as a condition of recovering custody of their kids - taken from their homes without regard for due process or less-hostile alternatives, judge barbara walther is requiring that the yearning for zion flds parents

… be photographed, take parenting classes, submit to in-home inspections and remain in Texas during a continuing investigation by state child welfare authorities.

excuse me? i’m confused as to what gives walther the authority to require the parents submit to any of those things - as far as i know, they haven’t been charged with any crimes; does the investigatory power of the texas department of family & protective services extend that far?

i’d read the actual order, but walther’s court doesn’t seem to have an online presence.

(other information in the article disturbs me as well: the department and the judge seem to want to make it as difficult as possible for families to reunite, requiring that parents travel to where their children are, rather than returning the children to them. according to the article, the children are scattered around the state - and texas isn’t small. a comment by the spokeswoman for the department, marleigh meisner, also raises red flags: she mentions “where the children are being held.” held? does the department think they, too, have committed some crime?)

apparently, in texas you can only take kids away from their parents without a court hearing if they’re in immediate danger (however that’s defined).

those 400 FLDS kids? not shown to be in immediate danger, according to the third court of appeals in austin. the grounds for removing the kids were “legally and factually insufficient,” they decided.

the texas department of family and protective services kept insisting that the entire ranch was essentially one household, which gave them grounds to search the whole damn place on the basis of a few unsubstantiated phone calls alleging abuse by a single person against the mystery caller. barbara walther, the trial judge who was presiding over the whole farce, accepted that argument. FAIL, said the third court of appeals, in footnote 10:

10. The notion that the entire ranch community constitutes a “household” as contemplated by section 262.201 and justifies removing all children from the ranch community if there even is one incident of suspected child sexual abuse is contrary to the evidence. The Department’s witnesses acknowledged that the ranch community was divided into separate family groups and separate households. While there was evidence that the living arrangements on the ranch are more communal than most typical neighborhoods, the evidence was not legally or factually sufficient to support a theory that the entire ranch community was a “household” under section 262.201.

hah. not only is 51st district judge barbara walther woefully out of touch (don’t get me started on her “they don’t need to breastfeed” rationale), but she’s also wrong. “The district court is directed to vacate its temporary orders granting sole managing conservatorship of the children of the Relators to the Department.” according to npr, walther has 10 days to comply with the ruling.

the next question: will the FLDS members try to sue the government of texas, the department of family and protective services, or its agents? and could they succeed?

this article discusses the misogynistic cultural response to the clinton campaign.

most of the comments completely miss the point.

a pilot program to bypass customs! what could possibly go wrong?

it really makes a lovely juxtaposition with those haldol-happy ICE officers. anyone else think we were a more humane nation when we had the immigration and naturalization service, rather than immigration and customs enforcement?

i tell ya, i really should stop reading the morning paper.

yet another reason to be ashamed of our government. the medical “care” provided to detained immigrants documented by the series is appalling; it looks like priest is gunning for another pulitzer.

after about a month of wordpress’ incessant reminders that i was running an outdated, unsecure version of their blogging software, i finally caved and took the time to upgrade. and while there should be no visible changes to this blog, the back-end interface has changed enough to make me grumpy.

tabs were moved. color schemes changed. the GUI refigured. and despite the changes, i still can’t scroll through my category list on my iphone. this is frustrating because i do most of my blogging on the ‘phone these days.

while i’m sure i’ll get used to it fairly quickly, my reaction upon writing this, my wordpress 2.5 inaugural post (using my ‘phone), is this: yuck.

in other news, i’m toying with the idea of making an iphone-optimized version of baggage carousel 4. we’ll see how that pans out.

but apparently not grammar. ¹

to be honest, I think a high school level class on computer-assisted graphic design should spend at least half the time teaching the basics of graphic design - something that does not require the use of a computer. otherwise it’s a bit like teaching kids in shop class to use the tools without some technical design or wood and metal (to use an example from my generation). and really, who wants to build a bong that leaks?

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¹ the quote that is the title of this post appears on the second page of the article; the speaker is - no joke - the high school principal.

last night i drove home through rock creek park.

entering at military and glover, there were nearly a dozen adult does and adolescent deer grazing in the open fields and on the island between glover and ridge. eyes peered out from the tree edge going down grant and on the creek side of broadbranch; then, on beach drive before the tunnel at the southern edge of the zoo, i saw several beautiful bucks.

all this, in the rain, at nearly midnight. on roads with no street lights.

road hazards, they are. bambi be damned; those deer need to become venison.

her pollster/chief political strategist: mark penn.

mark penn: worldwide ceo of burson-marsteller.

burson-marsteller: the pr/ad agency behind the national smoker’s alliance, philip morris‘ “grassroots” smokers’ advocacy group.

(b-m seems to like playing both sides. no honor among advertising agencies?)

yesterday a woman sat on her stoop in NE dc, watching her six-year-old daughter cross the street. the girl was not in a crosswalk.

the girl was killed by a hit and run driver. the mother told the washington post:

“My baby is gone,” said Crysta’s mother, Christina Spencer. It happened, she said, “because somebody had to do a hit and run.”

Spencer said she was watching from the stoop of the family home on Sixth Street as her daughter tried to cross.

at 35, i still have difficulty jaywalking, even if there isn’t a car in sight. why? because when i was a preschooler and snuck down to the end of the block to cross the street without an adult, i caught holy hell from my mother. and it wasn’t just about never, ever, ever crossing without an adult, but also never, ever, ever crossing outside a crosswalk. mom was harsh. the lesson stuck.

ms. spencer, i’m sorry for your loss. but while the driver was the proximate cause of your daughter’s death, it’s possible she’d still be alive if you’d taught her what my mother taught me. what kind of parent sits on the stoop and allows her six year old to cross the street alone, in the middle of the street?

update: i’m not alone in this opinion, it seems.