Photo by pgkcat.

Boy, this story by Freeman Klopott in the Examiner sure starts bad, doesn’t it? “The District will not meet a July 27 deadline to fall in line with a federal mandate designed to create a national sex offender registry,” Klopott writes, “likely causing the city to lose $250,000 in grant money that it uses for crime prevention.” Man, what a foul-up by the District!

Of course, if you read further, you’ll find some interesting notes. Like how, even with that aforementioned grant money, it’d still cost the District around $450,000 — and that’s just in the first year — to get the new program off the ground. Or the fact that only seven other states have actually complied with the federal call to comply with the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. Or that Councilmember Phil Mendelson, despite the risk of sounding soft on sex crimes, doesn’t believe that the new law would actually improve the sex offender registry which is already in place.

It’s just another reminder to the eighty percent of you who occasionally forget that it’s a good idea to read past the first couple lines of any given story.