Original FLDS warrant denied?

According to a story here, the original request for a warrant was denied due to insufficient evidence. Some quick searching on Judge Johnny Griffin reveals that he has taken a moderate approach towards the FLDS even as his apparent friend, Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran, was getting antsy about them.

Editors!

Cops going off half cocked !

Only in Minnesota. Well, unfortunately not. Seems some local cops decided to do some celebrating with their service revolvers. It's good to know we're making some strong efforts to hire people with good character to be cops. These neighbors were far more charitable than I think I would have been.

http://www.startribune.com/local/19417229.html

FLDS: Pots and Kettles and Who's Calling Who What?

A couple of years ago I met individually with a number of child welfare workers for some research. These are the people who decide if a child should be removed from a home, who write up recommendations for the court regarding the child’s future, who work with parents on creating a better home environment, and who inform courts if parents are fit to be parents or not. One thing that really struck me was the family life of these folks themselves. One very interesting thing that struck me was that those married with children were outnumbered by those single with children. Single because they were either divorced or had never even married the other parent. And these are the people telling others how to create a good home?

This was not even remotely scientific, but it would be interesting, if someone hasn’t already, to study this issue and find out just who we are relying on to determine who is fit to be a parent. Maybe next year.

As an old song says “If you can’t even run your own life, I’ll be damned if you’ll run mine.”

On a related note, just who is the state saying is or is not a fit parent? Apparently Texas’ CPS is OK with a polygynous relationship where some guy makes a baby with a teen girl and then runs off. There are some pretty reliable statistics to indicate that this kid is extremely likely to become a teen mom or dad themselves (and they are also likely to become a criminal). I can’t find any records of CPS raiding these homes, even though there are thousands more of them throughout the state. Even when CPS does get involved in these it’s rare that they remove children from the home. Yet, in a polygynous relationship where dad sticks around to help raise all of his kids and where evidence indicates that extremely few, if any, will turn out to be criminals, CPS deems it necessary to confiscate the kids.

FLDS: Texas Authorities Snake Bit?

I’ve found it rather interesting that the topic of polygyny has not been mentioned in any of the service plans or, to the best of my knowledge, in any of the custody hearings. There is certainly the possibility that CPS, given the vagueness of the service plans, intends to make it a part of each individual case. Perhaps as part of a ‘safe home environment’.

Another possibility though is that the State of Texas may be snake bit after their disagreement with Mr. Lawrence and his partner. Might they be thinking that going after the polygynists for polygyny in a legal court could wind up with a prohibition on polygyny being declared unconstitutional? Lawrence vs Texas certainly establishes a stage for that. In fact Justice Scalia, in his dissent made this point specifically. Stay tuned.

Airlines: We're all treated fairly?

Recently I’ve been doing a good amount of flying, much of it back and forth across the Atlantic. As I checked in for a flight yesterday I was charged for excess baggage weight. I knew that I would be and for the most part I’m fine with it. It’s a reasonable charge. Extra weight causes a plane to burn extra fuel and reduces the amount of revenue they can earn carrying other packages. This is simply the cost for me of some of the extra stuff I’ve had to carry.

Checking in ahead of me was a woman who weighed at least 250 lbs and likely over 300. From the looks of it her luggage was right at the 50 lb max as well. She was not charged for any extra weight. I weigh 160 lbs and had a 62 lb bag. Even without her luggage she weighed considerably more than me and my luggage. While this has never seemed fair, I’ve had more pressing issues than to worry about it too much.

Guess who was sitting in the seat next to me on the flight? Guess who couldn’t fit in just her own seat but flowed over in to my space? This wasn’t the first time I’ve had someone flow over in to my seat and on most airlines the flight attendants are sympathetic and try to make arrangements that will be more comfortable for both. Unfortunately this was a completely full flight so there was nothing they could do though one did apologize to me. The good news was that it was only a 1 hour flight and not 9 hours.

I paid more to fly less weight than she did to fly more weight and I got considerably less seat room than she did as well.

FLDS: Texas CPS !!

A quick cursory look through some statutory rape cases in Texas seems to indicate a pattern of going only after racial or religious minorities. Prior to the potential charges of statutory rape against the men in the FLDS compound, the State of Texas appears to have previously concentrated on African Americans. Either the Texas Authorities have a prejudice problem or whites in Texas don't commit statutory rape. If anyone has any better information on this issue, for or against, please stop by my office.

Also, for anyone not already concerned about the power of government intrusion I invite you to read a novel. "Custody of the State" is by Craig Parshall. Craig btw is the husband of Janet Parshall of Janet Parshall's America radio program. They are both great people and I highly recommend Janet's radio show.

FLDS: Where'd the boys go?

The FLDS site now includes a chart of the gender and ages of those taken in the raid.

http://www.captivefldschildren.org/Counts.php

Since this represents all of the children (or supposed children) in the YFZ ranch it is interesting to note the relative numbers of males and females. In the younger generation there are slightly more males, but in the teens there is an abnormally low number of males to the number of females than can realistically be explained by natural childbirth. What happened to the males? More lost boys?

What a week.

Last Sunday a friend’s parents were in an auto accident and her mom was killed. I don’t usually refer to a crash as an accident, but this one appears to have been. Having researched a number of crashes and talked to many highway patrol, county sheriffs, and city cops it is clear that the vast majority of crashes are not accidents – they are caused by driver inattention. They are not caused by speeding. They are not caused by mechanical failures of the vehicle. They are caused by inattention. A crash caused by inattention is NOT an accident. Some of these weren’t paying attention because they were drunk, most though were not drunk. They were simply stupid. They were stone cold sober but not paying attention to what they were doing.

Back to my friend. Her parents were friends of mine as well and it obviously came as a shock to a large number of us. Something that was really interesting to me is that over the past week it was my friend’s husband who seemed the most shook up. My friend’s dad was clearly sad, but handling things as well as can be expected. They’d been married for 37 years and were just beginning their retirement. They truly loved being together and had looked forward to an active retirement. My friend was sad over the loss of her mother and the grandmother of her 3 young children but she was mostly concerned about her dad and how he would manage. My friend’s husband? He was about as close to his mother-in-law as anyone I’ve ever known and while he was sad about loosing her, he too was concerned about his father-in-law but he was also hugely concerned about his wife and about his children’s loss of their grandmother. Just an interesting observation.

The saddest sight of the week for me was my friend’s father sitting by the coffin saying his final good-bye to his wife before they closed it for the funeral. I’ve never been one to get very choked up about things, but that sight got me.

Bad days for vice

Today came word that J. Palfrey, the DC Madam, appears to have committed suicide after being found guilty, not of prostitution, but of using the mail service to, well, mail things. Had the money she mailed been earned making porn films or telling old folks that they needed to send in $50 for a bottle of miracle water all would have been fine, but since the money was believed (she was never convicted of prostitution) to have come from prostitution (of consensual adults), well... Hers is the second apparent suicide from this same investigation as a woman who worked for her and was also a University professor apparently killed herself as well when her extra job was revealed.

Conspiracy theorists waisted no time claiming that Palfrey had not committed suicide but was killed to keep her from revealing names as part of a sentencing plea deal. She had over 15,000 customers in a 10 year period and many are believed to be fairly high ranking government and related folk.



This follows by a day the story of Susan LaFevre who, when she was 19 in 1974, got busted for Heroin and was sentenced to 10-20 years. This after she'd been told a guilty plea would likely result in 1 year probation since this was her first offense. Well, after a year in jail she managed to escape, moved to California, reformed her life, and over the past 32 years got married and had a number of children. By all accounts she did reform herself and has led a production life ever since. The authorities are saying that she now needs to serve at least 9 years of her original sentence though may get a few more tacked on for her little escape. Is this the best thing for society or her children?