Latest From Texas

Jacob Sullum at Reason has a good round up of the latest news from Texas and the government's intervention in the FLDS polygamist ranch.

From the beginning I've been wondering why young children needed to be taken from their mothers- The evidence of actual abuse of teenage girls seems sketchy enough, but regardless, if the teenage girls were the focus, why were the boys and the very young girls taken away from their mothers?

Yesterday, I heard on the radio that evidence of abuse had been found amongst the younger children. When I heard that, I was prepared to write a half apologetic post. But then, I heard that the evidence was that some of the children had broken bones at some point in the past. Jacob Sullum gets into it a bit more, but I mean, come on. The fact that a small number of the kids may have broken some bones is enough to get each and every single child taken away from their mothers? I could understand if some of the kids showed actual signs of abuse, but no, just broken bones, the sort of thing that a large number of American children are familiar with.

The more I hear about this story, the more obvious it seems that authorities are struggling to cover the fact that they really fucked up.