[Rick Lee]

I agree too, though I doubt they'll do any jail time. I watched the press conf. yesterday and the sheriff said they were trying to compute all the man hours used in the search to stick them with restitution. I don't get this. Everyone involved in that search is a salaried gov't. employee who would have been paid exactly the same whether they were writing parking tickets, eating donuts or chasing that balloon. Maybe the helo fuel could be considered extra. But I don't know why these guys are responsible for gov't. employees' salaries if we're not charging all criminals for every dime it took in man hours to catch AND convict them. Of course, that would encourage slow investigations. I'd love to see them punished and harshly. But I think it's a pretty bad precedent to say it cost $X million for some law enforcement action, when the taxpayers would have been out just about the same amount of money had that incident never occurred.