printI said so in my April 15 column, “They’re Coming For Your Kids.” At the same time, my good friend and colleague, the heroic attorney and broadcaster Jerri Ward, rushed to defend an FLDS father pro bono. Now the Third Court of Appeals in Austin agrees.
Did the malpracticing, mindless media that never swims upstream ever interview Jerri or myself when we said what ought to have been plain to any clear-thinking, liberty loving individual? Of course not. Nancy Grace, Bill O’Reilly and the rest were busy fulfilling “their providential purpose” in this case, evangelizing for state overreach.
We will be talking today, at 12:42 Pacific Time, about the case vis-à-vis these new developments. I am a regular, fortnightly commentator on Jerri’s marvelous “I Object!” show. Be sure to follow our schedule here.
Update 3 (May 24): We covered the issues on the blog after the publication of “They’re Coming For Your Kids,” which in itself pretty much said it all. Trace the discussion here. Nothing has been added to the debate since the column, other than a couple of legal technicalities, such as that the Abduction Department treated the compound as one family, instead of investigating individual cases. The assigning of collective guilt–tribal justice–bears no resemblance to the law as the Rights of Englishmen would have it.
This is both sickening and retarded. I covered it; re-read the post. We’re not rehashing the same thing over again, especially in light of the general reluctance, because chronically incurious, among posters to read all background material on the Mother site: Barely A Blog is a companion to the main site, IlanaMercer.com. What has changed is that a month hence, the Court has agreed with us. However, even if the Appeals Court had not agreed with us, we’d still be right. Natural justice is immutably true.
Governments have no RIGHTS – only individuals do. But governments do have power and authority. I can see the Government sending someone over to check out an accusation – say that I am keeping a 90 foot gorilla in my garage -and acting further if there is more to it than just a crank call….
They could have EXAMINED the young kids for burns, welts, cuts…. – and then let the moms have the kids back. If there was more to it, they could have required the dads not visit girls ages 10 – 18 without supervision for a limited time to check out the validity of whatever charges.
Why does a government of a supposedly free people think it should shoot first and ask questions later??
I’m not big on the death penalty. However, it needs to be exercised whenever bureaucrats knowingly, or unknowingly, violate civil liberties. Perhaps armed paramilitary police units should be allowed to get off with a public flogging, but not much less. I would rather see a thousand murderers walking the streets then one government agency allowed to violate due process. The danger to freedom in this case warrants extreme punishment for the statists involved.
Probably the only thing the FLDS is guilty of is bad taste in architecture.
If the State had proper evidence, their actions would have been appropriate. Sadly, it appears that they had zero evidence of abuse or imminent danger to anybody living in the cult. Therefore, a serious unjustice has been committed on the part of the State and somebody should be held accountable.
Well, if they can demonstrate that any of the mothers in question were actually underage when they concieved, and that certainly appears to be the case, then the opportunity is there for them to present that as evidence. But they never bothered to actually establish those pesky “facts,” never bothered to marshal all that bothersome “evidence,” and so never had anything so passe as a “case.” Simply siezing them all summarily (and we now find out that one of those underage “mothers” isn’t even, technically, like, a mother) wasn’t just tyrannical, it was unnecessary. It also might do serious damage to the state’s ability to actually prosecute a real statutory rape case if one is called for, thus undermining the supposed purpose of the entire exercise.
What a horror.
Hmmm – as I understand it, there’s good evidence that at least a few of those children were being sexually abused (and any sex with a child under the age of consent is abuse). I’m referring to the fourteen year old, amongst others. She wasn’t with child, but a fourteen year old bride?
In any case, given the revolting teachings of Islam on child-rape, I for one see a certain danger in turning a blind eye to religious lunacy of any stripe. Sam Harris wrote an excellent piece ‘Loosing our Spines to save our Necks’, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali concurred.
“there’s good evidence that at least a few of those children were being sexually abused”
In fact, there’s no evidence of the kind. They’ve not been able to pin point any adult who did any such thing. They have taken away 460 (the numbers keep changing and the fact that they can’t count should be reason enough not to trust CPS judgment) children from their parents because 3 girls “MAY” have been molested??? I would suggest that the numbers would be far higher in any other demographic in America selected at random. This remains a travesty to the families and a crime by government. The government has every right to bring charges against the guilty but they seem to be missing one solid necessity when charging someone with crimes, that is evidence!
FK, this is from the judges decisions. It’s pretty clear that they were on a fishing expedition and the bait was the children. “Cooperate, meaning you testify as we’d like, or never see your children again.” Despicable!
“”The Department (CPS) did not present any evidence of danger to the physical health or safety of any male children or any female children who had not reached puberty,” the panel wrote in its order.”
THanks for the info. That puts a rather different perspective on the matter.