First rule of lazy policework: when you find something you can't explain, blame it on a religion you don't understand. Despite protests from experts that grave-robbing is not an aspect of the Santeria religion, police in Florida insist on focusing their investigation into the disappearance of a little boy's remains on practitioners of the faith. Although both their own ritual crimes expert and a respected professor of religion have attempted to set the record straight- that grave robbery is not an aspect of the religion- the investigators on the case have already concluded that due to the difficulty of removing the remains, it must have been carried out by 'extremists' in the religion, which appears to be an on-the-spot phrase cooked up so they can continue to implicate the faith, even if the crime is cleary outside the boundaries of accepted religious practice. Another case of 'everyone knows' allowing stereotype to substitue for fact- so while the police are investigating the 'fringes,' everyone else can go on believing their Lukumi neighbors are apt to sacrifice their terrier or steal their grandmother's skull for occult rituals. After all, if the police can believe stupid things, why can't everone else?

The Indy Star takes the right approach, looking to believers to describe their own faith in its profile of a local Spiritualist church.

If you're a cable subsriber, check out the Lifetime Channel's Not Like Everyone Else, which airs Monday night at nine. The movie purports to tell the story of Brandi Blackbear, the Wiccan student who was notoriously expelled from school at age fifteen, accused of practicing black magick and making a teacher ill with a "hex."