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They Can Take Your Kids, Heck, Now They Can Take You!
by James Glaser May 13, 2008 Yesterday morning I was watching a program on the television that had on two couples from the polygamist compound in Texas where the State went in and took a reported 416 children from their parents. You could tell these parents were still in a state of shock, even though the confiscation of their children took place a month ago. The Texas government and the State Judge presiding over the case said that they would keep the children together, but the truth is that they have split up sisters from sisters, brothers from brothers, and sisters from brothers. The children are spread out across the State, and parents have to drive hundreds of miles to have an hour-long supervised visit with their children. To make matters worse, when the parents finally got to see some of their children, the children thought their parents were there to take them home. Nobody in the State of Texas disputes this claim about tearing apart families and moving children hundreds of miles away from their loved ones. Here is a real kicker. The State told the parents of these children, if they went back to their homes in the polygamist compound, they would never get their kids back, so many of these parents, out of fear, are now living in their trucks or cars. Yes, folks, this is happening in the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave. Think back a few years. Jose Padilla, an American citizen was arrested at the airport in Chicago on May 8th, 2002 and was held as a material witness on a warrant issued by the State of New York. New York and the federal government thought Padilla was going to explode a "dirty bomb" some place here in America. Well, a month later on June 9th, two days before Judge Michael Mukasey was going to rule if the State could hold Padilla under a material witness warrant, President Bush stepped in and had him taken by the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and held as an "Enemy Combatant." Padilla spent the next three years in solitary confinement in a military prison in South Carolina. Like the people in that Texas polygamist compound, Padilla had no rights,. The government came in and said, in effect, "You are guilty, and you must now prove you are innocent. Growing up in America I knew things like the mass confiscation of hundreds of children or just on the President's word, putting someone in solitary confinement for years could not take place in America, but that is no longer true. Now if the government doesn't like what you are doing, or saying, or writing, they can threaten you with the loss of your children. If you have no children, they can threaten to make you disappear. A few years ago those would have been idle threats, and nobody would believe that things like that could happen in the United States, but now we know they can. Soon there will be a National Identification Card. Like Nazi Germany, Americans will have to have their "papers" if they want to travel. You might think it can't happen here, but you better wake up, because it already has. If these two examples of government power (The Texas child roundup and Jose Padilla) are not enough to convince you that the American government and now State government feel they can do what ever they want to do to you and me, then think back to the mass killing by the federal government of little children at Waco. Maybe the FBI sniper shooting of a woman and her infant child at Ruby Ridge will do it. Snipers have their target right there in the scope, and they can see who they are about to kill. Anytime it wants to, our government can come along and take our children from us, it can take us away and put us in prison for as long as it wants to, and yes, our government can kill us whenever it wants to. Our government can do all of these things, and our government has done all of these things. Think about it. Decide if you are going to continue to allow this loss of freedom in America. Taking the children away from a polygamist compound may sound like the government is protecting those children, but think of the precedent that sets. Putting Jose Padilla in solitary because the government thinks he is going to do something wrong, sets it up so that others can be put away on the whim of the President. Both of these acts are scary. If you believe these things were done to protect you, then vote for the Democrat or Republican of your choice. These political parties have been in charge and have stood by and watched as government has taken on more and more power. But, if this grab for power by the federal and state government scares you, then start looking for a third party candidate, and work to get them votes. The only way we can get our freedom back is through the ballot box, and who knows how much longer that will be true. |
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