News

Wendy Davis divorced her second husband one day after he paid off her student loans

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Wendy Davis: Feminist champion and independent woman
Wendy Davis: Feminist champion and independent woman

So, it turns out that Wendy Davis has been misleading or even lying about her background for political ends.

Here are the facts from the Dallas Morning News. (H/T Letitia)

Excerpt:

Wendy Davis has made her personal story of struggle and success a centerpiece of her campaign to become the first Democrat elected governor of Texas in almost a quarter-century.

While her state Senate filibuster last year captured national attention, it is her biography — a divorced teenage mother living in a trailer who earned her way to Harvard and political achievement — that her team is using to attract voters and boost fundraising.

Was she a divorced teenaged mother? Not quite:

She was 17 and still in high school when she moved in with her boyfriend, a construction worker named Frank Underwood. She got pregnant, married and “some time between [age] 19 and 20 was when Frank and I separated,” she said.

Davis remained in the mobile home a few months, then moved in with her mother before getting her own apartment. She got custody of her daughter, Amber, and Underwood was ordered to pay child support.

Under terms of the divorce, he got a boat, the mobile home and the responsibility for the mortgage on it. She got a 3-year-old Pontiac Grand Prix, a 1972 Firebird and a 1967 Chevy pickup. Davis was 21.

I don’t think that moving in with a construction worker at that age shows good judgment – it puts possible children at risk of divorce.

More:

A single mother working two jobs, she met Jeff Davis, a lawyer 13 years older than her, married him and had a second daughter.

[…]After they married, when she was 24, they moved into a historic home in the Mistletoe Heights neighborhood of Fort Worth.

[…]When she was accepted to Harvard Law School, Jeff Davis cashed in his 401(k) account and eventually took out a loan to pay for her final year there.

[…]The daughters, then 8 and 2, remained with Jeff Davis in Fort Worth while Wendy Davis was at Harvard.

[…]Jeff Davis said that was right around the time the final payment on their Harvard Law School loan was due. “It was ironic,” he said. “I made the last payment, and it was the next day she left.”

[…]In his initial divorce filing, Jeff Davis said the marriage had failed, citing adultery on her part and conflicts that the couple could not overcome. The final court decree makes no mention of infidelity, granting the divorce solely “on the ground of insupportability.”

[…]A former colleague and political supporter who worked closely with Davis when she was on the council said the body’s work was very time-consuming.

“Wendy is tremendously ambitious,” he said, speaking only on condition of anonymity in order to give what he called an honest assessment. “She’s not going to let family or raising children or anything else get in her way.”

The Daily Caller says that she “relinquished custody” of the children after the divorce.

So, she had a man 13 years her senior pay for half her undergraduate degree, and her time at Harvard Law School, and then when the last student loan payment was made, she divorced him and abandoned her own children. You definitely don’t want to elect a person whose desire to be perceived in a positive way by others causes her to lie about herself, to make herself appear as a victim when the truth is that she was a gold-digger and a bad mother. Truth-telling is important, and especially important for a governor.

So here is my point about all of this. What did people expect from this woman? Do people really think that someone who stands up and advocates the outright murder/infanticide of unborn children after 20 weeks could be relied on to tell the truth? Would she be a good wife? Would she be a good mother? Or are people so taken in by her attractive appearance that they invent in their minds a completely fictional world where pink running shoes and blonde hair are all that matter in assessing a person’s character?

Abortion is a way of killing people you created by your own decisions. These people are weaker than you. They are depending on you to take responsibility for what you did, and to choose who you have sex with wisely. But you are killing them anyway, in order to stop them from taking your money and time. It’s possible for someone like Wendy Davis to look glamorous and pretty on the outside and be evil and selfish on the inside. That doesn’t mean that she is irredeemable, but it does mean that she would make a lousy governor.

Good leaders should care about other people, and especially children, and even more so their own children who were created because of their choice of man and choice of activity with that man. Good leaders take responsibility for what they do, and they honor moral obligations to others. Caring for others requires good decision-making and planning. You can’t break all the moral rules and choose men poorly, and then expect your children to get what they need. Life isn’t that unpredictable – there is a need for humility and wisdom. Ambition doesn’t cure selfishness, it just masks it. 

Wendy Davis responds

Wendy Davis has responded to these revelations by melting down on Twitter, which reflects poorly on her leadership ability, and then criticizing her opponent because he hasn’t “walked a day in her shoes”, which is some sort of back-handed attack on his disability – he is a paraplegic. She also implied that he doesn’t know what it is to struggle with difficulties in life. The man is paralyzed, for God’s sake.

Additionally, the Houston Chronicle reports that her campaign is trying to hush up her ex-husband from telling more about what really happened. (H/T Legal Insurrection via Letitia)

Excerpt:

“They’ve asked me not to talk to reporters,” Jeff said. He is anyway, because: “If she runs, the scrutiny on her will be extraordinary. She needs to deal with it in a constructive way. She needs to take control of the message. … My goal in all this, I think, is just try and protect the kids as much as I can.”

Now this should be the end of her campaign, but seriously, I wonder whether all of this crap is just going to cause her supporters to double down on voting for her “victimhood”. I would not be surprised, because we re-elected Obama. Every criticism of his policies (like this study by a Duke U. researcher) was dismissed as “racism”, and people actually believed that.

Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann

I just want to remind everyone how two conservative women, who are decidely pro-life and NON-VICTIMS, were mercilessly attacked by the left-wing media. I mean Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, the latter of whom was my top candidate for President in 2012. I wrote about 50 posts about Michele starting from before she even announced her candidacy for President to when she dropped out of the 2012 race. If you are going to pick someone to lead, pick someone with a good marriage and 24 foster kids. Someone who also quit her job to homeschool her kids when they were struggling in school.

I’m sure that Michele and her husband had stresses and strains in their marriage, but they never divorced, either. Women can be great leaders, if they are trustworthy and moral. Michele Bachmann would be a fine President. Palin also seemed to have this calm, responsible demeanor. She took a lot of hits, and never melted down like Hillary Clinton and Wendy Davis have. That’s what you’re looking for in a leader. But the mainstream press wanted nothing to do with those women leaders, because they were pro-life, and that was the difference.

Podcasts

Does the Bible support capital punishment?

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Llet’s take a look at what the Bible says in general about capital punishment, using this lecture featuring eminent theologian Wayne Grudem.

About Wayne Grudem:

Grudem holds a BA from Harvard University, a Master of Divinity from Westminster Theological Seminary, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. In 2001, Grudem became Research Professor of Bible and Theology at Phoenix Seminary. Prior to that, he had taught for 20 years at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he was chairman of the department of Biblical and Systematic Theology.

Grudem served on the committee overseeing the English Standard Version translation of the Bible, and in 1999 he was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society. He is a co-founder and past president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. He is the author of, among other books, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, which advocates a Calvinistic soteriology, the verbal plenary inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the body-soul dichotomy in the nature of man, and the complementarian (rather than egalitarian) view of gender equality.

The MP3 file is here.

A PDF sermon outline is here.

Topics:

  • Genesis 9:5: to whom does this passage apply?
  • What makes murder such a serious offense?
  • Romans 13:3-4: what does this verse mean?
  • Capital punishment is a contrast to taking personal vengeance
  • Redistribution on behalf of the victim is the main reason for CP
  • Deterrence of future crimes to protect the public is another reason
  • The purpose of retribution assumes individual responsibility
  • Retribution is more acceptable if you believe in the concepts of good and evil
  • Retribution is less acceptable if you accept that “society is to blame”
  • Secular Europe and liberal US states do no have the death penalty
  • Conservative states that believe in good and evil and individual responsibility do have it
  • Moral relativists are unlikely to support the death penalty
  • Christians who oppose the death penalty say that it has a sinful motive (revenge)
  • Revelations 6:9 has Christian martyrs calling for God to punish their murderers
  • So this argues that the desire for justice is not motivated by sinful motives
  • Colossians 3:25 God provides justice for wrongs in this life
  • 1 Pet 2:23 The example of Jesus is to give up personal vengeance
  • Romans 12:17-21 Personal vengeance on people who wrong you is not acceptable

The second half of the lecture is Q&A, and the questions are good.

You can find more talks by Wayne Grudem here.

What about the woman caught in adultery?

Some people like to bring up the woman caught in adultery as proof that Jesus opposed capital punishment. But that passage of the Bible was added much later after the canon was decided.

Daniel B. Wallace is an eminent New Testament scholar who also teaches at Dallas Theological Seminary, an extremely conservative seminary.

About Dr. Wallace:

Dr. Daniel B. Wallace

  • Professor of New Testament Studies
  • B.A., Biola University, 1975; Th.M., Dallas Theological Seminary, 1979; Ph.D., 1995.

Dr. Wallace influences students across the country through his textbook on intermediate Greek grammar. It is used in more than two-thirds of the nation’s schools that teach that subject. He is the senior New Testament editor of the NET Bible and coeditor of the NET-Nestle Greek-English diglot. Recently his scholarship has shifted from syntactical and text-critical issues to more specific work in John, Mark, and nascent Christology. However he still works extensively in textual criticism, and has founded The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, an institute with an initial purpose to preserve Scripture by taking digital photographs of all known Greek New Testament manuscripts. His postdoctoral work includes work on Greek grammar at Tyndale House in Cambridge and textual criticism studies at the Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster.

And Dr. Wallace writes about the passage in John on Bible.org.

Excerpt:

One hundred and forty years ago, conservative biblical scholar and Dean of Canterbury, Henry Alford, advocated a new translation to replace the King James Bible. One of his reasons was the inferior textual basis of the KJV. Alford argued that “a translator of Holy Scripture must be…ready to sacrifice the choicest text, and the plainest proof of doctrine, if the words are not those of what he is constrained in his conscience to receive as God’s testimony.” He was speaking about the Trinitarian formula found in the KJV rendering of 1 John 5:7–8. Twenty years later, two Cambridge scholars came to the firm conclusion that John 7:53–8:11 also was not part of the original text of scripture. But Westcott and Hort’s view has not had nearly the impact that Alford’s did.

For a long time, biblical scholars have recognized the poor textual credentials of the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11). The evidence against its authenticity is overwhelming: The earliest manuscripts with substantial portions of John’s Gospel (P66 and P75) lack these verses. They skip from John 7:52 to 8:12. The oldest large codices of the Bible also lack these verses: codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, both from the fourth century, are normally considered to be the most important biblical manuscripts of the NT extant today. Neither of them has these verses. Codex Alexandrinus, from the fifth century, lacks several leaves in the middle of John. But because of the consistency of the letter size, width of lines, and lines per page, the evidence is conclusive that this manuscript also lacked the pericope adulterae. Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, also from the fifth century, apparently lacked these verses as well (it is similar to Alexandrinus in that some leaves are missing).The earliest extant manuscript to have these verses is codex Bezae, an eccentric text once in the possession of Theodore Beza. He gave this manuscript to the University of Cambridge in 1581 as a gift, telling the school that he was confident that the scholars there would be able to figure out its significance. He washed his hands of the document. Bezae is indeed the most eccentric NT manuscript extant today, yet it is the chief representative of the Western text-type (the text-form that became dominant in Rome and the Latin West).

When P66, P75, Sinaiticus, and Vaticanus agree, their combined testimony is overwhelmingly strong that a particular reading is not authentic. But it is not only the early Greek manuscripts that lack this text. The great majority of Greek manuscripts through the first eight centuries lack this pericope. And except for Bezae (or codex D), virtually all of the most important Greek witnesses through the first eight centuries do not have the verses. Of the three most important early versions of the New Testament (Coptic, Latin, Syriac), two of them lack the story in their earliest and best witnesses. The Latin alone has the story in its best early witnesses.

[…]It is an important point to note that although the story of the woman caught in adultery is found in most of our printed Bibles today, the evidence suggests that the majority of Bibles during the first eight centuries of the Christian faith did not contain the story. Externally, most scholars would say that the evidence for it not being an authentic part of John’s Gospel is rock solid.But textual criticism is not based on external evidence alone; there is also the internal evidence to consider. This is comprised of two parts: intrinsic evidence has to do with what an author is likely to have written; transcriptional evidence has to do with how and why a scribe would have changed the text.

Intrinsically, the vocabulary, syntax, and style look far more like Luke than they do John. There is almost nothing in these twelve verses that has a Johannine flavor. And transcriptionally, scribes were almost always prone to add material rather than omit it—especially a big block of text such as this, rich in its description of Jesus’ mercy. One of the remarkable things about this passage, in fact, is that it is found in multiple locations. Most manuscripts that have it place it in its now traditional location: between John 7:52 and 8:12. But an entire family of manuscripts has the passage at the end of Luke 21, while another family places it at the end of John’s Gospel. Other manuscripts place it at the end of Luke or in various places in John 7.

The pericope adulterae has all the earmarks of a pericope that was looking for a home. It took up permanent residence, in the ninth century, in the middle of the fourth gospel.

So when you take a closer look at the issue, the Bible is very solid on being in favor of capital punishment for serious crimes. I think people who take the Bible seriously should take this view as well. If you go outside the Bible, well, then you might come up with a different view.

Polemics

What is the purpose of capital punishment? Does it deter crime?

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Why do some people support the death penalty? Because research conducted by multiple teams of scholars at multiple universities have shown that the death penalty deters crime.

Excerpt:

“Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it,” said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. “The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect.”

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. “The results are robust, they don’t really go away,” he said. “I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) — what am I going to do, hide them?”

Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 that capital punishment has deterrent effects. They all explore the same basic theory — if the cost of something (be it the purchase of an apple or the act of killing someone) becomes too high, people will change their behavior (forego apples or shy from murder).

And specifically:

• Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

• The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

• Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

In case anyone is wondering what sort of crimes are deterred by the death penalty, you can read this graphic description of a recent death-penalty crime.

What sort of crimes are eligible for the death penalty?

Here’s an example of a death-penalty eligible crime from the Hartford Courant. (WARNING: graphic!)

Excerpt:

A Superior Court jury today sentenced Steven Hayes to death for the murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Hayley and Michaela, during a seven-hour home invasion, robbery and arson at their Cheshire home in July 2007.

Outside the courthouse after the verdicts, Hawke-Petit’s father, the Rev. Richard Hawke, said “There are some people who do not deserve to live in God’s world.”

Asked what he had in his heart, Dr. William Petit Jr. struggled with his answer. “….Probably many of you have kids,” he said, pausing to choke back tears. “Michaela was an 11-year-old little girl…tortured and killed in her own bedroom, surrounded by her stuffed animals….”

Petit then talked about his daughter Hayley’s bright future and her strength and the children that his wife, Jennifer, helped.

“So, I was really thinking of the tremendous loss” during the verdict, Petit said, adding that he was pleased with it, but “mostly I was sad for the loss we have all suffered.”

Asked if he thought there’d be closure now, Petit said, “There’s never closure. There’s a hole…. with jagged edges…that may smooth out with time, but the hole in your heart and the hole in your soul” remains.

“This isn’t about revenge,” Petit said. “Vengeance belongs to the Lord. This is about justice.”

[…]The jury sentenced Hayes to death on six counts: killing Hawke-Petit and Michaela and Hayley in the course of a single action; killing a child under the age of 16; killing Hawke-Petit in the course of a kidnapping; killing Hayley in the course of a kidnapping; killing Michaela in the course of a kidnapping; and killing Hawke-Petit in the course of a sexual assault.

[…]Hayes, 47, of Winsted, was convicted Oct. 5 of breaking into the Petit home, beating Petit, tying up and torturing the family as Hayes and another man ransacked the home for cash and valuables and tortured the family for seven hours. Testimony during Hayes’ trial showed that at one point in the break-in, Hayes forced Hawke-Petit to go to the bank to withdraw money. During that time, according to testimony, Komisarjevsky sexually assaulted Michaela Petit, 11.

When Hawke-Petit and Hayes returned from the bank, Hayes raped and strangled Hawke-Petit. The house was doused with gasoline and set on fire as the intruders fled, testimony showed. Hayley, 17, and Michaela died of smoke inhalation.

[…]Prosecutors used the words of Hayes’ younger brother Matthew to counter testimony that home-invasion crime was an aberration in Hayes otherwise troubled but basically nonviolent life.

Matthew Hayes portrayed his brother as a conniving, sadistic, violent thief who saw Matthew take countless beatings from his brutal father for Steven Hayes’ misdeeds. At one point, Steven Hayes held a gun to Matthew’s head, according to the statement, which was given to state police after the home invasion.

Examples of Hayes’ sadistic behavior toward his brother included hooking Matthew to the garage door by his belt and raising the door up and down, and holding Matthew’s hand to a red-hot burner. Matthew said his brother’s life of crime was not a result of bad parenting or poor childhood. He said Hayes never learned to take responsibility for his actions.

Sometimes, I think that we have stopped judging others because we do not want to be judged ourselves. We hope that by not judging anyone, that we will somehow escape being judged by anyone – especially by God himself. The opposition to punishing the guilty is, I think, really just a way of expressing our desire to do away with the idea that we will finally face judgment.We seem to be able to ignore the victim’s needs and act as if the criminal is the victim. We act as if deterring a crime with punishment has no impact on the decision making of people who are considering whether to commit the crime. But crime isn’t some random action – criminals do consider what will happen to them if they are caught. We send potential killers a message by being willing to punish the ones we catch. But if we treat them like victims, then others watching are not going to be deterred from committing crimes.