41 Atrocities

I am not an angel. As I sometimes say whenever I take the moral high ground, "I can do some skeevy shit, but..." (My apologies for language, but a quote is a quote.) I certainly can (and sometimes do) do things that I should not. I am not a squeaky-clean Eagle Scout, and to everything from excess in festive behaviour to dallying with morally casual women, I will plead guilty.

That said, I am aghast at some of the new developments in the already horrifying Texas Polygamy Cult story. Apparently children of both genders were not only sexually abused (which is enough to make you physically ill) but also beaten severely. 41 children have been found to have sustained broken bones in the recent past. Some of these children were toddlers.

Admittedly, kids are going to sometimes have accidents. (I broke my collar bone in gym class when I was in the 3rd grade, so I speak from experience.) However, 41 broken bones just doesn't sound right.

The mind reels when one imagines what sort of inhuman monster can hit a toddler hard enough to break a bone (or at all for that matter.) I can remember (30 years later) how much my injury hurt, and how much I wanted my mother. Within fifteen minutes, she was at the school, and I was being simultaneously comforted and rushed to the doctor...and it was still traumatic. I don't even want to think of the absence of warmth, of the cruelty that went into not only causing those injuries, much less the presumed coldness that followed. Did the mothers even hold the children and seek treatment for their wounds? Were they even acknowledged?

We are a nation of laws, based on English Common Law. We are civilized people (as a society) and I abhor vigilantiism. On the other hand, if someone mysteriously decided to beat the hell out of whatever adult(s) did these horrible things, I think I could deal with it. I might even be willing to help. I have always said that a sure cure for child abuse is to have a proportionately larger adult beat the abuser until equal (or greater) pain has been inflicted.

Okay, enough frontier justice... I had a great time at the beach last weekend, and will talk about it next time. After watching the news about the kids, I had to get that off my chest.

On happier (and even wierder) subjects, in today's News From The Motherland, soccer star Renaldo makes a big mistake...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7374317.stm


HILLARY IN '08!!!

FLT3