As a hyper-proponent of the First and Fourth amendments, it took a long time, but, after looking at the facts carefully, it is impossible not to defend and praise Texas officials for removing more than 400 children from the Yearning For Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Look, I vigorously defend the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion. I also vigorously defend the Fourth Amendment that guarantees that the cops can't bust down your door without reasonable cause. However, the facts speak for themselves:

• Of the 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 who were removed from the Texas compound, 31 either already have children or are pregnant.
• Texas authorities are now saying there is evidence that boys, as well as the young girls, may have been victims of physical or sexual abuse.
• Medical examinations indicate that nearly 10 percent of the children have broken bones. In the real world, less than 1 percent of American children suffer a broken bone each year, according to one source.

These are, as Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said, members of the FLDS church who "wouldn't be in Texas if we didn't kick them out of Utah." Shurtleff defends Utah and Arizona law enforcement, which was roughed up pretty good a few days earlier by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who accused Shurtleff and his Arizona counterpart, Terry Goddard, of turning a "blind eye" to polygamy.

Business groups argue that paid leave would encourage significantly more workers to take time off and that replacing them would be too burdensome for small companies. However, a legislative study in California suggests these fears may be unfounded. During the first year of the program, which took effect in 2004, only about 1 percent of the eligible employees filed for benefits — a number that has not increased significantly since.

A survey by the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy reports that 169 countries offer mothers paid maternal leave and 66 offer new fathers paid leave. Thirty-nine nations grant paid leave to workers whose children are ill, and 23 offer it to employees to care for other family members.

It’s time for more states in America to follow suit. Better yet, Congress should make paid family leave national policy. Elected officials would then be in a better position to talk about the importance of the family without sounding hypocritical.

Warren Jeffs is the autocrat and reigning prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), a polygamous community of about 10,000 that regards itself as the one true Mormon faith. It survives much to the embarrassment of mainstream Mormons, who gave up polygamy in 1890, and much to the horror of the state.

Jeffs is either deeply creepy or downright evil depending on how you label religious leaders who consider themselves the voice of God and marry multiple women, including 30 of their late father’s youngest widows. He is infamous, among other things, for kicking hundreds of teenage boys out of his community and matching hundreds of their sisters into plural marriages. For those hooked on “Big Love,” Jeffs makes Alby Grant look appealing.

No, polygamy is not on trial. But its history is interwoven with questions of consent. Opponents to plural marriage in the 19th century included women’s rights advocates who equated polygamy with slavery. No mature woman, they believed, would voluntarily enslave herself.

The nativist motivations for such campaigns move beyond the subliminal at times. Elizabeth Krause, an anthropologist and author of "A Crisis of Births: Population Politics and Family-Making in Italy," tracked that country's population efforts over the past decade and found politicians demanding more babies "to keep away the armadas of immigrants from the southern shores of the Mediterranean" and priests calling for a "Christian dike against the Muslim invasion of Italy." The racial preferences behind Berlusconi's "baby bonus" came into embarrassing relief when immigrant parents were accidentally sent checks for their offspring and then asked to return the money: the Italian government hadn't meant to promote those births.