Fail Quote (and story) of the Day: Terror babies schoolchildren!

This needs no words [source]

Far more threatening to the well-being of American children than any terroristic group can hope to be is the fact that so many of those charged with their safety make it increasingly clear that they’ve lost their fucking minds:

Five Stuart Middle School students are facing criminal charges and school discipline after an investigation found they were involved in creating a map that detailed the “possible placement of bombs at the school,” a spokeswoman for Jefferson County Public Schools said Thursday.

The map was discovered by a teacher Thursday morning, said Lauren Roberts, the district’s public information officer. The district used dogs to search the school and found no bombs. Officers also searched the children’s homes and found nothing.

There was no indication of a date for any plan, Roberts said, and it is believed that the children — all sixth graders — may have been simulating a fantasy video game. Each child’s name was on the paper, she said.

“We don’t believe there was any means to carry this out,” she said. “But the fact that they put it in writing — we’re going to take this kind of thing seriously, whether they’re joking or not.”

The five students will be disciplined for terroristic threatening under the district’s code of conduct, including suspensions and a recommendation they be placed in an alternative school, district officials said.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said it’s charging four students with criminal conspiracy to commit terroristic threatening, a misdemeanor, and one student with felony terroristic threatening. The four were released to their parents and the fifth student was arrested.

So this is what the US’s paranoid and paralyzing fear of something that’s less likely to strike any given individual than lightning has come to: treating children like evil-doers for the crime of playing a harmless and obvious game. Because I’m sure that any reputable and self-respecting adult in charge would see a piece of paper with crudely drawn crosshairs and all of the teenaged participants’ names clearly noted and immediately jump to the reasonable conclusion of “terroristic threat!”. Without wasting time by doing anything as silly as asking the kids about it before calling the cops.

But, hey, don’t you be worryin’ about those kids. They’re safe, all right, and so is the rest of the schoolchildren and society at large, thanks to the hard work of the clearly rational school district’s public information officer, Lauren Roberts:

Roberts said she didn’t think a felony charge was too harsh, even if it was meant as a fantasy game.

“The safety of children is our first priority,” she said.

What a dangerous world our children live in. Drugs and gangs, stranger danger, schoolyard violence, being charged with terrorism …

(via The Agitator)