Students Suspended For Tebowing

What the devil is going on with teenagers today?

These little rapscallions have really gone too far now, and are in need of severe punishment.

Oh, they're not fighting in the hallway, smoking in the boys room, or rolling joints in the stairwells.  Those things are pretty commonplace these days, and are frequently handled with a simple "move along" from an armed hall monitor.

No, a recent collection of students in a Long Island high school were committing atrocities far more despicable, something that no self-respecting principal should ever be forced to permit.

Fortunately for the good people in that moral, heavenly place known as New York, the top guy at Riverhead High School has nipped these horrific actions in the bud, suspending the culprits for their misdeeds.

Their shameful, disruptive, unconscionable actions?

Taking a knee as if in prayer in the middle of the hallway.

It's a minor craze sweeping the sports nation lately, and even has a cool name: "Tebowing."  [Click here to see an example of "Tebowing."]

The action is a tribute to uber quarterback and Denver Broncos miracle maker Tim Tebow.

Tebow himself is quite a troublemaker, and will probably be run out of the NFL before the year is over.

Here in the 21st century, it is almost a requirement of employment that you must be a drug abuser, steroid user, wife beater, a regular strip club patron, a barroom thug, or in one notable case even a murderer, in order to be a player in the National Football League. 

This Tebow guy is none of those things.  Instead, he does something that simply cannot be allowed to continue:

He believes in God, and tells everybody within earshot.

After big plays, he doesn't dance in the end zone like an epileptic porn star, shout obscenities in the face of opponents while beating his chest hard enough to make King Kong wince, spike the ball in the middle of a choreographed huddle, or take out a Sharpie and autograph the goal posts like any decent, normal NFL player today.

No, he goes to the sideline, takes a knee, and bows his head in prayer.

It is such an oddity, such outrageous behavior, that it has caught on around the country.  The stance has earned the name "Tebowing."

And it isn't just an act, like the athlete wearing 14 gold chains around his neck and two pounds of pot in his gym bag who begins every locker room interview with "I want to thank God, my agent, and my mama."

Tebow doesn't just talk the talk.  He walks the walk.  He goes to church, does charity work in the community, and works hard to be something pre-teen football fans haven't seen in decades: a role model.

Which is why it's a certainty he won't last in the NFL.

But right now, he's on a hot streak.  Since becoming the starting quarterback for the Broncos mid-season, he has taken that team from last place in the division with a 1-5 record to first place in the AFC West with six straight wins (most of them last minute or overtime heart stoppers), and seven wins in the last eight games to compile a record of 8-5.

His dazzling play, devotion to God, and squeaky clean image have inspired venomous detractors and rabid fans across the country. 

Among them is a group of four high school athletes at Riverside High School who have been "Tebowing" in the halls for the last week or two.  [Click here for news story.]

Originally, it was just four jock buddies having fun.  But like most things as novel and rare as a professional athlete without a criminal record, it caught on among other high schoolers.  According to the school's administration, dozens of students had started doing the move in the middle of the hallway.  Apparently it was clogging the halls and disrupting the flow of students on their way to the bathroom for a smoke or to the stairwells to fire up a blunt.

So instead of employing the "move along, move along" tactic usually employed by overzealous high school administrators after a cafeteria shooting, the school suspended the four athletes they deemed to be the ringleaders of this nefarious action.

So to any parents out there, please take heed and warn your children.  Schools today will tolerate a lot of things, including rampant crystal meth use, death-inducing band hazings, sex between hot female teachers and their male students, sex in the showers involving football coaches and 10-year-olds, and all the students you can possibly cram into a classroom who are actually in this country illegally.  But they shouldn't dare do anything in a main passageway that might resemble prayer. 

If they must take such an action, they should find a secluded area in which to do it.  Of course, that might be a chore, since the bathrooms, stairwells, classrooms and showers are already full.  Maybe the principal's office would be a good place, since it doesn't seem to be getting much use lately.

TSA Picks On Teen For Gun Design On Purse

There are plenty of federal agencies that land on the Top 10 list of "Most Hated" for many Americans. 

It's actually easy pickings, beginning with that most dysfunctional, corrupt, greedy, and disharmonious of entities, the United States Senate and House of Representatives.  It's easy to hate an organization that is so steeped in partisan hatred and disregard for the people they are supposed to serve.

But they aren't alone. 

Wanna talk universal hatred?  Just bring up the IRS. 

Then you have partisan hatred.  To get a right winger wound up, just mention the EPA or the federal Welfare agency.  To see a left winger jump up and down, bring the CIA or the Federal Reserve board into the conversation.

However, even the most ordinary, lowly citizen can join hands with the most upper crust celebrity and millionaire in despising one particular federal agency, which is loathed equally by every socio-economic strata:

The TSA.

What does TSA stand for?  Below is the top 12 from a list of 38 compiled by JumboJoke.com.  My personal favorite is number 12.

1. Teaching Submission to Americans
2. Touchin', Squeezin', Arrestin'
3. Theatrical Security Agents
4. Taking Scissors Away
5. Too Stupid for Arby's
6. They See All
7. Trained Sodomy Adminstrators
8. Taking Security Away
9. Touching Sensitive Areas
10. Taliban Sharia Advocates
11. Terrorists Succeeded? Assuredly
12. Tough Shit, America!

The Transportation Security Administration was in the news again last week after a teenage girl from Florida was stopped and detained by TSA officials for carrying a gun.

It wasn't a pistol or rifle.  It wasn't a replica.  It wasn't a toy.

It was a design on her purse.

The front of the girl's purse had metal studs and the raised metal outline of a six-shooter.

She didn't have any problem with the TSA hasslers in Florida.  But on her way back from Virginia, bored TSA bullies from Norfolk International Airport stopped her, pulled her aside, and held her in custody long enough to make her miss her flight home.

The palm size gun design was a decoration that an untrained chimpanzee could have figured out in two, maybe three seconds.

The TSA's pretend cop wannabes went on red alert.

Because they're a government agency, and all federal bureaucracies thrive on something they call "precedent," you can bet there will now be a rash of detainments during the upcoming Christmas travel season.

I predict you will see the TSA stop travelers for possession of:

• a photograph of your favorite Glock
• CD's by the rock band "Revolver"
• DVD's of the old TV western "Have Gun Will Travel"
• any and every video version of "Die Hard"
• the gun-filled video game Call of Duty (just this week Alec Baldwin got into trouble for playing "Words With Friends" on a plane...I suspect he was winning with a three-letter noun starting with "g")
• the new "Juliette Has A Gun" perfume
• suppositories (which are often referred to as "bullets")
• packs of chewing gum (which the TSA illiterates will misread as chewing "gun")

This year, my family won't be flying back East.

Instead, I'm going to give my wife and daughter each a purse with an airplane design on the front.

According to the TSA, it's the same thing.

No Freedom Of Speech Until After High School

It's a question that rivals the eternally debated question "when does life begin?" and is about as impossible to answer.

The question is, "when does Freedom of Speech begin?"

If you look to the U.S. Constitution, the document which outlines that freedom in the Bill of Rights, you'll notice there is no age requirement or expiration date listed.

However, a recent action by a Kansas high school principal would seem to indicate that the right doesn't apply until after a student leaves the public school system.

The question revolves around a startling incident last week in which 18-year-old Emma Sullivan tweeted to friends after listening to a speech by Kansas governor Sam Brownback that the governor "sucked."  She was there as part of a school project in government.

Brownback's staff, which is constantly scanning the internet for instances of the governor's name, came across the posting.  The staffers contacted the young woman's school over the remark.

When she went back to school, the student was called into the principal's office, chastised, and ordered to write a letter of apology.

First, it's chilling in an Orwellian way that government officials are monitoring the Twitter conversations of teenagers.  The statements aren't private, but you wouldn't expect government henchmen to be listening in on loud street corner conversations, which is essentially the essence of Twitter.

Second, it's not like someone made a dire threat or a libelous statement about the governor.  A lot of people would even agree with the opinion.  But that's what it was, an opinion made by an American who even happens to be of voting age.

So why would members of one government agency (the governor's staff) contact a member of another government agency (the school principal) to single out and punish a citizen for expressing an opinion?

And how dare the principal use his power to order someone to apologize for that opinion.

To her credit, Sullivan said no, and was prepared to face the consequences.

Then, the story made it into the newspapers, and everyone started reversing engines.

The governor himself issued an apology, claiming his staff "over-reacted" to the Tweet. 

The principal backed down on his demand for an apology letter from the girl.

Of course, if the media hadn't caught wind of this, it's pretty unlikely that either government official would have backed down.

So while the student is no longer in Dutch, the deeper questions remain.

To keep order in school, rules must be enforced which limit or even prohibit Freedom of Speech.  (The "no talking or you'll have to put your heads on your desks" rule is probably the perfect example).

But where is the line?  Can a school enforce such rules even when the action takes place off school grounds?  Also, this wasn't an issue of disruption, it was a matter of content.  If the girl had tweeted "Governor Brownback looks hot in those corduroys," nothing would have been said.  But because she expressed a negative comment, she is accused of being "disrespectful" and subject to school punishment.

It's all made even more ironic by the fact the girl was attending the speech as part of a class in government.  What lesson do you think she and her classmates will take away from the attempted imposition of punishment for expressing an opinion about an elected official?  Is this really the lesson we want our children to learn about our American way of life?

It sounds as if the governor's staff and the principal could use a refresher course themselves on American government. 

Obviously, they were absent the day the First Amendment was taught during their own high school days.

Now, my only hope is that the governor's staff doesn't catch wind of this op-ed piece while trolling the internet.  I'm a little old to be staying after school, clapping erasers, and writing "I will not say bad things about government leaders" 1,000 times on the blackboard.