In my "to post about" queue for a couple of days but certainly not forgotten has been a recent development in Washington, DC which Lyssa pointed out to me not too long ago. It seems that things are going far too smoothly in the nation's capital, so the decision has been made to randomly search the belongings of people traveling on the DC Metrorail or Metrobus lines, effective 28 October 2008 (registration may be required, BugMeNot for the win), which happens to be the day the new measures were announced. They're citing the upcoming presidential election as their reason for …

It seems that LA police completely missed something shady happening that was not only reported by the public but recorded by a securicam: J. Random Stranger poured a bottle of mercury out on a subway platform, and the hazmat crew arrived eight hours later to clean up the spill. The Joint Terrorism Task Force says that this wasn't even a criminal act, which it probably wasn't but for future reference it actually is because mercury is toxic, and in fact there are special procedures that must be followed to clean it up. However, the guy who spilled the mercury hunted …