"Errorism," indeed...

Sally, the brilliant and beautiful Bride of Upper Left, has decreed that I post on the big bust in Prosser, where a vigilant art teacher has acted to rescue the republic from the scourge of 15 year old cartoonists. As a former public school teacher, the BBBUL is far more attuned to this kind of issue than I, but she's right. This one is worth noting, both as a matter of regional content and a potentially important civil liberties case.

Here's the stuff that led to a call to the local cop shop, which led to a call to the Secret Service, which led to all this furor.

* A cartoon of an effigy of Bush's head on a stake.

* A cartoon featuring Bush dressed as the devil, firing off rockets

* A cartoon with the caption "End the War -- on errorism"

* A cartoon one of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in flames

Nothing, as far as I can tell from the reporting, that actually threatens the President or another student. There's some indication that the kid, in fact, feels threatened by a government that wages reckless war and expresses disdain for our founding principles. That seems like a pretty patriotic impulse to me.

About the only one talking is Prosser Police Chief Win Taylor, who may have been better off thinking more and saying less (most folks usually are, in fact). He felt that the pictures were "...a threat against the president of the United States. And we notified the Secret Service because that's their bailiwick."

"We assume that he deliberately took an action of his own free will, which he reasonably should have known was against the code of conduct," the Chief said, although I'm not entirely what 'code of conduct' he's talking about, or how the young artist may have violated it. Maybe there is a (probably illegal) school rule that prohibits 'disrepectful' representations of the POTUS, maybe not, but absent an actual threat, what would inspire a call to police in the first place, or the Secret Service after?

Just your standard butt-covering paranoia.

"We've been in a different ballgame because police were attacked after what happened in Columbine," the Chief confessed. "Since then, we've all been under the gun with all these mandated policies for school security plans. ... Now for whatever reason, it's 'Oh, we want you to use discretion again.' We can't win."

Well, I don't know if they can win or not. I know that there seem to be a long list of losers in this case, from the teacher to the Chief. Only the kids seems to come off as a sensible and mature. A classmate of the artist, who finds the whole thing "Ridiculous and kind of embarrassing," says he's spoken to his friend and reports that he "didn't seem too freaked out, but (felt) like they're blowing this way out of proportion."

And they are.