by Attorney Joe Churchwell
So I’m lying here and can’t sleep for the second night in a row wondering what has happened to my Country.
My Country that Merle Haggard sang about. My Country that was born of courage of the likes of Nathaniel Bacon, Francis Marion, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and Sam Houston. My Country that hometown buddies would fight to defend if you so much as insulted her; and even more dangerous and downright foolish was to insult Texas or the South.
My Country that loved and protected her own above all others; but was kind, and strong, and protective of the weak and oppressed.
If my Country ever truly existed she has just as surely as I lie here writing this with tears in my eyes been put to death by apathy, and greed, and weakness, and cowardice.
Everyday I see injustice. Everyday I see oppression. Everyday I see on the faces of my clients; terror and anguish as they are forced to endure the wrath of “Child Protective Services.”
Child Protective Services operates with no sense of duty to the people. In this State the blame lies with Asa Hutchinson. These agencies are his responsibility and his alone. Asa Hutchinson could set this catastrophe on a new course with the stroke of his pen; yet he has truly done nothing. His Child Welfare Initiative, his Vincent Report and his tasking Tim Griffin with a “Top down review of DHS” has not produced one single measurable improvement in any aspect of child welfare.
Where child welfare is concerned the Judicial Branch has consistently shirked its duties. Truth and evidence and civil rights have become irrelevant in our juvenile courts. Our higher courts have sold out and they hide behind procedure, technicalities, their own rules, and the “discretion” given to lower court judges that was once the province of a jury of one’s peers.
The price of becoming a mother or father today in this Country is the immediate surrender of his or her constitutional rights because this government has brainwashed its people into believing that “the best interests of the children” is the government’s business and therefore the government must be free to invade families’ homes and their lives and the minds and bodies of their children in the name of “protecting them.”
The checks and balances and safeguards created by our Constitutions are ignored today and no citizen in this State can be secure in his person, house, paper, or effect, if he is a parent with a minor child in his care. Arkansas DCFS boldly and openly operates outside both the U.S. and Arkansas Constitutions and will continue to do so as long as we the people allow it.
There are legislators that are aware and need our support. They are being stonewalled, backstabbed and lied to by executives and bureaucrats. They are given the finger by rogue judges who are operating in secret courts with sealed records.
The Courts must be opened.
Raise the Government’s burden of proof.
Juries must be brought back.
Oaths of office must be ENFORCED.
Rights must be protected.
This is not My Country. But it can be. We must start with our State. My State. Your State. Forget parties and forget platforms and forget loyalties; because if we do not have basic freedoms all else is meaningless. Get behind the legislators that are speaking out and fighting for you. Get behind them and stay behind them. And fight and pray.
Originally posted on Facebook. Reprinted with permission.
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