And in the corner of the Nanny State,

we have, first, Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers who says Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain's most senior police forensics expert.
...
A recent report from the think-tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) called for children to be targeted between the ages of five and 12 with cognitive behavioural therapy, parenting programmes and intensive support. Prevention should start young, it said, because prolific offenders typically began offending between the ages of 10 and 13. Julia Margo, author of the report, entitled 'Make me a Criminal', said: 'You can carry out a risk factor analysis where you look at the characteristics of an individual child aged five to seven and identify risk factors that make it more likely that they would become an offender.' However, she said that placing young children on a database risked stigmatising them by identifying them in a 'negative' way.
Anybody want to bet that the same kind of thing that 'experts' say calls for kids to be drugged with Ritalin will also do as 'causing suspicion the child will become a criminal'? Or however they'll word it. Also note this:
'The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people,' Pugh told The Observer. However, he said the notion of universal sampling - everyone being forced to give their genetic samples to the database - is currently prohibited by cost and logistics.
So 'cost and logistics' is the only reason seen by those in favor of not forcing everyone in the damned country to give a DNA sample. Just bloody wonderful.

Second, Los Angeles PD actually has a 'Wrong Doors Unit' to repair damage done when they break into the wrong house. Like the guy at Reason said, I don't know whether it's good they're dealing with at least this aspect of it, or bad that it happens so damn often that they need a 'unit' for it. Also, I'm curious: he says that last year he did eight doors, but later on it says "Quite often, Jenkins said, wrong doors can get busted down in the early morning hours as armed officers clad in riot gear conduct raids." I don't know about you, but eight times doesn't quite match up with 'quite often', to me.

What the welfare state has done to Sweden. It's bad.

More later