TomServo

If Jerry Oppenheimer's reports about how Ethel treated and spoke to her minority employees are true, then her accepting an award like that is on the same level as Michelle accepting all those Mother of the Year awards.

It really depends on how things work in the state in question and the people in question. I knew a nurse who worked in the hospital Ina May Gaskin typically used (at the time) for clients that required hospital transfers, and she didn't have anything negative to say about her. I actually have a friend who was a CNM and practiced in a hospital setting who was present at the home birth of a friend (not as the midwife, but as a support person for her friend), and after experiencing that setting, she made the switch to practice as a CPM (not all states allow CNMs to practice in out-of-hospital settings and in her state, CNMs and CPMs were overseen by different licensing boards). Obviously, if she hadn't been impressed with the job the CPM did for her friend, she wouldn't have been inspired to follow in the other lady's footsteps. One of my births was a home birth with a CPM. I interviewed more than one midwife and did not hire the one that was most geographically convenient to me. Some CPMs seem to be in it because they are what I call "birth junkies." Another one I interviewed seemed to be wrapped up in the political aspects of it and my first impression of her was that she was too hands-off, impersonal, and a bit absent-minded and leaned on her assistants too much for organizational purposes. The one I hired was very experienced, on -the-ball, and right off the bat was very clear that while she was pretty laid back about prenatal choices for experienced moms (and she has a lot of what I'd consider hippie tendencies herself), there was a list of circumstances that were non-negotiable as far as throwing hippie preferences out the window because her job was to keep everybody safe. She was really the right balance for me. Even CPMs will have other colleagues whose services they would or would not recommend just like you'd see in any profession. Ditto for CNMs. In my state, CPMs have to have a collaborative care plan with a physician (usually this is just window dressing for legal purposes because the physicians actually don't want to deal with it), and if a hospital transfer is required, the CPM is supposed to stay with you for support purposes and also to inform the hospital personnel about what's been going on up to that point so they'll know how to help you. If you're in a state where CPMs are dealt with less favorably, then my guess is that the situations the CNMs are most likely to see are ones like you'd see in the book Pushed where the CPM sends the couple to the hospital, but doesn't go with because she's afraid of being arrested and therefore it just looks bad all around.

I've been to Paragould many times, although I haven't in a very long time. There's nothing much of interest there for outsiders. A couple of technical colleges and a satellite campus of Arkansas State and that's about it. Oh, and one of John Wayne's grandsons lives there. I can't think of a reason to fly there unless you're running drugs, although if you were going to do that, you'd land on one of the many cropduster landing strips instead of using Kirk Field. My best guess would be that the Paragould flight was a charter rather than personal business. Unless that's where Josh really is (or was taken to meet other transportation there) and the Rockford flight was the misdirection.

According to Gingrich's daughter, Newt Gingrich and his wife were separated and Newt had already filed the papers two months before the hospital visit in question. They did get into some kind of argument when he took the children to visit her, but she was not in the hospital for cancer surgery nor was she on her deathbed. She was having a benign tumor removed. She died in 2013 from "complications of multiple health issues." Also, Jackie Battley was an interesting piece of work. She was Gingrich's high school math teacher and some reports claim she started romancing him when he was 16, which if true legally would have classified her as a sex abuser. The official line is that they didn't date until he turned 18.

I believe that part is near the beginning and is part of Jim Bob and Michelle's initial interview and was not about the babysitter. They told the police that one of the girls kinda sorta remembered halfway waking up one time when Josh took her blanket off, but that she didn't remember if anything else happened.

I know people who live in the area, and he's definitely been seen around the area of the college during the semester. Almost always with some or all of the Bates crew. I've seen pictures, but I'm not posting links here because I figure he didn't ask to be a D-list celebrity; his parents decided that for him. Yep, and Jana, too.

This is what I meant. When you slap the same script on the back of every tract or blog post or whatever with instructions that "if you're ready to be saved then just read this out loud" and then immediately "Congratulations! This means Jesus has come into your life! The End!" then it has been made trite. I used to get a Christian current events type of magazine for my kids and there was a page in the front of every issue that said that (we're talking a magazine aimed at the elementary set). I tore it out before my kids saw it. Not that I don't want them to pray, but that I didn't want them absorbing that messaging and getting the idea that, "Hey, I read this page in my magazine so *poof* that's all there is to it!" Who knew the Bible could have just been a magazine page instead? While I do think it is possible to read a pre-written prayer and mean it from your own heart (and I've done so before, including praying some of the Psalms), I do not think the "Jesus prayer" contains a magic formula of words the way it is often sold. The thing that was big when I was in college was for people to leave those "Four Spiritual Laws" booklets littered all over the place. I just went to see if it is still in existence, and it is, along with a how-to page that gives a script of how to drag the prayer out of a reluctant prospect (including "repeat after me"). Three steps? The church I grew up in had six (it was originally five because five fits on one hand for ease of helping kids memorize them).

I'm pretty sure the original person who brought up the "Jesus Prayer" was simply making a reference to the trite and extra-Biblical "Jesus, please come into my heart right now and that will save me" type of prayer that is printed on every evangelical tract I've ever been handed. As the Wikipedia article states, "The structure and content of the Jesus Prayer also bears a resemblance to the 'Sinner's Prayer' used by many Evangelical Protestants."

As far as I can tell, she didn't. One statement was an email to another government official; the other was from a public statement.

Well, sure; the SCHOOL will let you in. They're happy to take your money. But sitting for the bar is another matter. I have acquaintances who had to appeal rulings against them by the Character and Fitness Board for things the rest of us would consider to be minor, like parking or speeding tickets.

This probably more appropriately belongs in the JimBob and Michelle thread or maybe the media thread, but yeah, it's not a good idea to let random government employees march on in to your house without a warrant, for reasons that I'd have to get into some off-topic personal stories in order to illustrate. IF it is true that someone from DHS dropped by unannounced, it would not be surprising to me for the Duggars to refuse entry to the house. I'm guessing they belong to HSLDA and if they do not, even then they are most likely familiar with what HSLDA says to do if someone calls CPS on you and would have been following that script. HSLDA advises not to let a social worker into your home without a court order because then you have waived your Fourth Amendment protection against search and seizure. However, they do say that depending on the situation, you should produce the child at the door that the inquiry is being made about so that the social worker can observe that the child is okay. If you google "HSLDA social worker at your door" then you can pull up copies of the article (HSLDA claims it is a "members-only resource" but I've seen homeschoolers post it on their blogs and other places). I can't remember whether it was in their book, but the plumbing line is recommended on the Pearls' website. "The rod we speak of is a plumbing supply line that can be bought at any hardware store or large department store. It is a slim, flexible, plastic tubing that supplies water to sinks, and toilets. Ask for '¼ inch supply line.' They cost less than one dollar. I always give myself one swat before I swat the child to remind myself how much force to exert. It stings the skin without bruising or damaging tissue. It’s a real attention-getter. Michael demonstrates its use in our new Seminar videos."

You might be surprised at the number of adults I know who eat in the bathroom (or in the shower, even). They say they're multitasking, but I think it's a little weird.

We can argue about whether we think that is the TRUTH, but it actually does not contradict the police report. With the second report being released by the sheriff, it was made clear that the person who originally told Jim Bob and Michelle what was going on was 14 years old, and that was Josh. Knowing that, and re-reading the Springdale report again, it appears that they did tell the police that Josh had self-reported all of the incidents that they told the police about, including the laundry room one where he lifted up the girl's shirt (the parents' interview said he had reached up her dress, but her interview specifically said shirt, and she was the one who was there to know) and the book-reading incident. The only way Jessa's statement might be considered to contradict the police report is that two incidents that we know of happened when the victims were awake (the laundry room and the one with the book). However, neither of those victims were part of the interview, and those things had not happened by the time Jim Bob and Michelle went around and asked the girls about it. Most of the victim interviews on the police report indicate that the girls were not really sure about the specifics of what happened and they were repeating what they thought they remembered their parents telling them in a family meeting. I've been working on a post with page number references to show this, but I don't have it completed yet.

According to the police report, the older girls were not the ones who reported the book-reading incident to the parents. They were out to eat at the time. On page 26 of the Springdale police report, the child being interviewed said that the kids from [redacted] on up were eating out with their parents and Michelle's dad when someone [redacted, assumed to be Josh] called them to come home because he had done something and needed forgiveness. The thing he had done turned out to be the book/lap incident. I was responding to the claim that "one of the sisters went to the parents first" when that is not actually what the police report says. There are even discussions on this board about whether it was Jana or Jill who spilled the beans on Josh in March 2002. The police report says it was Josh who told first. In addition, even the interview with the person who was molested in the laundry room reports that "Josh felt bad about it and told their parents" afterward (see page 20 of the police report).

People have been assuming that it was one of the daughters who went to Jim Bob based on reading between the redacted lines of the Springdale police report and because there were fewer victims at the residence than girls living at the residence. However, there was another report that was made known today that was written up by the Washington County sheriff's(?) office that was much less redacted and as far as I could tell appeared to be a summary of the same interview. The Washington County report definitely reads like Josh (rather than one of the girls) was the person who went to Jim Bob: "James said that in March of 2002 ****, who had just turned 14, came to him very upset and crying. James said that **** had told him that he had been sneaking into ********** room at night and had been touching ********** on the breasts and vaginal areas while they were sleeping." Josh had just turned 14 in March 2002. The Springdale report reads pretty much word for word the same except that the "turned 14" was redacted.

Yep, to me, too. Your childhood background and your experience being a viewer of the show gives you a reason for that to be the least interesting. If Megyn doesn't have the same background to pull from, the political parts are going to be more interesting to her and being in the environment she's in every day makes it more likely for her to have blinders on about it. Because if you're not a viewer of the show and you don't hang out in places like this, you get a very polarized view about the show. Your Facebook feed is filled up with show fans "liking" every puff piece link about the Duggars on one side vs. the people putting up hateful memes on the other (pictures of GOP politicians with fake quotes they never said about how it what Josh did was less offensive than what gay people do, etc). Or plastering up pictures of every right-leaning politician Josh has ever had his picture made with, implying that they are somehow complicit in the whole thing even though those pictures were likely taken at some event where everyone there gets their picture taken with everyone else there (see also Alison Arngrim's twitter feed). And I do think it is in play for a politically-inclined reporter to point out the hypocrisy of doing things like that IF the people who are making those implications are at the same time minimizing distasteful connections of people who agree with them politically (the Clinton family's connections to Jeffrey Epstein, for example. I could give similar examples on the left, but I'll stop there because it makes the point well enough while still trying to stay out of dissolving into a political debate).

None of those things answers the questions I was talking about that Megyn is likely interested in (again, see the other discussion that happened in the Josh and Anna thread. Somewhere in the 90-page range, I think). Those are points on a timeline, but it doesn't tell us who tipped off InTouch or why this is making national news NOW when if that reporter is to believed it was "the worst-kept secret in NW Arkansas." The reporter had a number for a case file and that's it. Apparently the NW Arkansas Times reporter did not do any follow-up on the case beyond trying to talk to Josh and JimBob about it. Most likely he assumed that if there was a case file that was sealed that any related police reports were also sealed and therefore didn't pursue it.

I keep going back to the fact that Megyn said on one of the clips that she doesn't watch the show. A lot of the things that have been brought up in the discussions here are not things that she would be familiar with. She just knows there is this family on television who is involved in some way or another in politics and supporting certain types of GOP candidates and somebody has gone back and dug up whatever skeletons they could find for some reason that nobody quite understands yet. It's probably fair to say that she at least has some of the same questions that have already been batted around (in the Josh and Anna thread, maybe?) about who did this, did the police department fail to redact it better on purpose, why now, why not before now, what was the objective of the person who tipped off InTouch, etc? And being more of a political junkie type reporter, that's of more interest to her than some of the questions that are of more interest to the types of people who read and post on the PTV forums.

Oh, you mean like that time MSNBC showed footage of a man at an anti-Obamacare rally with a gun on his hip and Contessa Brewer claimed that it raised questions about racial overtones because of these "white people showing up with guns" when in reality the gun-toting man they had videoed was black? Or when Rachel Maddow aired a segment criticizing the Koch brothers for what she claimed was their involvement in a drug-testing issue in Florida that in reality they were not involved in at all? Or that time they did a Cinco de Mayo segment while one of the producers paraded around in front of the camera wearing a sombrero, shaking maracas, and drinking tequila? Of course if the shoe were on the other foot there would be some left-leaning media outlet attempting to run interference, but that's not really the point. The point is that the media shouldn't be doing that. If it's not excused for one side, it shouldn't be excused for the other, either.

While we can't speculate here about the girl's specific identity, I can tell you that if you go read the police report that In Touch published, it contains a police interview of the victim and gives the circumstances of his having had access to her.

Michael Lerned's, Michael Michelle's, and Michael Steele's parents, apparently. Oh, and the Bateses. I've always thought Michael Michelle must have a sense of humor because Michelle is another form of Michael. Kind of like when you meet someone named John who has a son named Ian. It's John Jr. without the suffix. Also, if you watched that Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman show, the title character's name was Michaela but they called her "Dr. Mike." I've been told that Michal (or Mychal, as I've also seen it spelled since the pronunciation changes with just the i in the first syllable) is the Hebrew version of the American name Brooke. With the "el" on the end, the meaning changes and it becomes "He who is closest to (or like) God" and is the name of the archangel in the Bible. What's always been interesting to me about that story is that the Bateses don't even blink about admitting that they didn't know who Michal actually was at that point in their lives. She's not a totally insignificant character in the Old Testament. Saul used her to try to get to David, she loved him at first but ended up despising him because he didn't act uppity enough, he told her off, she ended up barren as a punishment so the lineage of Christ went through a different wife even though she was the first, and the whole nine yards. My first graders have covered it (although obviously not ALL the details). Sometimes I get the impression that some of these evangelical churches only spend their time in Psalms, Proverbs, and Leviticus.

The question here is when did the "church of Jim Bob" start? The incidents in the police report happened when the Duggars were still living in that regular-sized house. There would not have been a house church there. Also, there are clues in the police report as to who the elders were. One was said to be a chaplain at the Piney Ridge program, so whether or not that person was Jim Holt, by definition that person was local. Another elder is identified as being an ex-prison guard, so the question is was there a person *at the time* on the board of IBLP or ATI who was an ex-prison guard? Mr. Keller had a prison ministry, but I do not think he had a job as a prison guard. Then it says they "found out about" this other thing in Little Rock, not that "one of the elders was running this program in Little Rock" even though we know from the reports in the Arkansas newspapers that the man Michelle most likely was talking about who was "kind of a mentor" and was "remodeling a building" WAS Gothard. Gothard owned the building at that point and it was his plan to remodel it and set it up like the one in Indiana. The report also says that Jim Bob and the church elders decided to talk to the police and that one of the elders went with him. Again, at least the person who went with him would have been a local person, and I have my doubts (based on "open secrets" in my area in regard to ATI-related things that have happened) that Gothard would have thought it was a good idea to report the incident to police.

TTC will never not mean "Trying To Conceive" to me based on its usage on other internet boards. Of course, it also applies to the married Duggars at any given point in time, so... In the [However Many] Kids and Moving special, Michelle said that Jim Bob called the house a giant Tinker Toy project, so I assume that is where the nickname came from, but I also think of it as TontiTown House.

No, from a sin standpoint, they do not. However, the position statement was published as an answer to a question specifically about abortion in the context of "punish the person who committed the rape that created the child instead of punishing the child." So the immediate context was definitely talking about intercourse. I'll be saving that Josh interview for anyone who claims the Duggars never lied about what happened. It's one thing to include something horrible you did as part of your "testimony," and I have many friends who do that (and do it well, by the way). It's quite another to airbrush it and misrepresent the circumstances. "I had the opportunity to go and work at a center for about three months in a Christian ministry" is a far cry from "I was really caught up in my sins and my parents enrolled me in a Christian treatment center to help me overcome it." No matter which one of those is the real truth (whether he was working on the crew remodeling the IBLP building or whether he was a client of the program), there are records of some Duggar family member having said the opposite.

I'll go on record as saying that I think Lena is just as creepy as Josh if not worse. Her book did not describe one little "playing doctor" incident when she was seven. It talks about other creepy things she did toward her sister up until Lena was at least seventeen years old.