Appeals court rules Texas had no right to seize sect kids

 

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5796565.html

May 22, 2008, 12:44PM
Appeals court rules state had no right to seize sect kids

Associated Press

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DANG RIGHT they had no business taking these kids from their mothers--

Texas is way out over the abiss in this case/abuse of citizens.

I say soux, soo, seu, sue or however it's spelt. Bus in the lawyers and pound Texas into a cow pie.

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Sounds like activist judges to me.

I thought some folks opposed that? Gee - guess I was wrong

Arby J. Brown said:

Sounds like activist judges to me.

I thought some folks opposed that? Gee - guess I was wrong

 

What in that article relates to "activist judges"?

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I am glad that Texas has been put in their place.  They didn't have the right to take the children out of the custody of their mothers.  Now many of the mothers that were placed into foster care are now going to be given adult status?  What was this really about?  They collected DNA from these people and added it to their DNA bank for study!  There is more to this then meets the eye.   I hope that they didn't give these (adults & children) drugs to clam them down while in their custody?

The real problem is they didn't have enough information on these people and had to show the country they "thought" they had the "right" to know everything about anyone they wanted to have information about, and this was the only way they were going to get that information on them...  No Constitutional rights violated here?  Maybe this is a clear case of the right to privacy that people think they have to give up for freedom?

I can't believe these parts of the article!  Who does this state think they are?

From the article above: 

Meanwhile, at least half the mothers taken from the ranch and put in child foster care have now been declared adults, significantly chipping at agency statistics that seemed to demonstrate the widespread sexual abuse of underage girls.

They had admitted by midday today that 15 of the 31 mothers listed as underage are adults; one is actually 27. A few are as young as 18, but many are at least 20.

Another girl listed as an underage mother is 14, but her attorney said in court she is not pregnant and does not have a child.

Texas authorities may not have had the right to take the "children" but they sure as hell had the right and authority to take the child rapist male adults and the enabling adult mothers of the girls who were forced under their parents' religious beliefs to have sex with men many years their senior.

Does this mean we also don't have the right and authority to raid the buildings of suspected Islamic terrorists on our soil or do they also have the right to practice their radical religious beliefs under the right to privacy - kill all infidels in the name of Allah?  Infidels being us. 

Our country is changing - we can't have it all ways.  I'd never want to change the Constitution and the rights it bestows us, but we have to protect ourselves and our children against the new dangers we now face.

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TS -   They didn't have the right because it was all a lie!  They acted on "so called" information... They didn't even try to find out the truth before they took these (adults and children).   They didn't find one case that matched the reason they went into this ranch.

You are going way overboard with what you seem to think relates to what happened to this group of people.  They are not terrorist!   

 

You say: 

Does this mean we also don't have the right and authority to raid the buildings of suspected Islamic terrorists on our soil or do they also have the right to practice their radical religious beliefs under the right to privacy - kill all infidels in the name of Allah?  Infidels being us. 

Our country is changing - we can't have it all ways.  I'd never want to change the Constitution and the rights it bestows us, but we have to protect ourselves and our children against the new dangers we now face.

You appear to be following exactly what the agenda is of this administration.   They want people to be scared into submitting to giving up their Constitutional rights for the feeling of being safe... People need to understand that giving up their Constitutional rights does not offer security in any way shape or form!  If there are terrorist they will still do what they have set out to do.  Yes, the law enforcement will in fact still round up people that would cause harm in this country.  You don't have to give up any of the Constitution in order for that to happen.  You should still be a free citizen of the United States and feel safe without giving up any rights!  It''s a shame that people are running so scared....

 

The first thing that needs to happen to ensure security is to enforce border
security at all of the ports and borders.  You can't have security when the borders are left open for anyone that wants to sneak in and cause trouble!

 

Lady Jane,

I'm not running scared.  I did not imply in any way that the polygamist sect were terrorists or like terrorists.  Most importantly, I believe strongly in the Constitution and the rights it affords me and would not think of forfeiting any of those rights. 

I was simply asking what rights do the authorities actually have in situations like this?  They received a phone call about this sect that contained information that suggested underage children were being abused in the form of having sex with adult males in the name of their religion.  The authorities apparently received a supoena from a judge who felt the police had enough information to warrant a search of the compound.  How could they have known the caller was a loon?  If you've studied crimes such as murder (most especially in higher profile cases) you'd know that the police receive all types of call tips once the case is reported in the news.  They have to follow-up on each and every call no matter how ridiculous it sounds.  Ignore one call and that could be the one legit call with valuable information.  Should the authorities have ignored this call, even if it meant possible further abuse?  You have a right to privacy unless it's suspected you have or are committing a crime, then a search warrant is issued and the police are free to investigate.  I just feel that the authorities acted in the best way they knew with the information they had.

 

 

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Hind sight is 20-20.  Fact is, zealous social workers at CPS do this kind of thing all the time.  When it is a crack mom and her shack-up who are abusing or neglecting a kid or two, nobody complains.  When it turns out to be a mistake, CPS gets a slap on the wrist and the wronged parties don't usually get made whole.  When it involves hundreds of people and so many children, it is going to be a huge news story.  You would think that the zealous CPS workers would dot all the i's and cross all the t's, but it was just another case to them.  If they ended up being right, most people would praise them for getting those kids out f harm's way and declare the ends justified the means.  If they were wrong, as appears may be the case, they are hanging way out there.  I sympathize with them to some extent, but I have rarely been very impressed with CS workers and as a foster parent in Texas, I have dealt with lots of them over the past 10+ years.

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Sounds like shades of Janet Reno.  When are we going to go back to innocent until proven guilty. I will be looking for a whole bunch of lawsuits for malicious arrest and ceasure and violation of the civil rights of many of these people.  Oh!  Our government doesn't believe American citizens have any civil rights anymore, so why not just barge in and take over.

TS this whole raid was based on a bogus call just like so many other cases in Texas. CPS has way to much power and I see it every day.

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Ablolutely correct blaze, the CPS has way to much authority, and the don't mind flaunting it. Those children should never have been taken from the security of their mothers, or the enviroment the were in. Do Gooders at work.

This is the same kind of debate as to whether "Bush lied" or not.  If the CPS folks really and truly believed the children were in imminent danger, they have the authority and the duty to remove the kids to protective custody.  What if there really was ongoing rape and molestation of children occurring?  Would you want them to sit on their thumbs until they had an incontrovertible case in court while children were being harmed?

OTOH, if they knew or suspected there was no immediate danger and were just looking for an excuse to invade private property and disrupt the live of peaceable, law-abiding citizens, then they committed a serious abuse of power and should be held accountable.

The key determinate of whether an abuse occurred or not is whether or not CPS had reason to doubt the kids were in imminent danger.  I don't know if CPS has too much power or not, but they do often overstep.  When they do, they need to be held accountable!  I suspect, but don't know enough to be certain that this was an egregious abuse of power.

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That sort of thing should be handled on a citizen level. Not by burocrats flaunting their authority.

A citizen reported a problem.  It turned out to be a hoax.  Did the govt know it was probably a hoax?  I don't know.  I'm not sure a citizen could or should become a vigilante.  In this case, the alleged caller was supposedly one of the victims.  I'm not sure what you are suggesting.

This is a dangerous time in history.  Bad things happen all the time.  The main role of government is to protect citizens from various harms like theft, fraud, and assault.  But as Geo Washington warned, government can turn on us.  We need to find and strike the right balance between self-protection and government protection with its corresponding sacrifice of personal liberty.

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Regardless of location, state 'child protection' agencies have usurped both the general legal system's premise of presumed innocence and parental rights. They have accomplished these feats by brow-beating legislatures and the Congress with horrific tales of abuse and neglect...some are real, but most are either fictional or greatly exagerated.

Case workers in these agencies are generally zealots...they're kooks leftists, in the main; but it is their management that's really frightening because they view human tragedy -- real or imagined -- as nothing more than stepping stones to increased case loads, which requires more case workers which requires more organic infrastructure, which requires steady growth in budget appropriations.

In addition, by using the 'protect the children' ploy, state agencies -- including the law enforcement terror lobby -- is able to intimidate state legislatures and the Congress into passing Draconian laws such as requiring infant and child restraints for all vehicle operators who carry infants & children on pain of arrest, law enforcer abuse, being handcuffed, booked, jailed and massively fined...and all of that to 'protect' an average of 200 lives out of 300-million per year. 

Anti-smoking laws, requiring expensive (and generally useless) modifications to facilities to 'protect' children from theoretical harm; insane administrative regulations and zoning laws dictating specific requirements in private residential construction to 'protect' children, and worst of all, requiring parents to send children either to government schools or to private schools that conform to state curriculum requirements -- all of which are designed to ensure that government school graduates will become either useful drones or social derelicts; both of which cases assure a malleable, controlable populace...but all of that is for both our protection and for the protection of the next generation.

I suspect that the woman the police allege made the crank call that spawned the raid on the polygamist compound is a deranged person who is incapable of adequately refuting the charge...she's the scapegoat...my gut told me as soon as I heard the story that the call was phony -- probably either made by a police collaborator or the police and DA simply made up the call as an excuse to raid a community whose values don't jive with the local power brokers' values.

The best way to protect children is to return full parental rights to parents. The state's interest in protecting children should be managed through a court system that owes no allegiance to the political power system -- much the way military defense lawyers and judges in the courts martial system operate on a military installation but are not under the authority of the installation commander to assure that command influence cannot be exerted in military judicial actions...that's the way the military protects its worst members...should not parents, the bedrock of society, be afforded a similar form of protection for their families, themselves and ultimately, society itself?

I don't care if people want to live in communal groups, nor do I care how many spouses a man or a woman might have...as far as I'm concerned, what they do to and with each other is their business...the legal terrorists behind this raid and subsequent torture of hundreds of Americans should all lose their jobs and the state child protective services management should be held criminally liable for false arrest, wrongful imprisonment under cover of authority; destruction of private property, kidnapping and unnecessarily administering mind-altering drugs to minors...If I had the energy I'd find more charges.

This outrage is as egregious as any I've heard of even in a Third World country.

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(CM) Jim from Texas said:

Arby J. Brown said:

Sounds like activist judges to me.

I thought some folks opposed that? Gee - guess I was wrong

 

What in that article relates to "activist judges"?

It didn't.  As I understand it, the appeals court ruled that the child welfare officials had violated Texas law. 

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BREAKING NEWS: 

TEXAS SUPREME COURT RULES POLYGAMIST SECT CHILDREN SHOULD BE RETURNED TO PARENTS

**Watch FOX News Channel or go to http://foxnews.com for more

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