What Happens When People are Just a Wee Bit Over Zealous

Secret Service Questions Students regarding statements they made about Iraq and President Bush. These two high school students in Oakland were interrogated and told that they had no rights, that the Secret Service owned them. This is another one of those signs of the coming apocalypse. When our weapons of intelligence and terror are turned on our own people.

(Update 5.13.03: Sent the story over to Intellectual Properties and got this other version of the story back in return, its provides quite a lot more detail on the whole fiasco. AND you can add your comments to the story and we all know how much fun feedback can be. Anyway, thanks to leblanc for dropping the extra info over to me, I always like to get a bigger and sharper picture of the story if possible)

And this happened in my own backyard, at Oakland High. And I'm curious as to what will happen to these two students for speaking out in what they had thought was a free speech forum. They have likely been scarred by the episode for life, I certainly wouldn't trust any school teacher ever again. And the teacher should lose her job and then make a heart felt public apology to the two kids that she abused.

Schools are intended to be places where all opinions can be heard and explored, no matter how outrageous. And now we're finding out that there is no such thing as true free speech anymore, not when one call to the Secret Service (everyone's got their local field office on speed dial, don't they?) can result in your target being interrogated by the sunglass wearing goons.

I fear for the future of our country if this is current state of affairs. I fear for what Shrub's next trick he'll pull out of his magic GOP hat. His next "Ma Daddy did it" Crusade. And I think I'll start checking out real estate prices in Cape Town again.