From the Wikipedia entry on the Order of the Nine Angels (ONA):
Reading the articles, they supported Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
The proNorth Korea sentiment might have just been an FBI plot. It’s not clear if the guy already had pro- North Korea sentiments that they used to create the sting, but that seems likely.
My read–and I agree with the majority–is that Virginia isn’t saying “we think the adoption was fair”, they are saying “under state law, we have no power to help you after six months”. There are good reasons for that general policy, first and foremost the spectre of yanking a child away from her parents.
Now, here the adoptive parents themselves yanked the child away already. All seem to agree that was wrong, but technically not criminal if the papers were in order. The A.'s sued to have the papers declared invalid, but at trial they lost on the facts. They convinced the lower courts that the adoption order was void as a matter of law, but the Supreme Court of Virginia says it’s too late to void the order.
They can appeal the Virginia decision to the federal Supreme Court, because they had no notice to contest the adoption order that allegedly deprived them of parental rights, but fat chance that court will hear the appeal. The argument that pre-Taliban Afghan law grants the A.'s parental rights is a longshot, because the A.'s don’t have an Afghan court order. The factfinding by the Virginia circuit court, cited with approval by the Virginia Supreme Court, almost certainly precludes the federal Supreme Court from deciding the A.'s had parental rights in the first place.
The A.'s sued the Masts in federal court as well as state court (the federal court put its case on hold until the state case played out). But that case is now just for damages, it won’t bring the child back. And the Trump administration has stopped supporting the A.'s in court on their supremacy/foreign policy argument. And the factfinding in the state courts is still devastating.
~Max
No, you’re a fucking idiot with no reading comprehension. I said he should have been taken into custody and psychologically evaluated, which is what happened. What I object to is this sheriff calling a press conference acting like he’d just caught Osama bin Laden, which has entirely predictably led to this JUVENILE suspect’s identity now being all over the internet. I hope the kid’s parents sue that sheriff’s department into oblivion.
Yeah, I know what and why they ruled. I’m not sure why “fraudulent adoptions have to stand after six months” is a better policy, because that ruling opens the door to steal foreign babies left and right.
The man who stole that child is an evil sonofabitch.
But those babies deserve the right to be Americans. Why do your hate those babies?
/s
Agree that’s darn curious.
As a general matter the results of fraud aren’t legally defensible. Which suggests there’s got to be some narrow way in which, despite the baby thief’s motives, they managed to correctly do the whole legal process in a legally legit way. Such that it may be morally fraud, but it wasn’t legally fraud.
Courts do not exist to create justice. They exist to answer questions about the application of specific laws to specific facts.
There is always a tension between doing what’s legal and doing what’s right. Sometimes there’s wiggle room to do some right alongside the legal, and sometimes there’s not. Sometimes there’s inclination to do some right alongside the legal, and sometimes there’s not. It often depends mostly on how tightly the laws or regulations are written. The looser they are the more room between the lines for courts to color. When written narrowly, they pretty much have to be interpreted narrowly. No matter how frustrating that is in any particular case.
Indeed, itself a fact that we need to remind ourselves of.
This also ties in directly to the two current threads about abortion and state vs federal laws and jurisdiction.
The constitution exists to define how our federal government is supposed to operate. And, indirectly, puts some loose boundaries around how states’ governments are supposed to operate. Based on 1700s-era thinking largely foreign to modern concerns. It has a certain amount of elasticity, but only so much. As it becomes increasingly inapplicable to a modern integrated world, we will crash more and more into the boundaries of how hard it can be stretched until it’s merely being honored in the breach.
We’re all getting an object lesson now in the dangers of governments which ignore their laws and founding documents in favor of “whatever the executive wants is the law.”
Where to from here? Damned good question.
In theory, justice is served when good laws are passed. The courts just try to ensure that laws are followed correctly. Judges have some leeway in specific cases (hence why they are called “judges” as they use their own judgement) but many times their hands are tied in rulings because they are constrained by the laws that govern their jobs.
If you want justice, look to the legislature for that.
(Looking over at Congress and shuddering.)
Zactly. By the time the courts are involved, the die is pretty well cast.
To have a just society you need just laws.
And rulers/governments willing to abide by them, even when said laws inhibit their agendas (or in some cases, their whims of the moment nanosecond.
Well, the federal court is bound by issue preclusion and the Full Faith and Credit Act (28 U.S.C. s. 1738) to respect factfinding by the state court. And the circuit court in Virginia found every fact in the M.'s favor. That they did not have requisite intent for fraud. That the A.'s were not parents or even related to the child (questionable because the situation in Afghanistan made it impractical to get papers in order). That A.s made material misrepresentations (which is questionable because of the chaos surrounding evacuation in a war zone). But it’s really hard to get those facts overturned.
It’s not as if the Virginia Supreme Court admitted there was fraud and then said too bad. They said there was no fraud, there was no deprivation of parental rights, and even if there was fraud (but not parental rights) they still wouldn’t have the power to reverse the adoption order.
~Max
Thanks for digging into the case for those details. I was dealing in generalities.
The state court might have erred logically in demanding Virginia-level normality of records sourced from a chaotic situation where a court a little closer to that situation with more experience with wartime recordkeeping would have made greater allowances. But that’s not legal error.
And as you say, once the trier of fact has settled the facts, moving those facts on appeal, whether higher up the state chain or over into the Feds, is an extremely call order.
Two decades ago in South Korea, there was a horrible sex abuse scandal at a school for the deaf. The fallout from that case was a major change in the laws and sentencing related to sex offenses.
Welcome to 2026 and now there’s another case of abuse of disabled persons.
Speaking of matters Korean, there’s a story today about a guy who semi-successfully defrauded the Unification Church (or as it’s now apparently known, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity).
There’s something at least mildly satisfying about his causing so much trouble for modern-day Moonie businessmen.
These people can go straight to hell:
I don’t believe this is mentioned in the article, but these sonsifbitches forced homeless teenage girls to fight each other, and sexually assaulted them, strangled and beat them, and there are something like fifty girls in on this coming lawsuit.
This is local to me, and the response from the President of this agency has been a sickening lack of accountability. They’ve been forced to shut down their residential program but I hope the whole agency goes down in flames.
I learned about this today and I can’t tell you how angry I am about it.