[the following snipped from the current Liberator Online www.self-gov.org] Paper Guns Cause Real Trouble While waiting for school buses, a friend taught Virginia seventh grader Bruce Cruz how to make a "gun" out of paper. It's easy -- the kind of school-room origami that kids have done for ages. You just fold two pieces of paper about six times. The "gun" can just as easily be shaped like a boat or a plane. At home, Bruce showed a family member his new trick, making one "gun" out of white school notebook paper. He tossed both into his backpack and forgot about them. In school, the two "guns" fell out of his backpack while Bruce was taking out a book. A teacher seized them. The teacher said nothing. But in the second period, a security guard removed Bruce from class and marched him to the principal's office. School policy prohibits students from possessing "an instrument or device that resembles or looks like a pistol, revolver or any type of weapon..." Apparently, that's true even if the object in question is made out of *paper.* Bruce was suspended for 10 days. After protest from Bruce's mother, the suspension was dropped to "only" two days. His mom is trying to get the suspension cleared from his permanent record -- or if that's not possible, to at least have the record include a precise description of the kind of "gun" involved. What's next -- kids expelled for carrying *pictures* of guns? (Source: Newport Daily Press /Sierra Times / November 11, 2000) --- Student Expelled for Casting Spell Still more evidence -- as if it were needed -- that the government school system is getting ever loonier: The ACLU is defending 15-year-old Broken Arrow, Oklahoma high school student Brandi Blackbear. Blackbear says she was suspended for 15 days last December by school officials who accused her of being a witch and casting a magic spell that caused a teacher to become ill. According to the ACLU, Blackbear was called to the principal's office after the teacher became sick and had to be hospitalized. Blackbear, then a ninth-grader, was questioned about her interest in Wicca, a pagan religion. Officials had learned she had checked out a book from the school library that contained a section on Wicca. According to the lawsuit, after questioning her, officials told Blackbear "that she was an immediate threat to the school" and suspended her for "a disruption of the education process." Blackbear -- who says she's not a witch and does not practice the Wicca religion -- also says school officials told her that a five-pointed star with a circle she had drawn on her hand was an occult symbol and that she couldn't display it. Thus the ACLU lawsuit also accuses school officials of trying to suppress expression of, or interest in, the Wicca religion. The ACLU also argues the school violated the girl's civil rights by seizing her personal notebooks containing horror stories she had written. All in all, the lawsuit claims violations of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution as well as breaches of the Civil Rights Act. "I, for one, would like to see the so-called evidence this school has that a 15-year-old girl made a grown man sick by casting a magic spell," said Joann Bell, executive director of the ACLU's Oklahoma chapter. She added that Blackbear had been tormented by the charges and resulting publicity. An attorney for the school district said it would "defend itself vigorously." (Sources: Associated Press story, October 21, 2000) * * * A Despotism Over Mind and Body... "A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body." -- John Stuart Mill, 1859