Texas Appellate Court Rules State Seizure of FDLS Children Was Wrong

The raid on the YFZ Ranch happened April 3, 2008. This photo taken April 4 by a member of the FLDS.

“The Department did not present any evidence of danger”

In a stunning reversal, the Texas 3rd District Court of Appeals reversed the District Judge who ruled last month that the children sized in the April 3, 2008 raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, should not have been taken by the State, saying “The Department did not present any evidence of danger.”

CNN

The judges did not order that the children be returned to Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, but they directed the lower court to vacate its order granting custody of the children to the state.

In its ruling, the Texas 3rd District Court of Appeals decided in favor of 38 women who had challenged the removals and appealed a decision last month by a district judge that the children remain in state custody.

"The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the department's witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger," the three-judge panel said.

More than 450 children were removed from their homes on the Yearning for Zion Ranch, which is owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon offshoot that practices polygamy.

An attorney representing the mothers said the trial court that originally backed the state's seizure of the children has 10 days to vacate its decision. If it doesn't, the appeals court will act, said Julie Balovich of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid.

Although the ruling applies only to 38 mothers and their children represented in this case, "we believe the reasoning in the court of appeals decision would apply to all children," Balovich said.

After the state took custody of the children, the mothers appealed the order on the grounds the department failed to establish that the need for protection was urgent.

Because no such proof was presented, the mothers argued, the district court -- which backed the department's seizure of the children -- "was required to return the children to their parents and abused its discretion by failing to do so."

The appeals panel agreed.

"Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is not evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme measure of immediate removal prior to full litigation of the issue," the panel wrote.

Outside the courthouse, Balovich said it was "ridiculous" how the courts had ignored the parents' rights.

"It was about time a court stood up and said that what has been happening to these families is wrong," she said.

Flanked by the FLDS mothers represented in the case, Balovich said authorities considered the YFZ Ranch one household, an assertion with which the appeals court did not agree.

Therefore, proving that there was abuse in one household did not mean the state could apply that behavior to the entire ranch.

"This was the right decision," Balovich said, adding that she and her clients are "ecstatic about this news."

The authenticity of the initial abuse reports that turned authorities' attention on the ranch is in question, the court noted in its ruling.

Police have alleged that a family shelter crisis line received multiple calls March 29 and 30 from a caller claiming to be Sarah Jessop Barlow, age 16.

At least one of the telephones used by "Sarah Barlow" has been traced to a Colorado woman. Police say Rozita Swinton is a person of interest in connection with the reports of abuse at the ranch, but she has not been charged. She does, however, face a charge of providing a false report to authorities in a Colorado case.

Here are some key quotes from the actual opinion.

The Volokh Conspiracy

The Department did not present any evidence of danger to the physical health or safety of any male children or any female children who had not reached puberty. Nor did the Department offer any evidence that any of Relators' pubescent female children were in physical danger other than that those children live at the ranch among a group of people who have a "pervasive system of belief” that condones polygamous marriage and underage females having children. [Footnote: The Department's witnesses conceded that there are differences of opinion among the FLDS community as to what is an appropriate age to marry, how many spouses to have, and when to start having children—much as there are differences of opinion regarding the details of religious doctrine among other religious groups.]

The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the Department's witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger. It is the imposition of certain alleged tenets of that system on specific individuals that may put them in physical danger. The Department failed to offer any evidence that any of the pubescent female children of the Relators were in such physical danger. The record is silent as to whether the Relators or anyone in their households are likely to subject their pubescent female children to underage marriage or sex. The record is also silent as to how many of Relators' children are pubescent females and whether there is any risk to them other than that they live in a community where there is a "pervasive belief system" that condones marriage and child" rearing as soon as females reach puberty.

The Department also failed to establish that the need for protection of the Relators' children was urgent and required immediate removal of the children. As previously noted, none of the identified minors who are or have been pregnant are children of Relators. There is no evidence that any of the five pregnant minors live in the same household as the Relators' children. [Footnote: The notion that the entire ranch community constitutes a "household" as contemplated by section 262.201 and justifies removing all children from the ranch community if there even is one incident of suspected child sexual abuse is contrary to the evidence. The Department's witnesses acknowledged that the ranch community was divided into separate family groups and separate households. While there was evidence that the living arrangements on the ranch are more communal than most typical neighborhoods, the evidence was not legally or factually sufficient to support a theory that the entire ranch community was a "household" under section 262.201.]

There is no evidence that Relators have allowed or are going to allow any of their minor female children to be subjected to any sexual or physical abuse. There is simply no evidence specific to Relators' children at all except that they exist, they were taken into custody at the Yearning For Zion ranch, and they are living with people who share a "pervasive belief system" that condones underage marriage and underage pregnancy.

Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse by grooming boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and raising girls to be victims of sexual abuse as the Department contends, there is no evidence that this danger is "immediate" or "urgent" as contemplated by section 262.201 with respect to every child in the community. [Footnote, slightly moved: The simple fact, conceded by the Department, that not all FLDS families are polygamous or allow their female children to marry as minors demonstrates the danger of removing children from their homes based on the broad-brush ascription of every aspect of a belief system to every person living among followers of the belief system or professing to follow the belief system.] ... Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is no evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme measure of immediate removal prior to full litigation of the issue as required by section 262.201.

Finally, there was no evidence that the Department made reasonable efforts to eliminate or prevent the removal of any of Relators' children [as required under §262.201]. The evidence is that the Department went to the Yearning For Zion ranch to investigate a distress call from a sixteen year-old girl. [Footnote: The authenticity of this call is in doubt. Department investigators did not locate the caller on the ranch.] After interviewing a number of children, they concluded that there were five minors who were or had been pregnant and that the belief system of the community allowed minor females to marry and bear children.

They then removed all of the children in the community (including infants) from their homes and ultimately separated the children from their parents. This record does not reflect any reasonable effort on the part of the Department to ascertain if some measure short of removal and/or separation from parents would have eliminated the risk the Department perceived with respect to any of the children of Relators....

Sara has blogged extensively about the FLDS. Here are some links...

The Third Strike -- Nov 20, 2007

Well, Warren Jeffs finally got sent to prison. The sentence was two consecutive five-year terms -- which means he'll be paroled in seven, the way things usually go -- which hardly seems like enough for a guy who arranged for the statutory rape of dozens of adolescent girls, each of whom will be scarred for life by the choices he made on their behalf. But it's the first time in a long time that anybody in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) has seen the inside of a jailhouse, and I suppose we should be grateful for a good start.

Are FLDS women brainwashed? -- April 16, 2008

Almost every feature of these women's lives is determined by someone else. They do not choose what they wear, whom they live with, when and whom they marry, or when and with whom they have sex. From the day they're born, they can be reassigned at a moment's notice to another father or husband, another household, or another community. Most will have no educational choices (FLDS kids are taught in church-run schools, usually only through about tenth grade -- by which point they girls are usually married and pregnant). Everything they produce goes into a trust controlled by the patriarch: they do not even own their own labor. If they object to any of this, they're subject to losing access to the resources they need to raise their kids: they can be moved to a trailer with no heat, and given less food than more compliant wives, until they learn to "keep sweet."

The Secret Lives of Saints -- April 19, 2008

One of the most perceptive and tenacious reporters covering these developments as been Daphne Bramham of the Vancouver Sun. (A collection of her reporting on the FLDS over the past several years can be found online here.) Bramham's focus has been on the remote 2500-member Bountiful compound just outside Creston, BC, which was founded in 1947 by Roy Blackmore and a group from one of Canada's largest historical Mormon settlements in Cardston, AB. Roy's son Winston Blackmore inherited the role of patriarch for the community until Warren Jeffs cheated him out of control in 2002.

What We're Not Talking About, Part I: Other Issues With the FLDS -- April 21, 2008

One of the things we need to understand is just how the FLDS managed to stay so far under the radar for so long -- and what twisted consequences were allowed to follow from that lack of oversight. Bramham shows that they did a stunningly effective job of building their own self-sufficient infrastructure of community institutions -- hospitals, police forces, courts, financial trusts, schools, and employers -- that allowed the church to function without interacting with the outside world any more than necessary. Most of the group's institutions were designed to mimic and supplant outside authority well enough to keep the group (and especially its treatment of women and children) hidden from the prying eyes of outsiders. And, for 60 years, those who were responsible for providing higher-level oversight for all these institutions have almost always been somehow induced to look the other way.

How Dangerous is The FLDS? -- April 22, 2008

One of the trickiest parts of dealing with the extremist right is figuring out whether a given group is just harmless garden-variety crazy -- or harboring the special kind of insanity that will lead to acts of local violence or outright domestic terror.

It's a question worth asking in the wake of the state of Texas' intervention in the Eldorado colony of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints. As the country is thrust into a fresh debate over individual religious freedom versus our collective interest in protecting people's civil rights, we're struggling once again with the deeper question: When should we leave people alone? And when does the state have a public duty to intervene?

Or read The Secret World of Polygamy in The Vancouver Sun, featuring Daphne Bramham.

Quite the bit of news.

Is the entire FLDS culture so damaged that the state has a duty to intervene? Or are the tools of the state such a blunt instrument they could be used to rip apart virtually any religious household?

Is the Appeals Court right?

Is this nothing but rape and sexism, now being imprinted with the official grant of the Court? Or is this the Court protecting the rights of all of us by refusing to let the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services tear families apart? Keep in mind, that Family and Protective Services, regardless of its name in any state, is typically not especially respectful of family rights. The abuses of CPS (as it is known here) in my own state of Washington, are legion.

Yet.

Girls being married routinely at 14 and 15. To men in their 40s and 50s. While the boys are pushed out of the family (lost boys) onto the street with just the money in their pocket, to make certain there are enough girls for the men.

That's simply wrong.

What are your thoughts?

There's more...

Final Theme Song

DrBopperTHP asks a great question:

What specific song do you want played at your funeral as your "final theme song?"

My favorite tune of all time is Vienna Teng's Lullaby For A Stormy Night (live version; poor recording).

However when it happens I'll be dead. I have no wishes for those who are there except my ashes's eventually being released on both Mt. Lemon (north of Tuscon) and Mt. Rainer. No marker; let my body return to the earth.

I love music, so whatever music is there -- except religious hymns, other than classic music such as Bach -- would be fine. What might be even better is simply paying attention to the music of the birds, the trees and the wind. Just being present would be perfect.

Followed by everyone going somewhere and having a big-ass party. With lots of Margaritas. 'Cause otherwise people might think life and death was fracking serious. *laughs*



How about you? Do you have a song you want played at your memorial?

We're taking last requests.

There's more...

Long Day

Harborview Hospital/Trauma Center. Seattle.

Daughter #1 Was In a Car Wreck Yesterday

Avian, 21, my oldest, is fine. Mostly.

Shaken up, upset, and yes, in pain. But she's fine.

For 24 hours, I didn't know her status, other than she'd been in a wreck, and was in the regional Trauma Center. I talked -- briefly -- to her and the paramedic as they pulled up to Harborview.

The medic said she'd been wearing her seatbelt when her car was rear-ended on the freeway (I-90) at 25-30 mph. She wasn't knocked out. No apparently broken bones, no major bleeding.

This is my daughter who likes to knock players out on the soccer field. However she suffers from panic attacks in her personal life when life doesn't go as expected, which she's been working hard to get a handle on. Part of which is, she's committed to doing things herself, not calling on Dad and Mom to rescue her.

She said, very specifically, "Don't come to the hospital. I don't want you to see me when I'm this scared." And that it wasn't personal to me or her mom. She had her insurance card and her cell phone. After extracting a promise from her that she'd call me or or mom when she got out, the rig pulled in to the hospital and her cell cut off.

And the waiting started.

Six hours.

Twelve hours.

Twenty-four hours later.

The only good news was, she was at the TRAUMA CENTER, where presumably, if she was bleeding to death in her belly or head, they'd figure it out and save her. If she lost it, they'd medicate her. Harborview is a safe place, if you're seriously hurt. It's a pain-in-the-ass if you're not.

Her mom -- my ex -- didn't call me with any news (as she had promised to do no matter what time she heard from Avian) all night long.

There was only waiting, and then, waking up from sleep, worried. Nothing.

This morning I broke down and called daughter #3, Kyle, who had just heard news of Avian. "She's out of the hospital after she 'spent five hours strapped to a backboard' and they 'didn't even give [her] any pain medicine at all!'"

Which I interpret to mean as, there wasn't anything seriously wrong with her. Airbags and modern car construction. Good job.

Being a parent, teaching your children they can grow up and do the big things and then sitting back as they do... *shudders* ...not for wimps.

It's okay to be afraid. You gut it out, trusting you raised them right, remembering all that crap you used to get into your parents never knew about, and which somehow, you got out of. *waves to Mom*

I still haven't heard from Avian. No clue when her next call or txt will be. This one gets all the room to run she needs.

There's more...

A Child's Death in Iraq

It's so, so time to leave.

I don't know how anyone can read this and argue for anything, except that it is time to leave. I truly don't.

Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation

"My brother is dead ... and I helped kill him" -- by the Rev. Mike Kinman

Midday yesterday, this email popped into my inbox.

Mike,

Mohammed's brother Ali died of his wounds today courtesy of shrapnel and flames caused by US missile strike.

He was 9.

Don't expect to hear anything from Mohammed until 40 day of the mourning period is over. XXX* says US soldiers shot at Mohammed as he approached a roadblock they had set up and that he was carrying Ali in his arms trying to get to hospital. He also says that Ali was very badly burned and died screaming.

*Co-worker of Mohammed's, name removed for securityreasons

The words cut through my heart to read. Not because they should have been surprising ... although maybe because I had been living in denial of how predictable they were. But mostly because the friend who sent me this email was telling me my brother was dead, and he died in my other brother's arms -- my brother, Mohammed, who was experiencing pain I could not even imagine ... and not for the first time.

The words cut through my heart to read because I knew.

My brother is dead ... and I helped kill him.

A little background for the perplexed...

I first "met" Mohammed a little more than a year ago. Looking for information about what was really happening on the ground in Irak, I found this website set up by an Irish former UN Peacekeeper who spends a great deal of time there. They set up people on the ground in Irak with laptops and digital cameras to document what is really happening there.

I read this post by Mohammed and was immediately struck by his eloquence and the power of his writing. I quoted it in a sermon I preached the next Sunday and then posted on my blog. Through the wonders of Google alerts, Mohammed found my sermon and commented on it, which started a conversations of posts and comments between us.

I learned that Mohammed was 16 years old, that he worked not just for Gorilla's Guides but also doing things like delivering food to people in refugee camps. I also learned that I couldn't know his real name or any other details that might identify him because their lives were in danger if they were identified as being Gorilla's Guides bloggers.

I learned that Mohammed hated America because America had invaded and occupied his country and killed his people. At the same time, he was willing and even eager to be in conversation with me because of his respect for whom he refers to as the Prophet Jesus (Praise Be Unto Him) and his teachings. That my Christian faith and priesthood and his submission to Islam were a common ground for conversation. So we made plans to begin an online conversation on a private, secure channel.

But before we could begin, I got this email:

Most of Mohammed's remaining family killed in Arbaeen massacres.
Father killed on Tuesday. Mother died of wounds incurred same attack yesterday. Little brother wounded same attack but now released from hospital. One other sibling in refugee camp uniinjured.

Mohammed now head of family in "nuclear family" sense of expression.

Mohammed and brother on pilgimage

The "little brother" was Ali.

When our conversation began again it was hard going. We started from the relatively safe ground of what we each believed as Muslim and Christian, but the conversation quickly turned to Irak and the U.S. I said I hoped we could become friends. He had serious doubts about that but always assured me that we were brothers. "My brother in humanity," he calls me ... and I call him the same.

The conversation was challenging and convicting. Mohammed continually said things that were and are difficult for me to hear as someone who loves my country and believes deeply in the ideals upon which it was founded and to which I believe our better angels still strongly aspire. At the same time, I was carrying on an email conversation with a former student of mine, Paul, who was an Army Ranger stationed in Irak. Paul is one of those people who represents to me the desire to follow our better angels, someone willing to live sacrificially for what he believes in.

The stories and perspectives I was getting from each of them sometimes converged but more often than not were poles apart.

I cannot even begin to go into what Mohammed has taught me not just about what is going on in Irak, but about Islam ... and about my own Christian faith. Holding his story in tension with Paul's was almost always difficult, but I became convinced that no matter how well intentioned and good-hearted soldiers like Paul were (and Mohammed and I went back and forth on that one!), our presence there must end and it must end totally.

There's more...

Go to the jump. Read the rest of the story.

*sighs*

It's time for A Responsible Plan to end the war. Currently endorsed by 43 candidates -- 39 House and 4 Senate.

Not that I ran this story to plug a political plan. I ran the story because it breaks my heart, and because we're so cut off here, from the other side of the story. Even here, in the heart of the progressive blogosphere, unless we're actively seeking out sites such as Iraq Today (on our blogroll) we're simply not getting what's happening in Iraq, as everything we read is being filtered through the American press.

In the first week we were open, I ran an article with the subhead, Corpse & garbage in the streets of Adhamiya. Nothing has changed, except more dead children and soldiers.

We need to leave.

There's more...

Bullying in Arkansas

Billy Wolfe, target of bullies, Fayetteville, AR, March 2008. photo Angel Franco/The New York Times

“He kept spitting blood out”

Billy Wolfe, 16, has been a target of bullies, since he was 12.

Knocked out, stitched up, left bleeding and bruised lying on the street and the floor at school, his mother has one simple hope: "I pray to God every day they don't kill him," said Ms. Wolfe. "Because of all the things that have happened I honestly don't know if he's going to be O.K."

The New York Times

A car the color of a school bus pulls up with a boy who tells his brother beside him that he’s going to beat up Billy Wolfe. While one records the assault with a cellphone camera, the other walks up to the oblivious Billy and punches him hard enough to leave a fist-size welt on his forehead.

The video shows Billy staggering, then dropping his book bag to fight back, lanky arms flailing. But the screams of his sister stop things cold.

Whatever the reason, addressing the bullying of Billy has become a second job for his parents: Curt, a senior data analyst, and Penney, the owner of an office-supply company. They have binders of school records and police reports, along with photos documenting the bruises and black eyes. They are well known to school officials, perhaps even too well known, but they make no apologies for being vigilant. They also reject any suggestion that they should move out of the district because of this.

Judging by school records, at least one official seems to think Billy contributes to the trouble that swirls around him. For example, Billy and the boy who punched him at the bus stop had exchanged words and shoves a few days earlier.

But Ms. Wolfe scoffs at the notion that her son causes or deserves the beatings he receives. She wonders why Billy is the only one getting beaten up, and why school officials are so reluctant to punish bullies and report assaults to the police.

The Wolfes are not satisfied. This month they sued one of the bullies “and other John Does,” and are considering another lawsuit against the Fayetteville School District. Their lawyer, D. Westbrook Doss Jr., said there was neither glee nor much monetary reward in suing teenagers, but a point had to be made: schoolchildren deserve to feel safe.

There's more...

Jill is absolutely on the mark.

Brilliant at Breakfast

This just breaks my heart. As someone who endured my share of bullying when I was a kid, from being psychologically tormented by a troubled kid who was Catholic and delighted in telling me I would go to hell when I died to the boy in fourth grade who used to hit me every day to the time I was asked by a high school principal what I did to make so-and-so angry, I'm appalled that more than thirty years after I finished high school, nothing has changed.

That schools are still blaming the victim because they don't know what else to do is reprehensible. And the prevalence of social networking web sites make tormenting misfits an even more efficient operation.

I think back to the recent case of Megan Meier, who committed suicide at the age of thirteen after a boy she liked had turned on her, and the boy turned out to be a fake MySpace account set up by the parents of a girl with whom she'd had a falling out. And I wonder what on earth parents and schools in this country are doing when they want to put every kid whose brain functions differently on medication, but when you have actual cases of kids being tortured by their classmates, the schools blame the kid being victimized and the parents look the other way.

There's more...

The same thing happened to me.

Group News Blog

I Know and You're Stupid
Ass Kicking 101: Age Nine

I got my first serious beating at age nine (not counting Dad and any of the times he beat the shit out of me.) It was downtown at the Temple of Music and Art after choir practice. At nine I was in the Tucson Boys Chorus, working my way up towards the Touring group which I wouldn't make till I turned thirteen after a year spent living in Europe. I attended church regularly and was to all outward appearances a good boy. Boy were appearances wrong.

The problem with genius is simple. Genius plays by its own rules. Yet lives in the world with others. I tested out in the 160's both as a kid and then in my late teens on the adult tests. Certainly there are many people more adapt at solving intelligence tests than I am, but so far as relating to people who are "average", I didn't have a clue for a long, long time. Till I figured out how to put a stop to the bullying, people tended to beat the shit out of me because I was socially clumsy and freely volunteered my opinion that not only was I right, but everyone else was stupid for not seeing life my way. *laughs*

Dad forgot to pick me up on time so I waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually two older kids, teenagers, showed up down in South Tucson where we rehearsed. After questioning me for a bit, they started to hit me. I was different, that's what mattered. My answers were off; I knew too damn much for a freaking nine-year-old and didn't yet know how to hide it. (Sometimes I still don't.) So they hit me. First a little, then a lot. Didn't matter what I said. Didn't matter what I knew. Only mattered that they were bigger and stronger. They beat on me with fists, boots, belt buckles, rocks, whatever was handy, for close to forever. Had me cornered all the way upstairs back where no one could hear me scream. It got dark as they kept it up. Eventually I wore out their fists on my head and they left.

Dad got there several hours later. I was huddled under a lamp post, waiting. Bloody. Not crying.

There's more...

What is happening to Billy is wrong.

He is a strong young man to be standing up to this. I applaud his parents for suing the bullies directly, and hope they soon sue the school district as well.

The refusal of the school administration to deal with these attacks is wrong.

Bullying is wrong -- verbal, sexual, classism, racism, and physical.

Attacking someone because they're different is wrong.

All of these are forms of violence against people.

All bullying (violence) is wrong, both individually and in mobs.

Anyone who participates in mobbing or bullying is wrong.

Anyone who watches mobbing or bullying and doesn't help stop it is wrong.

There's more...

Heath Ledger, Dead at 28

Academy Award Nominated Actor
Found Dead In New York City

Heath Ledger, former partner of Academy Award nominated actress Michelle Williams (both nominations occurring from Brokeback Mountain) with whom he has a daughter, Matilda, age 2, was found dead in an apartment today in New York City.

Even though the gossip media are melting down over this and speculating in the crudest fashion, especially about a bottle of sleeping pills by the bedside -- which I heard a reporter for TMZ turn into "pills scattered all over the floor" -- please be clear this is pure bullshit. It is not known if the pills in a bottle by the bed played any role in Mr. Ledger's death, or what caused the death. It could have been anything from a congenital heart condition, to an overdose, to a homicide, to zombies. Some of these may be more likely than others. My point is, we don't know and the gossip magazines are making up crap. An autopsy is scheduled.

The New York Times

The police said Mr. Ledger, 28, was discovered facedown in bed in an apartment at 421 Broome Street in SoHo. Police officials said that a bottle of prescription sleeping pills were found on a nearby night table, but that they did not know whether they played a role in Mr. Ledger’s death.

Mr. Ledger, the star of “Brokeback Mountain” and other films, was discovered by a housekeeper and a masseuse, the police said. The housekeeper had been in the apartment for some time before Mr. Ledger’s body was discovered, and she let the masseuse in when she at the apartment for a 3:31 p.m. appointment with Mr. Ledger, the police said. They said they did not know when Mr. Ledger scheduled the appointment.

When Mr. Ledger did not respond to a knock on the bedroom door, the housekeeper and the masseuse opened the bedroom and found Mr. Ledger unconscious. They shook him, but he did not respond. They immediately called the authorities and moved Mr. Ledger to the floor, the police said.

“There was no indication of a disturbance,” Deputy Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne said. He said officers who checked the apartment found other prescription medications it in the bathroom. He said that there was no sign that Mr. Ledger had been drinking and that no illegal drugs were found in the apartment.

A native of Perth, Australia, Mr. Ledger, known for his wry grin and uncontrolled blondish hair, defied typecasting throughout his career. Mr. Ledger, who was born on April 4, 1979, gained roles in children’s television after he first appeared in a play for a local theater company. He decided to pursue acting as a career, appearing in Australian soap operas before moving to Hollywood in pursuit of a girlfriend.

The relationship did not last, but the move led to his first major role, opposite Julia Stiles in the teenage romance “10 Things I Hate About You,” and Mr. Ledger seemed poised for a future as a heartthrob. But Mr. Ledger defied that expectation and, although he still appeared in light romantic roles in such films as “A Knight’s Tale,” he sought out darker, more substantive work, appearing as a prison guard in “Monster’s Ball,” and a heroin addict spiraling out of control in “Candy.”

“People always feel compelled to sum you up, to presume that they have you and describe you,” Mr. Ledger told The New York Times in an interview last year. “But there are many stories inside of me and a lot I want to achieve outside of one flat note.”


Heath Ledger & Michelle Williams in Brokeback Mountain (2005). photo Kimberly French.
Click for LARGE image.

Mr. Ledger’s more recent films were also his most notable. His appearances as a reluctantly gay cowboy in “Brokeback Mountain” and as Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There” were both received with critical acclaim. The films were also important personally. Mr. Ledger met the actress Michelle Williams during the filming of “Brokeback Mountain.” The couple have a daughter, Matilda. Although they have since separated, they appeared together in “I’m Not There” and Mr. Ledger praised Ms. Williams’s performance in the film.

Elliott Puckett, an artist who lives near Ms. Williams’s apartment in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, said she saw the couple walking in the neighborhood.

“I used to see them with their dry cleaning and their baby,” she said.

Mr. Ledger told The Times last November that his favorite thing to do was hang out at home with his daughter. Leaving her for work, he said, was “kind of like your body has a lump in his throat.”

I will miss Heath Ledger. He was a fine actor, with an increasingly solid body of work, including his forthcoming role as "The Joker" in The Dark Knight.

My condolences to Michelle Williams and their child.

There's more...

“Ooooo. That Tickles, Mommy.”

Bullet-Proof Baby

There's more...

All Britney All the Time

Britney Spears outside her LA home Thursday night. photo AP.

Britney Melts Down, Hospitalized, Loses Full Custody

How many pop stars does it take to change a light-bulb?

One.

They just hold on to the bulb, while the rest of the world revolves around them.

Reality caught up to Britney Spears Thursday.

The New York Times

To recap, Ms. Spears apparently spent several hours last night refusing to hand over her two children, of whom she does not have custody, to her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, who does, or to the police who were called to the scene. She was then carried out of her home on a gurney and put in an ambulance, all in easy viewfinder range of paparazzi, to be taken to a hospital, where nothing was said of her condition, though a police officer who was at the house said she was observed to be under the influence of … well, something or other. Tests for illicit drug use are said by one gossip magazine to have come back negative today.

Moreover, Mr. Federline’s lawyers requested an emergency custody hearing, and persuaded the court to suspend her visitation rights in an order handed down this afternoon. Ms. Spears’s lawyers, meanwhile, no longer want to represent her, after she blew off one scheduled deposition and showed up more than an hour late for another, only to skip out again after 15 minutes. She has also ditched court dates, defied court orders, and gotten herself in one vehicular-related legal scrape after another over the past year.

The latest antics are quite a kickoff to the new year for the Spears family, which wound up the old one in signature style with Ms. Spears’s 16-year-old sister Jamie Lynn announcing she was pregnant by selling the story to a gossip magazine, evidently before she had told her big sister. The fallout from that little bit of business continued today with reports that Nickelodeon may give in to the storm of demands from parents that it cancel Jamie Lynn’s kidvid TV series, “Zoey 101,” even though the third-season finale has yet to air and the whole fourth season is already completed and ready.

That’s a notable data point: Not only have many average folks had it up to here with the Spearses, their media-conglomerate patrons may be running out of patience, too.

You can detect the glee draining out of the saturation coverage, even if the cameras have yet to turn their gaze away. A Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog post asks whether Ms. Spears is insane. People magazine rounds up experts to tut-tut about the hole she has dug herself and the possibility that she will lose access to her toddler sons for good. Clarence Page built his column on Wednesday on the fish-in-a-barrel angle: the Spearses, he wrote, make it altogether too easy to condemn them.

Taking note of court papers saying Ms. Spears burns through every penny of her $737,000 monthly income, a U.S. News & World Report blog post today even advises her to manage her money better.

This passage drew a smile and a nod:

Think about retirement. No, it’s not too early

Oh, we don't know about that...

What with the opportunity for the GNB Gossip Desk to run stories such as:

Britney Spears Loses Kids To Federline Due To Drugs & Alcohol

and

Good Girl Syndrome: Why Jamie Lynn Spears is Knocked Up

You Spears girls are reliable. We can count on you for a story.

At least Vanessa Hudgens -- Vanessa Hudgens Naked -- has the sense not to make a repeat appearance. (Damn.)

Britney. Your life is fucked up. People make fun of you. And even though here at the GNB Gossip Desk we try and be thoughtful and caring (unlike the catty folks at the other gossip rags) well, we're kind of sick of your shit.

Grow up Britney.

Check yourself in for serious treatment and don't come out till you're better.

'Cause seriously, soon it won't be an ambulance taking you to the hospital.

There's more...

Christmas Open Thread

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and family at Christmas (Dec 24, 1943.) photo White House archives.

Merry Christmas.

I've been browsing the White House holiday message for this year, along with previous years (bottom right corner of the page.)

It's a microcosm of how the Bush Administration sees the world.

For example, there is no Christmas photograph of any Democrats except President Roosevelt -- to whom President Bush frequently compares himself, in the sense of going up against a hostile Congress and ultimately being historically vindicated after his own death. All the other Christmas photos are of Republicans. The permanent Republican rule lives!

Prior to 2006, Muslims didn't exist during the Holiday Season. But in both 2006 & 2007, President Bush's speechwriters' have written a nice, polite message to celebrate Eid al-Adha: 2006, 2007.

In contrast, for the Christians, here is the Christmas 2007 message, which demonstrates greater familiarity with the tradition, but is roughly the same length, is published in the same news feed, cites scripture while the Muslim message does not (it truly will be a cold day in hell before a message signed by GWB quotes from the Qur'an. Heh.) But all in all, they are roughly the same, given the limits of familiarity of the speechwriters whom I do think did a nice job.

Better late than never, and it's nice to see anything nice about Muslim's coming from this White House.

I am appreciative this holiday season, that the worst presidential administration in history has at least moved up -- perhaps for political reasons, as it seems not to even break wind without there being a political reason, but whatever -- to acknowledging the legitimate hopes and dreams of over a sixth of the world's population, from the White House's bully pulpit. Not in a condescending way, or even in a way which suffers in comparison. A few years late... but they came through.

Now if the third of the world which is Hindu or Buddhist could receive similar acknowledgment, well, we'd truly have come a long way. Perhaps that will be a step for another President.

On this Christmas Day, we here at Group News Blog wish everyone best wishes as each of you celebrate the holidays in your own way -- with family and friends, alone, working or taking time off, with or without gifts, happy, sad, or just getting through the day. The holidays bring to each of us our own special moments and opportunities to reach out to others, and to find in ourselves the strength to be ourselves, not just for others, but for us.

And isn't being who we truly are, the message of Christmas?

Merry Christmas everyone.

Please use this open thread to share your holiday with us.

There's more...

Good Girl Syndrome: Why Jamie Lynn Spears is Knocked Up

Jamie Lynn Spears photo jamie-lynn-spears.net Click either photo for LARGE version.

Jamie Lynn Spears Pregnant at Sixteen

Jamie Lynn Spears, sixteen, star of the Nickelodeon show Zoey 101, has announced she is twelve weeks pregnant with the child of her boyfriend, student Casey Aldridge, nineteen.

Jamie's pregnancy should not impact production of Zoey 101 which already completed production of its fourth season.

Sister Britney tonight denied Wednesday night her baby sister is pregnant. TMZ has the video.

I can't count as a paramedic how many teenage moms I've had in the back of my rig. Or how often I've referred someone to Planned Parenthood for birth control. In fact, I referred a teenager there last week.

What isn't surprising to me is this child getting pregnant. Her home life is well known to not be of especially high quality. Born in McComb, Mississippi, just on the borderline of Louisiana, she was raised Baptist. Her sister is an addict. Her family life has been white trash with money. None of this is the recipe for being taught to use birth control religiously.

If she weren't the sister of a train-wreck of a major star (once renowned for her claimed virginity) or staring in her own television show, this would mean precisely nothing. It isn't as if teens don't get knocked up daily.

Don't think however it will force any Wing Nuts to deal honestly with pregnancy or birth control. As Sara has pointed out repeatedly at Orcinus -- read her Cracks in the Wall and Tunnels and Bridges series, and search for her articles on Mark Foley -- the fundies are quick to forgive their leaders human failings, knowing as they do that we are all born sinners.

The Wing Nut mothers will sigh a sigh over poor Jamie, make their daughters promise not to have sex. The daughters will all, "Of course Mommie. I'd never." And then on Friday nights with their boyfriends it'll be "Oh, Lance. That feels so... good."

The red states have a vastly higher teen pregnancy rate than the blue. It isn't an accident. Thanks to their fundy parents, the red states are filled with good girls.

The problem with being a good girl is, you can't use birth control. To have birth control is to admit you were prepared for sex, and to admit you were prepared for sex is to say what a little slut you are. That's worlds apart from being swept off your feet and onto your back, carried away in the moment by how good it feels, than to cold-bloodedly, like, you know, do it.

'Cause only sluts do it.

Good girls sometimes get carried away and make love. That can happen to anyone; who can help being overcome by loooove and passion. But just doing it?

Slut.

Jamie Lynn was raised a Baptist. She's a good girl.

Knocked up. But a good girl.

Thank God.

There's more...

Jodie Foster Comes Out

photo hitusa.com

Jodie Foster, Cydney Bernard, and Children

Ending years of silence, Jodie Foster came out last week at the Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment when she thanked her partner, "my beautiful Cydney."

Not that this was a large shock to anyone in show business. Cydney Bernard and Jodie Foster have been together for over fourteen years and have two children. What is news, is this is the first time Jodie Foster has said anything publicly.

Way to go Jodie.

At #9 on the current list of most highly payed actresses, we will see if this impacts her career, but I'm guessing not so much, especially as she's also doing much more directing and producing. But as an actor, Jodie's shown over and over again she can open a movie, not to mention her two Academy Awards. Plus people like her. She's Jodie Foster. We've watched her grow up from Tom Sawyer to Taxi Driver to Freaky Friday, The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs, to Contact and Panic Room.

She's Jody Foster and everyone adores her.

And now she's out. Go Jodie go!

h/t Feministing.

There's more...

Joe Arvizu Died Due To Institutional Racism

photo Armando Olea

Emergency Care, Si. Recovery Care, Drop Dead, Wetback.

Everyone involved denies it was racism.

How can anyone blame Nuns doing God's work for killing this boy, Joe Arvizu on the basis of race?

The nuns (and doctors and nurses) saved his life when he came into St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix on October 19 with bleeding in his brain after bumping his head messing around at church. Two days later, they discovered he had leukemia.

And on the seventh day, the nuns packed his poor brown undocumented ass in an ambulance and shipped him to Mexico. Where he died when his mother couldn't provide a blood transfusion. Game. Set. Match.

One to seven brown kids a week get shipped to Mexico. Undocumented. Poor.

Arizona Republic

"They said they knew that we couldn't pay the bill, so they couldn't continue with the treatment anymore," Rosa said, through a translator. "I asked for a payment negotiation, but they said that no, we couldn't make it with the income we have. I didn't want to make any decision by myself, but they told me the ambulance was ready."

Over his mother's objections, Joe was taken first to a hospital in Agua Prieta, then transferred to one in Hermosillo. His mother followed the next day while his father, a bricklayer, stayed behind with their other children.

Joe died on Dec. 3. Rosa couldn't supply the hospital with blood for a needed transfusion.

His death has shocked this central Phoenix community, where teachers, students and parents are asking why one of our leading hospitals - and a Catholic one, at that - dumped a boy whose only goal was to join the Army.

"This is an absolute community disgrace," said Sue Stodola, a North parent. "And my question is, is this what it's come to?"

Sister Margaret McBride, vice president of St. Joseph's Mission Services, said the hospital's charity committee reviewed Joe's case but decided he could get treatment in Mexico.

While Medicaid picked up the cost of his emergency care, there was no one to pay the rest of the tab. He wasn't well enough to be sent home, and McBride said there were no skilled nursing or rehab facilities in Arizona that would have taken him, no one who would have offered to treat an illegal immigrant with no money.

Racism? Oh, of course not.

The hospital simply can't afford to support everyone past the emergency phase, and they already lose $17 million a year over and above what the government will reimburse (as do most hospitals; it's a condition of having a hospital license.) Choices have to be made. Priorities have to be set. It isn't (gasp) racism!

EVERYONE is claiming this isn't about race or his undocumented status. It's about money.

Bullshit.

If Joe Arvizu'd simply been poor but with papers, he'd be alive today. Why? Because the hospital couldn't have shipped a U.S. citizen to freaking MEXICO, a goddamned third-world country when it comes to medical care. Joe Arvizu died because the hospital made a racist choice...

He has no papers -- dump him.

So a kid, 16 year-old Joe Arvizu died.

Because of a choice the nuns made -- send this kid to Mexico and hope for the best. But no matter what happens, we wash our hands of his blood. We simply can't "afford" to treat him.

Except it isn't true they couldn't afford to treat him. They chose not to treat him. Because if they were truly dealing with what they could and couldn't afford, they'd have done it fairly, without taking documented and undocumented status into account. Everyone who was poor would have had a fair shake at their resource pool, instead of just dooming the poor undocumented kids to shitty medical care. Because that is racism, plain and simple.

It's too much to expect for the Prosecutor in Maricopa "Let's Drive Out the Illegals" County to return an indictment of contributory negligent manslaughter against the Nuns... but wouldn't that be swell?

The mother says she isn't angry at St. Joe's. I'm sorry for her loss and glad she's finding some kind of piece.

I'm pissed as hell. Goddamn racist nuns.

There's more...

Wendy's Doesn't Say “Thank You”

Rude Food At The Drive-Through -- Wendy's

McDonalds, Jack-in-the-Box, A & W, Dairy Queen, Taco Bell, and Wendy's.

I try and avoid McDonalds. Dairy Queen is an occasional indulgence. I love A & W root beer floats oh yes I do. Taco Bell used to be two-three times a week till they turned it into a jewelry store. Now it's two miles away, but that leaves Burger King which I never ever go to. Eww. Which leaves Jack-in-the-Box (open all night) and Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers.

Often I blow all of them off, grab Mexican, Thai, Chinese, a hot dog from CostCo (mustard and onions), a whole chicken from Top Foods, or eat leftovers. But sometimes it's 11:30 at night and it's either the Mexican place for the second night in the row, or fast food.

At some point it became clear to me, Wendy's doesn't say “Thank You.”

I let it go.

But it kept bugging me.

It's such a simple thing, “Thank You.” And Wendy's simply doesn't say it, not when you actually pick up your food. Oh, they might say it when they take your order, maybe. But when they hand you your food, they just shove the drinks out the window into your lap, throw the food after, close the window and... well, that's it.

Buh-bye.

This called for the scientific method.

In a study I kept totally in my head, no control group, and "double-blind" means the people who keep not putting the extra onions on my sandwich, I've spent the last three months rigorously investigating my hypothesis -- that Wendy's is the only fast food restaurant I routinely frequent which consistently fails to thank people when they hand out food at the drive through.

Conclusion? It isn't just my local Wendy's. It's Wendy's from Olympia to Wendy's in North Seattle, to Wendy's in Kirkland and Wendy's in Bellevue. Even Wendy's in Tucson totally sucks at saying “Thank You.” Every other fast food restaurant has no problem saying thanks. But you only get “Thank You” at Wendy's 1 out of 10 times, two if you're lucky. (No doubt these thanks are coming from kids who were well raised.)

Far be it from me to suggest that the Republicans (90%) who own Wendy's, having got your money, simply no longer give a shit about you, and that their attitude has conveyed itself to the employees. But duh! That's precisely what I think has happened.

All you need is a simple training program -- "Say 'Thank You' when you hand people their food," and these selfish Republican punks can't even be bothered. How rude! Didn't their parents teach them anything?

May I suggest a contest for a new, more honest slogan?

• Wendy's: We don't give a damn.
• No, you can't have more ketchup.
• We've got your money. Now shove off. And...
• Stop checking if we got your order right and get the hell out of here!

There's more...

What Is It To Be An Elder?

photo Kelly Presnell/Arizona Daily Star

Sabino Canyon, Arizona

Upon retirement, people seem to take one of two paths.

Get small -- retire into themselves, curl up into their home, go out less and less, perhaps have mental and physical slowdowns over longer and longer periods, and then, die.

Or...

Participate in life -- retire out into their local communities, engage with friends, find projects where they can contribute back to children and teenagers their wisdom and understanding. This engagement keeps our elders alive for much longer, and allows their Institutional Memory to be passed on.

Like all seven major life developmental stages -- infant, child, teen, young adult, transition to adulthood, adult, & elder -- we can not say ahead of time, if a particular person will navigate the change well or not.

All of us know people in their late twenties and early thirties who are protracted teenagers, people who failed to move successfully from being a teenager -- which developmentally runs from the onset of puberty to the early twenties, and is characterized by being focused primarily on one's self, and pushing away one's parents -- and now at say thirty, are still stuck being very self-centered, relating to sexuality in a teenage way, and trying to go out and party as if they were a teenager. They are a protracted teenager.

In the same way, we can not say how any adult making the transition to elder, will do. Even the most successful adult, may go down the path of turning inwards, and the less successful adults may, counterintuitively, become very successful elders.

Like all developmental transitions, the transition to elder will likely take a number of years to tell which way it goes. These transitions are not under our control as observers, and we should be clear, they are not really under the control of the person in the middle of it all. Well, not any more than becoming a teenager or transitioning into adulthood was under your control.

My mother, Patricia, 70, has been transitioning into being an elder. She is a part-time municipal judge in Tucson providing backup for the full-time judges, however it is fairly rare she is needed to take the bench. After a successful career spanning being a respected bankruptcy attorney in two states, serving as the Chief of Staff to the Chancellor at a major urban University, and before all that, being the Assistant Concert Master of the Tucson Symphony (not to mention raising three children), it's really been fascinating for me to watch my oh-so-successful mother struggle to redefine herself from these large roles around family, work and career, into something more personal, more consistent with her passions.

This past fall, inside my mom's love of the Arizona desert, inside her commitment that people have the opportunity to learn at a young age both to love the desert, and that caring for the ecosystems we necessarily are part of is essential -- we will all live or die together with our plants and water, air, birds, insects and animals -- my mother along with retired airplane pilots, financiers, artists, and a group of massively smart, talented people (I met some of them when I went to Tucson in October), has been training to be Volunteer Naturalists at Sabino Canyon, just north-east of Tucson against the Catalina mountains.

Sabino Canyon is a glorious canyon, where many of us from Tucson did a lot of hanging out when we were growing up. It has water flowing much of the year, including some terrific floods during the rainy seasons. Awesome snakes to watch out for, BIG boulders to jump on, these old bridges built by the WPA which still look super-cool, spanning up the entire canyon, and the whole thing is just so perfect for hiking and biking. Or if you're not up for that, there's a tram to take you all the way to the top of the road, where you can keep climbing, all the way up to the top of Mt. Lemon if you want -- and I have.

(That's Mom in the photo, by the way, third person to the right, in shorts, helping to hold the king snake. Well, petting it, anyway.)

Mom and her classmates have been studying all fall, day after day after day, cracking books, working in the canyon, taking tests, so they can be Volunteer Naturalists and work with the 8,000-10,000 elementary school-kids who come to the canyon every year to be out in nature. Last month, Mom told me, one of her classmates encountered a real mountain-lion, right there in the canyon!

I'm proud of my mother -- and of the people she's graduating with. Instead of turning inwards, they're turning outwards. These people, the younger ones and the elders alike, are giving back to their community in a very real way, passing on the heart of their love for the land to a new generation.

That is the essence of being an elder -- giving your heart back to the community.

There's more...

Thanksgiving Open Thread

photo Aaronsgourmet.com (Click for high def of this Kosher bird)
(Aarons ships a yummy full take out line.)

Happy Thanksgiving to all Americans and people who celebrate Thanksgiving all around the world.

Here are two great previous posts on making that great holiday bird:
Holiday Food & Beer Can Chicken.

What are you eating?

Who are you having dinner with?

How is your holiday going?

Sports? Weather? How far did you have to travel?

And did anyone go over the mountain and through the woods? Even if it a month early?

It's the GNB Thanksgiving Open Thread. Let's hear some chatter out there!

There's more...