Kid jailed, charge with felony, for slingshot. Restaurant threatened with felony charges for novelty bag.

Meddlesome bureaucrats and would-be bureaucrats make life a living hell for anyone who comes in touch with them. And that is today’s sad tale tales in this case. One victim this week is small boy another a restaurant chain and the third another child. (Bureaucrats really must hate children.)

Let us start with the story of a young boy who was dragged off to jail by the local sheriff. The kid was going to sit in jail for three weeks awaiting trial until his mother got some publicity for the case.

The boy, Kevin Cottle, took a milk bottle (plastic I believe) and cut it up. He added a rubber band and a balloon and made a very weak slingshot. It shot small plastic pellets. The local television station, WFTV, took the device and tested it. They saidn was arrested.

The sheriff said this was “a deadly weapon” -- I’m waiting for the White House to call it a weapon of mass destruction myself. The boy faces felony charges for firing a “deadly missile”. Okay, so the sheriff of Lake County, Florida is a moron. And poor Kevin was between a rock and a hard place. He was dealing with the dumb PC types that run the schools and the dumb thug types that so often are police officers.

Mike Herring,the school principal, a.k.a. the head moron, says they think the boy was hit on purpose. And he supports the arrest. He says they take things very serious because one decade ago a 13-year-old shot and killed another student. Apparently the moron can’t tell the difference between a kid playing with a weak, home-made slingshot and a kid with an AK-47 terrorizing a school. That’s pretty much par for the course for principals these days. Herring says that they have started the "expulsion process" by which I assume they are expelling the boy and not the idiots running the school. If parents knew what kind of idiots were running the schools there would be rash of mysterious fires and not a government school would be standing in the morning.

The sheriff’s office says they did the right thing and stand by the arrest and charges. Again no surprise there. Real morons never admit mistakes and always stand by wrong decisions -- just ask Bush.

The kid was suspended from school which may have been appropriate but even that strikes me as a bit too much. I would have put him on detention and, with his mother's knowledge, had him do some cleaning up around the school. But arresting him, especially on felony charges is just another indication of how authoritarian America is becoming.

Our second story also comes from Florida. Hey, they elected the president’s brother as governor so you didn’t expect intelligent decisions did you? First watch this somewhat silly TV commercial for a chain of fast food restaurants. Actually the commercial is enough to cause me to give the restaurants a miss but you decide for yourself.



Rap by itself is a cultural monstrousity but a fake cat rapping is just bad taste doubled over. But the Checkers food chain is using this as a promotion. And as part of the promotion they are giving people cloth bags designed to look like the item the cat wears in the commercial. The bag has holes in it for the feet and a hole at the back for the tale and the cat’s head goes out through the main hole of the bag.

It’s a novelty and it does have a warning for idiots (as I said they elected a Bush so there are enough of them in Florida) which says “not all cats will be down with wearing this bag. Do not harm or endanger any cat.” Other than the bad English, par for Florida, especially for this part of Florida, the warning is fairly standard and pretty much common sense. Some cats would love this and some wouldn’t.

I’ve had cats my entire life so I know cats pretty well. And there is nothing in this novelty that is inherently cruel to cats. I have had cats that would love being inside this thing and others that wouldn’t. And the typical cat is not shy of letting you know which it is. And one pissed off cat can do a lot of slicing and dicing with human skin.

Into this rather lame publicity campaign steps the bureaucrats at the Hillsborough County Animal Service who said that putting the bag on a cat “could be considered a felony.” Apparently just about everything is a felony in Florida. Some spokesman for the agency, Marti Ryan said that her agency would be willing to go to court to stop the campaign. She ought to go court but not for the reasons she thinks.

For our third case we move to Kansas City, Missouri where school officials, once again proving only idiots run state schools, suspended a six-year old boy from school for 10 days. His crime was a squirt toy shaped only loosely like a gun. The boys mother was told by school officials that the toy, which shoots water, was a weapon and violated school policy. Phyllis Budesheim of the school district says that the school will automatically suspend any student for having a toy shaped like a gun. Arrest all the kids, I say. I've seen it myself. They can point figures and yell "bang" at each other. So until Islam takes over and starts hacking off hands every kid in the system has a toy which can be shaped like a gun. The boy's deadly weapon is pictured above.

So this week’s moron of the week award goes out to the hapless fools who run government in Florida. It’s a four way tie. The sheriff of Lake County, Principle Mike Herring, Marti Ryan and the Kansas City School District (collectively) each worked hard to win our “Moron of the Week” award. They truly are worthy of this honor and no doubt will receive many more just like it.