10 Years' Probation

GoSanAngelo reported today that Wendell Nielsen was sentenced to 10 years' probation for his crime of pure felony adult bigamy.  The sentence was the result of a no-contest plea.

While the Kody Brown family and the Utah AG's office joust over whether or not Utah's polygamists currently live in fear of the threat of prosecution for sleeping with more than one partner, Texas has gone all in and bet the farm.

Wendell Nielsen's only crime is having slept with more than one girl.  Texas is obviously pressing this prosecution and conviction because Nielsen is the only man in Texas EVER TO HAVE SLEPT with more than one woman.  Texas needs to make an example out of him to keep the state pure and unsullied.

I guess I should start calling for donations to pay for the lawyers who must needs take this case to an appeals court.  Texas gained notoriety when (through the Lawrence case [June,2003]) it single-handedly secured the permanent decriminalization of gay sex (and all other private consenting-adult sex, for that matter).  Texas must be bucking to get religious polygamy re-affirmed as a practice fully protected already by the Lawrence decision.

You cannot go to an American court and complain about a bad law unless you have been threatened or harmed by it.  Case in point.

I guess I still wonder what probation means to Wendell.  Will the probation officer routinely inquire as to whether he has confined his sleeping regimen to the bed of just one of his ladies, or whether he has maintained his customary rotation?  If he is caught with two different ladies in a six-month time window, will Barbie throw him and the equally-guilty ladies in the slammer?

Only in America !!!!!!!!!!!!  Someone should tell Hugh Hefner to steer clear of Texas.

Two Policies

I find it ironic that we have two states, Texas and Utah, who have diametrically dissimilar approaches to fantasy polygabigamy prosecutions.

In recent TV reports, we have heard that Warren Jeffs participated in "spiritual marriages".  If these marriages were "spiritual", then how does the state have any power over them?  Granted, if minors and sex were involved, then a prosecution should (and did) ensue.  Nevertheless, Texas is pushing forward with "bigamy" charges for several men, including Jeffs.

Mark Shurtleff recently stated that, in his response to Jonathan Turley's challenge of Utah's (nutty) bigamy statute, he will argue that Kody Brown doesn't have standing to bring suit because he and his family were never charged or harmed (just threatened [to the point of flight] by endless prosecutorial saber-rattling).

Meanwhile Shurtleff's less reticent Texas counterpart, Greg Abbott, has no qualms about charging consenting adults (like Wendell Nielsen and his life-partners) with violating adult sex guidelines (!!!).  Abbott must be one of the few AGs who were sleeping under a rock when the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas.  

This will be a fascinating time.  I wonder if Jonathan Turley will now go to Texas and take up the cause of Wendell Nielsen - to prove his commitment to illustrating the absurdity of post-Lawrence morality statutes and prosecutions - in more than one state.

Again, now that Texas is eating Jeffs for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I wonder if the Mo' Church will reach out to Texas prosecutors and IMPLORE them to drop the remaining, looney bigamy prosecutions (in order to preserve its treasured Reynolds decision).

Austrian Polygamy

A famous Austrian actor confessed to polygamy this week, revealing that he had two wives at the same time and even had two families living under the same roof.

When questioned regarding why he kept his polygamy secret for so long, Schwarzenegger admitted his fears that freedom of speech is limited in America just as much as it is in his homeland.  
 
He was afraid also that divulging his lifestyle to the media would prompt Utah prosecutors to seek his extradition to Utah for an embarrassing bigamy trial (since the days of Governor Brigham Young, Utah has forbidden its governors to have more than one wife).
 
Embittered with jealousy and rage over her husband's secrecy and unfairness, the first wife is seeking support from a Utah rescue clan named Holding Out Hostages.

No Fence

A discussion is brewing in Utah not unlike the Canadian discussion. Polygamy (though not mentioned in Utah statutes) is perceived (like in Canada) to be a crime. Of course, the Emperor was "perceived" to be clothed.

The discussion is about whether it is appropriate to continue to criminalize polygamy. Let me make a silly analogy. Light on, light off. When my wives are trying to sleep, and I am trying to read, there is often a tussle. I want the light on - she wants it off. No middle ground, no compromise. I can either see to read or I can't. She can either fall asleep or she cannot. The light is not "partially" on. ON or OFF - there's just no middle ground.

In Utah, there are words crafted into the "bigamy" statute that are designed to ensnare polygs. Do you cohabit with extra people? Do you think of yourself as a polygamist? Clever stuff! Good old Hugh and Reuben knew how to write that stuff so as to catch even the most wily polyg.

Everybody agrees that, until the stupid "cohabit" and "purport" prongs of the bigamy statute are repealed, polygamy is still sort-of technically a "crime" in Utah (although it goes blatantly unenforced). So, it boils down to this - some people want it DE-criminalized, while others DON'T want it DE-criminalized. If California's polarizing Prop' 8 was any indication, the vast majority of right-thinking Utahns want to keep it criminal (even if they aren't sure why).

There's no neutral ground, no compromise - like light or dark - there's no middle of the road - no "fence" to sit on (like being pregnant or not-pregnant). So in today's combative political climate, if you are not FOR the DE-criminalization of polygamy, you must AUTOMATICALLY be FOR the CRIMINALIZATION of polygamy and polygamists -

You must be FOR treating them as criminals
You must be FOR denying them full citizenship
You must be FOR creating patronizing programs for them
You must be FOR depriving them of social benefits
You must be FOR removing their children
You must be FOR trivializing their religion and its founder
You must be FOR evil judges who trample on their rights
You must be FOR prosecuting them
You must be FOR confiscating their property
You must be FOR mocking them in the media and in educational settings
You must be FOR putting them in prison and throwing away the key
You must be FOR running political campaigns based on your success oppressing them
You must be FOR tapping their phones and emails to build criminal cases against them

So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:16)

Sorry, there's no fence in sight for you to sit on.

Fox Guards Hen House

MORE ABSURDITY FROM BARBARA WALTHER !!!!!!!!!!

I am confident that my esteemed fellow bloggers will do more justice to this topic than I ever could, but I cannot hold my tongue (pen ? - keyboard ?) about this farce. I never let a day go by without thanking God that I don't live in California, but I think I am equally jubilant not to live in Texas.

Judge Barbara Walther was either hoodwinked into signing that search warrant for the YFZ raid, or she colluded in the fraud. Either way, why does she get to be the judge who is tasked with reviewing the legitimacy of the search? What happened to "checks and balances"?

Tell me she doesn't despise the FLDS with every ounce of her gentile (?) flesh. Tell me she isn't seething with rage over being overruled by the Texas Supreme Court. Tell me she wants to impeach the validity of the search she helped to set in motion.

International waters commence at the three-mile line (from our shores). When foreign admirals come ashore and assume authority over us natives, then we come under admiralty or maritime jurisdiction. A common law (de jure) court operates under the principle that "Land plus labor equals substance". Admiralty, maritime (ocean-going) (or de facto) courts have a gold fringe around the flag, and operate under the principle of "contracts over time for profit". If you don't think we are subject to a maritime jurisdiction, then why is there a sign at the state line that reads "PORT OF ENTRY"?

There is no possible way that Baba Wawa is following Constitutional principles in her courtroom. Her behavior is reminiscent of the behavior of the judges who ruled in the cases of the displaced residents of Short Creek in the 1950s (prejudice, bias, and utter violation of neutrality and impartiality).

I pray that she will remember the shaming she already got, and do the right thing ("Let my people go . . . ") or that, after she rules that her reprehensible April 2008 search and seizure was perfectly lawful, she will find herself once again impaled on the swords of the Texas appeals courts.

I rejoice nonetheless in the fact that now, as a result of real personal harm from bogus bigamy charges, the absurd 1879 Reynolds decision will be vigorously tested in the bright (?) 14th Amendment light of the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision.

Idiots !!!

Siamese Polygamy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiSuyuOOBR8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_and_Brittany_Hensel


Okay, folks - I'm going to PROVE to you why cohabitational bigamy statutes (especially in Utah) are ABSURD! I won't go into the stupidity of prohibitions against granting marriage licenses to same-gender couples when one of them is a hermaphrodite (clerk has to examine the applicant's genitalia to determine eligibility).

A set of twins - Abigail and Brittany Hensel was born in Minnesota in 1990. The girls are 18 or 19 now, and are beginning to think about marriage and children. As you can see in the photo and videos, they are two people - joined/merged from the neck down. There are two brains (no duhh !!!) two hearts, two arms and two legs. Abby controls one half of the body, Brittany controls the other half. When they walk somewhere, each has to take a turn moving a leg. They learned at an early age that this would be their best shot at successful ambulation. I remember a reporter once asking their parents if the girls would marry one guy or two. This question caught the parents entirely off guard, so in the same moment, each parent gave a different answer.

Quiz question -

1. Is it -
a) One person with two heads, or
b) Two persons with one body?

(answer not given below)

When they drive they share the steering and pedal-pushing tasks. In school, they have different competencies and interests while they, of course, sit at the same desk. There is only one vagina. If they marry one guy will it be polygyny? If they marry two guys, I guess it would be polyandry, right??

I wish like crazy they would move to Utah so we could all see how they run afoul of Utah's ridiculous bigamy statute when they go to the County Clerk's office. Maybe they would not be prosecuted, simply because they do not have a heritage of Mormon beliefs. Maybe they would not be prosecuted because of the Lawrence v. Texas decision (June 26, 2003) which asserts that no State can enact or enforce any laws criminalizing the private, intimate, sexual conduct of consenting adults. Maybe they would not be prosecuted because, finally, the tide of public (and ecclesiastical) opinion has swung in the direction of compassion and sanity when dealing with a minority burdened by an involuntary disability.

Go figure.

Renn

FAMILIES OR FELONS?

IS POLYGAMY A CRIME IN UTAH?

Do you believe that Utah’s polygamists are criminals? Let us hear from Utah Senator Orrin Hatch. In May of 2006, he said, "Polygamy is against the law. It's that simple." In an interview on the “Larry King Live” show, LDS Church president Gordon B. Hinckley said of polygamy, “I think I leave that entirely in the hands of the civil officers. It's a civil offense. It's in violation of the law . . . . . . . I condemn it, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal.

Do you know where to find the text of a Utah statute prohibiting polygamy? – Probably not. The truth is – There is no law against polygamy in Utah. Now, it is true that there are statutes prohibiting sodomy, adultery, fornication and bigamy, but the word “polygamy” is found nowhere in Utah’s criminal codes. Polygamy is not defined as a crime in Utah’s laws, and it has been many years since any Utahn has been prosecuted for polygamy. Why, then, is there such a pervasive belief that Utah’s polygamists are criminals?

Everybody knows that it was the Mormons who brought polygamy to the Rocky Mountains. It was a fundamental tenet of Latter-day Saint theology. When the federal government decided to crack down on Mormon polygamy in the 1800’s, it was a direct attack on a purely religious practice. Little attention was directed at adulterers and fornicators. Polygamy was dubbed one of the “twin relics of barbarism”. The government confiscated Mormon Church property in order to persuade it to renounce this controversial practice.

When the Church put forth George Reynolds as a polygamy test case in the 1870’s, the argument was that polygamy was protected under the First Amendment’s “establishment” clause. The Reynolds court summarily scoffed at George Reynolds’ claims, insisting that, “Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people.” This decision was an example of reprehensible bigotry, and it gave the federal and state governments unfettered power to attack almost any religious practice, even if it could not be shown to cause harm.

The reason why Utah has no law directly prohibiting plural marriages or polygamy is because there is no way to write such a statute without blatantly violating the facial neutrality guidelines invoked by the 1992 Supreme Court decision in Lukumi. It would be as flagrant as writing a law that forbids Mexicans to dance on Sundays. The sneaky way to get around this is to simply write a law that forbids all dancing on Sundays and then prosecute nobody but Mexicans for violating it. That is exactly what happens here in Utah, and it is a clear violation of operational or as-applied neutrality.

The way the legal establishment craftily targets Utah’s polygamists is by way of the bigamy statute. Nationally, bigamy statutes are designed to catch the con-man who legally marries one woman, then secretly and fraudulently obtains one or more additional marriage licenses in an effort to bilk the women out of their money and property. Polygamists do not commit such bigamy because there is no secrecy, and only the first wife has a legal marriage.

A hundred years ago, federal marshals employed numerous tactics to ensnare persistent polygamists. Laws were enacted which made it a crime to solemnize a plural marriage ceremony; to impregnate a plural wife; to spend the night in different homes on different nights of the week; to eat dinner with more than one woman, to say that you had more than one wife; and even to teach the doctrine of plural marriage. No effort was spared to twist the law to cast so broad a net that one could be imprisoned almost for believing in polygamy. In 1942, one of Rulon C. Allred’s wives was jailed for playing the piano for a Mormon fundamentalist church Sunday School class. Such violations of simple due process might cause even Stalin to shudder.

Today, the trickery continues. Utah’s bigamy statute is cleverly crafted. It says essentially two things:

You are guilty of bigamy (a felony) if you are married to one spouse and then you purport (claim) that you have a second or third.
You are guilty of bigamy if you are married to one spouse and then you “cohabit” with another person to whom you are not really “married”.

On the surface these statutes may seem innocuous and rational, but I will prove to you that they are not. First, it is absurd to prosecute someone in every case for purporting something inaccurate. Every Sunday, Latter-day Saints attend church meetings and address each other as “brother” or “sister”. More often than not, these churchgoers are not true siblings, so the claim of being brothers and sisters is inaccurate, yet I can remember no instance of a Mormon being arrested for such assertions. Now if I am married and I begin a relationship with another woman, and I decide to call her my “plural wife” (and not my “mistress”), the State of Utah will of course categorically refuse to acknowledge her as a real wife. Second marriages are automatically void and have no legal value. Nevertheless, I have now committed a felony for “purporting” that I have a second wife. This would be somewhat like my falsely claiming to have robbed a bank when, in fact, no bank was robbed, and then having the police demand that I return the money!

The second “prong” of the bigamy statute is equally absurd. First, the term “cohabit” has not been defined in Utah Code, so we are left to guess what it might mean. However, let us not split hairs. Cohabit can only mean one of two likely things. It either means “sharing the same dwelling with”, or “having sexual intercourse with”. Let us look at the first meaning. This meaning is overbroad, in that most Utah families have a married man who resides with other people to whom he is not married, namely his CHILDREN. This construction would put half of Utah in prison for bigamy. The second meaning – the sexual one – is the more likely application, would you not agree? The problem with this is plainly obvious. Mormon fundamentalist polygamists get a legal marriage license with the first “wife”. The subsequent (or “plural”) wives are only girl-friends in a strict legal sense. There may be sex acts, and children may be born, but that still does not afford the women any kind of legal spousal status. In strict legal parlance, the man’s actions constitute adultery or fornication – both misdemeanors which are NEVER prosecuted in Utah. Sadly, every year, thousands of ordinary Utah citizens commit adultery, and, in some cases, a pregnancy results. These crimes are never prosecuted because the perpetrators are not fundamentalist Mormons.

In recent years, the bigamy statute has been used to prosecute four men, all of whom were either single or were married to only one legal wife. Those men are Mark Easterday of Monroe, Steve Bronson of Hinckley, Thomas Green of Partoun, and Rodney Holm of Hildale. In some cases, girls of minor age were involved but, since at that time Utah had no “child bigamy” statute, all four men were prosecuted for “adult” bigamy. The only other bigamy case in recent history is the case of State v. Geer”. Geer was a true bigamist because he had two concurrent state marriage licenses. Without exception, Utah has only used the bigamy statute on men with one wife or no wife when those men were FUNDAMENTALIST MORMONS who believed in the Mormon doctrine of polygamy. There crime was their doctrinal beliefs.

This approach unquestionably violates the operational neutrality requirement of the Lukumi decision, and I believe it violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause. If I have a wife and I take an additional bed-partner, my guilt or innocence and the length of my prison sentence hinge on the language I use to describe the second woman. If I say, “mistress” or “girl-friend”, I am home free. If I say “plural-wife”, I will end up in prison. If it is discovered that I am a Mormon fundamentalist, then my goose is cooked. Mormon fundamentalists are about as popular as Nazi war criminals.

Even more ironic is the fact that in June of 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Lawrence v. Texas which forever changed the landscape of morality legislation. In overturning the (1986) Bowers v. Hardwick decision, the Court held that it could now no longer be said that homosexual sex was not a fundamental Constitutional liberty. Scratch your head for a minute and think back to the last case you remember where a gay person was incarcerated for homosexuality. In fact, today, Utah representative Jackie Biskupski is an openly homosexual state legislator. Now no state can enact or enforce any law prohibiting any homosexual sex act. The Lawrence Court insisted that states cannot create laws directed at specific lifestyles which are not then applied generally to all parties. It said that states must not pass morality laws designed to attack private adult conduct just because the majority finds that conduct repugnant or distasteful. All private, non-commercial, consensual adult sex acts are Constitutionally protected. This is why Bill Clinton and Hugh Hefner are not in prison. Singling out Utah’s polygamists for disfavorable treatment is inexcusable.

You may remember that Utah was refused admission to the Union until it agreed to include in its state constitution an irrevocable clause which would forever prohibit “polygamous or plural marriages”. A clause was then also inserted which forbade Utah to remove this prohibition without first getting permission from the federal government. This “irrevocable” clause is unconstitutional because it brought Utah into the Union on a lower (“unequal”) “footing” than the other states whose constitutions contained no such heavy-handed federal interference. In 1910, a Supreme Court decision, Coyle v. Smith, found such irrevocable clauses to be impermissible. Sadly, however, as long as the good people of the pretty, great State of Utah are content to leave this unconstitutional clause in their constitution, it remains in place to menace some 30,000 law-abiding fundamentalist Mormons with the stigma of criminality and the specter of prosecution.

One puzzling aspect of this situation is that the Attorney General has said that he will not prosecute consenting adult polygamists for the following three reasons:

No one will come forward to provide evidence;
Utah lacks sufficient law enforcement resources to catch all the polygamists; and
There are not enough prison spaces or foster homes for the polygamists and their children after they have been caught. (Could you ever let a polygamist out of prison?)

I think the true reason no prosecutor dares to exercise Utah’s bizarre bigamy statute against a consenting adult family is that the Attorney General knows that such a prosecution would provide the perfect test case to compel the Supreme Court to overturn the statute and the Reynolds decision. It appears that certain parties in power are anxious to maintain the status quo.

I will finish by including a statement made by the State of Utah in its Amici Curiae brief in the Lawrence v. Texas case. Joining other states’ efforts to keep already unconstitutional laws on the books, the Attorney General argued,

Even legislation that is largely symbolic and infrequently enforced (due to other salutary checks on government power like the Fourth Amendment) has significant pedagogical value. Laws teach people what they should and should not do, based on the experiences of their elders.

Might I venture to suggest that Utah’s elders include Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, Heber C. Kimball, Daniel Wells and John Taylor (all of whom were revered polygamists and statesmen)?

Free Merrianne!

Okay, I’ve had just about all I can take of this stupidity from Texas CPS. Face it, folks, the YFZ raid was a horribly botched invasion almost unprecedented in U.S. history (let’s not forget the 1953 Church/State cabal-raid of Short Creek). It wasted tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money and is swiftly becoming a monumental humiliation for Texas government officials at every level. If law-enforcement and lawmakers wanted to make this unusual, FLDS religious community look bad, they have virtually achieved the opposite. The Texas Supreme Court affirmed the wrongfulness of the removal of over 400 children, and made Judge Barbara Walther look foolish and out-of-control.

As of this writing, now only three of the YFZ ranch’s children remain to be non-suited. Despite the frantic gyrations of Natalie Malonis in her efforts to keep control of Teresa Jeffs, CPS has accepted the obvious truth that Teresa is as “safe” as her siblings and needs no more government supervision than any other Texas citizen. It remains to be seen which attorney took the extraordinary license of leaking details of Teresa Jeffs’ case and the associated depositions. While CPS is abandoning the vast majority of the cases, some factions are clinging desperately to the thin remnants of a bad case.

Now all eyes are turned towards Merrianne Jessop, the girl from the Warren Jeffs wedding-kiss photo. The photo may well be disallowed as evidence improperly seized, perhaps eventually making Merrianne’s case moot. Yet, while that argument drags on, Merrianne sits glumly in forced foster care awaiting a distant September trial to learn her fate. I do not pretend to understand FLDS marriage traditions. I think people should marry as adults, NOT as children. The vast majority of Americans recoiled at the sight of a 50-year-old kissing a twelve-year-old. We do not understand this culture. A Utah jury felt sufficient contempt for Warren Jeffs that it convicted him for rape as an accomplice for condoning a young monogamous teenage marriage. Jeffs is likely to spend many more years in prison.

Despite CPS’s distaste for this misunderstood culture, it has acknowledged that the YFZ families are cooperative and capable of caring for their children. After all, Texas likely has infinitely more families with greater challenges and who are more worthy of government intervention and its precious resources. So why the dogged insistence on keeping Merrianne? Merrianne’s younger siblings have been non-suited. That means that CPS has concluded that Merrianne’s parent(s) is/are cooperative and have demonstrated the ability and propensity to keep their children physically and emotionally safe. Those siblings are not married yet, but apparently CPS is confident that they are not at risk of an “early” marriage or underage sex. So, what are we to believe about Merrianne? Her alleged abuser will be safely incarcerated until she is in her twenties. If, in FLDS religious terms, Merrianne is still betrothed (or “married”), then no other honorable FLDS male will venture near her in this lifetime. If the spirit of the legal moves has been to punish her parents, then why is the punishment being inflicted upon her? Why is she in forced detention with a second Texas foster family?

In a recent DCFS custody case, a Utah woman’s ten children were forcibly removed and placed in foster care (ostensibly because their father disapproved of earrings on teen girls). The oldest son, Kevin (15), was deemed too old for a foster-care family, so Judge Andrew Valdez ordered him into a juvenile detention facility (ARTEC) where he was emotionally, physically and sexually assaulted. After several months of torment, Kevin succeeded in escaping from detention, and he vanished for several days. After his escape, Kevin wrote lengthy letters to the press and to Judge Valdez, chronicling the abuses he had suffered in government custody. Evidently acknowledging the horror of the experience, the Judge agreed to allow Kevin to return home to his family, where he was undoubtedly safer than in any other place. Later, all but two of his siblings were also returned home, and the case was closed. I mention this simply because I see parallels.

CPS/DCFS has well-worn techniques it likes to use when it becomes an adversary of your family. It makes allegations based on rumors. It elevates those rumors to the status of “evidence” (through a practice known as “courtroom demonstration”). It demands that you admit to abuse before it will agree to consider capitulating. Then, if you admit to abuse or neglect, you may not get your children back. You MUST cooperate with the “service-plan”, or you will lose your children. Not cooperating with CPS means you are a “bad” parent. That would be akin to being found guilty simply for invoking the Fifth Amendment. That whole “best-interests-of-the-child” mumbo-jumbo is just a supercilious way of saying that CPS knows better than you do what is best for your child.

So now Barbara Jessop is in the spotlight again, this time for providing her daughter Merrianne with a cell phone and encouraging her to do everything possible to convince her “captors” that she needs to go home (no duhh !!). Merrianne has experienced deep depression while in foster care. The first foster family was ashamed to go out in public with Merrianne because of her unconventional clothing.

CPS will say that Merrianne should be permanently removed, because her mother is uncooperative and disobedient. Obey CPS or you are a bad parent! Perhaps we should all turn our children over to CPS as soon as they are born, because, after all, CPS is a far wiser parent than we can ever be. What percentage of American parents would not try to get a cell-phone in the hands of their daughters after they were kidnapped (regardless of whether or not their removal was at the hands of the State)? I know I would. I know that Utah mother was overjoyed when her 15-year-old found the courage and initiative to flee his confinement – obedience to DCFS be damned! DCFS rarely even obeyed the judge’s orders.

Why can Texas not see the writing on the wall? Barbara Walther and Natalie Malonis are both risking disgrace for their hubris and abuse of power, and several shamed agency heads have already slunk off into early “retirement” following this mushrooming P.R. nightmare. Let the poor girl go home! Look at her elder sister, Betty Jessop! She is yet another young teen girl who was removed against her will from her father. She loves her family. She loves her life at the ranch. She loves her community and her religion. She loves her relatives and her ecclesiastical leaders. Upon turning 18, in the face of intense opposition, Betty moved heaven and earth to rejoin her community. Does CPS truly think it can re-program her sister, Merrianne, and forcibly separate her from her lifelong culture? What type of culture is Texas CPS offering her as an alternative, when Texas’s private foster care system has been shown to be the worst in the nation, and where a child is four times more likely to die?

Admit it Texas! You blew it! You lost! Walk away! Drop these last three cases. Leave these people alone. Stop all the hypocritical sanctimoniousness. Send Merrianne home to her loving family, and quit quibbling over a mother texting her daughter when you can’t even get your own attorneys to stop leaking confidential legal pleadings.