Posted on 10/09/2010 4:18:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A fascinating culture-war blog entry plus comments at Wonkette, well worth reading for people confused as hell as why Sarah Palin is able to succeed selling a sense of "they hate us but really we are more than OK" to lots of Americans.
The setup: a couple in New Hampshire had their baby stolen from them by government agents--which I think most normal humans recognize as one of the most wrenching, horrific, violative of one's integrity and liberty things that a state, or anyone, could possibly do--whatever the reason for it might be.
The affidavit about the snatch lists ongoing charges of child neglect against the mother regarding her other two children, and charges against the father involving weapons possession without a license, as among the reasons for the kidnapping.
The affidavit also** [see update below]--and this is why it has become a populist right cause celebre on the Internet--the father, Jonathan Irish, has "associated with a militia known as the, 'Oath Keepers,' and had purchased several different types of weapons including a rifle, handgun, and taser."
Wonkette finds it absolutely hilarious that anyone might be alarmed that political associations (with a group whose greatest sin is a refusal on the part of its members who are agents of the U.S. government to enforce unconstitutional orders) and weapons possession might be among the reasons listed for the state taking custody of a child from its parents.
The author and commenters goes on with some incredibly mean-spirited class-based mockery that is actually kind of extraordinary--especially in the monolithic ability of people to laugh at baby snatching as long as it occurs to those kind of people. We don't like those kind of people. There is even an incredibly un-self-aware, head-up-the-ass comment asking the angry right-wing populists to do a racial inversion on the situation (the parents are white)--not wondering for a minute how funny Wonkette Assembled would find all the assumed language, class, and diet mockery in the thread in the case of such an inversion.
See some very pro-parent accounts of the situation from Alex Jones' Prison Planet site (including the first page of the affidavit) and from the Daily Tea Party site, including a YouTube interview with Mr. Irish.
UPDATE: The most recent version of the Prison Planet account notes that the point mentioning Mr. Irish's membership in Oath Keepers is from a "different separate document" than the apparent order regarding why New Hampshire's Division for Children, Youth, and Families took the child, which means the way the story was being framed by everyone from Prison Planet to Wonkette to me in the original post is almost certainly wrong--that is, his alleged membership in Oath Keepers seems as if it does not have anything to do with the actual legal excuses for the child snatching. That does not affect the strange reactions of the Wonkette folk, who believed that was the case as much as the angry right-wing populists across the Internet believed it was the case. (And as I believed was the case, given the way the document had been presented on those two sites earlier today, and is still presented on the Daily Tea Party site.)
UPDATE PART II: While it is unclear whether Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, was also misled, as Wonkette and I were, by the way prominent right-populist web sites presented the supposed documents, he is insisting on his web site that he has:
confirmed that the affidavit in support of the order to take the child from her parents states ,along with a long list of other assertions against both parents, that “The Division became aware and confirmed that Mr. Irish associated with a militia known as the Oath Keepers.” Yes, there are other, very serious allegations. Out of respect for the privacy of the parents, we will not publish the affidavit. We will leave that to Mr. Irish. But please do remember that allegations do not equal facts -- they are merely allegations (and in my experience as a criminal defense lawyer in small town Montana I saw many allegations that proved to be false).
UPDATE III: The Concord Monitor reports on protests outside the hospital where the baby-taking occurred, with these details, sounding as if the reporter saw the whole affidavit, with more details on the accusations against the parents. (Whether anyone thinks an act of violence as severe as taking a newborn from parents is justified by these sorts of procedures is the big question):
By mid afternoon, about 20 people who had never met the couple gathered at Concord Hospital to protest what they termed the state's unconstitutional interference in a family matter. None claimed to know anything about government's allegations that Irish had beaten his fiancee or her young children, but they said they were outraged that the affidavit supporting the taking of his newborn mentioned Irish's association with a group called the Oath Keepers....
But according to an affidavit provided to Irish by the state Division for Children, Youth and Families, state officials took the child because of Irish's long record of violence and abuse. According to the affidavit, a judge determined that Irish abused Taylor's two other children. She is still married to the father of those children, though Taylor said yesterday that her husband has refused to accept her divorce petition for the past two years.
The affidavit also says that the police in Rochester report a "lengthy history of domestic violence" between Taylor and Irish, and that she accused him of choking and hitting her on more than one occasion. According to the document, Irish failed to complete a domestic violence course as ordered by the state, and that a hearing was held last month to terminate Taylor's parental rights over her two older children.
Taylor "has failed to recognize the impact of domestic violence in her life and the potential danger it poses to a newborn baby," the affidavit reads. "Mr. Irish has not acknowledged any responsibility to date and remains a significant safety risk to an infant in his care. . . . Without the intervention of the court, the infant will be at risk of harm."
Irish, 24, said in an interview yesterday that he had never abused his fiancee or her other children. He said he was unemployed and collected disability because he is blind in his left eye from a childhood accident. He said that Taylor suffers from "stress-induced seizure disorder" and that complications during her pregnancy required him to tend to her almost constantly. He said he has no lawyer, though a hearing in the matter has been scheduled for next week.
The affidavit also states that Irish is "associated with a militia known as the Oath Keepers and had purchased several different types of weapons including a rifle, handgun and Taser."
And the FBI brought bomb-sniffing dogs to the protest, reports local TV station WMUR.
Kudos...
I can think of no Hell on Earth quite like being branded as something you loathe unjustly, punished as if you are guilty without the level of due process a common criminal would warrant, trying to sleep at night tortured by the absence of your children and the constant uncertainty as to their welfare--and that is only the parent's perspective, the children are traumatized as well.
We have empowered no other part of our government to be as invasive or authoritarian with little or no evidence and thus have opened a Pandora's box of capricious action based on hearsay, supposition, and arbitrary standards often imposed by people who have only a theoretical knowledge of child-rearing.
Unfortunately, rather than confine this leviathan within the constraints of the Constitution, we have used the exceptions granted (for the children, of course) as a model of how to circumvent the protections for the accused in our system of jurisprudence, something which is clearly the action of those who view those Constitutional protections as an obstacle rather than sane constraint.
When (if) the time comes that totalitarianism rears its ugly head on these shores, I hope the survivors of the strife which ensues remember, I hope they carve in stone, that the door was opened to that Evil not by the external force of an overwhelming army but from within by those who claimed to do so for the children.
There will always be those even in conservative circles, who think this kind of constitutional abomination is acceptable because we must protect the innocent children.
They will be singing a different tune when they are the accused and their parental rights are trampled all over because some nasty neighbor doesn’t like the way they are raising their children or just doesn’t like them period.
Yes I believe that truly abused children need to be protected. However, the foster care system is so overrun with children that don’t need to be there that CPS has to place children in questionable homes. What ends up happening then? The children that were never abused at home end up abused in the system. Children are many more time likely to be abused in the system than they are at home.
If you have a case of abuse, arrest the abuser, try them in a court of law and THEN take their children. This preemptive kidnapping of children is an outrage and ANYONE that thinks this is okay or even a necessary evil is not a conservative, IMHO.
Exactly.
This preemptive kidnapping of children is an outrage and ANYONE that thinks this is okay or even a necessary evil is not a conservative, IMHO.
While it is often tempting to cut corners for extraordinary situations, we must recall that many of those who espouse such hold our system of government in contempt.
They have long espoused one thing: control.
We have no culture if our children are homogenized by the state. If the parental influence on our children is minimized or eliminated, all we have then is a breeding farm for worker drones to be programmed as those who control the State see fit.
Every totalitarian society has sought to control the children first.
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