children of Warren Jeffs aren’t allowed to hear or say their fathers’ name.

Maggie told me she travels 500 miles each week to visit her children — two boys in Amarillo, a daughter in Converse and another in Gonzalez.

How are the children doing, I asked Maggie.

”Good and bad,” she said, and then explained what she meant.

”Good meaning they’re strong, independent and determined in their faith.”

And bad: ”They look different, they smell different. There is a depth of hurt in their eyes I’ve never seen before. They have a look of betrayal like they don’t trust adults. They have never been lied to by anyone in our faith.”

In the beginning, I referred to this as “the kinder, gentler Waco.” I’m no longer so sure about that: not the Waco part, but the kinder and gentler part. There was an end to the suffering of the Waco kids.

TX CPS goes fishing for more children

The Authorities went back to Yearning For Zion Ranch to see if there were any more children there. I don’t know what they expected to find; they took the women and are taking any babies born to them in captivity. Maybe somebody said the FLDS “breed like rabbits” so they figured they had a 31-day gestation. The folks there told them to come back with a search warrant…which I suspect will be harder than usual to procure. they let journalists in though…a sign that they’re getting world-savvy. As is this:

In one sign that sect members may be thinking of flexing their political muscle, members on Wednesday requested up to 600 voter registration cards from Schleicher County.

That is something they have not done in the five years since the 1,700-acre ranch was transformed from a small game ranch to a $20.5 million self-contained community.

Schleicher County has an estimated 2,800 residents, and the sect property is the third-biggest taxpayer in the rural ranching county, accounting for roughly 18 percent of its tax base. County officials had no role in the raid, aside from sheriff’s deputies assisting state law enforcement.

“As residents of the state, we have to take responsibility for part of this,” said Jessop. “We were naive enough to believe there was good people in government to protect our rights.”

Yes, that was naive. The latest charge will probably be that the men tell their wives how to vote.

UPDATE: About that original search warrant:

The entire community was treated as a single residence. Separate search warrants were not obtained for the individual homes.
One citizen reported that when he demanded to see a search warrant before admitting officers to his home, he was told that the warrant had been served on Mr. Jessop at the gate.
“This isn’t Mr. Jessop’s home,” the citizen objected.
“Well, we’re coming in anyway,” he was told.
Many others could testify to the same treatment.