Thursday, June 25, 2009

Criminalizing ibuprofen

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that ibuprofen is not sufficient motivation for a strip search. Well, duh!

Only Clarence Thomas disagreed. He had the following impeachment-worthy comment:

“Preservation of order, discipline and safety in public schools is simply not the domain of the Constitution.”
The Court didn't rule on the policy that led to the strip search, since that policy was not at issue. But I'm not bound to the case; I can say that zero-tolerance policies such as this are stupid, stupid, stupid. They are tools for overzealous martinets to lord their precious authority over children.

I only regret that the Court immunized the idiots who performed this abusive search.

(By the way, the CNN story on this ruling is completely inadequate. Every time a professional journalist publishes a story like that, he proves that blogs are not the problem.)

1 comment:

Silence DoGood said...

Good call - stupid policy - plain and simple.

I have known a number of school officials. They are continually in a state of lawsuit-mode brought by parents for a host of real and imagined reasons. Zero-tolerance and other stupid policies are a result of this IMHO.

Of course there is always the authoritarian who is getting off on the power trip but I would put this at 10% or less of individuals (totally a guess I admit).

You are thinking Dickens era. Today's school admins seems more like CYA Dilbert managers.

It is like the nurse in a hosiptal waking you to give you a sleeping pill. Stupid but there is a lawsuit waiting to pounce on such things, so they just do it.