Girl Scouts make for some interesting news

It's that time of year for Girl Scout cookies. Seeing the colorful boxes and teal-vested troop members brings up the topic of scout- and club-involvement at an early age.

This year, though, there seems to be a lot of bad news when it comes to Girl Scouts in the news.

First, there's the whole switching-bakery thing that has resulted in some pretty below-par cookies.

Then, there's the Girl Scout "volunteer" (an older male, which is odd in the first place) who was accused of molesting a young child. Supposedly, he passed a background check with the Girl Scouts program, which has to make you wonder how thorough they really are.

On a side note, when I worked for a middle school over this past summer as a youth development specialist for the Center for Community Solutions, my interview and background-check process lasted more than a few weeks and included several interviews, fingerprinting, drug testing, and they spoke with each of my three references for more than 10 minutes each.

Then there's a bit of a bizarre project Girl Scouts have undertaken: Collecting old socks and stuffing them with cat nip, then giving them to stray cats. Don't get me wrong, it's sweet, and I love animals, but now there are just a bunch of dirty, herbed socks laying around alleys or what? The program is called Operation Happy Sock and was started in 2004.