Alex Hart has an IQ of 47, and is classified as mentally retarded. He can neither read nor write. Unable towork, he lived with his parents, did odd jobs and was, they say, courteous and gentle.

On the eve of his arrest, he was excited about a fair coming to town and asked a neighbor if he could mow her lawn to make a few dollars. She found him in the back shed fondling her 6-year-old stepson. When the police arrived, they read Hart his rights, and he confessed to what he'd done. As they transported him to jail, he asked repeatedly whether he'd get paid for mowing the lawn.

The sentence, which, as the Dallas News reports, is harsher than those typically meted out to repeat child molestors and rapists, has raised the larger question of how the state prosecutes the profoundly disabled.

The question is whether Hart was capable of understanding right from wrong; the court said yes, his parents say no. Many blame Hart's court-appointed lawyer for the severity of the sentence. Hart may not have understood his Miranda rights, and confessed to all five counts without an attorney present. Once appointed, the lawyer, assuming his client would get probation, apparently neither called witnesses on Hart's condition nor hired a liaison to help Hart understand what was going on. He also didn't challenge the finding that Hart was competent to stand trial, which his parents claim came after a cursory inspection. As a result, both judge and jury "say they would have preferred not to send Hart to prison," but they were presented with no option - no mental health facility or group home for disabled offenders. (Some jurors are saying the judge ignored their requests for alternatives, and that they were appalled that he chose to stack the sentences.) The District Attorney, however, stands by his decision to prosecute Hart on all counts, saying, "I hope people will remember he committed a violent sexual crime against a little boy."

Hart is currently in Texas' "Mentally Retarded Offender Program." He will appeal later this year; in the meantime, his father says the one upside is that his son has no idea of the severity of his situation. I use "upside" loosely, as the story is a tragedy. If Alex Hart is going to harm children, however unknowingly, he must obviously be kept away from them. One can only hope the child will sustain as little emotional damage as possible and receive counseling. But it's hard not to agree with the law professor quoted in the article who calls the sentence "not helpful to society or the offender."

Fairness Of 100-Year Prison Sentence For Mentally Disabled Offender Questioned [Dallas News]

[Dallas, June 17. Image via Getty]

DALLAS - JUNE 17: Nine-year-old Coulet Johnson (C), sits with fellow homeless children while watching circus clowns at a free performance at the Dallas Public Library on June 17, 2009 in Dallas, Texas. Dozens of children currently living with their parents in Dallas homeless shelters were brought to enjoy the clown show courtesy of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. The National Center on Family Homelessness reported this year that Texas has the largest number of homeless children in the nation with more than 337,000 children without permanent housing. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

[Dallas, June 16. Image via Getty]

DALLAS - JUNE 16: A child asks a question during daycare play events at the Center of Hope shelter for homeless women and children on June 16, 2009 in Dallas, Texas. Dozens of children live with their mothers at the faith-based center run by the Union Gospel Mission. The National Center on Family Homelessness reported this year that Texas has the largest number of homeless children in the nation with a total of some 337,000 children without permanent housing. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

The answer, of course, is "no"... or is it? Judging by the color of the former Secretary of State's face after Ferguson posed the question, we're not so sure. Clip at left.

The Department of Family and Protective Services in Texas reports that 12 girls between the ages 12 to 15 were sexually abused "with the knowledge of their parents" and spiritually "married" to older men within the Mormon breakaway group. Of the girls, 7 of them had one or more children:

The report, an unusual step taken to help satisfy expected questions from the state Legislature when it convenes in January, summarized individual investigations and the history of the case. The findings, though shared with law enforcement, are separate from the ongoing criminal cases.

The individual investigations, which covered 146 families, concluded that 91 families had children who were abused or neglected. Crimmins said that conclusion confirmed what investigators initially suspected — that girls were being forced into underage marriages and other children were exposed to that harm.

The case "is about sexual abuse of girls and children who were taught that underage marriages are a way of life," the agency said in its report. "It is about parents who condoned illegal underage marriages and adults who failed to protect young girls — it has never been about religion."

Authorities say that an additional 262 children were listed as neglected because their parents failed to remove their children from a situation where the child would be exposed to sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said that the the department has made "many allegations that it's never been able to back up" and that the department "needs to learn how to say we're sorry instead of trying to justify their actions."

So far a dozen FLDS men, including the sect's prophet—Warren Jeffs— face charges of sexual abuse and bigamy based on evidence gathered from the ranch. The agency has also identified 124 "perpetrators" who were either parents who arranged illegal child marriages or men who married a young child.

Abuse, Neglect At Polygamist Ranch [MSNBC]

Earlier: Authorities Take 400 More Kids From Polygamist Sect In Texas
Polygamist Sect Raided On Charges Of Abuse Of Girls

• The Bushes spent about $3.7 million dollars on real estate in a pricey Dallas neighborhood, and boy, are you going to seethe with jealousy when you see the house the Presidency can buy you. [Washington Post, The Smoking Gun]
• Italy is struggling with a rise in puppy smuggling due to a love of specific breeds and a declining economy. More than 70,000 puppies are smuggled into Italy every year, despite the fact that nearly a quarter of them die on the way and half die within a few months of arrival. There's a video. [BBC]
• Pastor Rick Warren says the Bible calls us to invade Iran. I don't think it says what he thinks it says, but that might be because I read it for my own edification and not to use it to make zillions of dollars or justify my existence. [Washington Independent]

• The recently-published jury instructions in the Lori Drew case make it more clear why she didn't get convicted of any felony counts. [Wired]
• Fred Thompson recently promised that he was getting out of politics and going back to acting. He lied to you. [Time]
• Conservative scribe and Earl of Minor Despair Bob Novak would totally out Valerie Plame again because the media was mean to him after his did so the first time. [Think Progress]
• Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee doesn't think enough LGBT people have been beaten or killed while seeking equality in this country to qualify as a civil rights movement. Also, he thinks if they would just quit choosing to have teh buttsecks, they could have all the rights they ever wanted. [Think Progress]
• Some wacky Republicans who probably spend a portion of their time bitching about tort reform and vexatious litigation are filing lawsuits upon lawsuits about Barack Obama's birth certificate because blah blah blah crazytown nonsense. [Honolulu Advertiser]
• Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, she of the horror of women who don't always wear stockings, is going to challenge Texas Governor Rick Perry in the 2010 gubernatorial primary because she doesn't think he's Republican-y enough. [Dallas Morning News]
• Sarah Palin is totally snubbing Oprah, because Real Americans would definitely go talk to Larry King first. [Huffington Post]
• Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with an assist from Governor General Michaëlle Jean, has shut down the Canadian Parliament to keep from being thrown out of office. And here you were all worried that George W. Bush was going to be the one to try to upend the democracy he supposedly serves. [NY Times]

• If you weren't already aware, voter turnout is really high. That's led to some scattered problems, which will be chronicled after the jump. [Washington Post]
• In the mean time, the fucking Supreme Court heard the fucking case about fucking swearing on fucking TV. They didn't say "fuck" once, so I felt like someone had to. [Washington Post]
• A lot of people in California who really love each other rushed to get married today in case a bunch of small-minded, easily-led voters decide to make it illegal today for them to do so tomorrow. [NY Times]
• Joe Lieberman "fears" for the future of this country if the Democrats gain a filibuster-proof majority today, and has vowed to join with Republicans to filibuster anything they want to show his contempt for his constituents and the Americans who decided they were okay with a Democratic Senate. [Think Progress]

• Actor Tim Robbins was the most prominent victim of the ironically-named Help America Vote Act's mandated purges of voter rolls today. Being rather well-informed, he took his ass to court to force the city of New York to allow him to vote in the regular fashion, rather than provisionally since it would have gotten discarded. Can we just agree HAVA needs to be revisited next year? [NY Times]
• Rudy and Judith Nathan Giuliani apparent had no such difficulties and even got to cut in line. [Village Voice]
• Some people in Detroit waited 4-5 hours to vote. [CNN]
• Ditto in St. Louis. [CNN]
• A bunch of people in New Mexico that requested absentee ballots never got them and were told to show up and cast provisional ballots, as though if one needed to vote absentee that was a possibility. [CNN]
• At one Florida voting site, they had one machine to accommodate all the voters. Yeah, it was in a predominately African-American neighborhood. [Huffington Post]
• There were big problems with broken machines and a lack of paper ballots in Richmond, Virginia today, too. [Huffington Post]
• In Indiana, the GOP violated a judges orders and tried to challenge the voting status of foreclosed-upon voters. [Huffington Post]
• Some voters in Ohio were forced to cast provisional ballots (which might or might not be counted) because poll workers screwed up and thought that the address on the license had to match the address on the registration. It doesn't. [CNN]
• A 92-year-old woman in Texas cast her ballot from an ambulance outside the polling place when her absentee ballot didn't arrive. [CBS]
• Joe the Motherfucking Plumber went to the wrong polling place and tried to good ol' "Do you know who I am?" when he got stopped for speeding this week. Fuck. Off. Dude. [Wonkette]
• Joining JTMP in fucking off should be P.U.M.A. co-founder Will Bower. [CNN]
• Not that she swears, but 114-year-old Gertrude Baines, the daughter of former slaves who voted for Obama today, probably shares that sentiment. [LA Times]

• An animal welfare journalist named Mira Tweti (pronounced "Tweety") advocates "planned parroting," or being aware of the challenges of raising parrots, to keep down the rising numbers of unwanted pet birds. • A new regulation in England, which went into effect today, no longer requires barristers to wear wigs in the courtroom. • A new craze of wacky beauty gadgets in Japan gave birth to the Kogao Meiku Beruto, or "small face make belt," which is a strap worn around the head that claims to shrink the wearer's face over time. • On Monday, New York City Transit, which is part of the MTA, will begin distributing 200,000 pamphlets about sexual harassment on public transportation to accompany the new anti-sexual harassment SubTalk ads in subways. • A female arsonist and police officer from Wisconsin is engaged to one of the firefighters who responded to a blaze she set in an abandoned house in March. • Police in England are investigating a death threat against a female priest following a series of hate crimes against her, including someone throwing a lit candle into her car.• Parent Television Council filed an indecency complaint with the FCC after a portion of a male contestant's penis slipped out of his shorts during the season premiere of Survivor: Gabon. CBS calls the incident "completely unintentional" and "virtually undetectable." • A 20-year-old woman from Atlanta was "livid" and "scared to death" when some men attempted to "rape" her after someone posted a phony "rape fantasy" ad for her on Craigslist. • When a New York woman told a nurse during a routine GYN exam that she had been treated for PMS mood swings in the past she was transfered to the psych ER unit and wasn't allowed to be released until after 5 hours of tests. • An argument this week between two brothers in Boston over a dog that ate the other brother's watermelon eventually led to one of the brothers repeatedly stabbing himself to prove he wasn't afraid of pain. • And just to prove that women can sometimes be prone to violent overreaction: A woman in Florida punched and bit her ex-husband on Monday after he forgot to buy kitty litter. • Many breast cancer advocates from the U.S. are reaching out to Africa to help promote breast cancer awareness and proper treatment , including a delegation of advocates and doctors that will travel to Ghana in October to open a medical center to educate and treat breast cancer. •

• A poll of British mothers reveals that 16 percent of respondents have a favorite child and 50 percent love both "equally but in different ways." • A claim that steroids may prevent a third of miscarriages raises questions about how normal early miscarriages are for women who are trying to conceive and if they need to be "cured." • A study of young girls and boys reports that boys with conduct and oppositional defiance disorders had lower heart rates and sweated less than boys without those conditions while playing a money-making computer game but girls showed no physiological differences while playing. • Concita de Gregorio appointment as editor-in-chief of one of Italy's most prestigious newspapers, L'Unita, signals the rise of women in the workplace in Italy. • The soccer players of FC de Rakt, an amateur Dutch women's soccer team, all play in short skirts (over hot-pants) because they feel that the look is both more "elegant" and comfortable. • Residents of San Francisco are split over a new proposition that would make prostitution legal in the city: The city's health department backs the proposal but the Mayor and DA say that it will ruin neighborhoods. • An internet advice site about divorces in the UK says that 10% of divorces happen during the second year of marriage and "online divorces" are contributing to a "throwaway" culture. • The "upscale bums" of Beverly Hills benefit from the neighborhood's rich residents but must "act respectful" and not be turned off by the wealthy in order to not get attention from cops. • A judge in Texas has ordered a woman to stop bearing children as part of her 10-year-probation after the woman admitted to not providing care for her 19-month-old daughter after the child was severely beaten by her father. • Computer models that are commonly used by doctors to determine if a woman would benefit from genetic testing for ovarian and breast cancer have underestimated the probability ofAsian women having a genetic mutation that could lead to cancer. • The various relationships between a Saudi woman and her driver all reveal a deep frustration with the inconvenience of not being able to drive themselves. • Why have Crayola crayons removed their old smell from their products? • A trading website for mothers in Australia called Mum Swap encourages free trading (instead of spending) of goods and services from clothes, babysitting, tips, and vacation homes. • High-class escorts in India are sharing in the country's booming economy but they are also evidence of the rising focus on materialism for women in the globalized economy. •

Police have taken statements from the cheerleaders but the school district is withholding the statements from the press for the time being, so there are no details to the case. There are a few questions, the answer to which would explain if this was a case of some classic mean cheerleader antics (a varsity cheerleader's ex-boyfriend would be involved, a MTV movie would be made starring a C-list actor/singer as the head cheerleader) or just some classic dumb hazing "rituals" made by young women who probably watched too many late-'90s high school films: How long did the girls stay in the water bound and gagged? Did the parents of the junior varsity cheerleaders know that their child would be "kidnapped" (which one parent of a varsity squad member seems to imply in a statement she gave to the Houston Chronicle)? More importantly, was anyone injured during the whole ordeal? According to Texas Education Code, students who participate in hazing can be charged with a Class B misdemeanor, which carries a maximum fine of $2,000 and/or up to 180 days in jail.

Granted, any parent should be concerned for their child's safety, regardless if their child was willingly partaking in an invented ritual to make some cheerleaders feel important or if their child was a victim of a violent crime. But as more details of this case come out, the situation will probably be sensationalized as another case of violent girls beating up other girls, with the added "sex appeal" surrounding cheerleading thrown into the mix (let's not forget how much the media — and Dazed & Confused director Richard Linklater — loves a bad girl Texan cheerleader). Is hazing really girl-on-girl crime, or is it just idiotic people being, well, idiots?

Officials Probe Cheerleader Hazing Case [UPI]
Katy ISD Probes Report Of Cheerleader Hazing [Houston Chronicle]
'Mean Girls' [Newsweek]

Related: The 2007-2008 Varsity Cheerleaders! [Morton Ranch High School Cheerleader's Page]

Two other adults, Jamie Pittman, 36 and his girlfriend Shauntel Mayo, 29, have been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for their roles, according to the Tyler Morning Telegraph. Jurors deliberated for only five minutes before returning guilty verdicts in Pittman and Mayo's trial.

The Swingers Club was exposed in 2005 when one of the girls involved told her foster mother about the shows, saying, "everybody does nasty stuff in there." Permanent custody of the three siblings was recently granted to John and Margie Cantrell, but in a twist worthy of the most melodramatic soap opera, last week John Cantrell was charged with sexually assaulting a minor in California 18 years ago. The Cantrells claim that the accusations are false.

Texas Town Reels From Sex Abuse Of Children [AP via MSNBC]
Jury Selection To Begin Monday For Third Defendant In Mineola Swingers’ Club Case [Tyler Morning Telegraph]

Stick A Pin In It [Dallas Morning News]
Read It And Weep [Staten Island Advance]
Earlier: ObamaMonkey? There Is No Teachable Moment With Some People.

Three of the Texas Supreme court members wrote in a dissenting opinion that while the Department of Family and Protective Services was wrong to take all the children, there was proper evidence given in order to remove adolescent girls from "a pattern or practice of sexual abuse."

While the Department of Family and Protective Services clearly abused power, some of the evidence presented by the Department was incredibly damning. According to the Texas Supreme Court decision, "the Department presented 'Bishop’s Records'— documents seized from the Ranch — indicating the presence of several extremely young mothers or pregnant 'wives' on the Ranch: a sixteen-year-old 'wife' with a child, a sixteen-year-old pregnant 'wife,' two pregnant fifteen-year-old “wives,” and a thirteen-year-old who had conceived a child." The expert witness from the FLDS themselves "confirmed that the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints accepts the age of 'physical development' (that is, first menstruation) as the age of eligibility for 'marriage.'"

Texas Court Upholds Polygamist Removals Ruling [Reuters]
FLDS Ruling Upheld By Texas Supreme Court [Los Angeles Times]
FLDS Ruling [Texas Supreme Court]

Whether the state of Texas violated the rights of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints when it removed 400 some-odd children from the Yearning For Zion ranch is up for debate. What's not is the creepiness of these photos of former FLDS honcho Warren Jeffs sucking face with his child-brides. The Smoking Gun got a hold of images of Jeffs with two of his spiritual wives, Loretta and Merrianne. Merrianne, pictured here with Jeffs, was 12 when this photo was taken. These photos were used as evidence in the ongoing FLDS custody trials. Jeffs is currently in jail for coercing a 14-year-old girl to marry a 19-year-old. [The Smoking Gun]