On the Elizabeth Smart case: We were going to leave it alone, we posted that we were happy she was home and we noted that she may been brainwashed. We had second thoughts about bringing up that her mother had found the creep who abducted Elizabeth panhandling and she not only gave him $5.00, but brought him home and gave him a job. Who does that? With young kids at home? We didn't want to be among the first to bring that up in the midst of the homecoming celebration. But now things are beginning to seem a little funky with the case again (like they were last summer when the Smarts took to the airwaves every day) and Mr. Smart is calling for "Amber Alerts" to become law and we don't care for "Amber Alerts" any more than we care for "Megan's Laws." So we've now decided the Smarts' actions are fair game.

Jeff Taylor over at Reason's Hit and Run tackles the Smarts head-on.

Taking events at face value, the whole episode was close to self-inflicted.

Lois Smart broke two cardinal rules of living in a modern, metropolitan area. One, never give money to panhandlers, especially ones in long flowing robes. And two, never, ever invite them to do work for you at your home. This goes double if you have young children at home. And if you have an achingly beautiful teenage daughter, well, puzzle it out.

It might seem cruel to point these facts out, but Ed Smart is on a crusade to get Congress to pass a national "Amber alert" law. Such federal action would help save kids like his daughter, he avers.

Let's just assume that is true -- another federal law that makes everyone safer. OK. Heard that. The law would still be no substitute for parental awareness of the threats their kids may face. We're not talking raging paranoia, just common sense.

Is there a homeless shelter or drug treatment center nearby? A lot of construction going on in the neighborhood? Other commercial traffic or workers? Who are your kids' peers? What are their brothers and sisters and moms and dads like? And is that street preacher in flowing robes following you home?

We hope Jeff won't mind that we raided the comments to his post to bring you the following snippets:

Jeff, be careful what you think and even more careful what you say. Next incident the activist parent will push for a federal law making it a felony to voice any appreciation of a young girl's beauty. Punishable by mandatory reeducation, close monitoring and a place on the offenders'registry. You'll also have to surrender a DNA sample, just in case.

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That amber alert shit sounds kinda creepy. what happens when the wrong car gets tagged and a few right minded citizens kill an alleged - but innocent - abductor?

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Hey gang - let's pass an unenforceable, pointless law that will unnecessarily violate the Constitutional rights of the innocent and serve no practical purpose, except to the demagogue politicians who proposed it. It's easy, you know: just name the law after a child...

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The circumstances of this case are so extreme and bizarre that it's basically useless to try to draw any conclusions from it, other than the fact that we live in a big world, sometimes some really weird shit happens, and there's nothing we could have feasibly done to prevent it. You seem to understand this basic point later when you point out the silliness inherent in passing a federal law because of this one case.

To be clear, we don't agree with other posts we've read speculating that Elizabeth ran away or was sent away because she was pregnant. We don't believe that Mr. or Mrs. Smart had any complicity in her disappearance. But we do think there's a lot more to this story and that it involves the family. We also can't forget that one person--handyman, Richard Ricci-- was falsely labeled a suspect in the abduction, an accusation that generated so much media heat that he was arrested for a violation and incarcerated in hopes he would talk. Instead, he died in jail, protesting his innocence. We hope the Smart family and the police apologize to his widow and stepson.

[comments now closed.]