I know many Democrats admire and want to emulate Europe, but I had no idea Michigan was already part of the UK. (Apparently, this made it to the Today show...)

A mother who helps neighbors in the morning by watching their children for a short time before the bus comes has been told she's breaking the law.

Lisa Snyder's house is by the corner bus stop on Thornbird Drive just outside Middleville[, Michigan]. Two of her friends who need to leave for work bring their children to her home in the morning before the bus arrives to take them to Thornapple Kellogg schools.

Snyder said she doesn't think she's doing anything wrong, but she was notified by the Michigan Department of Human Services that she has to stop watching the children because her home is not a licensed day-care facility.

Snyder said she's not charging her friends money to watch the children. She said she watches the 5-year-old and 7-year-old from two families for less than an hour.

"It's crazy. I'm just helping out a couple of friends,'' said Snyder. [source]

Just helping friends? Riiiight. Helping them by committing a crime you mean!

Two young detective constables in Aylesbury [UK] became pregnant at the same time and agreed to apply for a job share. Each would look after the other's infant during the long, sometimes unpredictable shifts. It suited the police work and the children; the babies grew up in homely sibling amity for two and a half years. The officers, relaxed and reassured, were presumably all the better at tracking down Buckinghamshire felons.

Then, DC Leanne Shepherd sadly relates, "an Ofsted lady came to the door" and accused her of illegal childminding. Because the arrangement was deemed a "reward", she should have been registered, inspected and compelled to deliver and record the 65 targets of the new early years curriculum. [source]

The answer proposed in the first article is... you guessed it... yet another law.