I've read a few things by Randy Balko before, especially regarding the Corey Mayo case. Mayo was the guy who was sleeping at home with his daughter in a crib nearby when police knocked down his door. Of course it was the middle of the night, he was groggy, and had no reason to expect that someone knocking down his door was a peaceful officer of the law, so he pulled a gun and shot an intruder. Turns out it was a cop, and they busted down the wrong door, they had a warrant for the place next door or something like that. Anyway, look up Corey Mayo if you want to read more.

I just discovered Balko's actual blog, The Agitator. Lots of stuff on how local police are becoming more and more paramilitary, and also falling more and more under the influence of the Federal government. Not good. And at the very bottom was an entry about a kid who had gone through chemo and the tumor came back bad the next year so his parents decided not to put him through chemo and instead tried a homeopathic treatment. The state decided to take the child away from them. Balko and I agree that in this case the parents had every right to make this choice. As Balko states, it's not quite like a Christian Scientist kid dying of an untreated ear infection. The chemo obviously wasn't working, all it was doing was destroying the kid faster.