The Breakout Group That Wasn't

...If only we'd had a SIGN.

It's like that Eddie Izzard routine about lacking a FLAG when claiming a discovered country.

I attended the Florida Dependency Summit the past few days, which is always useful, if for no other reason because you get a fresh copy of Chapter 39. Intrepid blogger at Guardian ad What? and I thought a dependency blogger breakout session (rather a renegade pirate rebel unauthorized forbidden dependency blogger breakout session) would be a nice addition. We just lacked a sign, so it was not to be. Not to mention that neither of us know each others' names or what we look like, but that's neither here nor there.

Next year there SHOULD be a blogger forum. And there SHOULD be a push by someone to discuss forming a voluntary bar association of dependency lawyers. What are we waiting for?

What we're waiting for is for lawyers to enter into a spirit of cooperation when there is no real money in it, that's what we're waiting for.

Link to global revolution church audio

...in anticipation of my appearance tomorrow on Fox and Friends. The link below demonstrates several things that I will argue in court, and not here (at least not now), but I want to present some basis for my claim that it appears that the Global Revolution Church renamed Rifqa Bary "Anna" during the 2.5 weeks that they had her in Florida.

Note also the simple act of Ohio police questioning a man in Kansas City in an honest attempt to locate a missing teenager (by the way, it worked, the Kansas City man apparently somehow knew that the child was with the Lorenz family and tipped them off that the police had questioned him) is portrayed by the pastor as "illegal" and as persecution.

Note also the emphasis on surrounding "Anna" with people telling stories about honor killings. How much of this did she hear in that 2.5 weeks?

Link is below. Admittedly, it is edited. The full sermon audio is on the church's website. I edited it for time and to focus on the things described above, but not to change the meaning of anything said in the full context.

LINK TO THE "ANNA" (RIFQA BARY) GLOBAL REVOLUTION CHURCH SERMON

[update: If clicking on the link doesn't work, cut and paste the url below to download audio:]

http://dependencydefense.com/revchurchedited.wav

Lawyer for Rifqa Bary's Mother Reacts to Governor Crist's Statement

The Governor's unfortunate decision to make a public statement taking sides in the Rifqa Bary case before any evidence other than allegations has been presented underscores the need to return this case to the child's home state of Ohio. Governor Crist stated that he was “grateful” that the judge ruled a specific way and in support of his “administration's position”. The entire Bary family has already been exploited by those who recklessly wish to force this case into a clash of religions, and now by the Governor's statement the Bary family's case has become a political matter as well.

Given that the Regional Counsel responsible for defending Mr. Bary is a political appointee of Governor Crist, a public statement of the Governor's pleasure with a specific ruling in the case is not appropriate. Now the Barys can only conclude that chances for impartiality and straight-forward dealings with DCF are slipping away.

Hey! One of the Regional Counsel Offices has a website!

I've been stunned and amazed for a couple of years that none of the Regional Counsel offices bother to maintain a website, as you might recall from this old post.

So in fairness I ought to point out that one of them actually has a website now.

Now the clients for the 4th Regional Counsel can find out how to contact their attorneys via the internet.

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.

Random state control update

I try, I really try, to keep politics out of this blog. I mean that. The majority of my colleagues who defend parents in dependency cases are what we would call politically liberal. The majority of my colleagues who work for the state, both attorneys and case workers and their web of supervisors (and by the way, DCF attorneys in Florida are now required to announce themselves as "attorney for the State" in all proceedings) are what we would call politically liberal.

Cool.

So please excuse me if I mention this:

"Our practice is when someone is thrust quickly into the public spotlight, we often take a look" at them, Jones-Kelley said"

It speaks for itself. Or at least, it ought to. Do I have this right? If a government official in charge of whether or not you get to keep your kids happens to hear your name somewhere, she by normal practice "takes a look" at you?

Scary.

Hey, how about this? Imagine you are a parent of a teen. Your teen is at school, and there is a sudden evacuation because there may be something lethal, something dangerous to life and limb, something frightening going on. Or maybe not. Your teen, standing outside the school and classroom and not especially being asked to participate in anything you might call learning, calls you on a cell phone to tell you that just in case you are worrying, she is o.k.

She gets suspended for violating the zero tolerance policy on involving parents in events that are 100% under the control of government, thank you very much.

I want to make a speech here, but I won't. Both of those links speak for themselves, and you and I (we dependency experts on both sides of the courtroom) know full well that "government", when it comes to deciding what is best for you and your children, is not some hyper-competent monolithic apparatus, but is usually instead a collection of scared young workers who will do anything but admit being wrong now and then.