Barbie Gets Her Way (Part Three)

Okay, I know I'm belaboring this topic, but it keeps growing wings.

I talked to an attorney today who is very familiar with the FLDS legal cases. The attorney told me that the reason that the Texas appellate court has not yet reviewed the FLDS's motion to suppress the (obviously illegally-obtained) evidence from the April 2008 raid is that someone has to be convicted first before the issue can be reviewed. What will they think of next ??? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Am I the only one who finds this constitutionally questionable? If Raymond Jessop gets convicted (which, at the rate things are going, might take 18 months), then the appeals court can finally review the evidence suppression motion. If Jessop is acquitted (for lack of jurisdiction, evidence, witnesses, etc.), then the FLDS must wait again for an opportunity for vindication, and must almost pray for a conviction if they ever hope to obtain justice and a reversal (!?!?!?!?!?!?!). Why should so many people be subjected to trials before a flagrant error can be corrected?

One can almost envision a string of nine or ten belabored trials with hate-mongers like K.D. Ignatin and Sam Brower slinking around the courthouse grounds with irrelevant placards trumpeting "Polygamy Equals Abuse", and reporters from all over the globe craning for a spicy story. What is driving this crusade? - a lust to confiscate highly-adoptable, cute white kids? Barbarous Warthug craving revenge for the shaming? Bigotry against a poorly understood minority, Demonic possession? Carolyn Jessop? Intestinal Flora? Beats me.

Doesn't Schleicher County have something better to do with the few dollars it has left?

Barbie Gets Her Way (Part Two)

This is just a follow up to my last post, because I thought of one more thing to point out.

I find it fascinating that prosecutors in Raymond Jessop's case decided to separate the sexual-assault-of-a-16-year-old charge and trial from the bigamy charge and trial. Obviously, it would be rather difficult, in the same trial, to argue both that Jessop and the girl were absolutely NOT married, and also that they absolutely WERE married. It's easier not to sound like a fool when you tell conflicting stories several weeks apart.

What I find even more compelling is the fact that, as a result of this decision on the part of the prosecutor, Jessop will be tried distinctly for the crime of polyga-bigamy, a crime which I have insisted (ad nauseam) is no longer prosecutable in a post-Lawrence era. Schleicher County and Her Noble Holy-Highness, Barbarous Walthug, should expect a vigorous challenge, especially now that the poor guy has been effectually "harmed".

What I also don't get is why the Texas appeals court isn't already racing to review the protested, ostensibly illegal search and seizure of evidence on which all of these scheduled trials are disingenuously based. What will Barbie do if, after three or four trials (and maybe a conviction or two) the appeals court comes back and once again reminds her that she egregiously overstepped her judicial province and trampled on huge sections of the Constitution? It will all have to be unwound, and Texas will have yet more egg on its Yellow Rosy face.

Maybe today's abrupt adjournment was less about a juror's child with swine flu (can you say "Alternate"?) than it was a tactical maneuver in light of a woefully weak case.

They say some criminals are boneheads and do boneheaded things. What conduct of Texas in this affair has not been boneheaded?

Maybe the Pat Robertsons of the world were not wrong when they said that our nation's escalating misdeeds are sufficient to incur the wrath of a just God. The private central banks have looted 24 trillion dollars out of the America's treasury in the last twelve months. Saudi Arabia, Japan and China are each holding at least a trillion of our Federal Reserve Note "dollars", and the recent 25% decline in the dollar's value will inevitably induce them to "dump" their dollars - most likely all on the same day. If that happens, our economy will take a cataclysmic nose-dive. Folks, there's only about three days worth of food in the grocery stores. When you get REALLY hungry, on whose side will you be?

Go Tito !

Barbie Gets Her Way

Today the trial began for Raymond Jessop. He is charged with bigamy and sexual assault of a 16-year old (his wife of now five years). I want to go out on a philosophical limb, so I'll understand if some of you more vehement detractors want to excoriate me, but hear me out, and see if I make any sense.

I personally have not married any minors, and I think that most American girls are poorly equipped for the rigors of marriage - let alone plural marriage - at the tender age of 18. I shall invite my teenage daughters to choose carefully and seek inspiration when it comes to choosing a spouse. I have a friend who lives in the Czech Republic - a western European country of mostly Caucasian Christians. He laughs at American hypocrisy. In the Czech Republic, if a man has sex with a girl under 15, he will go to prison. After 15, there are no constraints.

I Googled the U.S. state ages of consent and found the following:

	Alabama	16
	Alaska	16
	Arizona	18
	Arkansas	16
	California	18
	Colorado	17
	Connecticut	16
	D.C.	16
	Delaware	18
	Florida	18
	Georgia	16
	Hawaii	16
	Idaho	18
	Illinois	17
	Indiana	16
	Iowa	16
	Kansas	16
	Kentucky	16
	Louisiana	17
	Maine	16
	Maryland	16
	Massachusetts	16
	Michigan	16
	Minnesota	16
	Mississippi	16
	Missouri	17
	Montana	16
	Nebraska	17
	Nevada	16
	New Hampshire	16
	New Jersey	16
	New Mexico	17
	New York	17
	North Carolina	16
	North Dakota	18
	Ohio	16
	Oklahoma	16
	Oregon	18
	Pennsylvania	16
	Rhode Island	16
	South Carolina	16
	South Dakota	16
	Tennessee	18
	Texas	17
	Utah	18
	Vermont	16
	Virginia	18
	Washington	16
	West Virginia	16
	Wisconsin	18
	Wyoming	18

In 2005, Texas' legal marriage consent age was 14. Mark Shurtleff went to Texas and, with Harvey Hilderbran's help, he persuaded the Texas legislature to raise the age of consent (for sex) to 17. What else could Shurtleff have been doing other than trying to ensnare the FLDS people, since he knew that they had a tradition of sometimes marrying earlier than the rest of society?

Could someone help me to understand why today's promiscuous society feels that it has somehow sanitized itself by viewing young marriages as rape, sexual assault and pedophilia, and raising the age of a licensed marriage? The U.S. has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, and Texas has the highest teen birthrate in the nation (with 24% of those births being a second pregnancy).

My point is this - a significant number of U.S. states are happy to allow not only marriages for 16-year-olds, but also unmarried sex at 16. Since Raymond Jessop is not legally married to the girl in question, his alleged crime is sexual assault. But what if the marriage (and conception) occurred in a venue other than Texas? And what if it occurred when Texas' age of consent was 14?

Again, I am no fan of "arranged" marriages, and I don't encourage marriages with minors, but most Bible scholars will assert that Jesus was born to Mary when she was 15 or younger. Would that make our Heavenly Father a child-molester? Most of this marriage-age stuff is based on time-honored, cultural and religious traditions, and state interference in marriage age patterns is a relatively modern innovation, fraught with political implications and posturing.

I think that this series of scheduled bigamy/sexual assault trials is a naked and inexcusable attack on the people of the FLDS Church. I would not be surprised if it were driven by a need for retaliation for the horrible embarrassment suffered by Texas CPS as a result of the shameless raid and kidnappings of April, 2008.

It was not long ago that attorney Rodney Parker argued in behalf of Rodney Holm that his informal marriage to (16-year-old) Ruth Stubbs should have been considered just as legally permissible and binding as if it had been legally licensed. The court disagreed. Later, however, in the Utah Supreme court hearing of Holm's appeal, deputy attorney general Laura DuPaix argued passionately to Chief Justice Durham that the union between Holm and Stubbs absolutely WAS A MARRIAGE !!! (in order to preserve the "bigamy" conviction).

Here's the paradoxical hypocrisy of this situation - the State adamantly argues that the relationship is not a bona fide marriage, so that it can advance the assertion that the crime of "unlawful sex with a minor" was committed. Then, a few minutes or days later, the State fervently argues that the relationship absolutely IS A MARRIAGE, so that it can charge the defendant with having committed the crime of bigamy (getting two or more marriages). Try using that kind of twisted, contradictory logic in an argument with a teenager and see how far you get !!! The State (Utah AND Texas) wants to have its cake and eat it, too.

If you are not convinced that this is a usurpation of the justice system, then you are as wicked and inebriated with your own hubris as is Barbie.

My sincerest prayers go with Raymond and his family(ies).

Renn

Canada is at it again !!!

If last month's shaming of British Columbia's former Attorney General, Wally Oppal, wasn't enough, his successor, Mike de Jong, wants to revisit the illegality of polygamy in Canada. I am confident that, over the decades since polygamists have occupied the Creston/Bountiful area of B.C., there have been several disaffected people who have left the communities and have something to complain about (my sister-wife spanked my kid; my husband didn't spend enough time with me; I had to eat oatmeal; I don't like long dresses; etc., etc. ad nauseam).

I think also that a lot of young women may have been married in their mid teens back in the day when marrying in the mid teens was fashionable and widely acceptable.

None of this has anything to do with the question of whether a man may marry a first wife legally and then add other women to his "family" through an informal religious ceremony and then proceed to conjugate with them.

Mike de Jong wants the Supreme Court to settle the confusion which has been created between Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms (which guarantees freedom of religious conduct) and Canada's century-old anti-polygamy law which reads -

Polygamy
293. (1) Every one who

(a) practises or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practise or enter into

(i) any form of polygamy, or

(ii) any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time,

whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage, or

(b) celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction a relationship mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) or (ii),

is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

Evidence in case of polygamy
(2) Where an accused is charged with an offence under this section, no averment or proof of the method by which the alleged relationship was entered into, agreed to or consented to is necessary in the indictment or on the trial of the accused, nor is it necessary on the trial to prove that the persons who are alleged to have entered into the relationship had or intended to have sexual intercourse.

R.S., c. C-34, s. 257.
------------------------------
I admit that I do not know Mike de Jong's motives, but it seems that any layperson can see that the language of the law is reprehensible, and the Court ought to strike it. Paragraph (2) basically says that no WITNESSES ("averment") or PROOF is needed of the commission of the alleged crime, AND it need also not be shown that the accused had or wanted to have sex. In other words - YOU ARE GUILTY BECAUSE I SAID SO !!!

I would rejoice that we do not have so dumb a law here in the U.S., but Utah's anti-bigamy statute runs a close second.

So, what will the Canadian Court do? Canada has tens of thousands of respectable Muslim polygamous families. If the B.C. fundamentalist Mormons are molesting teen girls, then charge them with the pertinent offences under existing rape/molestation/sex-with-a-minor laws. Methinks that B.C. would have done that long ago, had the RCMP found a shred of evidence during its multi-year inquisition.

Bottom line - YOU CANNOT write an anti-polygamy law without impermissibly targeting a specific religious minority. You also CANNOT write one without colliding with existing fornication and adultery statutes which no "right-thinking" western nation has enforced since Wilford Woodruff made his covenant with death and agreement with hell.

So have at it, Supreme Court, twist your brains, bend the phrasing, enlist the brightest legal minds north of Idaho and Montana, and show me how to prosecute a guy for having sex with two adult women (in the same month) to whom he is not legally married, and I will personally move to Canada and test the law.

I feel like these anti-polygamy activists and their suck-up politicians are unwittingly bringing about precisely the opposite outcome from what they really want. Before the U.S. Supreme Court declared homosexual sex a basic Constitutional liberty in 2003, gays in Oklahoma and Texas were legally required to go to the county courthouse and register themselves as SEX-OFFENDERS !!!!!!!!

Perhaps the world needs to come to an end before foolish people will realize their folly.

Today on Fox News I actually heard a financial correspondent say that the Federal Reserve is "an independent part of the U.S. government" !!!

Vote Bernanke !!!

Celebrating Skin Color

This week we are celebrating skin color. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to freshman president Obama. The distinguished Norwegian gentleman who made the announcement to the press was questioned afterwards. He was asked if the award of the prize to Obama was based on future expectations of his performance as U.S. president or if it was based on his achievements to date. The official insisted that the votes in favor of Obama were driven by his many accomplishments as president. I find it interesting that the votes were cast back in February of this year when Obama had been president for several days.

Perhaps the Nobel society representative meant to say that Obama was nominated because many Europeans had been so twitterpated by Obama's skin color - one of the principal reasons for his successful presidential campaign.

I'm hoping that I will win the Nobel peace prize next year on the basis of my skin color - which, by the way, is very lovely.