More Egg on its Face

Texas just got a whole lot more egg on its face!

I followed the pleadings today in the sentencing phase of Raymond Jessop's trial. Today, to the irritation of the prosecution and Barbarous Wartthug, a handful of defense witnesses came forward voluntarily to speak of their esteem for Raymond as a citizen and as a dad.

Texas has wasted some 20 to 30 million dollars on pursuing the residents of the YFZ ranch already. Today, we learned that Texas wasted (at least) an additional $44,000 dollars on this charlatan named Larceny Billall. Larry Billall testified during the trial that he was an EXPERT on the FLDS people. All this because, out of his some 5,500 clients, 20 were either FLDS or ex-FLDS. Of these twenty, fifteen were (Lost, now found) boys. That leaves five clients, of whom two or three are disaffected, angry, apostate ex-members with a grudge. How can this make him an expert? Larry Baal admitted his mistake of asserting that no in-depth psychological studies had been conducted in Fundamentalist Mormon families. He was admittedly oblivious to the monumental work done by Professor Irwin Altman. He conceded that he had actually gone out of his way to avoid examining any other authorities' work on the topic, expressly to enable him to keep his (highly anecdotal) opinions virgin and pure (peer review be damned!!).

Folks, does this smell funny to you? What the hell is Texas doing giving this hate-mongering goon over $44,000 (TO DATE !!!) to sashay onto the witness stand and spew a pack of worthless lies about people about whom he knows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING? I shall make a (partial) list of the names of the people I believe have a deep, unrestrained, insatiable thirst to "bring down" the FLDS religion and/or some or all of its members.

Flora Jessop,
Carolyn Jessop,
Bruce Wisan,
Laura DuPaix,
Brooks Long,
Angie Voss,
Marleigh Meisner,
Larry Beall,
Barbara Walther,
Denise Lindberg,
Sam Brower,
Dan Fischer,
Laura Chapman,
K. Dee Ignatin,
Nancy Mereska,
Natalie Malonis,
Brent Jeffs,
Elissa Wall,
Harvey Hilderbran,
Roger Hoole,
Andrea Moore Emmett,
Deborah Brown,
Doris Hansen,
Shirley Davis,
Becky Musser,
Sarah Hammon,
Randy & Kathy Mankin,
Lucifer

Why, you ask, would I mention these names? Well, it's because I think that all of these people have caught the same spirit. What spirit? The spirit of malice towards a largely nameless, faceless community of believers. It would seem that each one has almost made it his or her life's mission to exact a pound of flesh. I bet if you sat some of these activists down and inquired, "What is your beef against the FLDS; and why are you so driven to get back at them?", you would get a variety of answers - including some of the following:

"I don't really know, but I can't stop myself"
"I like to go on the Larry King Show"
"I needed to demonize someone publicly so that I could sell my book (- /story - /testimony - /soul)"
"It restores meaning to my otherwise empty life"
"They are all child-molesters and perverts"
"They worship Warren Jeffs"
"They are uneducated"
"The women are Zombies"
"Their religion doesn't belong in a socialist country like America"
"I hate their hair and fashion styles"
"They have no business pooling their resources for the good of the whole community"
"They are too powerful"
"They have too many children"
"They don't like black people - like Rozita Swinton"
"They took away my free agency"
"They expect their teens to be too well-behaved"
"They won't embrace our decadent modern society"
"They believe in polygamy like people in Bible times"
"Willie is a thug"
"Willie looked at me with a dangerous face"
"I need some of their land for my family"

I shall finish this post with the text of the prayer I shall offer tonight on the eve of Raymond Jessop's sentencing:

Dear Heavenly Father,

Please forgive me for my weaknesses and impatience (and dry wit). Please bless me to be as faithful to my religion as the FLDS are to theirs. Please bless our country at this time when the Constitution hangs by a thread (and Barack Hussein Obama is fixin' to snip it). Please bless all the FLDS defendants who are being accused of pedophilia and sexual molestation for simply marrying as did 99% of our pioneer ancestors. Bless the government to have a teensy-weensy little bit of forgiveness, since all the Fundamentalist Mormon communities have now pledged to refrain from all marriage age violations (even though the statutes keep changing for political reasons).

Please bless Raymond's family-members (and all his children, too). Bless the jury to not be infected by the bitter acrimony of the anti-polygamy crusaders. Bless them to see Raymond for the honorable father he is, and to see that his religion was his reason for structuring his family in the way he did, and that his loyalty to his imprisoned prophet is a sound assurance that he will not fall afoul of the law again. Prompt the hearts and minds of the sincere jurors to sentence him to probation, so that no more children will have to be wrenched from their father. Bless all those who war against the FLDS; soften their hearts so that there can be peace and no more hostility.

Last of all, please inspire the Texas Appeals Courts to be as wise and courageous as they were last year, and overturn the epic travesty which was the unlawful search of the YFZ Ranch.

In the name of Jesus Christ,

Amen

Frontier Justice - Mob Jubilation

I know some people who went to the Raymond Jessop trial this week. I really would have given a small limb or at least a tooth to have been there. Barbarous Wartthug must be salivating over the opportunity to get some revenge on those filthy polygs who embarrassed her. I know she must be equally steamed over the fact that, now that there has been a conviction, the illegally-obtained evidence can be impeached or challenged or suppressed (or whatever the legal term is).

I understand that, when the jury (guilty) verdict was read, one of the honorable Texas Rangers inside the courtroom radioed his Ranger buddies standing outside. Their celebratory hootin' and hollerin' was so loud that it could be heard by those inside the courtroom. Now that's decorum!

Apparently, a conviction was the inevitable conclusion of this trial/lynching. Barbie coached the prosecutors and denied the defense's legitimate objections. Rather than beat this topic to death, I shall just make two more points - one dealing with human compassion - the other dealing with the law.
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1. I have observed these polygamy witch hunts over the last several years, and I have observed the following:

Tom Green married a 13.5 year old and did five years. The girl faithfully waited for Tom.
Rodney Holm married a 16 year old and did seven months with work release.
The guy who raped Heidi Mattingly's 13-year-old daughter while she was in forced foster care did a few months of prison time.
The Colorado City "Eight", who faced trials in Kingman before Judge Steven Conn, did a few weeks or months of prison time for marrying 16- and 17-year-olds.

Raymond Jessop's sentencing phase is underway and continues next week. The prosecution is rounding up disaffected apostates to plead against leniency. "String him up!", "Throw away the key!" This filthy, disgusting, warped, perverted, lecherous, polygamist pedophile had the nerve to MARRY A 16-YEAR-OLD !!!!!!!!!!!!! My heavens - why don't we just slit his throat? His wives and children don't need him. The least we can do is put him in prison for 20 years! Barbie can smell blood in the water. Let's put this guy away for the rest of his life so that we can set a precedent and send a message, and let's do this again and again until we put the other eleven guys away for 20 years, too. This is not Eldorado, Texas - this is Carthage, Illinois! Cut off his head! Kill the beast!

The other key point to remember is that Jessop's and the other defendants' marriages were sanctioned by their prophet. Now that the church's leader has long-since forbidden any future underage marriages, I am supremely confident that NONE will occur. So what message does the jury need to send? - "Don't marry any more minors"?! Any prison time at this point is would be malicious and spiteful and (as another esteemed blogger has pointed out) a hypocritical denunciation of the great Bible patriarchs whom God loved and endorsed as paragons of virtue and integrity.

2. The crime with which Raymond was charged was alleged to have occurred in November of 2004. If Texas truly had jurisdiction, and the crime could be shown to have occurred in Eldorado, then Texas's laws regarding age of consent (in 2004) would govern. In 2004, the age of consent was 14. The law was changed to reflect a higher age of consent (17) in September of 2005. So here's your homework assignment, kiddies - help me to figure out how Raymond Jessop can have been found to have been guilty of unlawful sexual assault, by an ex post facto law enacted after the date of the alleged crime.

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I'm no lawyer, so don't let me get carried away here, but it seems to me that something is rotten in Denmark.

The Texas Court of Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court are likely to have fun with this one. I'm sure that Barbie and her SturmTruppen are as proud as peacocks to have the taste of revenge. So, if they ever read this blog, my message to them comes from Proverbs 16:18 -

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

Renn

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