Last April 439 children were seized from the ranch. Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Anne Heiligenstein testified in a House Human Services Committee hearing that the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints group now realizes forcing teenage girls into marriage is sexual abuse. However, committee members said she may be too optimistic, since the group has been known to coach the children to give misleading information. They suggested that there is no way to be sure if church members are being honest about underage marriages now. [UPI]

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

• A new service from Japan offers users four different virtual "wives" to nag help remind dieters via email to stick to their weight loss goals. • A 60-year-old woman willingly faces excommunication from the Roman Catholic church as she pursues her goal to become a Catholic priest via a ordination ceremony at a Protestant church this weekend. • A new study reveals that illegal but common marriage dowries in Bangladesh are a major contributor to poverty in many families with daughters. • The custody case of 439 children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas is being whittled down with all but 37 children released from court oversight. • Researchers announced that many young women may be unknowingly spreading genital herpes because they have no symptoms and therefore do not know that they need to get tested. • Meanwhile, a recent study reports that while 40% of the women surveyed say they have sexual problems, only 12% say they are the source of significant personal distress. • Meet Dr. Elliot Jacobs, the best plastic surgeon specializing in reducing enlarged male breasts in New York City! • A study of middle-aged British women found that early puberty, having multiple children, and taking hormone replacement therapy all increase the risk of needing a joint replacement surgery due to arthritis. • Chinese authorities announced today that a mother in China will avoid a jail sentence for poisoning and smothering her mentally ill 20-year-old daughter. • A mother in England reported that her 23-year-old son collapsed and later died from watching a pornographic film weeks after her underwent open-heart surgery. • From the "Duh" files: A new study reports that female politicians must appear attractive and competent to win votes; most people perceiving male politicians as more competent that female ones. • Critically endangered Peruvian yellow-tailed wooly monkeys are being threatened by deforestation and people selling the baby monkeys for a few dollars. • A mathematician has cracked the opening "PAAAANG" chord in The Beatles' "Hard Day's Night." • Happy Halloween! •

If you'll recall, Jeffs is already serving a jail sentence for being an accomplice to rape, and since his incarceration in Utah, there have been rumblings of a new prophet being anointed. Merrill Jessop, the former husband of Carolyn Jessop, who wrote the anti-FLDS memoir Escape about her awful experiences as Merrill's umpteenth wife and the tyranny of Jeffs' reign. A change in leadership could definitely be a positive, as Carolyn Jessop wrote in her book that things in the sect were much more reasonable before the power-hungry Jeffs came to lead the FLDS.

Texas Grand Jury Indicts Polygamist Sect Members [AP]
Sect Leader Jeffs Charged With Child Sex Assault [CNN]
A New Prophet for the Polygamists? [Time]

Earlier: Big Love
Please Do Not Cry For Those Poor Polygamist Wives, Fox News

While Kinkade's egalitarian, Marxist, hippied-out community, Twin Oaks, was "as far from fundamentalist Mormonism as it could be without being lunar," she still felt a kinship with the FLDS children because "I grew up in a place where my 'normal' was far enough from the average American childhood to make Dick and Jane books read like cultural anthropology."

She also identified with the FLDS's unconventional kinship structure. While Kinkade didn't live with her biological mother, there was a woman who she considers her mother emotionally; a woman who was her "purveyor of mac and cheese, warmth, and safety." And though she thinks that marrying off 13-year-olds to gross old men is "indefensible," she does fear that the media is painting the FLDS with the freak brush a little too often for her liking. "I wonder what degree of empathy is possible in a social structure that persists in defining the lives of the children it is trying to help as bizarre," she muses.

Look, I'm no fan of the FLDS. I don't have evidence that every family within the church is sexually abusive or cruel to children — though clearly the structure of the religion makes it easy for abuse to happen. But Kinkade's plea for tolerance and compassion is something we should all consider. Though really, Warren Jeffs — what a sick fuck, right????

We Are (All) Family [Slate]
Judge's Orders Aimed To Protect Jeffs' Daughter From Sect Member [Dallas Morning News via Newser]

Earlier: Please Do Not Cry For Those Poor Polygamist Wives, Fox News

MOE: The Douche-oisie?
MEGAN: You gotta thank T-Rex for that one. "I have a new term for all those nebbishy young men in DC/NY with their unsold novels and their delusions of literary lionization. The Douche-oisie."

MOE: Um there are dudes in DC like that? Nevermind, I don't want to know. Don't spoil it for me. I was very content assuming everyone in DC liked to peddle their fictions "nonfiction." Insufferable, in a way I've always been slightly more inclined to suffer. But it's reminding me of the Marxist critique of the Sex & The City movie my sister just sent me…

MEGAN: I am sitting here trying to reconcile the mental picture of a Marxist paying $10 (or sucking up to PR people) to see a movie (let alone actually watching it) that, at a minimum, glorifies conspicuous consumption. Also, I will admit I sorta don't care to see it, even if I have to give up my girl card. I never thought she should end up with Big, I always thought he sorta sucked and I thought the finale was a disappointing cop-out and so I don't care anymore.
8:30 AM
MOE: Yeah, I basically thought Big was the only good thing in a sea of really fucking boring people. Miranda's husband I also liked. Aidan gave me the vapors.Peggy Noonan on McClellan. She defends him, says he should be defended as a contributor to the historical record, finds the triteness of his insights and the obviousness of his argument "all too believable" — not to mention the fact that he has no defenders. "I want to quote his defenders, but he doesn't have any." OH PEGGY. You might have checked this little blog we know… It only quotes you every Friday…

MEGAN: Did we really defend him? I mean, I guess I do believe him because he doesn't say anything that isn't playing into Bush's shitty approval ratings.
MOE: ARGHHHHH SO WHAT.
MEGAN: Also, I give a hells yeah to Steve (Miranda's husband) and Aidan. Yum.
MOE: He's not running for anything!
MEGAN: Bush? Yes, thankfully.
MEGAN: I mean, I hate to find myself agreeing with Peggy here, but it's like, wow, Scott McClellan felt out-of-the-loop and lied to? I'm actually only surprised that he noticed and said something about it.
MOE: McClellan. That's the thing. Dude writes a book. No discernible agenda of self-servingness. About the excesses and evils of the "constant campaign." And everyone's like, "What's the campaign?" and "I don't see how this is going to affect the campaign," and "Why didn't he tell us this when it could have impacted a campaign?"
MOE: In any case he's got a crush on Obama
MEGAN: Oh, well, he didn't say it when it could affect a campaign because he was still working there. Duh. Also, would it have changed anyone's mind in 2004? Doubtful. Kerry lost by a bunch.
MEGAN: I love how it's him and Jenna against the world on that one.
MEGAN: Whoa, wait. Maybe it's not Obama on whom he has a crush?
MOE: Milbank mockery
MEGAN:

He's a bit thinner around the middle, and the sideburns are comically longer

MEGAN: Damn, dude, mocking a man's facial hair?
MOE: Dude do you remember Robbie in My Three Sons? Those were some comical sideburns, especially when it switched to color.
MEGAN: I have seen comical sideburns, sir, and I pronounce McClellan's wispy and a bit sparse, possibly in need of a good shaving, but I wouldn't call them "comical"
MOE: Oh shit some dude is aping your steez but …so much more cringetacularly!

Soup to nuts? Campbell's and Planters are here for the looking. I can't think of a single sector of the American economy that directly or indirectly doesn't have some sort of Washington representation.

MOE: Um I love how Condi Rice is recovering from being so pilloried by McClellan.
MEGAN: That's a week late and a dollar short, dude. Also, Mr. Korologos is a former Bush appointee, and is now a "strategic adviser" which means he does everything up to the point of official lobbying in order to avoid registration. So, um, what a great defender. Someone who uses his former position to almost lobby but stay under the radar.
MEGAN: Ugh, I seriously, seriously cannot see Gene Simmons anymore without flashing back to the demoralizing experience of seeing his sex tape. That was cringetastic and unimpressive. Spits on his finger to be able to finger the fake-titted chick. Small penis. Never removes his shirt. That line from Bridget Jones never seemed so apt: "Coitus is brief and perfunctory."
MOE: Ah! I often use the word "perfunctory" to describe sex sessions. I didn't realize Bridget Jones — well, that and distinctly shitty taste in dudes — was to blame. That is so depressing. Let's talk about something else!! Victory on Al Qaeda perhaps? That epic Bear Stearns series? The Fundamentalist Pedophiles being awarded their inbred children? It's all so heartening.

MEGAN: Oh, don't forget Obama's new clergy problem. This time, he's white!

MEGAN: Oh, by the way, you can go watch it right here. Why in the world would they not have stopped taping the sermons, anyway?
MEGAN: Oh, by the way, speaking of bombshells, 111 countries formally adopted a treaty to eliminate cluster bombs yesterday. Just guess who the big hold outs were? Us, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. We're always in such great company on these things.
MOE: Hahahaha China and Pakistan! They're just like US!
MEGAN: On this and the death penalty and torture! Hoorah!
9:20 AM
MEGAN: Oh, great, the Burmese junta has decided that it doesn't need any stinkin' refugee camps.
MOE: CIA director Michael Hayden:

"The fact that we have kept [Americans] safe for pushing seven years now has got them back into the state of mind where 'safe' is normal," he said. "Our view is: Safe is hard-won, every 24 hours."

Inspiring! Me to throw up!!
MOE: So what's the deal with the polygamists? Why do they get their kids back? How did that happen? Etc. etc.

MEGAN: They get their kids back as soon as they can, I guess. It seems that the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the state had failed to prove immediate danger to all the kids, since that's the standard.
MOE: Oh god and more.
MEGAN: Like, obviously, infants weren't about to be married off and shit. The state tried to argue that just being raised in the community was turning the boys into cousin-marrying pedos, but the courts didn't buy it.
MOE: BUT WHY?
MEGAN: Because they couldn't prove it.
MEGAN: I mean, let's just all admit that our legal system is pretty fucked, but it's less fucked than a lot of others.
MOE: Here's the dissenting opinion though it also concedes:

On this record, however, I agree that there was no evidence of imminent “danger to the physical health or safety” of boys and pre-pubescent
girls to justify their removal from the YFZ Ranch, and to this extent I join the Court’s opinion. Id. § 262.201(b)(1).

Maybe we should just redefine "imminent."

MEGAN: I guess it's just, like, parents have the right to fuck their kids up, home school them and teach them that humans co-existed with dinosaurs in the garden of Eden and that a woman should aspire to no more than to be a good wife to whomever she's told to marry.
MEGAN: They just don't have to right to physically abuse them or force them to have sex.
MOE: NO THEY FUCKING DON'T
MEGAN: Well, legally they do. Whether they ought to is a different question.
MEGAN: Should the state decide which religious views are valid, short of one that requires or encourages physical or sexual abuse?
MEGAN: Should the state decide by which moral values you should raise your kids?
MOE: What's on the books w/r/t cults? This is fucking mind control. They created their own totalitarian parasite state within a state, which is the only reason it's managed to survive for more than a century, and it has nothing to do with values!

MEGAN: I mean, I guess I feel like, great, if they choose my moral values, that could be totally cool but do I trust the government to choose my values? And I sure as hell fucking don't. I don't trust that they won't decide that some ignorant fucking Christian piece of shit females-aren't-as-good pastor gets to decide.
MEGAN: There isn't anything on the books about cults. As long as there's no physical or sexual coercion, they're legal. You're allowed to brainwash your followers as long as you don't stockpile weapons, try to kill everyone or fuck children.
MEGAN: Luckily for law enforcement, the really scary ones rely on physical coercion, stockpiling weapons, killing people and fucking underage girls. I mean, that's obviously unlucky for the people involved.
MOE: You know about Germany. Don't they have some decent laws on this matter?

MEGAN: Sort of. I mean, Germany's basically a two-religion state (Lutherism and Catholicism) with some provisions made for Jews. In fact, your tax dollars support the Church to which you belong, interestingly. They don't recognize Scientology as a religion, I'm given to understand but will no doubt be corrected, in no small part because to advance within the religion costs you money. They view Scientology (and, in my opinion, rightly so) as a money-making enterprise. They do allow regular LDS (i.e., Mormons) despite the tithing "requirements" of that Church.

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]

MEGAN: I have decided that CNN's morning show has become The Today Show and can't watch it anymore despite the hotness of Sanjay Gupta. MSNBC is my only alternative despite Joe Scarborough's dickishness (today: he's going to buy a Tahoe hybrid, which gets shittier gas mileage than my 8 year old Corolla but the Tahoe is biiiiiig unlike his dick) but since I'm apparently being a dick today it's working for me. Sort of. I wish I hadn't given my collection of stress balls to that guy I was dating last year when he was quitting smoking because I could now be throwing them at the TV.
MOE: I haven't watched TV or really slept very much in a very, very long time. I'm a total shutin, trying to write prettily the tale of antibiotic resistant bacteria for this epic piece I can't seem to finish even as I'm sort of fascinated by microbiology.

MEGAN: You know what's fucked? My parents' neighbor's daughter, who is 3 or 4 years younger than me, has had a drug resistant flesh-eating staph infection for the last 6 months.
MOE: I guess I should at the very least read Drudge, or this is going to be one of those things where it's like "oh, Moe's gotten REALLLY stupid hasn't she."
MEGAN: She's been in and out of the hospital and they're only now maybe kind of sure she won't lose her arm and she's like 25.
MEGAN: Nah, actually, reading Drudge will make you stupid, I think. The Pope is here! Obama's not hope-y! Clinton's on the attack! And McCain isn't that bad!
MOE: It's the affliction of our thoughtless Cold War antibiotics policies. We've given the bacteria all these opportunities to create these radicalized master races with our indiscriminate use of antibiotics.
MEGAN: Got a cold? Have some antibiotics! Got an ear infection perhaps? Enjoy! Yummy amoxicilin!
MOE: Whenever you take 3 days worth of amoxicillin to kill a cold that you thought was maybe a sinus infection, you're funding terrorism.
MOE: Or like, eating meat.
MEGAN: Yeah, beef. Damn beef.

MEGAN: Corn fed beef that's spent its life as a cow crapping all over and being crapped on by other cows necessitating a constant stream of antibiotics to keep them from getting sick before slaughter because, really, it takes a really special slaughterhouse to still slaughter a downer cow and feed it to the populace and the USDA is getting so mean about that these days. What? It's not like we've got BSE in this country. Or, um, but we totally got it from Canada! Only when we didn't! Whatever, everyone should take our meat anyway.
MOE: OMG Cindy McCain is totally the next coming of Jessica Seinfeld. And they use them in pork and chickens too. It's not so much to resist infection (because um, duh, when you feed cows a constant supply of antibiotics it's not going to really do anything about the infections after awhile) but to fatten them up faster. They grow like 12% faster for some reason. I think it has to do with the gut flora but I don't really know.
MOE: I love this:

This past Sunday, Lauren Handel, an eagle-eyed attorney from New York, was searching for a specific recipe from Giada DeLaurentis, a chef on the Food Network. Yet whenever she Googled the different ingredients in the recipe, the oddest thing happened: not only did the Food Network's site come up, as expected, but so did John McCain's campaign site.

MEGAN: Yeah, I saw that yesterday. Old men fucking their 12-year-old daughters? Totes fine. Cops talking to them about it? Baaaad.

MEGAN: But MSNBC yesterday had an interview with a former sect member who was all, hey, that bitch you're showing crying about her kids? Yeah, she used to beat mine.
MOE: Bob Herbert re bittergate:

But there is something perverse in the effort to portray Senator Obama — who has tried hard to promote a message of unity and healing — as some kind of divisive figure.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxit professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.

"The rest of Europe will just roll its eyes, sigh and say, 'Here we go again,' but there's nothing they can do about it," said John Harper, a professor of political science at the Bologna branch of Johns Hopkins University.

MEGAN: But, apparently, in Italy that's sort of okay which is why he got re-elected.
MOE: Ohkay, Geoff Davis. Nasty racist congressman refers to Obama as snake oil salesman, was less impressed with this World of Warcraft game than he was with his bowling score!

He said in his remarks at the GOP dinner that he also recently participated in a "highly classified, national security simulation" with Obama.
"I'm going to tell you something: That boy's finger does not need to be on the button," Davis said. "He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country."

MEGAN: Also, I love that this is the overarching analysis of the paper's prescience:

We had high economic growth for years, but never solved the problems of poverty, unemployment and unequal income distribution. And those problems are still there

Behind the scenes, Cosby hired the Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint to make sure that the show never trafficked in stereotypes and that it depicted blacks in a dignified light. Picking up Cosby's fixation on education, Poussaint had writers insert references to black schools. "If the script mentioned Oberlin, Texas Tech, or Yale, we'd circle it and tell them to mention a black college," Poussaint told me in a phone interview last year. "I remember going to work the next day and white people saying, 'What's the school called Morehouse?'" In 1985, Cosby riled NBC by placing an anti-apartheid sign in his Huxtable son's bedroom. The network wanted no part of the debate. "There may be two sides to apartheid in Archie Bunker's house," the Toronto Star quoted Cosby as saying. "But it's impossible that the Huxtables would be on any side but one. That sign will stay on that door. And I've told NBC that if they still want it down, or if they try to edit it out, there will be no show." The sign stayed.

MOE: Well, since then, you know, he's become kind of the Cedric character in Barbershop. In Philadelphia we did a lot of stories about all the charges that he'd had a big problem groping and dateraping women or something. There do not seem to be mentions of those in this story, which depicts him as a well-intentioned hater.

MEGAN: Yeah, whatever happened with that? Those were some vicious stories.
MEGAN: Also, I love how the death of his son isn't presented at all as a potential reason for the change in his public demeanor.
MOE: 13 women is a lot to ignore.
MEGAN: And, yet, somehow The Atlantic Ta-Nehisi Coates manage to do so. Strange that.
MEGAN: Oh, um, maybe not that strange. Ta-Nehisis is a dude. Married to a woman named Kenyatta, to bring it back to Obama's father's critique.
MOE: And yes, I think that would make you a candidate for the "bitter" category. To be honest, everyone in this damn country needs to grow the fuck up, stop spending so much money, stop watching reality TV, invest in an Economist subscription, learn a foreign language, and help others now and again.
MEGAN: But The Deadliest Catch's new season premieres tonight on the Discovery Channel! That doesn't count as "reality" TV right?

Three women claiming to be representing the group wrote a letter to Texas Governor Rick Perry, lamenting their plight. "You would be appalled," the FLDS mothers wrote. "Many of our children have become sick as a result of the conditions they have been placed in. Some have even had to be taken to the hospital. Our innocent children are continually being questioned on things they know nothing about. The physical examinations were horrifying to the children. The exposure to these conditions is traumatizing them."

The mothers have also been stripped of their cell phones, as Texas authorities fear that the custody case will be hampered by outside interference. If the treatment of the FLDS wives and children is anything like former sect member Carolyn Jessop claims it is, then the lack of cell phones is the least of these women's worries. Jessop was married to a man over 30 years her senior when she was 18, and though she had 8 children with her husband (who had five other wives), she lived in constant fear. "Some [women in the sect] had been beaten so badly they had suffered broken bones. Girls, some as young as 12 and 13, had been expected to have sex with much older men."

Mothers From Polygamous Sect Ask Texas For Help [CNN]
Sect Investigation Moving To Courtroom [AP]
Forced To Marry A 50-year-old With Six Wives When Just 18 ... One Woman's Harrowing Tale Of Escaping The Texas Polygamist Sect [Daily Mail]

Earlier: Authorities Take 400 More Kids From Polygamist Sect In Texas
Your Nagging Ancient Mormon Underage Sex Cult Questions, Answered At Last!
Polygamist Sect Raided On Charges Of Abuse Of Girls

• We were so into the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints and their Yearning For Zion Ranch, where girls in their early teens get married off to gross molesty old men with multiple other wives, none of whom are allowed to wear red because that's Jesus' color.
  
• Are those teens better, or worse off than the brave 8-year-old Yemeni girl name Nojoud Muhammed Nasser who was married off by her crazy homeless father, but has now successfully filed for divorce.
  
• A study in contrasts: the marriage of Nojoud Muhammed Nasser versus the insane Southern belles of MTV's True Life who call themselves "old maids" at age 24.

• OMG I almost forgot about that Australian father and daughter who fuck and have babies. Oh ew.
• Can't some people just have a nice, normal wedding that doesn't involve incest, polygamy, statutory rape, fake boobs or Botox?
• Mommablogger Dooce appears to be a fairly reasonable person whose wedding probably didn't involve any of those things.
• Karl Lagerfeld hates Dooce's kid, though. Actually he hates all children. And also fat people!
• You know who probably had kind of shitty moms? Those horrid teenage cheerleader bitches who beat the living hell out of their friend and may now face life in prison.
• So make a bonfire out of Cosmo's "Sexy" issue, and rip off that bandanna you've been wearing. Let it all hang out this weekend!

MOE: Okay, can I just say...these guys have been the subject of a fucking John Krakauer book, their fugitive leader was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List as of a year ago...how...just how is it that 412 girls are being rescued only now?
MEGAN: Well, I watched the presser two days ago and the prosecutor was like: we needed evidence, and we needed probable cause. We didn't have those things without a witness and we can't just harass people because of their religious beliefs and I was kinda of like, go Texas. Only then, you know, 412 girls. Civil liberties aren't always black and white.

MOE: Hm, okay, that sounds to me like some bullshit. If this shit were happening in Philadelphia the police woulda just gone and firebombed their asses. But seriously, being a church affords you certain protections from like, forensic accounting investigation, right? From the sounds of this Texas Monthly story about the construction of the Eldorado ranch — related question: where'd they put all those girls while they were constructing the thing? Tents? — these guys had to be committing some sort of basic financial fraud that might granted them a few search warrants. Is the FLDS actually recognized by the IRS as a church? Shouldn't it be a cult? Isn't polygamy banned...uh...everywhere in this country? So many questions
MOE:

What's more, said Jessop, Jeffs has taught his followers to "bleed the beast": to take advantage of any government assistance they can get, from food stamps and public welfare to medical care. Some reporters who follow FLDS activities say that tens of millions of dollars a year in welfare and other government funds go to the Colorado City-Hildale community. The very same thing was no doubt about to happen in Eldorado, Jessop said.

MEGAN: Well, only without the Man-Boy love aspect of NAMBLA. It's MANGLA
MEGAN: er, NAMGLA, but the other way is funnier.
MEGAN: Also, this part made me cross my legs in horror:

In fact, said an Arizona county official who came with Jessop to the press conference, the sole responsibility of females in the FLDS is to submit to their husbands and give birth to babies "until their insides drop out."

At city hall, Mankin ran across a compound resident named Ernie Jessop, who was trying to find out some information about water rights. "You know, things would be a lot better around here if you had a spokesman to speak to our community instead of acting so secretive," Mankin told him.
"Sir, we don't talk to outsiders," Jessop said. "That's the way my grandfather was, the way my father was, the way I was raised, and the way I will raise my children. It's a tradition. We congregate to ourselves."

MEGAN: That's been in some of the news reports. They expel some of the younger men so that the old ones can marry their classmates. Grody. Also, one would think, unsustainable in the long term.
MEGAN: And I'm sure Jeffs is segregated from the general population.
MEGAN: Or in a mental facility.
MOE: Here's a story about Krakauer trying to find Warren Jeffs in 2005.

"Krakauer is actively investigating a lot of things, including the whereabouts of Warren Jeffs," said Paul Murphy, spokesman for Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.

"Boys are fined and harassed by the police, who are sworn to uphold the law but serve as minions of Warren Jeffs," Krakauer said. "Hundreds of these boys over the past four years have been cast out. Most of them end up on the streets of (Las) Vegas or St. George," where they turn to drugs or prostitution.

MEGAN: Yeah, there was this story last year in the New York Times. They're some fucked up kids.
MEGAN:

The problem of surplus males worsened in the 1990s when the late prophet Rulon Jeffs, Warren Jeffs's father, took on dozens of young wives — picking the prettiest, most talented girls, said DeLoy Bateman, a high school teacher who watched it happen. Warren Jeffs, taking the mantle after his father's death in 2002, adopted most of his father's wives and married others, and also began assigning more wives to his trusted church leaders, former members say. Forced departures increased.

MEGAN: Yeah, despite Big Love, people find polygamists creepy. Who'd'a thunk?
MOE: Well, apparently they didn't always find them as creepy. Check this 2002 story.It uncovered an internal Arizona AG memo detailing the accusations against the FLDS but not advocating...criminal prosecutions?

Colorado City was once called Short Creek. It became infamous in 1953 after Governor Howard Pyle ordered state police to arrest and jail all married men on charges of bigamy, adultery and rape. Pyle also ordered the National Guard to round up all the women and children and bring them to Phoenix, where they were held as wards of the state for two years.
Pyle's action proved disastrous to his political future. Photographs of police pulling babies from their fathers' arms inflamed public opposition to the raid. Prosecutors were unable to secure significant convictions because it was difficult to prove bigamy since most of the marriages were not legally recorded.
"You get killed quicker in government doing your duty than turning your back," Pyle was quoted as saying at the time, according to a March 4, 2001, article in the Denver Post.
Pyle was defeated in the next election.

The hands-off policy continued during former attorney general and governor Bruce Babbitt's era. In a 1986 Associated Press article, Babbitt defended the residents as hardworking, God-fearing people and said he did not want to delve into personal lives.

Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson says Napolitano told the group that her office was continuing to investigate activities in Colorado City.
"They don't have enough documentation to charge anybody with any crimes," Johnson says he was told by Napolitano.
Johnson says he's been investigating allegations of child abuse, sex crimes and welfare fraud in Colorado City since becoming a supervisor six years ago. The former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy says he's interviewed more than 30 former church members who have fled Colorado City.
Johnson says he has been told of repeated instances of underage girls being forced into marriage, child abuse, child labor law violations, welfare fraud, rapes, assaults and mental cruelty. Young boys are also abused, he says. Boys who are deemed to be unruly and who will not follow church doctrine are dumped onto the streets of Salt Lake City to fend for themselves, he says.

MOE: Where does the natural foods diet come from?
MOE: Whoa, check this out from a Dallas Observer piece:

"They are not a threat to your children; they are a threat to their own children," she said of the polygamists, mentioning in passing child abuse, forced marriage of teenage girls, child labor, welfare fraud, tax fraud and other horrors. "They have a commune in Canada. They use it to mix up the blood. Birth defects are starting to become noticeable. If a young girl starts to get rebellious, wants to get out, they'll send her to a foreign country."