Mooninite Watch: Bomb Squad Blows Up Church Boomboxes

One of the problems with escalating law enforcement (and, particularly, escalating SWAT style law enforcement) is that these groups are created in small towns that don't need them out of a sense of paranoia and then find themselves constantly having to justify their funding. That's the reason you have SWAT teams kicking in the doors of high schools and aiming their rifles at kids heads for petty drug busts. That's why you have bomb squads exploding a purse found on a subway platform. And that's what caused the entire city of Boston to panic in the face of a coordinated Mooninite attack of Lite-Brites.

And that's also the reason stuff like this happens:

Three CD players hidden under a cathedral's pews blared sexually explicit language in the middle of an Ash Wednesday Mass, leading a bomb squad to detonate two of the devices. Authorities determined the music players were not dangerous and kept the third one to check it for clues, said police Capt. Gary Johnson.

The CD players, duct-taped to the bottoms of the pews, were set to turn on in the middle of noon Mass on Wednesday at the Roman Catholic Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.

The recordings, made on store-bought blank discs, featured people using foul language and "pornographic messages," Johnson said. He would not elaborate because of the ongoing investigation.

It's clear from reading the article that the bomb squad knew that the cd players weren't dangerous. It was obvious to everyone that they were simply some kid's obnoxious prank. The entire situation could have been defused by pressing a thumb firmly down on the "pause" button. But that didn't happen, and it's plenty obvious why.

Police blow up foul-mouthed CDs that blared in church [CNN]