O’Reilly & Miller goof on FLDS & Warren Jeffs

Texas CPS and Judge Barbara Walther should be gloating this morning at the results of their FLDS disinformation campaign. Last night, they snookered Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller into making fools of themselves — each in a different way — over the Warren Jeffs pictures (purporting to show Jeffs kissing teenage girls) admitted into “evidence” on Monday.

O’Reilly and Miller are both smart guys. The fact that neither of them senses the real danger presented by CPS and Walther — that of an out-of-control, frighteningly powerful government agency subject to no real judicial oversight — shows how easily the country as a whole is distracted by official-sounding, sensationalistic lies. This is not good news.

As outlined here yesterday, the “shocking” Jeffs pictures have been authenticated by no one and have no demonstrated relevance to any decision on custody of FLDS children. Jeffs is already in prison without the ability to harm anyone’s kids even if he had the inclination to do so. And the evidence that most of the FLDS are model parents is considerable. Yes, there may be some bad apples, but the word from experts without an agenda — try here and here — is that other parents in this country could learn a thing or two about parenting from the FLDS.

In the age of Photoshop, a middling intellect with a PC can make photos up to show just about anything she wants.Despite their irrelevance and suspicious pedigrees, Texas CPS, in characteristic form, threw the pics down in court without explanation (and without challenge by the pro-CPS Judge Walther) and has refused to answer questions about them.

As an indicator of how covert CPS has become in the FLDS case, consider that the official CPS “news” page has featured no FLDS-case update since April 30. Thirty days without a single written update. That says a lot. Perhaps CPS finally caught on that the salacious lies and innuendo were too easy targets for bloggers.

One of my personal favorites is this one from the April 30 CPS update:

Medical exams and reports by the children indicate that at least 41 children have had broken bones in the past. We do not have X-rays or complete medical information on many children so it is too early to draw any conclusions based on this information, but it is cause for concern and something we’ll continue to examine.

Too eary, indeed. Since when are 41 cases of past broken bones among 460+ kids who lived on a ranch and rode horses a “cause for concern”? Talk about making mountains of molehills. This is the kind of “evidence” of “abuse” that CPS had to offer after breaking into the FLDS homes and grilling the little kids for over three weeks.

Anyway, in The O’Reilly Factor clip shown above, Miller demonstrates how little he reads up on current events with this sage observation:

“I think that Jeffs is a demented pig and the quicker he goes to prison and is on the other side and the sooner he is on the other side of an inequitous power relationship, the better off the planet will be.”

Memo to Miller: Jeffs is already in prison!

Miller, to his credit, accuses O’Reilly of voyeuristically exploiting the Jeffs pics on TV. O’Reilly’s response reveals O’Reilly as a regular mobocrat, anxious to take a torch and pitchfork to anyone who claims to be FLDS:

To build outrage, you almost have to do this, just like the girl-fight stuff ahead of you . . . Unless people get angry, unless folks mobilize . . . we’re going to lose the country . . .

This kind of rhetoric is unfair and irresponsible. You don’t save a country whose life blood is due process and deliberation by fomenting “outrage” and “anger” against offbeat religious minorities on the basis of a few photographs of a guy already serving time. Shame on Mr. O’Reilly. We won’t say “shame on Fox” since its been done so many times before. And, Dennis, dude! Do a bit of reading before shooting off your mouth on major issues of the day.