Another casualty of the war on drugs.

[extarbags]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/us/24savana.html?_r=2&hp

Forgive me, there are too many highlights to resist:

An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school.

One of her friends since early childhood had moved in another direction. “She started acting weird and wearing black,” Ms. Redding said. “She started being embarrassed by me because I was nerdy.”

When the friend was found with ibuprofen pills, she blamed Ms. Redding, according to court papers.

Lawyers for the school district said in a brief that it was “on the front lines of a decades-long struggle against drug abuse among students.” Abuse of prescription and over-the-counter medications is on the rise among 12- and 13-year-olds, the brief said, citing data from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Given that, the school district said, the search was “not excessively intrusive in light of Redding’s age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.”

In a sworn statement submitted in the case, Safford Unified School District v. Redding, No. 08-479, Mr. Wilson said he had good reason to suspect Ms. Redding. She and other students had been unusually rowdy at a school dance a couple of months before, and members of the school staff thought they had smelled alcohol. A student also accused Ms. Redding of having served alcohol at a party before the dance, Mr. Wilson said.

"I couldn't prove it, but the suspected alcohol use is what turned me on to the case. I knew there was a strong chance that she was also trafficking in NSAIDs."

“Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules,” the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, “only that she was never caught.”

ProTip: spend less time searching vaginas for secret Advil stashes and more time looking up what the word "infer" means, school officials.

The best/worst thing is that I could absolutely see this happening where I went to middle/high school.

[WarrenM]

“Do we really want to encourage cases,” Professor Arum asked, “where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?”
FFS, you're strip searching 13 year olds for ibuprofen pills. When is that EVER going to be appropriate?

[Kraaze]

Jesus, I realize teens are hard to deal with and we need to cut school staff a lot of slack, but this merits many many firings.

[BennyProfane]

Don't you just love their "guilty until proven innocent" attitude? Except that it is really "they are all guilty, we just haven't caught them all at it yet, but we will."

Disgusting. Unfortunately. SCOTUS is almost certainly going to rule in favor of the school.

[WarrenM]

SCOTUS is almost certainly going to rule in favor of the school.
What gives you that impression?

[Aeon221]

[Teachers] suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

All I can muster as a comment is lolololololololol.

After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”

Hawt!

In a friend-of-the-court brief in Ms. Redding’s case, the federal government said the search of her was unreasonable because officials had no reason to believe she was “carrying the pills inside her undergarments, attached to her nude body, or anywhere else that a strip search would reveal.”

This school is so boned.

[Marged]

What gives you that impression?

Well, because they ruled against the Bong Hits 4 Jesus kid? I mean, that was entirely about the school's interest in maintaining a drug-free environment overruling kid's first amendment rights. Why should the 4th amendment be any different?

[extarbags]

Well, because they ruled against the Bong Hits 4 Jesus kid? I mean, that was entirely about the school's interest in maintaining a drug-free environment overruling kid's first amendment rights. Why should the 4th amendment be any different?

Not that I agreed with that ruling, but I think that the vague perviness of this exercise plus the obviously-this-is-ridiculous-on-its-face factor might make them rule the other way this time.

[zengonzo]

The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”

How the fuck do we make our kids confident enough with the idea that it isn't acceptable for any person of authority to demand they strip, but insist that there are some situations where they might have to?


One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

Just to give some perspective on the severity of this case ..

[Marged]

Not that I agreed with that ruling, but I think that the vague perviness of this exercise plus the obviously-this-is-ridiculous-on-its-face factor might make them rule the other way this time.

I live in hope.

[extarbags]

How the fuck do we make our kids confident enough with the idea that it isn't acceptable for any person of authority to demand they strip, but insist that there are some situations where they might have to?

As far as I'm concerned, just do the first part. I didn't see the need for a policy on this until now, but as of this moment I intend to impress upon my children that they should never, ever submit to a strip search. Adults are one thing, but while they're kids, screw it. I don't care if it's something as innocuous as ibuprofen or something as serious as Flintstone vitamins, if the school thinks it's important enough to strip search my kid, it's damned sure important enough for them to call me and have me come down and deal with it.

[Aeon221]

Well, because they ruled against the Bong Hits 4 Jesus kid? I mean, that was entirely about the school's interest in maintaining a drug-free environment overruling kid's first amendment rights. Why should the 4th amendment be any different?

Yes, how dare our children walk about with pills that have the strength of two Advils!!!

They could relieve cramping and muscle pain with only half as many pills!!! The horror!!!

Two pills of prescription Ibuprofen is, what, 800mg? That's 2/3rds of the standard max dosage for OTC use. There are absolutely no known fun uses of these pills (although they are a commonly used coping mechanism for girls dealing with menstrual cramping, as you most likely already know). This is the stupidest and most unwarranted search in the history of mankind, and should have been treated as sexual abuse and resulted in the termination of the individual who demanded it, not a lawsuit by the aggrieved student.

[Marged]

Aeon, clearly you've never experienced the THRILL that comes from bleeding holes in your stomach from taking ibuprofen in excess!

[bago]

Clearly you've never experienced the thrill of being searched in your bleeding holes.

[Tim James]

As a counterpoint: you can hide a lot of stuff in there. Weapons, copies of your math test, disruptive t-shirts...

[Kraaze]

As far as I'm concerned, just do the first part. I didn't see the need for a policy on this until now, but as of this moment I intend to impress upon my children that they should never, ever submit to a strip search. Adults are one thing, but while they're kids, screw it. I don't care if it's something as innocuous as ibuprofen or something as serious as Flintstone vitamins, if the school thinks it's important enough to strip search my kid, it's damned sure important enough for them to call me and have me come down and deal with it.

That's sort of my take as well. I simply can't think of a situation, like any situation at all, that justifies school officials strip searching a child. If something serious enough to warrant a strip search comes up, then it's probably something serious enough to call the cops and parents no?

[RyanMichael]

Aeon, clearly you've never experienced the THRILL that comes from bleeding holes in your stomach from taking ibuprofen in excess!

I hope you're joking.

I was on ibuprofen therapy for my TMD for a long time when it was really bad. I was taking 800mg of ibuprofen (over the counter, that's 4 200mg pills) every 4 to 6 hours about 3 times a day.

It took about a month of that before my stomach started acting up. Maybe I've got a strong gut, but you don't get bleeding from ibuprofen taking a week's worth of high dosages.

Ibuprofen's probably one of the safest and most effective pain-reliever/anti-inflammatories around. Won't kill your liver like acetaminophen, and won't give you cancer or whatever they're acusing naproxen of these days.

[Hanzii]

Aeon, clearly you've never experienced the THRILL that comes from bleeding holes in your stomach from taking ibuprofen in excess!

He said 'fun use'.
Of course you can overdose on the things and have bad things happen. That's true for vitamins too and most OTC drugs.
Over here they don't want shops to sell large bottles of paracetamol because stupid emo girls try to off themselves on them and get cronic liver damage (and perhaps a lingering death) as a result.

Apart from that, I agree fully with Extar.
If any school official did anything remotely like this to one of my kids no matter how sure they were of their case - and even if they were right and it was something actually illegal like pot or extacy - I would be livid.
Get the parents there. If you can't get the parents there, hold the kid till you can.

[extarbags]

I hope you're joking.

I was on ibuprofen therapy for my TMD for a long time when it was really bad. I was taking 800mg of ibuprofen (over the counter, that's 4 200mg pills) every 4 to 6 hours about 3 times a day.

It took about a month of that before my stomach started acting up. Maybe I've got a strong gut, but you don't get bleeding from ibuprofen taking a week's worth of high dosages.

Ibuprofen's probably one of the safest and most effective pain-reliever/anti-inflammatories around. Won't kill your liver like acetaminophen, and won't give you cancer or whatever they're acusing naproxen of these days.

Google Define: Excess (http://www.answers.com/excess).

[BennyProfane]

I certainly HOPE SCOTUS rules in favor of the plaintiff, but I just can't see them doing so. They have pretty universally held that minors have more limited rights than adults, and they've also pretty universally favored efforts in the "War on Drugs" (TM) or efforts by law enforcement (as embodied by the school authorities in this case) to "protect" minors. There have been several rulings regarding a schools right to search children, both en masse and individually, as well as to drug test both randomly and selectively. If you can search somebody's blood and/or urine, why would the rest of their body be any different?

I sincerely hope they prove me wrong.

[AaronSofaer]

This article is ... mind-boggling.

Everyone involved, school-side, should be terminated with extreme prejudice, and if I were a parent involved in the case, I'd demand they were arrested and tried as sexual offenders. Every single person involved.

I also agree with the sentiment up-thread that there is no reason in which a child should submit to a strip-search. I'd rather my kid flat-out refuse and demand they call me, at which point I would pick my kid up and he would never step foot on school grounds again, even if it meant moving to a different city to educate him at a non-psychotic institution.

[WarrenM]

If you can search somebody's blood and/or urine, why would the rest of their body be any different?
???

!!

[Marged]

Hahahaha, what? Of course I'm joking, because the idea that anyone would take ibuprofen recreationally is beyond ludicrous. Because WHY? Take the highest amount prescribed by a doctor: relieve your muscle aches and cramps with no side effects. Take more: you can develop stomach bleeding/other stomach problems. Oooh, fun times accomplished!

[Bahimiron]

The school I went to had a first aid vending machine in the bathrooms that dispensed two packs of Aspirin, Advil, Tums, Alka Seltzer and I assume in the girl's bathroom tampons. That was just over a decade ago, and under a decade prior to the strip search to which this story refers. It's disturbing to me that we've come to this in so little time.

[Marged]

We weren't allowed to have OTC medicine at school. It was one of the many small indignities we suffered in highschool, I always thought.

[extarbags]

We weren't allowed to have OTC medicine at school. It was one of the many small indignations we suffered in highschool, I always thought.

Yeah, we weren't either. You also couldn't get any Tylenol or similar from the school nurse if you didn't have a fever.

[zengonzo]

It's pretty fucked up that parents have to address strip searching and institutional limits with kids.

Like we're a bunch of conspiracy nuts .. Or in the Mafia.

Of all the things parents should have to do .. Civics lessons to toddlers ..

[WarrenM]

You also couldn't get any Tylenol or similar from the school nurse if you didn't have a fever.
I'm assuming that's for cost reasons but still ... what do they think kids are doing with it?

[zengonzo]

I never brought pain medications to school .. Never thought of it. It's only very recently that I've understood it to be a serious problem. Really quite strange.

There was even the one of the girl who got in trouble for a fucking lozenge. Which presumably has the power of five Tic-Tacs.

[extarbags]

I never brought pain medications to school .. Never thought of it. It's only very recently that I've understood it to be a serious problem. Really quite strange.

There was even the one of the girl who got in trouble for a fucking lozenge. Which presumably has the power of five Tic-Tacs.

Yeah but what if she took them... in excess? Seriously, lozenges are used recreationally all the time by kids these days. You have no idea. It's a serious problem.

[extarbags]

I'm assuming that's for cost reasons but still ... what do they think kids are doing with it?

Well in fairness, too much acetaminophen can fuck up your liver, just like alcohol. So taking Tylenol at school is more or less equivalent to drinking at school.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Well in fairness, too much acetaminophen can fuck up your liver, just like alcohol. So taking Tylenol at school is more or less equivalent to drinking at school.

Jesus effing jumped-up mother-humpin' breakdancing Christ.

[Major Icehole]

Well in fairness, too much acetaminophen can fuck up your liver, just like alcohol. So taking Tylenol at school is more or less equivalent to drinking at school.


Are you out of your mind? How are these two remotely similar. You don't get intoxicated on Tylenol. Yes you can damage your liver, or even OD, but it is not more or less the same as drinking in school.

[Marged]

Wow, somebody's deadpan-0-meter is malfunctioning.

[zengonzo]

Yeah .. Icehole, you want your mind blown?

http://www.news4jax.com/news/18295358/detail.html#-

That's right .. Dealing. And these people weren't being sarcastic ..

[Major Icehole]

Wow, somebody's deadpan-0-meter is malfunctioning.

Ok, maybe I've had a bit much coffee this morning.

Yeah .. Icehole, you want your mind blown?

http://www.news4jax.com/news/18295358/detail.html#-

That's right .. Dealing. And these people weren't being sarcastic ..

Jesus. I don't know how I ever survived being a child without Big Brother to guide my every move.

[Ninyu]

Did everyone take too many "take things seriously" pills today? Usually people on this forum are pretty good about picking up on sarcasm.

[Major Icehole]

Did everyone take too many "take things seriously" pills today? Usually people on this forum are pretty good about picking up on sarcasm.

Thanks Arthur!

[Anaxagoras]

Thanks Arthur!

Then I don't need this jacket!

[Joe M.]

When it comes to kids being strip searched at school I think it's ok that people are a little serious.

[zengonzo]

Did everyone take too many "take things seriously" pills today? Usually people on this forum are pretty good about picking up on sarcasm.

I blame the school administrators' insanity for throwing off the calibration of any sense of what is logical and reasonable.

[Drastic]

When it comes to kids being strip searched at school I think it's ok that people are a little serious.
It's cool, the kids are strip searched in a sarcastic manner.

[zengonzo]

All very tongue-in-cheek.

This is my solution: Schools cannot enforce drug laws. At all. Any time there is an issue such as this, they have to immediately turn the matter over to the police.

If the police decide there is something worth investigating, then they will have to go through their own procedures. And then maybe administrators will take a moment to decide where Ibuprofen or cough drops are really all that damned significant.

[Tim James]

That wouldn't change anything. I'm actually surprised the administrators handled it without calling the local SWAT team. Good to see the tin-pot dictators are asserting themselves a bit more instead of sheepishly letting someone else overreact.

[zengonzo]

It probably would have prevented a kid from getting strip searched by the nurse and a secretary. It likely would have resulted in the parents being contacted. It definitely would have injected some perspective into the situation.

[noun]

It probably would have prevented a kid from getting strip searched by the nurse and a secretary.

This is all that matters. How using one's authority to demand nudity from a minor is considered anything except sexual assault just floors me. If this happened to my kid I'd end up getting jailed for murder.

[Tim James]

This is all that matters. How using one's authority to demand nudity from a minor is considered anything except sexual assault just floors me. If this happened to my kid I'd end up getting jailed for murder.What's annoying about this and that poor girl that got beaten down recently while in juvie is if an average citizen were to do these things they would have the book thrown at them. And that's for good reason, because we as a society frown on these things but allow them to seem normal if it involves an authority figure acting within the letter of the law.

Judicial law and internal reform (like at a school) are failing in these cases so there must be a push by social and ethical "law" that we all forget used to handle these issues just fine (I'll spare you "religious law").

[Aeon221]

Aeon, clearly you've never experienced the THRILL that comes from bleeding holes in your stomach from taking ibuprofen in excess!

No, but my paternal grandpa did, as it happens. He died from a combination of that and a fucked up coronary bypass (necessitated by smoking).

Protip -- don't self medicate with 6000mg of Motrin a day, it will cause problems.

[Joe M.]

I've been taking ibuprofen off and on (mostly on; weight lifting related) for years and haven't bled out yet. I'm going to pretend I didn't read this thread.

[zengonzo]

And that's for good reason, because we as a society frown on these things but allow them to seem normal if it involves an authority figure acting within the letter of the law.

Hell, authority figures tend to get the benefit of the doubt even when acting outside of the letter of the law.

[BostonBum0]

I hope you're joking.

I was on ibuprofen therapy for my TMD for a long time when it was really bad. I was taking 800mg of ibuprofen (over the counter, that's 4 200mg pills) every 4 to 6 hours about 3 times a day.

It took about a month of that before my stomach started acting up. Maybe I've got a strong gut, but you don't get bleeding from ibuprofen taking a week's worth of high dosages.

Ibuprofen's probably one of the safest and most effective pain-reliever/anti-inflammatories around. Won't kill your liver like acetaminophen, and won't give you cancer or whatever they're acusing naproxen of these days.
It only took about a week for me to vomit blood when I was taking Ibuprofen for a root canal that lead to a tooth extraction. I was quickly switched to percocet. infact I still have the 800 mg pills in a bottle in front of me at my desk at work.

[Hanzii]

In case you need to quickly vomit blood, so you can go home sick?

"Hey, Diablo 3 is out... quick, to the ibuprofen!"

[RyanMichael]

It only took about a week for me to vomit blood when I was taking Ibuprofen for a root canal that lead to a tooth extraction. I was quickly switched to percocet. infact I still have the 800 mg pills in a bottle in front of me at my desk at work.

Anyone who tells you to take ibuprofen for what amounts to deep nerve pain should have their teeth ripped out sans anesthesia. Ibuprofen's effective, but not for that kind of hurt.

[Staff Sergeant]

I had my wisdom teeth removed and all I received was some sort of extra strength ibuprofen. YMMV but it blocked the pain pretty well as long as I took some every 4 hours.

[RSofaer]

At my high school we weren't allowed to have OTC drugs, but I carried a bottle of ibuprofen in my backpack. Then again, this is a place where if a student dropped a joint on the ground in front of some teachers, they would pointedly look away as the student picked it up.

[Morberis]

I had my wisdom teeth removed and all I received was some sort of extra strength ibuprofen. YMMV but it blocked the pain pretty well as long as I took some every 4 hours.

Ditto. They also gave me some stronger meds just in case the ibuprofen wasn't effective enough, never touched it for the teeth. However ohh they came in handy for headaches.

[RyanMichael]

Every oral surgery I had came equipped with at LEAST a scipt for vicoprofen. Docs who do any less fail at pain management, as far as I'm concerned.

[Staff Sergeant]

Well it's not a big deal really. He said if the pain was more than the ibuprofen could block I could come back the next day for some stronger stuff. A friend of mine who went to the same doc got codeine. I guess I just wasn't hit as hard by the pain, or pain doesn't bother me as much, but I was fine.

[Marged]

It sounds like they're going to overturn the lower court's ruling. How maddening.


Today's argument features an astounding colloquy between Matthew Wright, the school district's lawyer, and Justice Antonin Scalia, who cannot understand why "black marker pencils" are also considered contraband. "Well, for sniffing!" answers Wright. "They sniff them?" asks Scalia, delightedly. "Really?"

Or when Justice Ginsburg complains that the tipster in this case fingered Redding only after she herself was caught with drugs, Justice Samuel Alito muses that "the school could keep records on its students, like the police keep records on confidential informants, so unless this student had a proven record of having accurately ratted out a certain number of classmates in the past, she couldn't be believed."

When Wright suggests kids have no incentive to implicate innocent students because "students can be disciplined if they tell tales," Justice John Paul Stevens asks what discipline was meted out to the girl who falsely ratted out Savana Redding. Wright replies, cheerfully, "Oh, there was no discipline that I know of."


http://www.slate.com/id/2216608/

[zengonzo]

This case makes my brain foam.

Have professionals at such a level always been so stupid, or are we just more exposed to it now? I can't conceive how the Constitution wasn't simply a series of fart jokes written in crayon ..

[zengonzo]

David O'Neill from the Solicitor General's office tries to thread the needle between allowing schools to conduct daily strip searches for black sniffy markers and chilling the school district's broad power to search for dangerous contraband. He wants the court to impose a higher standard before schools may conduct a strip search but gets into trouble with Scalia, who wonders what happens after "you search the student's outer garments, and you have a reasonable suspicion that the student has drugs." Scalia's almost chortling when he exclaims, "You've searched everywhere else. By God, the drugs must be in her underpants!"

O'Neill responds by explaining that "where you have reasonable suspicion that there is contraband in the underwear, then you could go directly to that location, and you wouldn't have to work from the outside in."

Wot the fack?

[Marged]

There is seriously something wrong with Alito.

[zengonzo]

Nobody but Ginsburg seems to comprehend that the only locker rooms in which teenage girls strut around, bored but fabulous in their underwear, are to be found in porno movies. For the rest of us, the middle-school locker room was a place for hastily removing our bras without taking off our T-shirts.

But Breyer just isn't letting go. "In my experience when I was 8 or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we did take our clothes off once a day, we changed for gym, OK? And in my experience, too, people did sometimes stick things in my underwear."

Dot, dot, dot.

[zengonzo]

I can't believe this .. The answer is so clear .. You call the fucking parents! How is that a problem?!

[ReptileHouse]

If it's illegal drugs they're concerned about (not just school contraband), you call the parents and the cops.

School officials have no business doing a strip search. Ever.

[WarrenM]

I can't believe this .. The answer is so clear .. You call the fucking parents! How is that a problem?!
They're busy at work. I mean, really, can't the school deal with it? Kids are such a bother.

[zengonzo]

We ought to be able to just kennel them until college-age, and then call weekly to complain about how we raised them and yet they never call us.

[lesslucid]

I am just fucking lost for words. Three adults - teachers in a school, no less - mount a "search" which verges on being sexual assault of a minor, and instead of immediately being carted off to jail where they belong, we have a court battle lasting six years in which it is ultimately decided that what they did was just fine given the seriousness of the drug-dealing empire she was imagined by these brainless fuckwits to be overseeing. I mean, what the fuck? When they failed to find drugs, they should have waterboarded a confession out of her - then they'd probably have gotten a fucking medal, too.

[zengonzo]

And it manages to boggle Supreme Court Justices ..

The Death of Reason.

[salwon]

AWISE!!!!

The court ruled 8-1 on Thursday that school officials violated the law with their search of Savana Redding in the rural eastern Arizona town of Safford.

I guess Souter's locker room experiences were different than he remembered...

Oh, but of course:

But the court ruled the officials cannot be held liable in a lawsuit for the search. Different judges around the nation have come to different conclusions about immunity for school officials in strip searches, which leads the Supreme Court to "counsel doubt that we were sufficiently clear in the prior statement of law," Souter said.

Ginsberg dissented on that point, I'm sure with a thunderous sigh.

No word in the Times (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/25/us/AP-US-SupremeCourt-Stri.html?_r=1) on who the 1 is yet.

[Tim James]

I've long held the belief that these types of things don't need lawsuits. They simply need one firm open-handed slap to the face administered by any one person who will be exempt from battery that time only.

Cops, politicians, school administration -- it would be a revolution in authoritarianism.

[salwon]

In general I agree, but in this particular case I think a molestation conviction for the principal would be a better option.

[Tim James]

In general I agree, but in this particular case I think a molestation conviction for the principal would be a better option.Fantasy world. It would drag on for years and then nothing would come if it.

The Slap Brigade has a greater chance of coming into existence than some sort of shift in the lawsuit realm.

[AaronSofaer]

I wonder if the parents will pursue further charges in civil court. You don't have to be criminally liable to be sued for a million dollars for messing with some girl's psyche with sexual assault.

Not to mention that that shit will probably go on her record, and won't that be fun with college applications.

[Saiban]

No word in the Times (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/25/us/AP-US-SupremeCourt-Stri.html?_r=1) on who the 1 is yet.

WSJ says it was Thomas (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124593034315253301.html)

[Anti-Bunny]

AWISE!!!!



I guess Souter's locker room experiences were different than he remembered...

Oh, but of course:



Ginsberg dissented on that point, I'm sure with a thunderous sigh.

No word in the Times (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/25/us/AP-US-SupremeCourt-Stri.html?_r=1) on who the 1 is yet.
The court said they would have not ruled this way it if they were strip searching her for illegal drugs.

[prolix]

I wonder if the parents will pursue further charges in civil court.
This was a civil suit, for the school's violation of the kid's fourth amendment rights. So this is all they have.

[AaronSofaer]

This was a civil suit, for the school's violation of the kid's fourth amendment rights. So this is all they have.



Damn, didn't realize. Thought this was a criminal case brought for sexual assault.

[RSofaer]

I don't think there was a sexual assault. The girl was searched by 2 female teachers. What the SC majority opinion didn't allow was a claim for damages against the principal, I'm pretty sure also in civil court.

[RyanMichael]

I don't think there was a sexual assault. The girl was searched by 2 female teachers.

Right, the fact that she was sexually assaulted by an adult female makes it all right!

Thanks, Arthur.

[RSofaer]

In general I agree, but in this particular case I think a molestation conviction for the principal would be a better option.

Just quoting for example, I was thinking of cases against the principal.

[Cubit]

Another war on drugs is failing. Holbrooke says the US is going to phase out eradication of Poppy fields in Afghanistan.

“The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure,” the representative, Richard C. Holbrooke, told reporters on the margins of the Group of 8 conference in the northern Italian city of Trieste, Reuters reported. “They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work and they alienated people and drove people into the arms of the Taliban.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/world/asia/28holbrooke.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=poppy%20eradication&st=cse

[Cubit]

I don't think we expected much from Obama in this area, but here is further proof that the war on drugs drags on.

The federal government is not going to pull back on its efforts to curtail marijuana farming operations, Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Wednesday in Fresno.

The nation's drug czar, who viewed a foothill marijuana farm on U.S. Forest Service land with state and local officials earlier Wednesday, said the federal government will not support legalizing marijuana.

"Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine," he said.

Kerlikowske said he can understand why legislators are talking about taxing marijuana cultivation to help cash-strapped government agencies in California. But the federal government views marijuana as a harmful and addictive drug, he said.

"Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit," Kerlikowske said in downtown Fresno while discussing Operation SOS -- Save Our Sierra -- a multiagency effort to eradicate marijuana in eastern Fresno County.

http://www.fresnobee.com/updates/story/1553061.html

[CLWheeljack]

"Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit," Kerlikowske said

It must have been hard to say that with a straight face.

[Anti-Bunny]

the war on drugs drags on.

CHANGE

[Anti-Bunny]

http://www.fresnobee.com/updates/story/1553061.html

As it turns out, the guy is required by law (http://www.motherjones.com/toc/2009/07/editors-note) to say that “Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit.” No really.