The Modern Pharisee's biggest day

Tuesday was the biggest blog day ever. The Modern Pharisee was probably aided by the fact that every other FLDS watching blogger took the day off. For the most part.

As a consequence with a slow day at work I was able to check in on the news from time to time and blog away my blues. The Pharisee didn't just have the biggest visitor number for one day, the blog shattered the previous mark by more than 40%.

There were some interesting developments, including the confirmation of the "squeeze play" tactic that was being used on FLDS women. The holding of their own children as hostages to make them talk. Immunity was never intended to create a Scilla and Charybdis situation in which your own children may be forfeit. Yet that is how it was used. Texas has been brutal to the children and their mothers to dig out the possibility of two or three underage sexual liasons among the FLDS.

If in fact any FLDS participated in such a union, and did so in Texas or another state that prohibits such contact, they were extremely foolish. Nevertheless the incidence of sexual "child abuse" at YFZ as a percentage will turn out to be less than in society as a whole. When and if it is documented, it will also turn out to be with girls who are all of the age of consent now, or on the verge of it and who will be able to convincingly declare their intent regardless of what the law says.

Any of us who thought there would be no indictments after Harry Reid scheduled his US Senate hearings, well, we were dreaming. It was surprising to see the Salt Lake Tribune retire for the day with a claim that no indictments had been issued. Barbara Walther and her cronies are near geniuses when it comes to raw unvarnished pressure. They knew how to apply it, and they did.

There was apparently a moment where there was some doubt that Texas would be able to use the immunity angle, and frankly I think they probably didn't have the ability to give immunity but that may be where Harry Reid comes in. The trump card to guarantee immunity rightfully given or not. In the end I think FLDS mothers stared into the yawning pit of loosing their children or having their beloved husbands carted off to jail. It's probable they had been directed in that case by those husbands to give them up, instead of the children.

Texas must get a conviction. They are pulling out all stops to do so. Failing to do so produces the scenario of the raid being completely unjustified in the public mind. It was unjustified, but in the end, Texas knows that if they can find one girl who was underage who had sex with one man who was too old for our culture to accept as a sex partner, they're home free. It won't matter that the basis for the raid was unfounded. It won't matter that the instigator of the acts they prosecute was already behind bars. America will forgive Texas if they can place in our minds the credible image of a middle aged man taking the virginity of a 14 or 15 year old girl. It won't matter that this happens more often in their own church, or their own high schools, it will only matter that a Polygynist did it and Texas will be home free.

That's why they keep going. If they fail to produce one conviction, even if that conviction had NOTHING to do with the raid, Texas is dead, and they know it.

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