My niece, who's in the second grade, goes to public school. The other day, there was a flyer sent home with her usual stack of dead trees. The flyer was from an evangelical Christian group, offering bible classes at the school after school hours.

So my brother and I debated (because that's what we do). On one side (my brother's), this is a violation of church-state separation. There's no gray area -- it's wrong, and needs to be stopped. On the other side (mine), as long as the class is not publicly funded and is voluntary, it's ok. I'm as big a proponent of church-state separation as anyone, but if it's not harmful, then why stop it just for the sake of stopping it, just because we can?

But then my sister-in-law brought up a good question: Who are the people holding the classes? Are they licensed? Have their backgrounds been checked? Have they been fingerprinted, as teachers are? After all, they're going to have access to a school full of children. Can they be trusted?

So while my sister-in-law was going to bring it to the PTO's attention, my brother was going to "go have a chat" with the school principal. I'm taking donations now. What's a typical bail amount these days?