On the Counterterrorism Blog Jeffrey Breinholt of the U.S. Justice Department argues that the Texas FLDS raid will test an issue crucial to fighting terrorism:

"Can a state or the federal government define what constitutes a crime, and and enforce the law where the alleged conduct is religiously-inspired."

Breinholt, a former Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in Utah, is a fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center:

The problem is that young marriages - and all that they entail - can be part of the social fabric of fundamentalist Christian communities. I know this well from my time in Utah, where teen brides are common, even among the educated. To make it worse in the FLDS case, the marriages are polygamist and do not jibe with common American customs about what constitutes a legitimate family unit. This makes the religious freedom people (and anti-government partisans) chomping at the bit, looking for a controversy.

They should take a cold shower. ...

How is this related to counterterrorism? Muslim defendants in terrorism prosecutions sometimes claim that their planned violence should be excused because it was mandated by their faith. Same with heavy-handed family discipline, when challenged by state child welfare officials. This will be argued in Texas.

My bet is that there will eventually be an international consensus that sex with people under a certain age should be prohibited worldwide. Why? There are so many Hillary Clintonesque women in the human rights community for this not to be inevitable.

If I were their lawyer, I would tell them to couch it this way: people under a certain age have an individual human right not to be used as sex objects. People who engage in sex with them violate human rights. Far too often, this conduct is part of a larger dynamic that ruins lives. It's hard to argue with that.

Finally, Breinholt reminds us of what followed the government's last attempt to enforce sex abuse laws against a religious extremist group in Texas.

We know that Timothy McVeigh acted out of outrage over the raid on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco. I pray we don't see a spike in domestic terrorism as a result of what's occuring in Texas.