Election Diversity: We’ve Come a Long Way … or Have We?

With the four leading candidates in this year’s presidential contest having been an African-American, a female, a Mormon, and a 72 year-old, the diversity envelope was certainly stretched this year. A USA Today/Gallup poll reported last year on the willingness of present-day Americans to select a non-traditional candidate for the presidency compared to responses to [...]

Virtual FLDS Petition (Part II)

Here are some additional links for the Virtual Petition I assembled in a previous post. None of the below was actually written as a petition (except for the petition of writ of habeus corpus), but all of the below authors expressed significant concerns about the manner in which the FLDS case was handled by Texas, [...]

“We’re Not Going to Violate Their Civil Rights until We Get an Outcry”

State of Texas 45, King George 28
45. In what has to be one of the most notable quotes of the Eldorado fiasco, the Schleicher County Sheriff said, “This is the United States…. We’re not going to violate their civil rights until we get an outcry.”
Here’s a little more context for the quote, as reported by [...]

Texas-Sized Double-Standard in Dealing with FLDS

State of Texas 43, King George 28
43. The State of Texas just can’t make up its mind whether teenage sexual activity is right or wrong.
The Texas Supreme Court minority opinion cited a psychologist’s testimony indicating that:
The pregnancy of the underage children on the Ranch was the result of sexual abuse because children of the age [...]

Digest of Abuses

State of Texas v. King George III
In which the contest begins…

King George 28, State of Texas 3
1. Legal action should be directed at individuals, based on evidence of specific actions committed by those individuals, rather than being directed against a community.
2. The government actions against the FLDS appear to violate the first amendment guarantee [...]

King George 28, State of Texas 10

7. We can only hope that the government actions against the FLDS violate the fourteenth amendment guarantee of “equal protection.” I believe the only way the State of Texas can dodge the charge that the fourteenth amendment has been violated is to start treating all its citizens the same way as the FLDS have been [...]

King George 28, State of Texas 6

4. The government actions appear to violate the fourth amendment requirement that search warrants be based “upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
It appears quite possible that the same person who placed the phone calls claiming to be [...]

King George 28, State of Texas 3

1. Legal action should be directed at individuals, based on evidence of specific actions committed by those individuals, rather than being directed against a community.
Texas government officials disrupted the entire FLDS community, even though the only allegations of potentially illegal actions involved a small fraction of that community. The government actions pose a risk to [...]

State of Texas v. King George III

In 1776, Jefferson listed 28 abuses committed by King George, and now the State of Texas is making a valiant effort to topple the king’s longstanding record. Poor King George may not have much of a chance, since his record is frozen in time, but I thought it might be instructive to keep tally of [...]