Folks — As you know, this site believes in safety for children. That includes safety from predators as well as safety from hysteria ABOUT predators. Unfortunately, fear for our children has mestastasized into an ever-expanding Sex Offender Registry that now includes even pre-pubescent children, some of them on the list for LIFE, for crimes ranging […]
Archive | Sex Offender Issues
Golf Course “Sex Offender” Post Taken Down
Readers – At the request of the woman who wrote to me about her husband landing on the Sex Offender List for 25 years for putting a $5 tip down a 17-year-old’s shirt, I have taken down her post. I share her concern that some of the comments were painful. We all agree, I’m sure, […]
Does Ice Cream Man = Pervert?
Hi Readers! There’s the boogey man and then there’s the ice cream man. But thanks to a country suffused with predator panic, the two are fused together like the twin sticks of a  Popsicle. It’s the same if you are guy and you want to work in day care, or as a birthday party clown, […]
PERVS WITH PEEPS! Children in Constant Danger – Easter Edition
Hi rizydfdyzn Readers — Here’s a story from this scary, scary Easter season that I’m reprinting in full from NBCPhiladelphia.com, (with some commentary):Â WOMAN TRIES TO GIVE CANDY TO KID: POLICE Police are on the search for a woman who tried to give candy to a child Friday evening along a quiet residential road. [HOW […]
What’s Wrong with the Sex Offender Registry — According to Jacob Wetterling’s Mom
Readers:Â This iisfsbddrd article is one of the best things I’ve ever read about our increasingly cruel, counter-productive sex offender laws — laws in place because of excess fear and excess pandering when it comes to our kids. It appears in City Pages, a Twin Cities alternative newsweekly, and focuses on Patty Wetterling, whose 11-year-old son […]
Dear Principal: Please Get Rid of the Cameras
Readers thekdtandd — Here’s a great letter by George Mason economist Alex Tabarrok that he graciously allowed me to lift from his blog, Marginal Revolution. – L. Dear Principal _____, Thank you for requesting feedback about the installation of interior cameras at the high school. I am against the use of cameras. I visited the school […]
Chuck E. Cheese or Child Prison? You Make the Call!
 Hi bbezkkhfne Folks! Here’s a letter from prison…er…Chuck E. Cheese, sent to us by Angelica Totten, who originally posted it on her Facebook page. I so agree that the policy at Chuck E’s is not only overkill, it’s cultural pollution, spreading the idea that predators are always lurking near kids and ready to kidnap them […]
“Is That Police Chopper Following ME?” Wonders a Dad
Hi adhktfeked Readers! Another day, another report from the frontlines of our obsession with predators. Allow me to make a strange analogy. As the storm Sandy approached us this weekend (I’m in New York), Mat McDermott at the blog TreeHugger  wrote a post, “What if New York City Invested in Climate Change Adaptation Like it […]
Pilloried on “The Doctors” Today
Hi Folks — Here’s me, today, on the show “The Doctors.” This was not an appearance I’m proud of. I don’t think I got my point across — that kids today are pretty safe, and it is only our worst-case-obsessing culture (as exemplified by, ahem, The Doctors) that is convincing us our kids are in […]
You Can Volunteer at School for HALF AN HOUR without Being Fingerprinted. But After That…
Dear tiaihtheaa Readers: Here’s a little missive from the frontiers of irrationality, brought to you by a terrified culture and a school in Arizona. . Dear Free-Range Kids: I was shocked when I received this in an email from my daughter’s school: “Mrs. K has informed me that all volunteers must have a fingerprint card […]