"A lot of poor choices were made...not that a poor choice means families should be subjected to this ordeal...but still. A lot of poor choices. Innocence is one thing. Stupidity is another."

What poor choices would those be? Having childern, and taking their pictures?

The problem is people like you, who literally ruin the lives of others because of basic stupidity or evil intent, it's hard to tell which.

Nothing the letter writer wrote is a poor choice, nor is anything he did stupid. Children go around naked. There is nothing wrong with this.

That you, and some sick freak at a photo lab, can't understand the difference between a father taking a picture of his daughter swimmming and actual child porn is disgusting.

Society is being ruined because people, in the name of caution, have thrown all reasonablness out the window.

Naked child breast feeding because sexual stimulation.

Child with plastic toy keychain in the shape of a science fiction gun becomes a criminal who intended to kill everyone.

Let me make it clear in case the subject line is misunderstood, people like bgibbons are destroying America and are a danger to everyone around them.

They abdicate any type of actual responsibility by proclaiming zero tolerance and other inane stands.

"You can have zero tolerance for [child pornography, child abuse, violence in schools, terrorism] or you can have people investigated only when it's obvious they're guilty. You can't have both."

That's a false choice, and it's this type of lack of reasoning that both child abuse and false accusation can increase.

Zero tolerance is not a principaled stand because you can never be free of anything, including child abuse and child porn. This doesn't mean that its existence means it is tolerated.

What rational and ethical policy demands is that we reduce the incidence of such behaviors with as little harm to the innocent as possible.

The Doctor's creed of "first do no harm" applies to other policies as well.

"No one wants to be the one who made the wrong judgment call. Do you want to be the photo lab technician who learns years later that a kid was being molested and didn't report the warning signs? Do you want to be the DCFS worker who has to explain years later that they gave a free pass to a child abuser?"

That is exactly why current policy is unethical, because it does not take others into consideration. It's a selfish policy designed solely to alleviate one's potential guilt or job, yet it doesn't concern itself with what harm might be caused by the accusation.

Ethics requires understanding that your action can cause harm as well as prevent it, and those have to be balanced. Otherwise, why not simply report any picture of a child or why would DCFS ever release a child? There's always a chance the child is abused and there's always a chance the parent is unfit, but you can't simply decide that the harmed caused by false accusations causes no harm.

In this case the family was harmed, and the children were harmed. In an attempt to do what you advocate, children who were suffering no harm were hurt. Greater harm resulted of this unethical policy that you are defending.

Why should kids have to "survive" bad parenting at all? And isn't NO alcohol always a better example?

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Why would it be. The question itself assumes there is something inherently wrong with alcohol as opposed to problems with alcohol abuse.

For instance, Germany and France have far fewer problems with Alcohol abuse and alcoholism than the United States, despite the fact that the drinking age is both considerably younger and children grow up seeing adults drink with nearly every meal.

Alcohol is not associated with adulthood in those countries, so you don't have silly drinking games such as taking 21 shots when you turn 21.

Treating alcohol as something forbidden and secret often draws children toward drinking rather than drive them away.

Children seeing responsible drinking and are better prepared to resist peer pressure to drink to excess. It’s dangerous to drink 21 shots to celebrate a birthday. Such antics seem silly to the 21 year old who doesn’t believe that alcohol is some tantalizing ritual into adulthood.

Because there is actual intrigue in who will win. Lance was so dominate for so long that the tour was reduced to underdog vs. Lance.

Now, we have Landis who dropped the yellow jersey in a strategy to try and regain it latter, which he did, but only with a 10 second lead.

The actual winner is in doubt at a time when Lance usually had the Tour locked up barring a major spill.

Now, coverage isn't as good, but is that the fault of Americans or those who provide entertainment. Afterall, the decisions on how much to air where made long before the race began. It's hard to argue that Americans have forgotten about the tour when it's actually the broadcasters who've cut coverage.

When Lance was riding, Yahoo had a section on it's main page about the Tour de France, not most of the time you have to go to the sports section. Interest is down partly because information isn't as readily available.

But there are Americans, who don't race, don't know any racers, who are following the tour. I don't watch it on TV because I don't watch much TV at all, but I following the tour daily in print, something I don't do for most sports.