Excuse me?

Now this is a headline: "Former DCF Employee Sentenced For Embezzling $1.5 Million"

It was an emotional scene Thursday evening in a Broward County courtroom after a judge sentenced a longtime state employee who, along with two others, embezzled more than $1 million from the Department of Children & Families.

It was money that was earmarked for needy children.

Violet Jones, the ringleader in the embezzlement scheme, was the last to take the stand.
..."I should have known better," said the former DCF supervisor.
...Jones was sentenced to 17 years in state prison and 13 years probation for stealing $1.5 million dollars from DCF accounts and spending the cash. The Shorter sisters were sentenced to 10 years in prison, 20 years probation.

Words found in other news accounts...."widely respected" and "supervisor".

Wow. Well that sort of eats up a good chunk of the money Florida saved by pretty much destroying the private dependency defense bar, doesn't it?

Congratulations to the President-Elect

As I noted in the post below, I try to keep this blog non-partisan. I want to mark the election, however, and pass on to you something that I believe to be very well said at the NCCPR blog:

No matter who we voted for Tuesday, we all should be grateful for two things: First, let us be grateful that, when Barack Obama's mother decided she couldn't raise him for a while, no Child Protective Services agency ever got involved. And second, we should be glad that Marcia Lowry, founder and leader of the group that arrogantly calls itself "Children's Rights" (CR) was not suing the State of Hawaii from 1971 through 1979.

This was the time when Barack Obama was being raised by his grandmother who, so sadly, died Monday. Obama has said a great deal about how important Madelyn Payne Dunham was to him. On Tuesday, Obama made history – and odds are that wouldn't have happened had he not spent eight years living with Dunham in what now we would call informal kinship care.

But in those cases where, unlike Obama's, child protective services is involved, CR is trying to curb informal kinship care drastically. The group has decided that the magic bullet for foster care is licensing. So the group's latest crusade is trying to strong-arm states into requiring that every grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle or other relative who steps forward to care for a loved one whose parents are accused of maltreatment jumps through all the same hoops and meets all the same hypertechnical licensing requirements imposed on total strangers. With only limited exceptions, the CR rule would be: No license, no grandchild.