The other day I wrote about out-of-control government prosecuting a woman for doing something technically criminal -- buying cold medicine for two different family members at two different stores on two different days within the same week.

But this one is even worse -- the criminalization of neighbors helping neighbors.

A West Michigan woman says the state is threatening her with fines and possibly jail time for babysitting her neighbors' children.

Lisa Snyder of Middleville says her neighborhood school bus stop is right in front of her home. It arrives after her neighbors need to be at work, so she watches three of their children for 15-40 minutes until the bus comes.

The Department of Human Services received a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home. DHS contacted Snyder and told her to get licensed, stop watching her neighbors' kids, or face the consequences.

"It's ridiculous." says Snyder. "We are friends helping friends!" She added that she accepts no money for babysitting.

Mindy Rose, who leaves her 5-year-old with Snyder, agrees. "She's a friend... I trust her."

Good grief! This is the sort of stuff we grew up with when I was a kid. My house was where the kids next door came after school until their mom, a nurse, got off at 4:00. Miss Carmen down the street watched some of us when our parents had doctors appointments and were running late. That sort of stuff isn't day care -- it is normal human interaction.

My diagnosis? Too many laws caused by too much government.

Posted by: Greg at 10:22 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 265 words, total size 2 kb.

Big business gets a bad name too often. But stories like this one happen regularly, but don't always get reported.

Because of caring people and a caring company, a terminally ill little Green Forest girl was flown home Friday by air ambulance from M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, so she can spend her last days surrounded by the people who love her most.

Jada Harper, who turned seven on Sept. 1, has an inoperable malignant tumor in her brain and is in a coma with a ventilator doing her breathing for her. She has been at the famous cancer center in Houston since July, but her situation is now at the point not much else can be done to help her.

The story is tragic -- a little girl dying of cancer being brought home todie -- but the story itself is beautiful. After all, there is still a lot of caring and decency in this world -- the sort of thing that leads us to help others in their time of need.

Posted by: Greg at 10:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 185 words, total size 1 kb.

When it is clear that a legal product is being legitimately purchased for its intended purpose, a prosecutor ought to make a common sense decision to drop charges against someone who committed a technical violation of the law.

But for some reason, prosecutors in Indiana simply refuse to do so.

When Sally Harpold bought cold medicine for her family back in March, she never dreamed that four months later she would end up in handcuffs.

Now, Harpold is trying to clear her name of criminal charges, and she is speaking out in hopes that a law will change so others wonÂ’t endure the same embarrassment she still is facing.

“This is a very traumatic experience,” Harpold said.

Harpold is a grandmother of triplets who bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a weekÂ’s time.

Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period.

That the purchase of two boxes of over-the-counter cold medicine is a crime is ludicrous. Moreover, that law enforcement and prosecutors still insist upon prosecuting this woman despite freely admitting that these over-the-counter purchases were not for illicit drug production and were, in fact, intended for legitimate use by sick family members is a serious abuse of the judicial process and waste of taxpayer money.

My diagnosis in this case? Indiana is clearly suffering from too many laws and too much government.

Posted by: Greg at 11:57 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 302 words, total size 2 kb.

1 There's good info here. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog. Keep up the good work mate!

Posted by: RobD at Tue Oct 6 07:42:30 2009 (e/dq4)

2 Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again - taking your feeds too now, Thanks.

Posted by: RobD at Tue Oct 6 08:49:39 2009 (UQDK3)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

How dare the justice system pursue a cretin who drugged and then used force to vaginally and anally rape a child, admitted his guilt, and then fled to avoid justice!

Let there be no doubt about what he did to this girl. And that he voluntarily entered a plea of guilty to over three decades ago.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland on a decades-old arrest warrant stemming from a sex charge in California, Swiss police said Sunday.

* * *

The director pleaded guilty in 1977 to a single count of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, acknowledging he had sex with a 13-year-old girl. But he fled the United States before he could be sentenced, and U.S. authorities have had a warrant for his arrest since 1978.

Out of fear that a judge might actually make him go to prison for this deviant sexual assault on a minor, Polanski fled the country to France, a land that would not extradite him despite his having committed crimes that would have drawn a jail sentence there.

There are those in the press, Europeans, and the “celebrities can do no wrong” community who think that this is a miscarriage of justice, that we should allow Polanski to walk away a free man. I say no – and if Polanski wants to try to prove that there was some sort of prosecutorial misconduct in his case that merits a different disposition than the time to which he was sentenced over three decades ago, then he can come to this country and make his case – just like any other child molester.

Where are Nancy Grace and Jane Velez-Mitchell to cause a stir when we need one?

Posted by: Greg at 11:32 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 304 words, total size 4 kb.

Come on -- tell me that this story doesn't at least make you thing a little bit about the classic movies and television series.

Hours earlier, someone had broken into John Pontolillo's house and taken two laptops and a video-game console. Now it was past midnight, and he heard noises coming from the garage out back.

The Johns Hopkins University undergraduate didn't run. He didn't call the police. He grabbed his samurai sword.

With the 3- to 5-foot-long, razor-sharp weapon in hand, police say, Pontolillo crept toward the noise. He noticed a side door in the garage had been pried open. When a man inside lunged at him, police say, the confrontation was fatal.

What Pontolillo did was cleanse the gene pool of one very stupid criminal -- who, shall we say, lost his head.

No charges are pending -- yet. Let's hope that the Baltimore DA treats this kid as he deserves and pins a medal on him rather than taking him to trial.

Posted by: Greg at 04:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 175 words, total size 2 kb.