Land Of The Pussies -- Pussies Raising Pussies
How pathetic is it that we actually need legislation in this country so parents will not be prosecuted for allowing their kids to walk to school -- unaccompanied by a parent or a team of armed guards? (Which I did just about every day of elementary school, save for maybe the first few days of kindergarten.)

Lenore Skenazy writes at reason.com:

Libertarian-leaning Republican Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a supporter of the Free-Range Kids movement, has proposed groundbreaking federal legislation to protect the rights of kids who want to walk to school on their own.

That's right: a Free-Range Kids provision made its way into the Every Child Achieves Act, a reauthorization of major federal law that governs funding and regulation of elementary education in the United States. The Free-Range Kids portion of the law would permit kids to walk or ride their bikes to school at an age their parents deem appropriate, without the threat of civil or criminal action.

Laws like this one could prevent--or at least deter--local officials from waging harassment campaigns against parents who want give their kids some autonomy. If this had been the law of the land when the Meitivs allowed their kids to walk home by themselves in Maryland, it might have forestalled the whole shebang. (Though, admittedly, the kids were coming back from the park, not school.)