According to News and Messenger:

In the past few years, Tincher estimates he made three or four complaints to Social Services – including one alleging physical abuse – regarding his twin boys. The boys live with their father in Bealeton but go to Moore’s house on selected weekends due to a visitation agreement.

A friend of the family has also made numerous complaints. 

The family friend, who attended Brentsville High School with Moore in the early 2000s, said she made close to 10 calls from 2007 to 2010 to the Prince William and Fauquier Social Services departments regarding the situation. She said she heard nothing from anyone other than a brief phone conversation with a social worker.

 

Sadly,  children are often caught in the middle of a delicate balancing act.  Social services agents must respond to every report.  At the same time, parents are guaranteed some rights of privacy.  It is not unheard of for Social Services to be used as a weapon to get even with neighbors, ex-spouses, etc. 

Children must be protected.  Sometimes we, as a society, fail at that charge because we don’t know or because the system is simply inadequate to handle the problem.  Sometimes we fail because we don’t live in a police state.  Social Services and police cannot come charging through someone’s door unless imminent threat or danger  is charged.  To some degree, social institutions are powerless because of parental rights. 

It’s easy to point fingers  at social services agencies when things go horribly wrong.  These agencies cannot discuss cases with others.  The last time I heard, they were able to tell a complaintant if a compaint was founded or unfounded.  Nothing more.  Privacy laws.  Social services work can be rewarding but those workers are often in a legal vise grip with tight parameters.  They walk a tightrope that involves protecting children, parental rights, family rights and legal limitations.  It is an underpaid, undervalued, stressful job by all accounts. 

Sadly, this won’t be the last case of child abuse.  I am all for letting people do their jobs at this point in time.  The court system and Child Protective Services have their work cut out for them.  Its times like this, however, that we need to think about the services we want cut.  Do we really want mental health and substance abuse services cut?  Do we want to cut back on public employees like social workers and police? 

Cases like this are brutal reminders about where we want our public money to go.

And yes, my hosts were all Mormons, but maybe not practicing ones.  After they laughed and carried on over my ignorance, they explained it.  Polygamist only have one state marriage as we saw in Big Love.  Barb was the legal wife.  The others, Margene and Nikki, were ecclesiastical wives.  That is not illegal.  It is taboo, however, in the official Mormon Church, otherwise known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.   Barb has been excommunicated because she was living in polygamy.  Bill, Nikki and Margene  had never been in the mainstream Mormon Church so they were  not excommunicated. 

So I got an email from a friends asking me what was the difference in living together and polygamy.  I would say there is none legally.  The legal problems of polygamy center around child abuse and statutory rape.  Amongst consenting adults,  what is the problem?   There has also been a problem with many of the polygamist men not supporting their children and costing the state lots of welfare money.  The Juniper Creek class polygamists ran in their own little world and lived by their own laws.  However, if people are living like the Hendricksons or those seen on the reality show Sister Wives, why does it concern us?

Any opinions or comments?

Mike Huckabee laced into Oscar winner Natalie Portman for her “out-of-wedlock” pregnancy, saying the expecting star is helping to “glamorize” single motherhood.

Huckabee made the comments on conservative commentator Michael Medved’s radio show this week, after Portman accepted her golden trophy and in her speech thanked her fiance, Benjamin Millepied, for giving her “my most important role of my life.”

Medved led the way on the question, saying the “most wonderful gift” Millepied could have given the diminutive Black Swan star “would be a wedding ring! And it just seems to me that sending that kind of message is problematic.”

 

Huckabee said he hadn’t seen the Oscars telecast, but added, “What’s troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, you know, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having these children, and they’re doing just fine,’ Media Matters reported on its website.

“But there aren’t really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie,” he added.

“And I think it gives a distorted image that yes, not everybody hires nannies, and caretakers, and nurses. Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock.

He added, “You know, right now, 75 percent of black kids in this country are born out of wedlock. 61 percent of Hispanic kids — across the board, 41 percent of all live births in America are out of wedlock births. And the cost of that is simply staggering.”

The United States cut off food aid several years ago over concerns about nuclear transparency.  It has said it has no plans to start up again.   The UN Food Program has said it will only contribute food for another month.

According to the Washington Post:

The request has put the United States and other Western countries in the uncomfortable position of having to decide whether to ignore the pleas of a starving country or pump food into a corrupt distribution system that often gives food to those who need it least.

We have always been a generous nation, even with our enemies, at least in the 20th century.  North Korea is simply too much of a problem to start giving hand outs.   A country that won’t play by the rules and issues threats all the time is in no position to be asking favors.  On the other hand, there are starving people.  The question we must ask ourselves is, would the starving  people even get the food?  I would give food only if I could distribtute it to those in need.  If our troops went anywhere near there to give food, they would probably fire on them.

What do you think we should do?

Notice North Korea at night.  The people have no electricity:

Does it matter that cards we receive say Seasons Greetings?  Does it matter that sales clerks we don’t know tell us to have a great holiday instead of Merry Christmas?   Is it something to be paranoid over?  Is there really a war on Christmas? 

Back in the summer we ran a post celebrating the 50th anniversary of JFK’s speech to the ministers of Houston on the importance of the wall of separation between church and state.   That speech was considered to be one of Kennedy’s most important.  To this day, he is the only Roman Catholic to be elected President of the United States. 

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has addressed Palin’s erroneous thinking in an opinion piece in the Washington Post   Saturday:

I have tried researching this allegation, without much luck.  I even went to the  Legatuswebsite.  Fimian is a member of Legatus, which is a Catholic organization, founded by Dominos Pizza Magnet Tom Monaghan for very wealthy Catholic business folks and their spouses.  I didn’t find out much there either.  Maybe it’s me.  However, I haven’t heard anything which disputes this claim.  This makes me nervous. 

There has been somewhat of an uproar the past several years about pharmacists with religious objections being forced to dispense contraception, in particular, the morning after pill.  NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia  has this to say:

In addition to lack of contraceptive equity, Virginia’s so-called “conscience clause” allows pharmacists to decide which prescriptions they will and will not provide. This means that a pharmacist could legally refuse to fill a doctor’s prescription for birth control or stock or distribute emergency contraception. Since when do pharmacists get to step inside the doctor-patient relationship and refuse to fill necessary prescriptions?

 

Conscience Clause?  Where did that come from?  Someone slipped that one by me.  The more I google, the more I unearth and the angrier I get.  This thread needs to be a work in progress.  First of all, anyone who has knowledge of Fimian’s position on allowing pharmacists to cherry pick what prescriptions they will fill, please let us know.  I don’t have a bone to pick with private pharmacies who post, in clear view on their door that they do not sell or dispense contraception.  However, other stores open to the public without disclaimers should really not be involved in type of exclusionary behavior.  I consider it equivalent to the Muslim cab driver who wouldn’t let bottles of liquor in his cab.  Find another job. 

Secondly, what kinds of legislation have been passed that allow ‘conscience clauses and require pharmacist counselling?  How offensive.  If one works for a pharmacy, the job is to fill prescriptions, not chime in with a moral opinion.  If that is an issue, go work for a private religious hospital or pharmacy. 

I would especially welcome and appreciate word from the Fimian campaign that this information is indeed false.  This is the year 2010, in the United States of America.  Griswald was decided 45 years ago. 

Krystal Ball owes no one any explanations.  She was with her own husband in the privacy of someone’s home.  Someone betrayed her and violated the sanctity of her marriage.  Couples should not have to explain their love life to others. 

What is it that makes some conservatives feel they can degrade her, make crude comments about her?  Where is their sense of outrage over someone violating the privacy of this couple?  Is it because Ms. Ball dared to go into politics?  Is it her youth?  Is it that she obviously has a lust for life?

I need conservative principles explained to me. No one here on this blog has been disrespectful.  But traveling around the blogosphere, observing that which has gone viral,  I see attack after attack from people who are obviously conservative.

Where does the sanctity of marriage kick in?  Help me understand.  Those pictures were not posted by Ms. Ball anywhere in public.  What is the difference in posting those pictures and being your common, every day Peeping Tom?  Don’t conservative values include guarding the privacy of married couples?  How about being respectful of people’s wives?   Don’t most conservatives believe in family values and wouldn’t those values guard the privacy of this couple?  How many people who made sexist comments voted for the Virginia Defense of Marriage Act?

Del. R. Lee Ware Jr. is a political conservative standing on principle in the debate over whether to get Virginia out of the liquor business.

But he’s standing on a different principle than Gov. Bob McDonnell, who says the state has no business selling distilled spirits through the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

“The control of the sale of alcoholic beverages is a legitimate function of state government in serving the public good,” said David A. Bovenizer IV, spokesman for Ware, R-Powhatan. “Consequently, the free-market assertion regarding privatization of ABC is at best secondary to the common good.”

Bovenizer said Ware also regards the governor’s projections of state revenue from a private liquor industry as “unpersuasive” and the sale of the liquor monopoly unnecessary to raise money for road improvements, given the findings of a recent state audit of the Virginia Department of Transportation.

It isn’t surprising that Republicans cannot agree.  One needs to think about exactly who we are speaking of.  Let’s consider Old Republicans and New Republicans.  OR and NRs.  ORs are simply Old Democrats who were the people who voted Democratic regardless of who ran.  They were the old left overs from Reconstruction. 

The Old Republicans who were old Democrats also wanted to regulate booze.  Confused yet?  So at the end of Prohibition, they put their plan into action and that is where it is today.  Our state ABC Stores have grown out of  very conservative values in the state.  Virginia had strong feelings about liquor and they wanted to be in control. 

So as McDonnell goes about the state trying to sell his plan, he is running in to some serious opposition.  He should not be surprised.  The Old Dominion does not roll over for change very easily.  McDonnell is coming across like a carpetbagger.  He is from Northern Virginia.  Remember, Northern Virginia isn’t even real Virginia–not in the eyes of the rest of the state.  And finally, money talks.  $250 million dollars profit is hard to beat. 

McDonnell needs to find a new hobby.

K K Temptations, an adult boutique, will be opening next month in Old Town Manassas.

Perhaps the first thing people need to do is clarify in their own minds what really constitues ‘porn.’ I have a sneaking suspicious we wouldn’t all agree, especially if some people thought others were watching.

I am curious if a boutique that featured magic, the occult, and earth centered religions would be greeted the same way? Would the Old Guard try to run it off also? 13 Magickal Moons is in historic Occoquan and has been for many years.

I am continually amazed at people who want free enterprize and less government until it is something a little off the beaten, non-vanilla path. Then there is great howling for the government to fix things. I guess that is better than burning people at the stake, however.