Warrant Issued for Warren Jeffs.

Looks like a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints prophet and polygamist Warren Jeffs. Which presumably means they finally found someone with the chutzpah to testify against him. That means either one of two things: some heavy-duty witness intimidation is in the offing, or stand by for Waco II.

My guess is these charges are only the tip of the iceberg, since law officers in Arizona have been conducting  fraud investigations on both the church's trust fund and the Jeffs-controlled Colorado City Unified School District. The present charges relate to his child-marriage habit.

Apparently it's a little difficult to get the women and children to testify against Jeffs since his followers are taught to fear outsiders, but several men who have been annoyed recently when Jeffs confiscated their houses, wives, and children have spoken up.  I guess there are a few civil cases pending, including one by teenaged boys forced out of the community.

Jeffs also garnered a little bit of media attention last month when the Southern Poverty Law Center added the FLDS church to its Hate Groups list.

Not because of the polygamy-with-the-kiddies thingy, but because of Jeffs's laconic speeches demonizing blacks.

(I'm assuming it's blacks. I only listened to a little bit of one of them. Not my kind of thing at all.)

Jeffs's group is only one of several active polygamist groups in the U.S., most claiming to be Mormons. Yes, the mainstream Mormon Church does excommunicate all of them.

I've heard estimates of the total polygamist population of the U.S. that range from 30,000 to 100,000. Jon Krakauer recently wrote a book about them.

(Yikes, I've never tried to do so many links before. Sure hope they all work.)