The Gauntlet

Well, the gauntlet has been thrown down. You may have noticed the press coverage over the last two days regarding Kody Brown and his family. Kody and his three (soon-to-be four) wives have a TLC channel reality TV series premiering in late September. They seem like a nice, well-balanced family, so some of the negative comments to news articles seem particularly mean-spirited. There appears to be a contingent of nay-saying parade-rainers who are so desperate to disparage polygamists, that they have been able to compile an immense list of complaints and criticisms about the show months before it even airs. Negative energy or not, these whiners will have to face the likelihood that this show, "SISTER WIVES" -- see 'BIG LOVE' FOR REAL IN LEHI will be an immediate ratings success, and will likely draw an audience hungry for successive seasons.

Face it - negative reactions to and media coverage of the show will inevitably add to, rather than subtract from, the show's popularity and success.

If there is one BIG FAT IRONY in this matter, it is the fact that, were Kody and his family to go to West Texas, they would, presumably, end up in Barbarous Wartthug's circus/court facing a possible 10-year Bigamy sentence (for purporting to marry, or living under "the appearance of being married") just like Wendell Nielsen will next month. BUT NO - - - - - - -

No, I can see Shurtleff on TV, reasserting the AG's policy of pursuing only crimes against children and the LDS Church, but not CONSENTING ADULTS. He craftily left it to Texas to charge people with fantasy crimes - crimes like pretending to marry and performing pretend weddings in one's living room.

Am I the only one who sees the exquisite absurdity in this farce? While Schwarzenegger calls out for the resumption of legal gay marriages, Texas is busy prosecuting a guy for having ladies in his life who are not his legal wife, and a Utah man will invite cameras into his home to film his many wives/bed-partners, while millions of drooling voyeurs look on. The Mormon Church must be writhing in its fast-approaching grave. Might anti-polygamy sentiment soon be going the way of anti-gay passions?

Oh, Mark, what will you do?
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Tar Baby, Eh?

In my short, cynical life, I have seen some public officials get a wild hair about a particular thing and then over-act. I watched a documentary yesterday about ex-Beatle, John Lennon. Richard Nixon and his administration were nervous about John Lennon's ability to marshal sentiment and support for anti-war groups and left-wing activists. They hatched a plan to silence Lennon by revoking his visa and deporting him back to Britain. Needless to say, the plan failed. Lennon had the emotional support of hundreds of millions of fans, and the deportation plan was craven and disingenuous. Lennon eventually became a legal permanent U.S. resident and lived out the rest his (woefully short) life in New York City. Nixon went down in political flames and shame.

I won't say that Canadian polygamists are as popular as the Beatles, but some Canadian politicians are as stupid as Richard Nixon, eh? Perhaps driven by the likes of Wally Oppal, Jancis Andrews, Daphne Bramham and Nancy Mereska, some Canadian observers and officials have taken up the anti-polygamy crusade and are gearing up for the polygamy showdown of their shallow lives. A TV reporter remarked to me recently that he found such crusades too full of "negative energy". What kind of person wallows in "negative energy" 24/7/365 ??? Does negative energy survive into the next life?

People acted shocked when Warren Jeffs was un-convicted. Why? His prosecution was a big set up in the first place. Perhaps the only surprise was that a Court, which not long ago upheld the criminalization of fantasy weddings, now recognized the absurdity of imprisoning a cleric who solemnized a wedding for a couple whose marriage would eventually be unsuccessful.

So, what do we think will ultimately be the result of the "reference" battle before the British Columbia Supreme Court? Which outcome will shock us the most? (See the intelligent discussion and a link to an excerpt of a conference on the subject:)

Canadian Constitution Foundation 2009 Conference

Or watch Martha Bailey on YOUTUBE - [Note also the comments from Nicholas Bala (Queens University Law Professor), who argues that group sex (commercial or non-commercial) should be permitted, while religious plural marriages should not, because the group sex generally does not produce as many children.]

The last thing I would want to see is that the Canadian Charter of Freedoms be muzzled in favor of prosecuting Canadians who enjoy an alternative lifestyle. COME ON, PEOPLE !!! Gay relationships and MARRIAGES in Canada are legal and commonplace. The polygamists are not seeking legal recognition or status for their relationships as did the gays. They want only to be left alone.

The question of prosecuting "polyga-bigamy" is an exquisite migraine. It is a tar-baby for any foolish public official who wants to take it on. I say "BRING IT ON !!!". This debate has awakened a different Canadian faction - a literal army of Canadian "poly-amorists" -- people who share multiple bed-or-life-partners for generally NON-religious reasons. Will they too be marched off to prison?

I can see it now (almost a Joan of Arc or Martin Luther tribunal) - the judge asks the defendant, "Do you believe in Joseph Smith or Mormonism? Did you sleep with this person for religious or erotic reasons. Be careful how you answer, because how you answer the question will determine whether you go free or go to prison for ten years!"

EVEN IF the decision were to go against the polygamists, what then ??? I assume that Canada would prosecute Winston Blackmore and Jimmy Oler - but for WHAT ??? Is it the religion that defines the crime? I know there are a lot of stupid public officials in Utah and Texas, but has Canada lost its mind altogether? Does Canada want to get stuck to this tar baby?

This is like watching a three-ring circus where most of the observers don't realize it is a circus. Murderers often experience regret once they have been incarcerated and are no longer abusing substances or rage. Will our public officials finally have regret and contrition when they realize that brutalizing a generally innocent minority was not the purpose for which they were elected or appointed?

"In the days when the love of men shall wax cold for one another, see that thou be not found with thine hands on a tar baby, lest thou be consigned at the last day to a state of eternal disgrace and shame, eh !!. Renn II, 24:7"

Crackpot Gallery

Since yesterday's reversal of Warren Jeffs' "rape as a fantasy-accomplice" conviction, the crackpots have been coming out of the woodpile. I just can't resist posting some of the absurd crap they have been spouting (their words are in italics).

FLORA JESSOP: "If Warren gets a new trial, I'm afraid that the FLDS are going to kill Elissa. They'll make it look like an accident, but they will kill her."
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JON KRAKAUER: “I, for one, do not doubt that there may have been a political basis for this decision, given the five members of the — the five justices on the Supreme Court’s close ties to the LDS church and the LDS Church’s own concerns with sexual abuse and what this says about, you know, how you can tie someone who compelled the abuse but didn’t actually commit the rape, how he can be held accountable. That’s — that’s a scary thing for some members high up in the LDS church.”
"The one — the one silver lining in this is if Texas — if Utah decides not to retry Warren, he will be more quickly extradited to Texas, where he faces very serious charges, much more serious, not as an accomplice to rape but an actual rapist.
And the evidence, in the raid of 2008, they uncovered a treasure trove of evidence, including a tape recording and a transcript of Warren raping a 12-year-old girl. Actually, she had been 11 until 24 days earlier.
She had been forced to marry Jeffs. She was raped in the temple on a special bed. Two of Jeffs’s older wives participated in the rape. It was tape recorded. Every grunt and perverted prayer and command to this girl."
"Things are getting — the people in Short Creek, the loyal followers of Warren, are getting all hinked up by this. They believe, you know, the propaganda about how this shows that Warren is innocent and the state is persecuting him and we should rise up."
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CAROLYN JESSOP: "As far as what information that we’re getting, that’s leaking out, apparently the reports are it’s still occurring. It’s a strong belief in the FLDS, that if the leadership authorizes an underage marriage that you are not to question this. It is a real tragedy." – ( . . and this after Fox 13's Ben Winslow reported yesterday that Mark Shurtleff has spies within the FLDS community who are reassuring him that new "underage marriages" have not been occurring any more [Renn]).
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JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: "This opinion, I find a disgrace. I had to read this opinion twice even to understand what they were saying was wrong with these jury instructions. It is the very definition of a technicality. It has nothing to do with his guilt or innocence."
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MARK SHURTLEFF told Rod Decker of channel 2 news that this was his worst loss before the Utah Supreme Court.
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So, my responses are:

TO FLORA:
Stop sniffing so much glue. You will become progressively dumber with each tube you sniff!

TO CRACKAUER:
Stop sniffing Flora's glue. The LDS Church hates the FLDS more than you do, so any connection between the Court and the Church would surely have impelled it to rule against Warren and not in his favor. You are another one of those liberal idiots who thinks the Constitution is like a father who won't give the keys of his Cadillac to his twelve-year-old son, so it should be abolished. Remember that the the vigilante justice you crave will eventually take your freedoms away, too.

Plus, you can yak all you want about a sex tape but, if it exists, it was illegally seized, and it will NEVER be allowed into evidence. What law-enforcement official leaked it to you, and how is it proof of a crime that cannot have occurred? All you are is a pathetic sensation-monger.

TO CAROLYN:
Get your facts straight. If you are so right about the ubiquitous rigidity of FLDS leadership, don't you think that no sane member would dare to contravene its rules and marry an underage girl anyway? Live by the sword - die by the sword (or the American legal system).

TO TOOBIN:
I had no idea that you were such an idiot, too. The jury instructions may have been what merited the reversal, but the charges themselves were just as unconstitutional. If the charges and the crime were truly valid all along, you will soon see Shurtleff agreeing to a swift retrial, and, if that happens, I'll give you one of my wives. If the Court could have found any grounds on which to uphold the conviction, its deep ties to the Utah establishment would have sealed the deal. Come and visit Utah, and you will learn that hatred of polygamists is hard-coded into the local DNA. Polygamists only win when all other avenues for bigotry and persecution have been exhausted.

TO SHURTLEFF:
Get a life! I don't believe that all the fuss you make about nailing Warren (and bungling his conviction) is sincere. I believe it is all politics and grandstanding. Elissa Wall has not been entirely truthful, and you know it. Go catch some real criminals.

I made a point of re-reading the Supreme Court's opinion and, in particular, its surprisingly cringing apology and disclaimer. You will notice that the Court makes reference to the "underlying crime". This is baffling because, if Warren Jeffs is now once again presumed to be innocent, and Allen Steed has not been convicted, what possible "CRIME" could they talking about? Amid the rest of their unanimous Constitutional brilliance, how could they have overlooked this major boo-boo?

"We regret the effect our opinion today may have on the victim of the underlying crime, to whom we do not wish to cause additional pain. However, we must ensure that the laws are applied evenly and appropriately, in this case as in every case, in order to protect the constitutional principles on which our legal system is based."

OOPS !!!!

Hand In Cookie Jar

I am adding a follow-up comment to the previous Jeffs conviction reversal blogpost.

A closer read of the Utah Supreme Court opinion reveals that the Court adamantly disagreed with the prosecution's theory arguing that Jeffs was guilty of being an accomplice to rape.

From the start of this case, it was evident that Shurtleff, DuPaix, Fischer, Hoole and company were NOT sincerely interested in nailing Allen Steed. They were so driven to target Warren Jeffs, that nothing else mattered. If anyone seriously believed that Allen Steed was a "rapist" for marrying his young cousin, then no one really followed through. To this day, nothing has happened in the Steed rape case (and it probably won't). This was all about twisting, bending, tweaking, torquing, contorting, plying, manipulating and contriving the accomplice liability standard, in order to ensnare Warren Jeffs.

Problem is - they messed up! The Court articulately reprimands the State for contriving a theory of guilt which misinterprets the Utah statute. The State complains that Jeffs held a position of "special" trust in Wall's life. True - no one disagrees. The problem with this reasoning is that, if Steed was the real rapist - the real "actor", then we must ask if Steed was the one who held a position of special trust (and he didn't). The other problem is that, in order for accomplice liability to be met, Jeffs would have had to satisfy ALL of the following three elements:

1. He would have had to have a (mens rea) desire that a "rape" occur.
2. He would have had to exercise that "desire" by acting, coaxing, fomenting, assisting the rape to occur.
3. The actual crime of rape has to have been shown to have been committed (which it wasn't).

The Court observed that the State failed to show that element #1, INTENT, truly occurred. The Court also points out that the State completely BUNGLED its identification of the DEFENDANT (Jeffs) and the [alleged] ACTOR (Steed). The State was so blinded by its thirst to target Jeffs, that it forgot to cleanly distinguish between the two parties - Actor and Defendant, oftentimes treating Jeffs as the Actor, when he plainly was not the Actor (rapist), thus conflating the two.

This is the simplest explanation I can give of some of the legal logic behind the reversal. What is also fascinating is that Shurtleff announced today that he likely will not seek a re-trial, partly because, if the previous contortion of the jury instructions was ineffective (unconstitutional!), then no amount of legal acrobatics will get those jury instructions to work at a new trial. Furthermore, if this witch hunt had not been disingenuous in the first place, wouldn't Shurtleff be racing to the U.S. Supreme Court to get it to overrule this Utah decision which so "disappointed" him?

What I find truly pathetic is Shurtleff's remark that he will perhaps go "back to the legislature" and try to get some legislation that will more successfully focus on this type of crime. Maybe he wants to get the Utah legislature to modify the Constitution so that it can better attack Warren Jeffs. Wasn't Shurtleff satisfied when he rammed through his pet (hugely unConstitutional and NEVER-USED) "Child Bigamy" statute? Wasn't he satisfied when he wooed Texas's legislature into adjusting its laws to directly attack the FLDS? The Court made it perfectly clear that you cannot be classed as an accomplice to crime merely because you did a certain thing - just as a homeowner cannot be charged as an accomplice to burglary simply for forgetting to lock his doors. DUUUUUUHHHHH !!!!!!

Plus, Texas is itching to get its hands on Jeffs. Utah has to hurry up and decide if it wants to waste years and $$$millions on a pointless re-trial, or let Jeffs go home a free man. If justice doesn't always work, karma and poetic irony sure do help out sometimes.

In a further irony, a Texas man was recently convicted of molesting a 13-year-old girl whom he also impregnated (when she was 15). The man got a sentence of two years of probation! I have to ask myself if he should not have been subject to Hildy Harferbrain's (79-year) sentencing enhancement by virtue of the fact that the pair were "legally not able to marry".

Perhaps Texas will soon have the "Yellow Egg Of Texas" all over its face, just as Utah got its little red hands caught in the proverbial cookie jar.

Go Christine !!!!! Go Wally !!!!!

VINDICATION !!!!

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF UTAH

CONCLUSION
"¶53 Because we hold that the trial court’s instructions to the jury regarding lack of consent were in error, we reverse Jeffs’ two convictions of rape as an accomplice and remand for a new trial."

Wow !!! Yours truly could not possibly be happier today. I always said that I wished that I could have been on the Warren Jeffs jury, because I would have hung that jury faster than you can say NOT GUILTY. Frankly, I cannot figure out why intelligent, upstanding American jurors like those in Warren's case did not also see the absurdity of the charges. Could it be that people can be swayed by religious prejudice and bigotry?

This morning, the Utah State Supreme Court ruled (unanimously) that Warren Jeffs' conviction as an "accomplice to rape" was BOGUS (in particular because of erroneous jury instructions).

If I am enjoying satisfaction over this, it is because I know that the people who pursued Warren Jeffs did not have clean hands. They had hatred and malice and hubris. They wanted his blood, and they would stop at nothing to inflict harm on him, even though they knew that they were guilty of lying and cheating and distorting. They stretched the statute of limitations; they fabricated evidence; they committed perjury on the witness stand.

I believe our Republic is dead. Just look at ObamaCare and Cap and Trade! Our government is entirely corrupt and headed for the dung-heap of history. However, those conspirators who lusted for Warren's blood will reap the sorrow and despondency that they sowed. Today, they will have some wind knocked out of them, because Utah's justices faced up to the fact that you can't charge someone as an accomplice to rape for performing a void ceremony where the intent to rape was absent.

I rejoice with those members of Warren's family who must now finally be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. I laugh loudly at the prospect of a re-trial, since JEFFS-TRIAL II would be a bigger circus than the first. Does Utah's Attorney General seriously want to risk his precious reputation by getting that pack of lying jackals back on the stand to perjure and fabricate, when everyone knows they are frauds? I think not.

I think back to August of 2006, when the hysteria was peaking. Warren was on America's Top Ten Most Wanted list with Charles Manson, Theodore Bundy, Saddam Hussein, Timothy McVeigh, Obama Bin Laden, Adolf Hitler and the Unabomber. All that fuss!!! Do you think polygamy had anything to do with it?

Warren's jailers have scorned him not a little for fasting and praying for justice and vindication. Arizona has dropped its charges. He is free of Utah's charges. Now, all that is left is for Texas to charge him with having sex with a girl with whom he could not possibly have had sex.

Maybe Texas, Utah and Arizona should arrest him again and charge him with felony unpopularity or something similarly creative and fantasmagorical. I can't count on a momentum shift, but I sure wouldn't mind if the Court were soon to stick it to Lintbag and Wisass, too.

Stupid White People

I bet you'll accuse me of being a "racist" because I write about stupid white people. After all, it's not difficult to get accused of being a racist nowadays. Pretty much, you are a racist if you:

Own a farm,
Own a company,
Are a Republican,
Are a Libertarian,
Are a conservative,
Believe in the Bible,
Don't live in an inner-city,
Believe in the Constitution,
Resent illegal immigration,
Dread Obama's redistribution agenda,
Talk about "White Power" or "White Pride",
or teach your children against miscegenation.

Truth is - there are evil (and good) people in all the races, and presumably all races want to preserve their heritage (cultural and racial). There is a project underway in Cornwall, England, where a few hundred remaining speakers of the Cornish language are diligently recording mp3 audio files of their fast-dying language. They are sad that the younger generation has not upheld Cornish language traditions, and they want history not to forget them.

If white people cared at all about their heritage and blood lineages and all that, they would do well to make similar attempts to preserve them, like, say, by REPRODUCING !!! (and putting down their guns).

The countries of western Europe (England, Germany, France, Italy, etc.) systematically pay their subjects/citizens to have children (for fear of extinction and other catastrophes). It is not working well. More the half of British households are a single person, and the most common newborn baby boy name in the UK is Mohammed.

I could be wrong, but a cursory glance at the last few centuries of world history would suggest that somebody wants the white race to shrink as a percentage of world population (and shrink it sure will). In ancient history, it was generally different races/nations who went to war against each other. More recent wars, commencing with the American Revolution and the Civil War, seem to have succeeded in pitting white folk against white folk - - the net result being - lots of dead white folk. We saw the same thing with the Great War (WW-I), resulting in the deaths of some 37 million (mostly white) folk.

In Tsarist Russia, there were once approximately 175 million white Christian Russ (the largest Christian population on the planet). Thanks to evil guys like Stalin and his buddies, that number has been cut in half.

Why, then, do I say "stupid white people"? Well, because it seems to me that white people: Shemitic, Hebraic, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel, Reuben, Judah, Gad, Zebulun, Asher, Benjamin, Levi, Simeon, Issachar, Naphtali, Ephraim, Joseph and Manasseh, should figure out how to stop warring against each other, their own kinfolk. But no, they are stupid, or somebody tricks them into going to war against each other (see brothers Max and Paul Warburg who financed each side of World War One).

This takes me to the vicissitudes stirring in the twin towns of Hildale and Colorado City. Paternalistic interference in the community's local governance has caused more trouble than it initially proposed to prevent. A handful of stupid white people (names mentioned in earlier posts) have taken it upon themselves to stir up more trouble. Frivolous law-suits, trumped up allegations, conspiracies with lawyers, courts, law-enforcement and fiduciaries, have all combined to bring about the desired effect - to bring destruction upon an unpopular minority. And this is no ethnic conflict. The players are generally white folk, and some very stupid.

I call upon all stupid white folk to stop being stupid and remember the lessons of history.

Fox Guarding Hen House II

You know I like to point out ironies in the world around us. The irony I'll highlight in today's post has nothing to do with polygamy, and everything to do with Gadianton robbers (of at least Book of Mormon fame).

I watched the news this morning and learned that Senate Minority leader, John Boehner (R-Ohio), is asking for the new Financial Reform Bill (passed yesterday in the Senate) to be swiftly repealed (partly because it does nothing to address the huge abuses perpetrated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). Boehner's critics are accusing him of "siding with the banks". Ostensibly, the purpose of this (Obama's) bill is to shield the nation against another meltdown like that of 2008 and place many more checks on American financial institutions. That all sounds well and good. Who among us has read and understood this 2,300 page bill? Did you know that the bill already has so many problems and loopholes that Congress is frantically working to pass a second bill to fix the problems in the first one?

Okay - so what is the big IRONY, you ask? Well, the entity which has been tasked to oversee the regulation of our nation's private financial institutions is the Federal Reserve. That would be just fine if the Federal Reserve really were "federal". In truth, the "Federal Reserve Act" was passed in 1913 after efforts to pass it the year before had failed. It had first been called the "Aldrich Plan", and the People had rejected it, knowing it was meant to concentrate the power to issue money into the hands of a private, central bank. Slyly, the name was changed to "Federal Reserve" (eventually to be set up as 12 regional, member banks). This was sufficient to hoodwink the people, and the bill passed. Do not have any illusions that this private "system" of banks is in any way "FEDERAL"! For a simple explanation, see the following two links:

The Truth of the Federal Reserve System
The Secrets of the Federal Reserve

So, now that the bill has passed, the (ever-private) Federal Reserve will perform all of the regulation of private financial institutions, deciding which ones will succeed and which will fail. The federal government has let the fox into the hen house. Methinks that the exquisite irony is that it is Obama, Pelosi and Reid who are "siding with the banks"!

Don't say I didn't warn you (and watch out for that Berwick creep whom Obama just [recess-]appointed to run ObamaCare [Medicare/Medicaid] and the end-of-life, care-rationing death-panel).

It's "sigh and cry" time.

Performing An Illegal Ceremony

I found this amazing quote from an article (see the link to the full article below):

" . . . Four more trials are scheduled for the end of the year, with charges including bigamy, performing an illegal ceremony and sexual assault of a child. - - - - "
FLDS trial jury pools dry up
GOSANANGELO - Saturday, June 26, 2010

I confess I did not know that Texas was going to pull this "performing an illegal ceremony" B.S. !!! I know that Utah played that game over a hundred years ago, charging LDS clerics with a crime for solemnizing plural marriages. In Utah, at least such crimes are now misdemeanors and are NEVER prosecuted. I really sincerely thought that our modern, diverse, politically-correct society had abandoned such insanity. Does Texas seriously think it can get a conviction to stick for the crime of performing a ceremony?

Next they will be incarcerating people for celebrating the Holy Eucharist or performing baptisms. What is a religious ceremony to government? Didn't that question get put to rest in the Lukumi case? ( . . you can't punish someone for sacrificing a chicken in a Santeria church ritual). Doesn't the First Amendment say that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion (like ecclesiastical CEREMONIES !!!)?

Let's look at this in the sober light of my brain. If I get three gay guys over to my house, and I position them in my living room, and I wave my hands in the air, and I pronounce some kind of abracadabra incantation over their heads (in order to imaginarily "marry" them into a three-way, polygamous, homosexual union), have I arrogated to myself a power normally reserved only to the state? Is my fantasy performance viewed as sufficiently impactful that it rises to the standard of an illegal ceremony? Have I usurped the marriage traditions of the pretty, great state in which I live? Are fantasy, void, informal rituals conducted in the privacy of my home now subject to state scrutiny and prosecution? I fear I could soon do five years for having married my dog to my cat last week in a beautifully touching, backyard ceremony.

I am DYING to watch that trial. If any prosecutor in this case has half a brain, he or she will wake up, smell some coffee and call up the FLDS and beg them to agree to the charges being dropped. Wait, no, I just remembered that Barbie Wartthug will find a way to guarantee a conviction regardless. Perhaps, when she gets roundly overturned again by a sane appeals court, she can be burned at the stake for heresy against the Lord's only true religion.

GO FIGURE, GOSANANGELO

What's In A Name?

I noticed that Eldorado Texas resident, Abram Harker JEFFS, was sentenced this week to a 17-year prison term for having "married" a fifteen-year-old. I bet a lot of our ancestors are glad they are not alive today. They would have been branded as child-molesters and charged with sexual assault. The esteemed Mormon prophet and church-founder, Joseph Smith, would likely have gotten 20 years or at least execution. He is fortunate that his last name wasn't something despicable like 'Jeffs' or 'Kingston'. It appears that much of the guilt imputed to Abram Jeffs came from the fact that his brother happens to be Warren Jeffs, the second-most hated man in America (behind BP's Tony "Oil-Spill" Hayward).

I am reminded of the events of a few years ago, when Philistine University of Utah president, Bernie (Hitler) Machen announced that he didn't want anyone whose last name was "Kingston" to attend the U of U.

I recently re-watched the rather didactic movie, District 9. As gruesome and downright offensive as this movie was, it really is one of the most brilliantly presented stories since The Matrix. In District 9, the recently arrived aliens are relegated to a reservation or ghetto. They are universally misunderstood, despised and mistreated. The show's leading character, Vikus Van Der Moewe, regularly refers to the aliens as "Prawns" (due to their unmistakably crustacean appearance). He willfully mocks and destroys their incubating offspring. In the end, he actually becomes one of the aliens, and we learn that the aliens are infinitely more technologically advanced than the humans who are abusing them. One message of the show is that the good white folk of South Africa have been unbelievably brutal toward a minority within their midst.

I am genuinely disgusted with the residents and public officials of Tom Green and Schleicher Counties of Texas. The frenzied hysteria of vilification and bullying has driven ordinarily-sane Americans to inflict vicious and spiteful prison terms on perfectly innocent neighbors and their young families. A single juror could have nullified these sentences - could have bridled the frenzied mob and stood up to Barbie and her SturmTruppen.

I have decided that we Americans are good at developing what I call "Weapon Words". If we dislike a person or a community, we say they live in a "compound"; that their religion is a "cult". These words are not inherently pejorative, but they become so through their use. "Nazi" (from national) and "Nigger" (from black) are good examples.

So now the word "Jeffs" has become a curse word. If you are a Jeffs, you had better change your name to something more tasteful, like "Jeffries". (George Burns changed his name from Birnbaum). Merely being a "Jeffs" could easily add a ten-year enhancement to your sentence (as it may well have done just this week).

The Bible speaks of a day when " . . the love of men shall wax cold" for each other. I think we are in that day now, if we can hand out 17 and 75 year sentences to people because we despise their religion - the religion of our recent, and not-so-recent, forefathers.

I pray that the illegal invasion of the YFZ Ranch and the unlawful search and seizure of FLDS property will soon be indicted in a court of appeal saner than Barbie's.