Every now and then, I’m capable of writing an article that doesn’t make you want to reach for the Xanax.

I have a piece in the November issue of Reason, now online, about how Columbus, Indiana became a jewel of modernist architecture.

Here are some photos I took from my visit:

Several convicted sex offenders in Georgia, home to some of the toughest laws in the country, were told by their probation officers to take up camp in a woods because all but one of the state’s homeless shelters don’t meet state requirements to be 1,000 feet from any place where children may gather.

One of the offenders, 34-year-old William Hawkins, is on the sex offender for an offense committed against a 12-year-old when he was 15 (the crime was “sexual battery,” those it isn’t clear if the sex was coerced).

After the A.P. broke the story of the enclave in the woods over the weekend, the offenders were told yesterday to pack up and move again, though it isn’t exactly clear where they’ll go. They can also be re-arrested for failing to notify state authorities of their new residence after moving. Not having a residence to report apparently isn’t an excuse.

If they’re permitted to cross state lines, I wrote last year about a bridge in Florida they could live under.

Chicago.

Sausalito, California.

…looks at Pottawattamie v. McGhee, which the Supreme Court will hear next month.

The question at issue is whether prosecutors who manufacture evidence that they then use at trial to falsely convict someone should be susceptible to lawsuits.

Yes, there’s actually a chance the answer to that question could end up being no.

Last March, Sally Harpold, an Indiana grandmother of triplets, bought two boxes of cold medication in less than a week. Together, the two boxes contained 3.6 grams of pseudoephedrine, putting her in violation of the state’s methamphetamine-fighting law, which forbids the purchase of more than three grams by one person in a seven-day period.

Police came to Harpold’s home, arrested and handcuffed her, and booked her in a Vermillion County jail. No one believes Harpold was making meth or aiding anyone who was. But local authorities aren’t apologizing for her arrest.

“I don’t want to go there again,” [Vermillion County Prosecutor Nina] Alexander told the Tribune-Star, recalling how the manufacture and abuse of methamphetamine ravaged the tiny county and its families.

While the law was written with the intent of stopping people from purchasing large quantities of drugs to make methamphetamine, the law does not say the purchase must be made with the intent to make meth.

“The law does not make this distinction,” Alexander said…

Just as with any law, the public has the responsibility to know what is legal and what is not, and ignorance of the law is no excuse, the prosecutor said.

“I’m simply enforcing the law as it was written,” Alexander said…

It is up to customers to pay attention to their purchase amounts, and to check medication labels, Alexander said.

“If you take these products, you ought to know what’s in them,” she said.

Harpold’s photo was put on the front page of the local paper as part of an article about the arrest of 17 people in a “drug sweep.” Alexander has generously allowed Harpold to enter a deferral program. If she commits no crimes in the next 30 days, her arrest will be wiped from her record. She’ll still have to pay court costs and attorney fees.

I’ll leave it to Vigo County Sheriff Jon Marvel to (unintentionally) put an exclamation point on the absurdity.

“Sometimes mistakes happen,” Marvel said. “It’s unfortunate. But for the good of everyone, the law was put into effect.

“I feel for her, but if she could go to one of the area hospitals and see a baby born to a meth-addicted mother …”

Because clearly the best way to prevent meth-addicted babies is to arrest women who buy cold medication for their grandchildren.

(Via William Grigg)

Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. I’m ready for autumn.

Yesterday I wrote about a woman in Michigan who was being harassed by state bureaucrats for watching her neighbors kids without a license.

Several readers sent a similar story from Britain about two families who took turns watching one another’s children. Apparently, British authorities determined that the reciprocity amounted to a form of compensation, and ordered them to end the arrangement.

The case is now under review.

Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Area Transit Authority fired Metro bus driver Carla A. Proctor this week after Proctor struck a jogger earlier this month. The jogger was just released from intensive care at a local hospital.

It’s good to know nearly killing someone was—finally—enough to get Proctor out from behind the wheel of a public bus. Her record to that point:

• Proctor had five off-the-job traffic tickets in January alone, including driving an unregistered, unlicensed vehicle.

• In 2003, Proctor got off a bus she had been driving to check a sticky door without first assuring the bus was parked. The bus rolled down a hill without her, damaging eight vehicles, including the bus. Metro paid out $27,000 in damages.

• Also in 2003, Proctor turned into oncoming traffic, at which point her car was struck by another vehicle. Proctor’s car went flying into a fast food restaurant, injuring two women.

• In 2004, Proctor crashed another Metro bus, this time into a parked vehicle, injuring a 72-year-old pasenger.

Given the impressive record of the Metro workers union in helping scofflaws avoid discipline, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see Proctor back on the job.

Back in 2007, D.C. Metro General Manager John B. Catoe, Jr. promised new scrutiny for Metro bus drivers after Metro had five pedestrian fatalities from 2003 to 2006, and three more early in 2007 (New York City, by contrast, had just one bus v. pedestrian fatality over that period). The Washington Post wrote at the time:

[Catoe] said he will begin to monitor drivers — knowing when they are stopped for speeding, drunken driving and other violations while on duty — by coordinating with the motor vehicle departments of Maryland, Virginia and the District. Although many transit agencies already do this, Metro supervisors have no way of knowing whether operators have broken the law unless drivers tell them or the violations are caught on police cameras.

Despite the Proctor fiasco, recent stories about Metro bus drivers chatting on cell phones while driving, Metro train operators opening doors on the wrong side (a potentially fatal mistake), and of course the disastrous Red Line crash in June that killed nine people, Metro’s board of directors voted 5-1 yesterday to grant Catoe a new three-year contract.

State bureaucrats threaten to fine, jail a Michigan woman for watching her neighbor’s kids.

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…

A DHS spokesperson would not comment on the specifics of the case but says they have no choice but to comply with state law, which is designed…

…wait for it…

…to protect Michigan children.

Once again, the Internet covers the important issues the New York Times ignores.

Stellar piece of contrarian journalism by my colleague Katherine Mangu-Ward.

#3: Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”

A triumph of rock ‘n’ roll excess, cheesy riffs, clap drums, and overt sexuality. Or: everything hair rock ought to be. Who can deny the metaphorical depth of lyrics like:  “You got the peaches/I got the cream”?

Eat your heart out, Byron!

True story: This song came out when I was in seventh grade. My home ec teacher that year asked us to put on a show for a kindergarten class. Not really sure what a variety show has to do with home ec, but I digress. Anyway, for our act, I and some of my junior high friends lip-synced this song in front of a class of five-year-olds. Just about everyone in the room was mortified. Except us. We thought we were pretty cool. Today we’d probably be put on a sex offender list.

Stern warning from the ever-earnest, web-loathing Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson: You know who would have loved Internet comment threads? The Nazis.

Alaska.

The waterfront in Buenos Aires.

Wired reports on a fascinating new study showing how eyewitness memory can be influenced by video. Participants in the study were paired with a partner (who was actually part of the research team) to play a gambling-based computer game. The participants bet money on their own ability to answer multiple choice questions. The game relied on participants to honestly pay back money they’d earned when they got a question wrong.

After they had finished with the questions, the participants were told that their partner had cheated, even though the partner hadn’t. One group of students were then shown a video that had been digitally altered to make the partner look as if he had actually cheated. Though they were told to only report their partner if they were 100 percent sure he had cheated, and that the partner would be punished based on their decision, about half the participants who viewed the video still reported their partner for cheating. The second group wassn’t shown the video, but only told of its existence. Just 10 percent of them still reported their partner for cheating.

The article may overstate the study’s lessons a bit, at least in their relevance to the criminal justice world. It seems unlikely that many criminal cases are tainted by video digitally manipulated to show obvious guilt—even if you’re cynical enough to believe law enforcement officials would try it, I’d think it would be pretty easy for someone with expertise in video editing to detect. But the broader point—that eyewitness memory is highly susceptible to suggestion—is worth heeding, and has been confirmed in numerous other studies.

Chicago.

The L.A. Times editorializes for reforming the forensics system:

In 2006, Congress charged the National Academy of Sciences with studying the application of forensic science in the U.S. judicial system. Its findings, released last year, are grim. Almost every branch of forensics but DNA testing — hair and fiber analysis, arson investigations, comparisons of bite marks — lacks the extensive scientific research and established standards to be used in court conclusively…

In February, the science academy issued a report calling for Congress to create a national institute of forensic science, and there is more than enough evidence that one is desperately needed. As an independent agency, not part of the Justice Department, it would be charged with conducting research, setting national standards for forensic disciplines and enforcing those standards. Right now, standards vary wildly. An expert in San Diego, for example, might testify that a fiber is similar to one found at a crime scene, while an expert in San Bernardino might testify that a match is impossible to determine.

Advances in forensics have revolutionized the judicial system, aiding both prosecutors and defense attorneys, exonerating the innocent and confirming the guilty in ways that were impossible just a generation ago. The patchwork state of forensic science should not become an excuse to shy away from its use; rather, the nation should invest in the rigorous research required to standardize techniques and application.

I’m generally skeptical of the “blue ribbon panel” approach to public policy, but there are really two issues that need addressing here, and one of them could actually be addressed by the sort of federal agency the Times endorses.

That problem, as the Times explains, is setting a baseline for what sort of forensic evidence ought to be admitted at trial, and establishing what level of certainty a specialist should be permitted to convey to a jury about his conclusions. The faux science of matching bite marks left on skin to human teeth, for example, should never be admitted into evidence. There’s simply no science to support it. A fiber expert can convey important information to a jury, but should be required to accurately describe the limited evidentiary value of a fiber match. The other problem you see occurs when a forensics specialist testifies truthfully and accurately, but in closing arguments, a prosecutor (and less often, a defense attorney) will exaggerate the degree to which the expert’s testimony implicates or vindicates the defendant.

If a federal standards-setting agency can survey the latest scientific research to issue guidelines trial judges then use to determine what evidence should and should not be allowed, and that appeals courts can then consult when determining when improper or scientifically unsupported testimony was wrongly allowed into evidence or improperly exaggerated by a prosecutor in his closing—that all seems like a good thing. It seems unreasonable to expect a trial judge to keep up on the latest forensic and medical research. I don’t see much problem in having a government agency ensure that we’re using good science in criminal cases.

But the other problem with forensics is the bias—intentional and otherwise—and human error that creeps into crime lab work. A standards-setting federal agency isn’t going to be able to do much about the forensics specialist who gives testimony that falls within the parameters of the agency’s general guidelines, but was influenced, perhaps subtly, by the fact that he reports directly to the DA or state attorney general, or he’s a private specialist whose opinions might be influenced by who’s paying for his services.

That’s a problem that calls for the more comprehensive sorts of reforms that economist Roger Koppl recommended in a 2007 report for the Reason Foundation. Koppl and I also wrote a condensed version of his recommendations for Slate.