Here’s the latest:

A Texas appeals court said Thursday that the state had no right to take more than 400 children from a polygamist sect’s ranch, a ruling that could unravel one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the state offered “legally and factually insufficient” grounds for the “extreme” measure of removing all children from the ranch, from babies to teenagers.

The state never provided evidence that the children were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court approval, the appeals court said.

It also failed to show evidence that more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and never alleged any sexual or physical abuse against the other children, the court said.

More at the link.

On Tuesday I puzzled over an L.A. Times story claiming that there has been “[n]o independent confirmation” of the content of laptop computers recovered from FARC terrorists, which show Venezuelan assistance to the terrorists. I noted that Interpol had confirmed that the laptops had not been tampered with, and that the AP had been shown files with messages detailing years of cooperation between the terrorists and the Venezuelan government. How does the paper justify saying there has been no independent confirmation of the laptops’ content? I wondered.

A couple of commenters suggested an answer: perhaps it’s been confirmed that a) the files were really on the laptops; and b) the files say what is claimed by the Colombian government; but we don’t know c) that the information in the files is genuine.

Dr. Weevil begs to differ. He links a Gateway Pundit post, based on a Miami Herald article that is now offline, which noted that information found on the laptops has been successfully used in a raid on a FARC safe house:

Colombian authorities tipped off Costa Rican officials about a huge stash of FARC cash in an old safe house earlier this month. Costa Rica confiscated $480,000 of FARC cash in the raid. The Colombians discovered this information from the computers seized during the raid on FARC leader Raul Reyes in Ecuador.

Good catch by Dr. Weevil, and one that leaves me thoroughly confused as to how the content on the laptops has not been independently confirmed.

Bueller? Bueller?