Petty Authorities Rear Their Ugly Heads

And Here It Is:

The first petty 'authority' expressing their peeve at being told they were wrong in the Texas kidnapping of over 400 children.

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A plan to begin reuniting parents with more than 400 children removed from a polygamist group's ranch has been thrown into doubt because a judge and the families are clashing over proposed restrictions.

Texas District Judge Barbara Walther has refused to sign an order restoring custody to the parents until they agree to more restrictions than state child-welfare officials have proposed.

Walther was directed by an appeals court to reverse her ruling last month putting all children from the Yearning For Zion Ranch into foster case. The Texas Supreme Court affirmed the appeals court's decision Thursday and rejected the state's argument that all the children were in immediate danger from what it said was a cycle of sexual abuse of teenage girls at the ranch.

This judge and the rest of those 'authorities' involved better be happy with what they've got and hope they don't end up behind bars themselves. But is doesn't appear as if they understand that.

Texas has to give back the kids

More than 400 children removed from a polygamist sect's ranch will be returned to their parents beginning Monday, state officials chastened by a state Supreme Court ruling said Friday as they hammered out an agreement with the families.

The children won't be able to leave Texas but they will be allowed to move back to Yearning For Zion Ranch, where child-welfare officials have alleged that underage girls were pushed into spiritual marriages with older men. The parents say there was no abuse, and two courts ruled that the state overstepped its authority in removing all children from the ranch, from infants to teenagers.

Texas Child Protective Services took custody of the children from the west Texas ranch after a raid nearly two months ago. A court order that a judge restore custody to parents applies to only 124 of the children, but state officials said about 300 others taken under identical circumstances also will be returned.

A draft agreement released by CPS attorney Gary Banks says the parents can get their children back after showing identification and pledging to take parenting classes and remain in Texas.

The agreement was reached with 38 mothers of 124 children who filed the complaint that prompted the Texas Supreme Court's ruling Thursday.

The agreement does not specify that the fathers must stay away, and it allows the children to return to the ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Eldorado, about 40 miles south of San Angelo.

Texas District Judge Barbara Walther made revisions to the deal, and attorneys on both sides were reviewing them Friday afternoon.

The high court affirmed a decision by an appeals court last week and said CPS failed to show an immediate danger to nearly all the children swept up from the ranch.

"On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted," the justices said in their ruling issued in Austin.

The Texas high court let stand the appeals court's order that Texas District Judge Barbara Walther return the children from foster care to their parents within a reasonable time period.

Walther ruled last month that the children should be placed in foster care after a chaotic custody hearing involving hundreds of lawyers representing the individual children and parents.

FLDS elder Willie Jessop said Thursday that parents were excited about the court's decision but would remain apprehensive until they get their children back.

"We're just looking forward to when little children can be in the arms of their parents," he said. "Until you have your children in your hands, there's no relief. But we have hope."

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled last week that the state failed to show that any more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and had offered no evidence of sexual or physical abuse against the other children.

The FLDS, which teaches that polygamy brings glorification in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

Texas officials claimed at one point that there were 31 teenage girls at the ranch who were pregnant or had been pregnant, but later conceded that about half of those mothers, if not more, were adults. One was 27.

Roughly 430 children from the ranch are in foster care after two births, numerous reclassifications of adult women initially held as minors and a handful of agreements allowing parents to keep custody while the Supreme Court considered the case.

Under state law, children can be taken from their parents if there's a danger to their physical safety, an urgent need for protection and if officials made a reasonable effort to keep the children in their homes. The high court agreed with the appellate court that the seizures fell short of that standard.

The justices said child welfare officials could take numerous actions to protect children short of separating them from their parents and placing them in foster care, and that Walther could put restrictions on the children and parents to address concerns that they may flee once reunited.

Texas authorities, meanwhile, collected DNA swabs Thursday from sect leader Warren Jeffs in an ongoing criminal investigation separate from the custody dispute.

A search warrant for the DNA alleges that Jeffs had "spiritual" marriages with four girls, ages 12 to 15.

Jeffs, who is revered as a prophet, is serving a prison sentence for a Utah conviction of being accomplice to rape in the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to a 19-year-old sect member. He awaits trial in Arizona on similar charges.

Unfortunately for the sect members this isn't over. The state officials who perpetrated this gross miscarriage of authority aren't happy they were called to the carpet for it, so we can expect more from the little ranch in Texas.

Chatter

Today's CHATTER revolves around the bemoaning of tired topics being repetitive ad nauseum on every forum of every stripe.
And you guessed it ... sex topics top the list.

While such topics are fine and dandy they do tend to wear thin and I do wonder why some are obsessed with them. Even this Blog's sister Blog which is more skewed toward just such topics has more there than sex in both a serious and an irreverent vein.

Bemoaning the fact that such topics clog up a forum is a useless exercise, Simply refrain from participating in topics that are not to your liking instead of deriding and complaining about them - it is plain to see that some like them and keep them going.

After sex, 'how do I get (insert whatever here)' topics run a close second with 'why don't they (insert whatever here)' bringing in third place.

That is just how the cookie crumbles folks. Learn to deal with it.

Uncontacted tribe in Amazon

This photo released yesterday depicts members of a tribe in the Amazon rain forest firing arrows at an airplane. Apparently, the tribe has never had any contact with humans outside of their own group. And there are likely many other "uncontacted" tribes in the region too. From National Geographic:

"We are very confident the photos are genuine," said Miriam Ross, a spokesperson for Survival International, which estimates that half of the hundred or so uncontacted tribes in the world live in the rain forests of Brazil and Peru.

Some experts say few, if any, tribes have had no outside contact. It's more likely is that previous generations had negative encounters, prompting social taboos that continue to drive clans deeper into isolation.

Due to their vulnerable immune systems, these groups are highly susceptible to diseases borne by outsiders such as missionaries, loggers, or oil workers.

While this photo may be of what it claims it is there are a few details that lend credence to it not being as it claims such as their wearing of clothing and what appears to be a metallic object near the shelter.

But, the biggest factor is the fact you can see the humans in the photo - not having 'experienced' the modern world and 'airplanes' the survival instinct of the humans of this group would be to hide from such a large and noisy flying animal as the airplane would appear to them rather than show aggression.

One must remember in the wild large and noisy means trouble and no species wants trouble if they can avoid it.

There are an unknown number of human groups living in the Amazon and other regions of the world who we have had no contact with and these people could well be one of those groups ... the National Geographic Society usually is spot on, on such as this and as stated above they feel the photo is real.

But for the reasons I stated I think the people pictured have had some contact - maybe fourth or fifth handed, but contact nonetheless and they weren't that all fired impressed by that contact.

McClellan's book on Bush a hit

The allegations of deceit in Scott McClellan's book have been a surprise not only for Bush officials enraged with the former White House spokesman but also for publishers who turned down what is now the industry's hottest release.

"Books by spokespeople rarely contain anything newsworthy and have generally not proven particularly compelling to consumers," said Steve Ross, publisher of the Collins division of HarperCollins and head of the Crown Publishing Group at Random House Inc. at the time McClellan was offering his manuscript. "It was shopped around but, like others who publish in the category, we didn't even take a meeting based upon past history."

McClellan, a press secretary known for loyally defending President Bush on Iraq, Katrina and other issues, has written that his ex-boss misled the country about Iraq and calls the White House atmosphere "insular, secretive and combative."

"What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception" was No. 1 on Amazon.com and the publisher, Public Affairs, said that the printing has been doubled from 65,000 to 130,000.

McClellan's accusations have been met by counter accusations that he is cashing in on his White House access. Bush supporters have criticized him, but so have liberals such as commentator Arianna Huffington.

"It's George Tenet deja vu all over again," Huffington wrote in a posting on her blog, http://www.huffingtonpost.com, referring to the former CIA director who received seven figures for his memoir. "How many times are we going to have a key Bush administration official try to wash the blood off his hands - and add a chunk of change to his bank account - by writing a come-clean book years after the fact ..."

But McClellan's book does not fit the pattern of Washington mega-deals. He was not represented by Washington, D.C., attorney Bob Barnett, whose clients include Tenet and countless political leaders, but by the much less known Craig Wiley, whose most famous client is actor Ron Silver.

McClellan's advance did not approach the level of Barnett's writers. According to an official with knowledge of McClellan's contract - who spoke on condition of anonymity citing the confidentiality of the pact - McClellan received only $75,000 from PublicAffairs, which specializes in policy books by billionaire George Soros, Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus and others.

Rival publishers say they had no sense that McClellan would make such explosive observations, a belief scorned by PublicAffairs founder Peter Osnos.

"Of course they didn't know what would be in it, because they didn't acquire the book," said Osnos, currently in Los Angeles for BookExpo America, publishing's annual national gathering. "Very rarely does a book turn out the way it's expected."

Osnos said he didn't even read the proposal, but instead sought out people who knew McClellan and said they regarded him as an honest man unhappy in his job. According to Osnos, and the book's editor, Lisa Kaufman, "What Happened" evolved as McClellan wrote it.

"The original proposal was somewhat general, so before making an offer on the book we talked to Scott at some length," Kaufman said.

"As Scott says in the preface, writing the book was a process for him. ... The tone was always thoughtful, straightforward, and candid. It's just that as he thought about his experience over many months, that tone began to be directed toward issues and events that some people would rather he not be straightforward and candid about."

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Not all that much of a surprise now is it really? We all know there is and have been shenanigans of every stripe going on under and by this administration so when one of those perpetrating those said shenanigans tells us what those shenanigans actually were in lieu of that hairs raised on the back of the neck instinctual feeling we got when we knew something was amiss but could not quite put our finger on it, of course it is a HIT!

The surprise is from those who turned book publishing the book. That and those idiots who are and were up to those said shenanigans, who like all who do so think they will not be found out - funny it never works that way.