First The Garbage Disposal Breaks, Then The Lawnmower Won't Start, Now I'm Four Months Behind On My Outrage

Via M*chelle M*lkin, the story of the little girl punished for her patriotism continues.

First, despite something of a personal interest, I've lost count. What is this, the nineteenth incident of right-wing persecution of the school year? Oh, well, I suppose there's always the chance this one might turn out to be correct, huh?

Except that sharp-eyed readers have probably already noticed that young persecutee Raven Furbert seems to be wearing a Support Our Troops t-shirt with flag, and I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess she wasn't told she couldn't wear that or we'd have heard about it.

If every time you took your car in the mechanic told you the problem was "the goddam liberal catalytic converter" you'd change mechanics. It should be the same thing with pundits. Nobody operates in real life like this.

I'd be the last one to say school administrators, or any related species of bureaucrat, never go off half-cocked. But fer cryin' out loud. Any school with a hint of gang activity inside its walls has got to be on top of the problem, and they've got to respond in a way that treats every student equally. You'd think it would be so-called conservatives who rallied around beleaguered administrators when this sort of thing made the papers. But no, suddenly they're champions of free speech.

And the Court has been clear about it. Students do not have an expectation of protected speech, anymore than they have an expectation their lockers won't be searched. We can debate that. I think there is a genuine concern about an over-regulated school environment. But those are the terms of the debate, not whether the rules should apply to everyone except right-wing Christian students and teachers. Are they really too delusional to see the difference?

Does that necklace look threatening? No, it doesn't. If the law required me to act in loco parentis for Miss Furbert would I be willing to risk possible violence over it? No, I wouldn't. It's rather sad that a parent can't simply see this reasoning and teach her child to compromise over small things for the benefit of the community at large, but it's sadder yet that the M*lk*ns in this country can't at least approach it with some perspective. Would that they were one-tenth as concerned when people get tossed in a cell for five years without access to an attorney.