CIVICS 101 IS CANCELLED: What kind of high school principal won't make a few rotten teenagers keep their mouths shut at an assembly to honor the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court? That's right, Chief Justice Rehnquist's old high school in Wisconsin ("Ah, Wisconsin, it's already starting to make sense") wanted to honor him at a school assembly. But some adolescent imbeciles quickly organized (no doubt with encouragement from some Sixties left-over of a teacher or parent) to oppose the assembly "because they contend Rehnquist has a record of undermining civil rights and voting rights." So the school has cancelled the assembly and scheduled receptions in the Chief Justice's honor instead:

"We did not feel it would be appropriate to invite him to receive an honor and then embarrass him here," Shorewood High School principal Rick Monroe said. "We did not want to subject him to that sort of treatment."

Idiot teenagers don't bother me. I was one not too long ago. I remember the angst, the self-absorption, the self-righteousness. But the cowardice of these school officials is unforgivable. Remember, school officials readily kick kids out of school for writing scary creative writing projects, calling them "threats," so it's not like they give the First Amendment an expansive reading. Yet in one area where the Supreme Court has actually affirmed school officials' power to restrict student speech -- where it disrupts a school function, like a student assembly (See Bethel School District v. Fraser) -- this school principal didn't have the guts to use it. This "educator" won't even try to teach his students the difference between peaceable assembly and disorderly conduct. Pathetic.