C.C., I see what you’re saying. But — I don’t speak for Tokin42, but I do speak as a father — if strangers are acting in an unreasonable manner that *includes taking away my infant child*, I think it’s almost instinctual that a parent will have the urge to defend that child at all costs. And yes, if someone I don’t know is trying to take away my daughter without just cause, I will do everything and anything to prevent that from happening. That reaction is neither unreasonable nor disproportionate. And it says nothing about my “parenting skills.” It’s like smacking someone in the knees with a crowbar and then saying “it’s hard to take you seriously if you keep screaming like that.”

While the particulars of this case may have justified some concern, I react pretty viscerally to reading about this case. My daughter was “failure to thrive.” She started losing weight almost immediately after her birth, despite the fact that we fed and fed and fed her. At two months, she started to look emaciated. She fell completely off of the growth chart. Her ribs showed. We took her to 3 different pediatricians, none of whom could find anything wrong other than “she didn’t seem to be getting enough calories.”

Then, finally, when she was 10 months old, she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (see http://www.cff.org/AboutCF/). All along, she had simply been unable to digest her food, so — even though we fed her contstantly — she was undernourished. Now, with enzyme supplementation, she’s almost 4 years old and doing very well, despite continued lung problems.

So reading about this sort of thing happening makes me bristle. How close could we have been to having our desperately ill baby girl taken from us forcibly before her diagnosis? How long would it have been before she was properly diagnosed and received the care she needed? It’s hard to even contemplate.

If that order had been granted, there was no way for it to be appealed. I was never notified about the hearing for the order, so that I could testify. The only way that I found out was that the cop went out of his way to tell me.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/view/id/124

Medicine really is moving along quite nicely.

How about this one?

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/04/another-enemy-of-people.html

Retired Marine Colonel, Distinguished Chair on Public Law, author of Bush’s Brain. That’d do it.

And the frightening part was the ticket clerk, who admitted that participating in a “peace march” gets you on the terrorist list.

Then there’s me, who likely got on the list for a Harry Potter book review that made accurate comparisions between the Bush administration and the Ministry of Magic.

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2003/libe231-20030713-03.html

Cause and effect seems to be there, year before I could fly to a convention, following year I was blocked.

It appears that Orbitz bounces all ticket purchase attempts against the lists.

My estimated statistic was based on the numebr of times CPS removes a child for reasons that, even if true, do not rise to the level of warranting a removal. If you want to talk about how many times they err, I would assume that means how many times there was really no risk to the child *in reality,* and that would mean looking backward at whether the allegations were true or not.

If you want to talk about those times, I would estimate that allegations are overblown or inaccurate about 40% of the time. But still, in most of my cases, the parents do have some sort of serious problem and it appears to be affecting their parenting.

The problem is that all allegations are given instant credibility because CPS is worried that if they discard allegations as not credible and bad things happen, it will look like they *should have known*. I have a case where the sister-in-law of my client, a known drug abuser and enemy (for lack of better word) of my client, reported to a CPS Social worker that there was drug use in the home when the SW showed up to drop off Xmas presents (the SW was working with the family to help with the kids’ special needs and had a great relationship with the parents). Those allegations were taken completely seriously, kids were told to spend the weekend at a family friends while parents submitted to screens. In the end it appears parents had spent a night out and did a few lines of cocaine (mere drug use is not sufficient reaosn in itself to remove kids) but it wasn’t some rampant life-destroying drug binge as sister-in-law described (which would be a sufficient reason). These loving parents have now been taking screens 2-3x per week for over 3 months while working full-time and going to drug counselling. Mother has failed one screen for cocaine., and father 0. Kids are still out of the home and wondering why they can’t be with their mom, but at least they get to visit them an hour or two a week.

Also, I find it hard to believe that an agency, whose policy is to remove children from the home as a first resort, only errs once in fifteen times (as appalling as the figure is).

Anyone who thinks the work isn’t done until all children are safe will never run out of work and will ultimately create a state where your every move, thought, and breath is under direct state supervision. But don’t worry. It will still be called democracy.

@Kit Smith: According to the article you linked to, the Senator was stopped because his name was similiar to that of another person on the list, and not “because of political retaliation for protected 1st Amendment activities”. I don’t believe the Senator has stated he thinks it was retaliation or directed at him personally. Even the ACLU rep in the link you provided called it a clerical error. What I’m saying is that there are two explanations here: bureaucratic stupidity, or political retaliation. I tend to favor the formaer as the simplest, and hence most likely, explanation.

I’m not saying that the lady’s PDD isn’t an issue, because I’m sure it is, but she certainly has done things that have given CPS enough ammunition to make a reasonable argument.

And Tokin42, I’m sure the idea of acting violently toward a social worker who is just doing their job is emotionally satisfying, but showing him/her that your reaction to an unreasonable and upsetting situation is violence is not going to give them faith in your parenting skills.

CC

When it takes a sitting Senator of the United States three weeks to get his name off of the No Fly List, how long will it take someone who doesn’t have that much clout to get off the list? You think Sen. Kennedy was on the list for advocating the violent overthrow of the federal government? I highly doubt it.

Unfortunately, they have now been declared de facto nobility and thus exempt from the restrictions the rest of us have to live by.

I think many of the policies and laws make sense, but they are often not executed properly and CPS’ number 1 motivator is fear of screwing up and being in the paper. Of course they should be aware of that fear but, when that is your primary motivator you’re not doing your job right. I have had social workers admit to me that they don’t care what the law says, that they are out to protect kdis no matter what, even going so far as to interfere with the parent’s attorney-client relationship.

There was a recent case here where a children were at home with a mother and the family was working with CPS because there were several (like almost 10) reports of neglect. Then someone fire-bombed the house while mother was not home late at night (2 14year-olds in the home though) and two of the kids died. And then everyone blamed CPS, and now they are raking extra precautiong before leaving kids in the home, when that case it was just as likely that the house could have been hit by a meteor. Those kids are dead because they were murdered, not because CPS failed. But the media can’t even figure out how to include some of the most basic facts in the story.

Kids are removed unnecessarily quite regularly. It’s definitely a small percentage (maybe 1 in 15) but it happens, when CPS is working with a family because mom has mental health problems and then mom misses too many therapy sessions so they take her child as essentially a punishment even though the child is doing great in the home.

And at the final trials the question is usually about whether the parents did enough services rather than whether CPS can prove them unfit. Parents have to play 9 out of 10 cards right in the system, and even then they go without their kids for at least 6 months. It’s not particularly hard stuff for the parents to do, a lot of it is showing up and not getting angry, but if you sit back and defy CPS to prove their case, you will absolutely lose.

And why did they do this (besides not wanting to be publicly scrutinized)? Because they knew the Democrats (led by someone even more incompetent than George W. Bush) were too goddamned stupid to nail them for it and the mainstream press are too lazy to delve into a complex story about e-mail that doesn’t involve child porn or sexual harassment. Once Nancy Pelosi officially took the possibility of impeachment off the table, the only reason for Bush to even consider obeying the law vanished, so I imagine it’s probably futile to hope that he’ll ever be held accountable for destroying the records of his malfeasance.

It’s really frustrating watching a president as inept as Dubya get away with openly breaking the law because the people who are responsible for keeping an eye on him are even more inept than he is. The state of our nation’s elected government is almost to the point where if Putin went crazy and decided to drop a nuke on Washington D.C., I wouldn’t even care. In fact, that would probably be the only scenario under which the federal government would ever get reduced in size.

I’m sure egregious cases sometimes happen, but (a) I bet there’s much more to this case than described in the news article and (b) in 14 years I have NEVER personally seen a case where initial removal of the child(ren) was unjustified , or the (rare) termination was not fully justified, after substantial CPS services and effort, and in the best interest of the child(ren). By contrast, I have OFTEN seen bad cases of neglect or abuse where there’s been earlier evidence of those problems and CPS involvement–the department investigated but found “no basis” or offered parenting or other services with kids still in-home.

Children are presumed to be best off with their natural parents, and federal law REQUIRES that CPS make all reasonable efforts toward family reunification. The caseworkers are always overloaded, and I’m sure bad cases happen. But in my experience the government tends to be SLOW in protecting abused and neglected children, not eager to take kids away.