Nightingale

I think it should. I don't think it's up to the government or an outside party to define someone else's marriage and family.

I have no idea why people seem obsessed with pushing their own ideas of what makes a family onto others. If their definition of family is working for them, who are we to tell them it's wrong? (child abuse excepted, of course)

When the second amendment was written, a "militia" was not a standing army. It was every able bodied man. The Militia Act of 1903 defined it as every male from 17 to 45. The militia were the civilians.

The media is making it about polygamy, which is influencing public opinion. Courts are influenced by public opinion, even if they're not supposed to be, and CPS is almost certainly taking it into account when looking at the big picture of the children's environment.

Honestly, I think the case is partially about polygamy. If it wasn't about polygamy, the children from households in the community that had evidence of abuse would have been removed, but not the children from the house next door or the entire neighborhood. Because the families were all polygamist, CPS assumed they were all extremely closely associated enough to make one warrant good for the entire area, not just a few houses. If it wasn't about polygamy, the news would be saying "Children removed from compound in Texas", not "Children removed from POLYGAMIST compound in Texas". Even though the children weren't removed solely because they were in polygamist homes, saying that polygamy wasn't a factor is naive.

My solution: Take a liberal to the range. Teach them the safety basics and how to aim, pick a quiet afternoon, and give them a .22 (anything that kicks can be scary to a newbie) and a big non-human, non-critter target. Present it as a "sharing of perspectives", and make a bargain. They go to the range, you go to the next MoveOn rally or Michael Moore movie with them.

That's what I do too.

I'd love to have one so my ears aren't ringing after going to the range. Actually, I'd love everyone at the range to have one, because indoor ranges are so much louder than outdoor! I usually wear earplugs and the headphone style earmuffs, and it still doesn't get the noise down to a comfortable level.

Lady would be a good name... she looks a little like the Disney character.

You could tell the cops no. Children don't have the same rights as adults. Their parents, guardians, or the court can consent to something on their behalf, because they are not mature enough to decide in the eyes of the law. They have court appointed advocates to make sure their interests are represented. Can you imagine the mess if the state returned a child to someone who wasn't that child's parent?

Hmm...I thought they needed probable cause related to a crime, not just "due process", but this is your arena, not mine. Blues, Dave The children aren't suspects, so probably all that's required is the consent of whoever currently has custody of them, in this case CPS. Under the Texas code, CPS can bring an action to "adjudicate parentage", and then the court can order DNA tests as evidence.

The FLDS has only existed for about 75 years, and has a membership of around 6000. That's a lot of people to get extremely inbred in less than a century.

Because the US is hung up on anything having to do with sex?

Of course they do. They are protected from search and seizure without due process. They had their day in court and got due process. Also, it's a practical matter. Since the kids won't tell them who their parents are, and the parents won't ID their kids, the state needs to know who to return the child to.

They don't have to do either. The DNA tests are only mandatory for the children in custody, and optional for adults. It appears as though many adults are cooperating, though, because otherwise, the state won't know which child to return to which parent. with the level of inbreeding, will they know even with the DNA test results? Could be a lot of ambiguous results. Even with that level of inbreeding, they should be able to show paternity/maternity without too much of a problem.

They don't have to do either. The DNA tests are only mandatory for the children in custody, and optional for adults. It appears as though many adults are cooperating, though, because otherwise, the state won't know which child to return to which parent.

The artist had done a different kind of butterfly made of knotwork before, and so we took that design and changed it to suit what I wanted. For me, it represents my Irish roots, and wings to take me wherever I want to go, skydiving included, so for me, it's kind of a skydiving tattoo even though it doesn't look like one.

Personal relationships are treated like commercial transactions, with contracts, prenups, and all kinds of other legal rules.

That is gorgeous!!! Who is the artist? Here's mine... I decided to do it about a year before I actually got it done, and had been stewing over it for about two years before that. Plus, the artist has a two to three month waiting list, so there's a lot of built in think time.

A lot of those "fixed costs" wouldn't exist if it weren't for marriages and divorces.

I don't really agree with that... Skydiving, even if someone leaves the sport before 500 jumps, will always be a part of you. There's something about jumping that changes people, and whether you have 5 jumps or 500, it's something you take with you forever. And if you get to 500 jumps and somehow lose interest in the sport, you get stuck with the tattoo... Depending on the location, it can hurt job prospects, if anything. Even if you lose interest in the sport, being a skydiver is something you're always going to take with you. Like with any body art, if you put it in a location that will hurt your job prospects, that's the penalty you pay for being dumb and not thinking ahead.

We need contract courts anyway, though. Without marriage, we wouldn't need the entire divorce court system. Many people wouldn't ever end up in court, because they'd just break up and move on, and no court would need to be involved.

Fair enough. But a constitutional law professor at GW seems to be saying exactly what I was saying: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=4670370&page=1 The probable cause issue may affect evidence in criminal charges (although I don't think it will, but we'll see how the ruling goes), it probably won't affect evidence introduced in child custody and welfare hearings, because the standard they have to meet is "a person of ordinary prudence and caution there is an immediate danger to the physical health or safety of the child or the child has been a victim of neglect or sexual abuse and that continuation in the home would be contrary to the child’s welfare." They're going to make an urgency argument... "Your honor, I got the phone call, and I dispatched officers immediately, because I believed there was a child in immediate danger inside the ranch."

Because if they make the cost of a divorce prohibitively expensive, you'd have people with very little money stuck with the people they married because they can't afford a legal divorce. There are all kinds of community property issues with that, as well as tax problems.

I just didn't want to get into an immigration debate in a marriage thread.