The Stuff of Movies

This is the stuff of a good John Grisham novel.  A few months ago, Sim Gill, the Salt Lake County district attorney decided to file formal charges against former Utah Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff, and disgraced (former) Attorney General, John Swallow.  The charges, both felony and misdemeanor, were for various crimes:- accepting bribes, interfering with criminal investigations, and various other acts of corruption.  For a list of the charges go to this article.

I met Bishop Swallow once.  He seemed like a nice guy.  He said he came from polygamous stock and would never intentionally harm polygamists.  I guess it doesn't matter any more.  He's likely to go to prison.

Shurtleff is another proposition.  He has always seemed to me to be a bit imperious and self-serving.  You always want to assume the best of your political representatives (unless they are Harry Reid [a relative of mine] or Nancy Pelosi).  I guess when you are an ambitious Mormon attorney and politician, it is easy to get tempted into corruption.  Shurtleff has had his share of adversity - months in an Ilizarov frame, colon cancer, heart attacks, a troubled daughter, and more.  I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but I am wondering what the mystical meaning is in this grand story.

Shurtleff was the one who, in 2005, executed the takeover of the (FLDS's) UEP trust, handing over day-to-day control of the trust to his corrupt crony, Bruce Wisan.  Wisan has recently quit his law firm job and his role as UEP Trust fiduciary in the wake of his public shaming for getting caught with a prostitute and lying about it. 

This is the stuff of movies.  I would cast Russell Crowe and Alec Baldwin.

I think the irony of it is the hypocrisy - the fact that Shurtleff championed his holy war on the Fundamentalist Mormons (for their alleged criminality), shopping Utah's stupid anti-bigamy statute to Texas, feigning good will towards us, all the while thinking only of his own personal advancement and political career.  Now, as I predicted, Shurtleff's is the fate of Governor Pyle, only worse.  He is likely to go to prison, hopefully among the felons he put away.

One of Shurtleff's errands for the blue suits at 50 E. North Temple was to keep the polygamists under control.  Thankfully the Church has no use for him any more.

Shurtleff's and Swallow's successor, AG Sean Reyes, has a few more days left to announce whether he intends to appeal Judge Waddoups' recent final ruling in favor of the Kody Brown family and the voiding of Utah's bigamy statute's unenforceable anti-cohabitation clause.  Let's hope that Reyes has some political corruption skeletons in his closet so that he too can be shamed for making war on the saints.

The drama continues.

Off With Their Heads

I am still scratching my head over the FLDS implosion.  In 2005, the State of Utah seized the FLDS UEP trust and ran up millions in inflated fiduciary fees.  The Hooles assisted with the rewording of the UEP trust statement, hoping to plunder the trust for their own gain.  Warren told his followers to "Answer them nothing."  Young men were illegally detained and imprisoned in an Arizona prison, simply because they had no idea of Warren's whereabouts and could not disclose something they didn't know.

Warren was captured in 2007, but his conviction in a Utah court was overturned.

In 2008, 439 children were confiscated from the FLDS ranch in west Texas.  The feds knew at the time that Warren was molesting little girls.  The little kids were returned thanks to Julie Balovich, but Warren was later convicted by a Texas court, and should remain in his Texas prison until the next millennium.

Probably dozens of the young teen girls (now adults) still remain under FLDS house arrest.  Only God knows how they can regain a normal life in the wake of the destruction of their perverse, fairy-tale culture.

Fiduciary Bruce Wisan eventually had to get his filthy lucrative fees from the Utah legislature.  Mark Shurtleff, then the A.G. who targeted the FLDS, found himself at cross purposes with Judge Denise Lindberg, who would make a ruling in favor of the FLDS if her life depended on it.

Federal Judge Dee Benson demanded that the State return the UEP trust to its trustee (Warren Jeffs), but that got thwarted, too.

A wise man once told me that one can liken the UEP trust to an egg.  The egg was once fresh and whole and desirable.  Then somebody scrambled it and cooked it.  Then someone else came along and burned it.  Try as you might, you cannot return that egg to its shell, and put things back to how they were before.

Willie Jessop sued the FLDS church to recoup the money he loaned Warren to pay for all the lawyers who defended him.  Answering "them nothing", Warren watched Willie win the suit by default and earn a $20 million award.  Since then, Willie has gained control of the spectacular mansions built for Warren by his followers since his incarceration.  The porn theaters have been removed. 

After a period of time under the leadership of John Wayman, the control of the FLDS people has been handed back to Warren's brother, Lyle.  Warren and Lyle have bled virtually every penny out of the remaining faithful.  The number of faithful is dwindling steadily as they are systematically ejected from the fold because of any number of petty violations or heresies.  Families and children are abandoned, then jumbled up at Warren's whim.  Warren is now certifiably insane, so one has to wonder why Lyle complies with every directive.  Perhaps it is because he likes not working and living for free off other people's labors.  No one has been allowed to marry since 2006, and rumors abound now that a select group of men has been selected to play the role of community impregnators.  One thing is for sure - hundreds of families have been ripped to shreds, and some exiles are still trying to gain back the infant children they handed over to the church police while they were still sucked in by Warren.

This is turning out to be one of the worst humanitarian disasters since the days of Stalin.  It is a true tar baby for the State.  The State may have had a vision of some sort to rehabilitate the twin towns, but it didn't come about.  My sense is that the degree of indoctrination in the FLDS was so extreme, that many of the excommuniqués barely understand what has happened to them.  Would you feel guilty if you had been born into an oppressive cult, and had surrendered your free agency to a lunatic, just because your church's theology so dictated?  Would it be your fault, or just the fault of the lunatic and his cronies?

I wrote a blogpost in 2011 - Critical Mass - in which I pondered the eventual dissolution of the community.  I guess we are there now.  If we accept the premise of a pre-existence, we allow that all of the participants in this adventure consented to come to earth at this time and be tested by it.  For us outsiders, our duty is to provide whatever kindness and support is desired by those who have become victims of the nightmare.  I hope that we remember that it was NOT POLYGAMY that caused all this.  It was stupid humans doing cruel, selfish stuff.  That's the lesson.

News Updates

It looks like Papandreou is out.  Berlusconi has agreed to step aside also.  The Dow dropped 390 points today.  Europe is rumored to be on the brink of utter financial collapse [according to correspondent, Chicken Little).
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Yesterday, Merril Jessop, 75, got a ten-year prison sentence in Texas for performing an "illegal" wedding ceremony.  I have blogged about this before, but I just have to rub this in!  What in the blazes is an illegal wedding ceremony?  What element of the event is criminal? - the words? -  the arrangement of people in the room? - the ages of the people in the room?  What part of the FIRST AMENDMENT do Barbie and her puppet jurors not understand?

Now, I'm not saying that what Merril did was not inconceivably reckless.  If he had half an inkling that these (alleged) eleven young daughters of his (whom he was surrendering to Jeffs, his colleague in the church's First Presidency) were going to be molested in short order, he should have caught the first train out of town with Carolyin and the rest of his immense tribe.  However, it has also been reported that he picked up a couple of young dames in the bargain, so maybe there was some kind of wink-and-a-nod quid-pro-quo going on.

Nevertheless, I think Merril has suffered enough with the discovery of Jeffs's despicable debaucheries and the monumental humiliation.  I wish there had been some kind of plea bargain opportunity (like in Wendel's case) to avoid prison time.  Maybe he is feeling some sort of mea culpa and wants to fall on the sword.

The galling thing for me is the absurd contention that these fantasy ceremonies conducted in a private setting can constitute a crime in modern, 14th Amendment America.  I understand all the jurisprudence surrounding enticement, grooming, aiding and abetting, complicity, collusion, and so on, but this illegal wedding idea is even more intangible (let alone its being entirely novel in Texas).  In many cases, assisting in some way (even obliviously) with the actions of a criminal can be weighed and deemed criminal in and of itself, but it still seems to me like a huge stretch to criminalize a strictly religious performance - one which involves the utterance of purely religious phrases, and no more physical interaction than perhaps a brief hand-clasp, - one which presumes no legal stamp of approval, no governmental imprimatur.  I weep inside at the thought that no one has the stamina to take this farce to the Supreme Court and get it overturned.  In the wake of the Jeffs disgrace, however, I'd be surprised if any of his cohorts can escape the wrath of a disgusted American public.  Perhaps the prosecution's view is that, despite the informal nature of the ceremony, the young girl participating in it was losing all personal and community-approved freedoms to escape imminent sexual exploitation by the putative "husband".  Yet, if that is the legal standard, you would have to incarcerate the entire community - or maybe just outlaw religion.
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In other news, it has been reported that Judge Bauman will render his decision in the British Columbia polygamy reference case in a couple of weeks.  Remember that this anti-polygamy case was not about establishing new, anti-polygamy legislation, it was about whether or not to uphold a 100-year-old, anti-polygamy law that was atrociously crafted and NEVER implemented.  The judge has an unenviable task.  Any ruling is likely to be appealed (see my earlier associated posts here and here and here).

If he rules in our (polygamists') favor, I shall cheer because he will be acknowledging what everyone already knows - that you cannot criminalize informal, multi-partner intimacies in a nation that already solemnizes legal, homosexual marriages.  If he rules that the law can be lawfully applied, I shall laugh out loud because, despite my not wishing any harm on Winston Blackmore's and Jimmy Oler's families, I am DYING to see what the RCMP and the prosecutors think they can do next.  Of the perhaps hundreds of faithful Fundamentalist Mormon families in the Bountiful/Creston area, which ones will they handcuff first?  Will they take the women, too?  I have visions of the 1953 (Short Creek) raid all over again.  Sincerely, I wonder how it is that supposedly intelligent public officials can be so incredibly myopic and stupid.  I guess I'm just naive. 

Perhaps the law of unintended consequences will kick in, as with Bank of America's boneheaded $5.00 monthly debit card fee, or Obama's ill-fated 15-cent Christmas tree tax.

Oh Happy Day!

Yesterday we learned that Federal Judge Dee Benson issued his ruling in the FLDS UEP trust case.  May I say that this was the most significant event (in the polygamy world) since the victims of the 1953 raid were returned to their homes, or since the 439 YFZ ranch children were allowed to return home.

I can't help but smile, because Judge Benson was strident in his criticism of the state's attorneys and their pathetic inability to provide a decent legal argument as to why the state should have invaded a church and confiscated its property.  I think my greatest satisfaction comes from thinking about Brute Wisass and how he told the FLDS people he was their S.O.B. (State Ordained Bishop).  He acted like he was God's gift to the people - a great savior, yet he was smug, arrogant and stubborn.  He appeared to care only for himself and a few cronies.  Payback's a bishop !!!!

It is almost mind-boggling to think of the defeat of Wisass and the Fooles. I hear rumors that Wisass wants to appeal, but one bright observer asked, "With whose money?"

I note that there are new allegations of child-trafficking across the Canadian border. I guess we have to wait for evidence of you-know-what (penetration, conception, pregnancy etc.) to corroborate or dismiss the rumors. I sense that many ambitious folks will try to leverage this matter into more political capital.  My fear is that it is always about selfish and ulterior motives, not the welfare of the people. Sadly, many will quickly forget the rapid rise and fall of Wisass and how he impaled himself on the deceptively sharp stake of the anti-polygamy movement.  Many will follow in his tragic footsteps because they have long forgotten the liberty aspirations of their pilgrim ancestors.

I'm not saying that polygamists are perfect, but targeting them to impose patronizing intervention or busybody interference is never right.  There are some who would say that the Amish are abusing their children because they do not let them play video games.  The only way to rid America of the peculiar and mystifying traditions of the Amish is to wipe them all out.  They are allowed to survive because they bring in tourist dollars.  Modern LDS demagogues secretly love our region's polygamists because they make them appear and feel clean and righteous (by contrast).

It is ironic that Benson's ruling appeared at the same time as a fairly disturbing revelation from the twin border towns (that several prominent leaders are being expelled).  I don't know the details of the situation, but anything that can help people not to put their "trust in the arm of flesh" is a good thing.  Like it or not, the banks and their armies seem not to want to ignore this quiet remnant in the Rockies, so perhaps our dramas will only escalate.  One day we may want to link arms and collaborate for survival's sake.  Priesthood lineages and leadership are supremely important, but their ostensible significance may wane in a time of global war and hunger.

I think now is a time for much prayer in behalf of the FLDS people that they can have (not just their UEP Trust but also) their peace of mind and stability restored (but always in keeping with true principles of liberty and compassion).

Gaddafi's dictatorial example appears to be a painfully and ironically bad one.  He was recently heard calling his people "rats" and promising to "kill" them.

BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES !!!!

Weapon Words

We Americans have grown partial to what I call weapon words. The definition of a cliché is - a word or expression that has become trite and meaningless through over-use. Examples of clichés include:

Life as we know it
For the life of me
Off the top of my head
The time of my life
Little did I know

These expressions are virtually meaningless and carry little weight. We know what they mean, but we pay no attention to the meaning. Weapon words are different. Weapon words have extra built-in barbs. They are used to add potency to an assertion. I submit that their use is a form of DISHONESTY. Perhaps the traditional term for them is "loaded language".

Let me demonstrate. The twin towns of Hildale and Colorado city are home to a fundamentalist Mormon community. The media dubs it a "polygamist sect". This is dishonest because PEOPLE can be polygamous, but a sect cannot, right? Besides, it makes the community sound like a pack of crazies about to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. It is also dishonest because, no matter how much the Mother Church wants to demonize its own offspring, it cannot argue that their religion is a departure from its own origins.

Families in 14th-century Scotland formed clans (like tribes). The term "clan" is (and should be) emotionally neutral. The media talks of the Kingston "CLAN". This is now meant to be pejorative (see Brent Hunsaker). It evokes thoughts of weapons caches, fenced compounds, and antipathy for government. It feeds the public's appetite for disdain - for villainizing different communities so that it can feel guiltless when persecuting them. "Clan" has thus become a weapon word. I look back at the 2008 raid on the Yearning For Zion ranch. Many of the participating law-enforcement officers showed hubris and cynicism towards the peaceful residents. They forced young men to the ground and stood on their necks. Thankfully, weeks later, mental health workers wrote indignant, angry letters decrying the horrible abuses perpetrated by law enforcement against the mothers and children of the YFZ ranch.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, people often use weapon words to reinforce an argument. I just read a Canadian article titled, Polygamy Hearing: Evidence So Far Shows Polygamy Inherently Harmful. I can't help but think that "INHERENTLY" is a weapon word. Why? Because it is designed to summarily condemn. You could say, "Polygamy is harmful", but then you'd have to show evidence. If you say, "Polygamy is INHERENTLY harmful", you add a special dose of argumentative legitimacy. But what does it mean?

Arguing that polygamy is "inherently" harmful is fallacious. "INHERENTLY" is now a weapon word. I remember Flora Jessop ever chanting, "Polygamy is INHERENTLY abusive." What, exactly, does "inherently" mean in this context? It SOUNDS potent. Does it mean that, from the moment a man and a woman decide to enter a polygamous relationship, they have INHERENTLY plotted and inflicted harm? INHERENTLY because it is an INHERENT sin (in the eyes of a church)? - or INHERENTLY because it is an INHERENT crime (in the eyes of a politician)? - or INHERENTLY, because antagonist "experts" have carefully selected a set of grim anecdotes to catalog instances of harm perpetrated by rogue humans, then, when discovering that those humans happened to be polygamous, made the extrapolation that polygamy directly caused those humans to act like rogues? By that logic, BIN LADEN, the terrorist, is an ARAB HUMAN, so therefore all ARAB HUMANS are terrorists and must be killed !???!!

Using the word "inherently" in this way is an attempt to arrogate authoritativeness to a weak argument and intellectual dishonesty. I shall prove how disingenuous this is. If that broken logic is so scientific, then we should apply it to the human practice of divorce. DIVORCE is demonstrably harmful - INHERENTLY harmful, if you like. DIVORCE causes VAST devastation in all countries. Divorce NEVER fails to cause harm. Perhaps, if Canada is so deeply committed to international busy-body treaties calculated to minimize social harms, maybe it should blaze the U.N. trail and lead out with a law prohibiting/abolishing all DIVORCE. After all, isn't divorce inherently harmful?

The problem is - you could enact legislation to force legally married people not to divorce, and you could even try to force non-legally-married couples never to split, but:

a.) In practical application you won't succeed, and:
b.) that is way too much impermissible interference in people's INHERENT civil liberties. It will always BACKFIRE !!!

In truth, divorce is merely an abstract concept. It cannot commit a crime or injure someone. It is the DIVORCING spouses who perpetrate the harm (perhaps a harm whose genesis began on the day they committed monogamous marriage!).

I agree that some communities develop practices which are reprehensible. In India, some men have murdered their wives for sleeping (voluntarily or involuntarily) with another man. I disagree with such behavior, but should we abolish India or Hinduism to fix this problem?

I am sincerely baffled at the sheer volume of horse-pucky being shoveled out in the polygamy reference case. I would chalk it up to weird, liberal Canadians if it weren't just as rampant here in Arizona and Utah (forgive the clichés).

The Wall Is Cracking

GRITS FOR BREAKFAST has an intelligent discussion brewing over Mohave County Judge Steven Conn's decision to accept the stipulation of both the defense and the prosecution in Warren Jeffs' Arizona case.

http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/02/az-judge-suppresses-evidence-from.html

Bottom line: the mountain of evidence submitted by Michael Piccarreta alleging that the YFZ Ranch raid court orders and evidence seizures were illegal has gotten the attention of at least one judge. One would think that many humans in public service have an instinctive animus towards the practitioners of plural marriage. Look at the Rozita Swinton prosecution. In a multitude of states, the prosecution and law enforcement community is collaborating to build a wall of silence and obfuscation. A vast array of polygamy-haters is doing its best to keep the wall from cracking.

"The FLDS are grooming young boys to become sex abusers"

"The babies (male and female) are at risk of imminent physical harm"

"FLDS leaders systematically fracture the bones of all the children"

"At least 25 girls under the age of 15 were pregnant"

"All YFZ Ranch residents were residents of a single family dwelling"

"The FLDS religion (Mormonism) constitutes a culture of abuse"

"Pubic hairs were discovered in FLDS beds"

"The FLDS plan to take over the political machinery in Texas"

"FLDS marriage ceremonies are inherently criminal"

"Dale Evans Barlow can be in Arizona and Texas at the same time"

Come on, people! If you embrace this hysteria, you are like the Judeans of 33 A.D. who lusted for the crucifixion of the Nazarene for performing too many miracles and for catching the Pharisees in their false doctrines. As one blogger put it, Warren Jeffs was probably the real culprit in the Kennedy assassination.

I admit, there are a few people I passionately dislike. However, it is entirely beneath me to stoop to using legal machinations unjustly to make their lives miserable and confiscate their children.

So, here's what I think: the wall is cracking. Barbarous Wart-hog can't go on forever punishing the FLDS at the expense of justice. Judge Steven Conn has seen the light. The Texas Appeals courts can see the light. The raid was a shameless cabal. The conspirators/(-trices) muddied the evidence and lied about their collusion. You simply cannot cover up this much dirtyness forever. This is the stuff of a good Eastwood movie. How many movies have you seen where the corrupt government official commits evil and fraud, and the poor protagonist(s) struggles for 95 minutes to expose the dastardly deceit? It's formulaic. The tide is turning (just like the support for Obaminacare). Pretty soon, the perpetrators will be running for deeper cover and pointing fingers at each other.

I'm not calling for my gracious readers to revere me or Warren Jeffs (or any mortal man, for that matter), I'm simply saying that we should esteem justice, not lies. The Constitution was set aside in the 1860's, but that is no excuse for us to trample on its precepts.

Funding Terrorism

In the titanic and cosmic war between those who wish to live by " . . . every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God" (including plural marriage commandments) and those who hate them, we occasionally see money change hands. Noteworthily, some years ago, by way of its representative, Elder Alexander Morrison, the LDS Church donated tens of thousands of dollars to Tapestry Of/Against Polygamy, ostensibly to help stamp out apostate polygamists. My guess is that the money went into the pockets of the organization's leaders. I read yesterday of another instance of fiscal aggression. The Presbyterian Church USA just donated $40,000 to an anti-polygamy group to provide help to women and children "transitioning out of the polygamist culture."

http://www.fox13now.com/news/kstu-church-donation-for-ex-polygamist-help,0,4286785.story

Maybe I'm all wet, but I am more inclined to believe that the mission of the anti-polygamy hate groups is to make war on Fundamentalist Mormons and to do everything possible to lure people out of the culture. It isn't politically correct to "lure" people out of the black or Latino cultures, so why is it okay to attempt to do so with plural families?

It is very easy to say, "Oh, we just want to help these poor, poor people," but isn't that what Texas wanted to do with the YFZ Ranch residents? I'm with the government and I'm here to help you (with tanks and sharpshooters).

From what I've heard, there are organizations already in place whose goal is to provide private and public resources to people from and within the fundamentalist culture - organizations which do not want to turn challenged individuals into anti-polygamy poster children to use as pawns in an anti-polygamy campaign. Why cannot the Presbyterian Church give $40,000 to the Family Support Center to enable more needy families to get the help they need, without requiring them to renounce their religion?

It always seems ironic to me that liberal Feminazis clamor for the right of women to choose for themselves, while requiring them to choose only what the Feminazis want for them, so, if a woman chooses an honorable husband who already has seven loving wives, then that woman is brainwashed and misguided and needs to be re-brainwashed.

When the State of Utah and the Mormon Church crafted the 1953 Short Creek raid, they also choreographed the transplanting of dozens of formerly healthy, happy women and children into LDS homes in Mesa, Arizona - presumably in a effort to re-program (= brainwash) them. Recently, another polygamy help group ushered several disaffected fundamentalist women and children into "mainstream" society, but not without vigorously working to convert them to a "mainstream" church.

This kind of crap is reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition, where the ones with money and power preached mandatory "conversion" and demonized those who would not cooperate. In the Unanimous Declaration, we find the word, "UNALIENABLE". It talks about how certain of our God-given rights cannot be "a-lien-ed", or liened away (it has NOTHING to do with aliens !!!). Since our nation changed hands in 1868, we have become corporate socialists who have forgotten what a republic is. A democracy is like three wolves and a pig arguing over what to eat for lunch. We no longer know the meaning of free agency and liberty. Some people take pleasure in applying duress to get others to do what they want them to do. That is self-serving and devilish.

Look at Bruce Wisan, the Mormon Stake President. He knows what's best for the residents of Short Creek. He charges them millions for giving them the "help" they don't need.

I have no trouble figuring out why many women dread the prospect of plural marriage - they know that they would not do well sharing a husband, regardless of how wonderful he is. What I do find puzzling is the surprising number of men (like Bruce Wisan, Monte Stewart, Ron Barton, David Leavitt, George Smith, etc.) who deeply despise polygamy. Is it because, deep down inside, they know they have already failed the morality exam, and can never qualify to live the exalting Principle? I'm telling you - anti-polygamy animus is supernatural and devilish.

Prove me wrong.