OmegaMom

Ballet Recital Madness has started.

Today was photo day.

I got the dotter all dolled up in her costume, including makeup and hairspray holding the little wispies up off her forehead.  We got into the car, complete with a sheet covering the seat so that the (white!) costume didn’t get dirty.  We got there in plenty of time.  Only to discover…

…the photographer had left a Crucial Piece of Equipment at his studio, back in Big City.  So he was driving back there and back to the studio.  And there we were, half of the parental units having been contacted in time, the other half not, with dotters in tow, all costumed and made up…

…for two hours.

In white costumes.  Did I mention the costumes are white?

I had to re-do the dotter’s hair three times, with more and more hairspray, because the girls were running and jumping and having great barrels of fun.

A bunny:

More bunnies (with blurred faces!):

It took a lot longer than I had planned, and we didn’t get home until 1 or so.

And then this afternoon, OmegaDad arrived home early, removed the tarp from the Ginormous Mound o’ Dirt to transfer to the veggie beds, and this is the result:

Our thought is that we should have gotten a Ginormous Mound o’ Dirt many years ago, as a plaything for the child.  She could spend hours in it.  She gets tossed into the bathtub as soon as she gets inside the house.  Her friend K. is coming over tomorrow, and I have to warn K.’s mom to send a change of clothes, because between the chickens and the GMOD there’s no way on gawd’s green earth that she’ll be clean for very long.

(Bonus points to any commenter who recognizes the subject line of this post.)

The court has ruled that Texas CPS acted incorrectly in seizing 48 women’s children.

But not underage.  At this point, 15 of the 31 "girls" who were pregnant or already mothers that Texas CPS claimed were underage have turned out to be adults.

The anonymous, hushed call that started it all?  "Sarah was officially considered to be a real person until Monday, when CPS dropped her court case, acknowledging that she doesn’t actually exist. State police are now investigating the calls for help from "Sarah" as hoax phone calls, made by an adult from Colorado with a history of making false reports."

I do not condone old men using the cloak of religion to force underage girls into "spiritual" marriages with other old men.  I do not condone child abuse.  I do not condone sexual abuse.

But ruthlessly sweeping through the compound and separating 440 children from their families in the guise of "doing good" makes me think of the road to Hell.  It’s paved with good intentions, as we all know.

Were there girls being forced into marriage and childbirth against their will?  I’m sure of it.

Were all of them?  I’m sure not.

Does the end–rescuing women and children from life in what seems to be a cult–justify the means?  I don’t think so.

But other people seem to think so.  While there is a contingent of people like me who found the entire operation a sweeping infringement on civil rights, there is also a contingent who has been saying, "If there are underage girls there who have been trapped, then it’s right."  My thought is what should have been done is an examination–case by case–before any warrants were served, before any children were taken.

While I tend to think that all religions are essentially lunacy, and I regard people who live their lives circumscribed by religious beliefs with a certain amount of befuddlement, this does not mean that their civil rights are negligible, eligible to be tossed aside for the "good of the chiiilllldrunnnn".

Given also that my forays into adoption research made me aware of the inconsistent oversight of foster care from state to state, and even county to county, and the fact that many states offer what is essentially a "bounty" for children to be moved to adoption as soon as possible, and the relentless market for healthy white infants, and I am bound to cast a jaundiced eye on such a widespread sweep as this.

The good thing is that the eyes of the mainstream media are upon this case.  The faults of the MSM aside, when the journalists are in full cry, the tendency for things to be hidden away, shadowed, swept under a rug will be difficult to fulfill.

I am sure that there will be some cases where the separation of the children is justified.  But there was never a justification for the full-scale raid.  Even if the "ends" are good, the "means" were not.  If a sweep like this is done and no outcry is raised, then the next time the sweep may be aimed at…inner city welfare mothers…homeschoolers…who knows.  The outcry and the subsequent examination it has provoked is a Good Thing to this observer.