There was a news story about some kid in North Carolina being arrested and sent to jail for thirty days for saying the F-word to his teacher. God, disenfranchisement pisses me off to no end! I mean, Dick "The Penis" Cheney drops an F-bomb on the Senate floor, and nothing happens, but some poor kid tells off his teacher and he's going to jail. I think the archetypical last line of the news article is telling: "School officials declined to comment."

I don't know — the news article describes the kid as a troublemaker and a miscreant, although we don't get his side of the story — and I think if I knew him, I'd hope he died and burn in hell, but the undue abuse of power really bugs me. Especially with the school's tacit goal of conformity; if the teacher can't indoctrinate the kid with books and lectures, they'll indoctrinate him through jail. And they'll fail, because what these so called educators with their teaching certifications and Ph.D's and Ed.D's don't understand is that kids — well, anybody, really — mouths off because they're angry over the destruction of their personal agency.

Damn, I should be a school principal. Griping about those bastards in the blog just isn't satisfying.

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Okay, in another news story, it's that beatification time of the year again! In case you skipped Sunday school, beatification is granted by the Pope as the last step on one's road to sainthood, and you're going to Hell. This year's candidates include two anti-Semites who seem to have gotten Jesus's message of love just a little bit garbled. (Okay, in all fairness, Pope John XXIII is also getting beatified, although I think his soul should be rather mortified being honored in the same ceremony as that bitch nun whose writings were Mel Gibson's inspiration for "The Passion.") I guess I wasn't really expecting any great moral proclamations from an organization that passes child molesters from parish to parish like a gangsta ho. But I am expecting some sort of Catholic outrage from the true followers of Christ's message as opposed to those following the traditions of a church gone astray and power-mad.