If you're innocent, why would you resist talking to investigators all by yourself?

Really?

Yes, I realize that this isn't a criminal investigation, but honestly. If I knew there were a chance that any offhand remark or misstatement I made could end up being quoted on C-SPAN by a Senator with an axe to grind...yeah, I'd be pretty damned reluctant to talk. Even if I weren't bright enough to figure that out for myself, I'm pretty sure I can see why my employer would have similar concerns.

So...meh. At the $5 per gigabyte we keep seeing tossed around, that's $150 a month to work from home, with occasional trips into town for supplies and groceries he probably needed to get anyway. Some of us are out of pocket that much for a transit pass to get to work.

Given that it probably costs north of ten thousand dollars in legal fees, commissions, and taxes to buy or sell even an inexpensive home (and the sky's the limit if the property is more valuable), moving out solely to save even a couple of grand a year in bandwidth fees is a pretty dubious move, financially speaking. Bluntly, there's more to this story than is being reported.

I am sure the phone company can pull a T1 out so if it is really that important to his livelihood why not bite the bullet? Dumping a home 2 months after buying would likely cost more.

Giving them an old beater doesn't really solve the problem from the standpoint of the rest of society. A jackass driving a car from 1996 can do just as much damage to pedestrians, cyclists, other cars, and other people as he could driving a car from 2016.

Heck, the 1996 vehicle may encourage more reckless behavior (because the jackass driving doesn't care about the car, and isn't afraid of a few scratches and dents). The 1996 vehicle may be more likely to be involved in a collision even if driven the same way as the late-model vehicle (since safety equipment and systems may be absent, outdated, worn, or broken). The 1996 vehicle may be more dangerous in a collision (predating modern standards for protecting both its occupants and other vehicles or pedestrians).

I'm also a bit surprised by the assumption that so many people here seem to be making that this car will be the teen's own car, or that the teen must be the principal driver. I would imagine that the much more likely scenario is that this will be Mom's or Dad's car (or just the lone family vehicle), and Junior is allowed to drive it from time to time. Mom and Dad also don't want to do all their own driving in a crappy car just to make sure that Junior suffers sufficiently; these systems add some more teeth to the "We'll let you drive the family car, but we have our eyes on you."

Besides, this year's brand new car is next decade's beater anyway. Might as well have a feature that adds value for the resale market.

I didn't really believe that the fire department would come when I pulled the alarm, so I ran a "test".

Who do all these people keep insisting that my actions have to have consequences?

OK. So if you have a clear enough idea of what your ideal language should be then what are you waiting for? Create it.

It's very fortunate that that isn't what happened, then, isn't it?

At the very beginning of any police investigation, police don't - or at least aren't supposed to - start out suspecting anybody at all. They are given (or they collect) information which leads to suspicions: testimony by victims or other witnesses, surveillance video, credit card and phone records, fingerprints, blood or semen at the crime scene.

In this case, the police found one line of evidence - DNA from semen - that strongly suggested the crime was committed by one member of a family. They then used a number of other, independent types of evidence to narrow down that original list, and eventually to get a warrant to test their single best suspect's DNA. What is your preferred outcome here, that the police ignore the DNA information that they did have? Or that a warrant to test DNA be denied unless the police have already specifically considered and ruled out all seven billion other people on the planet? Should police not be allowed to investigate cases when their first (or only remaining) lead is DNA evidence?

The police presented a plausible case - not an airtight, conclusive case, but enough to be probable cause - to suspect that the individual at hand was involved in the crime at hand. On the strength of that limited but suggestive evidence, a judge granted a warrant allowing the police to test a DNA sample (not search a house, not seize a vehicle, not throw a man in jail) to rule in or out a match with the DNA they had from their crime scene.

As I noted in my original comment, I can see the potential for a slippery slope type of argument, but the system actually seems to have worked properly in this particular instance. I agree that the situation is vulnerable to errors--but that's true of any criminal trial. A lot of cases have turned on eyewitness testimony that later turns out to be mistaken (often demonstrated by DNA analysis, ironically); does that mean that police should not use witness descriptions to identify suspects to investigate?

Your summary may be a bit too brief for the nuances here. It appears that the police found a partial DNA match with the suspect's father (in, remarkably, a privately-maintained - not state-controlled - DNA database), which in turn suggested that a close relative would be match. The police then examined publicly-available genealogy information to identify candidate relatives. From the genealogy records the police narrowed their search to three candidate individuals. Using various other circumstantial information they finally sought a warrant to collect a DNA sample from just one individual.

While I agree that there are legitimate "slippery-slope" concerns, based on the (admittedly brief) description in the linked article, it seems that in this particular instance reasonable steps were taken to minimize the scope and inconvenience (to potentially-innocent individuals) of the investigation. It wasn't a scattershot "We must test the DNA of all your male relatives!", but rather "We want to test the DNA of your one male relative whom we also suspect for reasons (a), (b), and (c)."

Right. Because everybody wants to rule the world...

Best to wait until they have the whole nausea problem settled. This is one case where you don't want to fall victim to the Ludovico technique.

That hasn't been my experience. After doing some real cycling after a winter of spin classes my average speed on the road bike was much better than it had other times when starting out in the livable seasons.

If I'm going to man the hell up, then I plan to do it by moving to a place with a reasonable climate and experiencing enjoyable cycling all year round.

That's what gyms with stationary bikes are for. There's no way in hell you'd get me out in this miserable, fuck-all, if-mother-nature-were-an-actual-person-I'd-skin-her-alive weather.