I 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.

“Imagine: One day you’re frolicking in the open air on a large compound, doing your daily chores, and feasting on hearty homegrown fare; the next you’re gagging on a diet of T&A courtesy of MTV, and fast-food compliments of your fat foster mom. As the makeshift mom hollers at you to swallow your zombifying meds—the Texas foster care system is notorious for pumping its charges full of psychotropic drugs—her flaccid live-in lover eyes you lustily.”

As I write, many of the kids kidnapped by Texas rangers from the Yearning for Zion ranch are being scattered across the state to far-flung group homes and shelters. In the land of the free and home of the brave hundreds of children can be rounded up and removed from their families based on a hunch or a hoax. No hue and cry will ensue—not from professional civil libertarians, nor from members of the unwatchful dogs in the media, or from presidential candidates vying to uphold—or is it just to hold—the Constitution.”

The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily.com column, “They’re Coming For Your Kids!” The column leads the WND Commentary Page for Friday, April 25.

On the occasion of Pope Benedict being forced to publicly capitulate to the sexual abuse industry, I’m reposting a BAB post titled “Sex, God & Greed.”

Ever wonder why the epidemic of allegations that has almost bankrupted the Catholic Church has not caught on in the UK and Europe? I venture that this is because the pop-psychology that undergirds the lion share of the allegation, and the attendant class-action law suits that ensued, is American through-and-through.

The repressed memory mythology is an American invention. As I reminded readers in my “Defense of Hierarchy & the Catholic Church,” “this victim movement has done a great deal more than try and bankrupt the Church.”

‘SEX, GOD & GREED’

In 2003, Daniel Lyons, in Forbes, hashed out all there is to say about the sexual-abuse shakedown to which the Catholic Church has been subjected. It’s worth revisiting this exceptional exposé, now that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, lamentably, has decided to capitulate, rather than fight a racket facilitated by courts that are conduits to theft. Writes Lyons:

“….The focal point of this tort battle is the Catholic Church. The Church’s legal problems are worse even than most people realize: $1 billion in damages already paid out for the victims of pedophile priests, indications that the total will approach $5 billion before the crisis is over… The lawyers are lobbying states to lift the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases, letting them dredge up complaints that date back decades. Last year California, responding to the outcry over the rash of priest cases, suspended its statute of limitations on child sex abuse crimes for one year, opening the way for a deluge of new claims. A dozen other states are being pushed to loosen their laws.”

“’There is an absolute explosion of sexual abuse litigation, and there will continue to be. This is going to be a huge business,’ MacLeish, age 50, says. A Boston-based partner of the Miami law firm of GREENBERG TRAURIG (2002 billings: $465 million)…”

Lyons and Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal are the only writers I know of to have pointed out how many of these class-action claims are, if not bogus, backed by the discredited excavation of false memories. (See my “Repressed Memory Ruse”):

The repressed memory hoax “…relies on a controversial theory that has split the world of psychology into bitterly opposing camps for more than a decade: the notion that people can wipe out memories of severe trauma, then recover these repressed memories years later… Richard McNally, a Harvard psychology professor…. thinks recovered memories of trauma are questionable. He has conducted numerous studies on memory, particularly with sexual abuse victims. He says people don’t forget a trauma like anal rape. They might forget something like being fondled as a child, but that’s because the fondling was not traumatic, he argues. ‘It might be disgusting, upsetting—but not terrifying, not traumatic.’”

“McNally’s take on this subject has set off a hometown feud with Daniel Brown, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School who is a leading proponent of recovered memory. The two archrivals have never met, engaging instead in a ‘battle of the books.’
In 1998, when Brown won an award for his 786-page tome, Memory, Trauma Treatment & the Law, McNally wrote a scathing review that criticized Brown’s methodology. In March of this year McNally published his own book, Remembering Trauma, in which he bashes repressed-memory theory and criticizes Brown’s work yet again.”

Update (April 20): To the extent that there was sexual abuse in the Church—and it was never as rampant as the $2 billion-worth of lawsuits suggests—it was mostly homosexually oriented. So sanctioning marriage would not have mitigated the abuse of small boys. I can’t imagine, moreover, that by sanctioning marriage, our reader recommends that the Catholic Church bless gay marriage.

All in all, lowering moral standards in response to a moral crisis is surely not a very elevated solution. The church, therefore, need not change its tradition of celibacy.

In 2006, I warned that yet another “prosecutorial team [was gathering] steam, this time in Utah, where the state, feds in tow, has been pursuing Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” (Blog discussion is here.)

Since I wrote “Remember Reno,” the “Benthamites” put Jeffs away for a hitherto-unheard of crime: rape by proxy.

Recently, as My Way News has reported, Texas “child welfare officials seized 416 children from the [polygamist] compound.”

This, based on a vague allegation of abuse by a girl the authorities have yet to locate:

“[t]he investigation began with a call from a young girl who has yet to be located by CPS. The women in the sect said they suspect she may be a bitter ex-member of the church.”

In the land of the free and the home of the brave, as one sect member—Brenda—described America cynically, children are removed from their families absent verified evidence of abuse.

Here’s what I uncovered, and wrote-up, in “Remember Reno”:

“The law is confusing. Although polygamy is banned by the state constitutions of Utah and Arizona, it isn’t a crime and is not prosecuted. Furthermore, provided parental consent is obtained and the marriage voluntary and in the best interests of the minor, the law does not prohibit minors from marrying. More material, and as Court TV has reported, ‘Under state law, it is a crime to have sexual relations with anyone under the age of 18 unless the parties are legally married to each other. Because a polygamous marriage can never be legal, the men marrying teenagers as second, third or fourth wives [are] guilty of statutory rape, or sexual conduct with a minor.’ Thus a determination of rape here rests not so much on whether evidence exists that a woman was forced to have sex against her will, but on her position in the harem!”

Update (April 18): HERE COMES FOSTER CARE FUN. Those of you who’re convinced that the State is justified in removing 416 children from this compound, based on false reporting, and other “evidence” that would not hold up in a court that respects the rules of evidence, please consider this:

If these kids have not been forced into sex to date, they most certainly will once they hit the foster-care circuit. Oh yeah, foster parents, bless them, are usually upstanding professional people, who collect strays out of the kindness of those big hearts of theirs, rather than for the cheque account the welfare State affords them.

Whatever are your voyeuristic ideas about the sex life on a polygamist compound, you can take this to the bank: The children seized in this raid lead a protected, relatively innocent and insulated life. The gravest abuse still awaits the kids of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as they become intimately acquainted with the loose, licentious, foster-care system.

Their mothers, scorned by moron media, may be quaint, deficient, and demure (not to mention thin!) ladies, but thankfully, these children will soon encounter the libertine, promiscuous life-style fostered under the state.

(I’m dripping cynicism, of course.)