http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23618831/

This is obviously ridiculous and when policy goes too far. I can understand a school saying they won't serve candy in vending machines or the cafeteria.

But taking it to the level where you are busting 14 year old kids for buying candy from a classmate?

Does anyone else see this as completely overstepping bounds?

I feel if schools are starting to worry about how kids are getting sugar, they are wasting resources that should be spent on education.

Also, it is a scary model. the more you ban behavior, the more you have to police it and the more you make "criminals" of people that are exercising individual liberty.

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This stems from the Zero Tolerance policies that schools have been using since the 90's, to sometimes ridiculous results. Schools should use reason and judgment, not blindly adhere to the letter of an arbitrary rule regardless of the consequences.

I definitely understand why schools want to ban candy and soda, but this story's ludicrous.

This falls under something I can't exactly remember the name of, moralistic relativism or something like that.

Some believe that these school imposed bans actually fail to teach kids how to make choices between right and wrong or teach them the real difference. When the kids enter the real world they have no clue how to deal with it.

I can see discouraging kids from eating lots of candy under the goal of "wellness" and teaching proper nutrition, but suspending the kid and stripping him of all that stuff? I can't even pretend to try to understand any of that or what the school administration could possibly hope to accomplish.

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– Brigadier General Julius C. Holmes
Allied Forces Headquarters
4 March 1943

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The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? - Psalm 27:1

This is what you get when the "law" is followed as written, without interpretation.

"Original Intent," run amok.

Note that the situation was fixed when an administrator looked at the facts, decided that a kid selling Skittles to a friend didn't match the intent of the rule (no sugar-filled vending machines) and cancelled the punishment.

What would Anthony Scalia say?

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"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." G.K. Chesterton

Ah... in the 90's. That explains it. After my time. I remember when Central High was invaded by Coca-Cola. Due to my families vegetarianism I was keenly aware of the evils of sugar even as a kid so my thought was WTF when I saw the new machines.

Anyone have kids at Central now? I wonder what they sell these days... diet water and rice crackers?

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"Those who cast the votes decide nothing.
Those who count the votes decide everything." - Josef Stalin

http://www.thosewhocount.com/

Do you mean Antonin?
Probably that it was a bad law, but writing laws is the job of the legislature, not the judiciary (see Small v. United States)
According to the U.S. Constitution, if that has any meaning, he'd be correct.

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The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? - Psalm 27:1

Sadly we have a lot of judges writing law from bench.

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That's not what this case illustrates.

Here, the legislative body (the school board, a stand-in for Congress) apparently wrote a sloppily phrased rule (read, "law") that failed to distinguish between candy-filled vending machines and a kid who swapped a bag of Skittles to another kid.

So, a "judge" (school administrator) inherited the responsibility to clean up the mess. That is, he/she had to decide that the rule meant this, and not that.

What you call "writing law from the bench" is the job of a judge.

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"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." G.K. Chesterton

I agree, this isn't an illustration of that. The thread was starting to tangent (the previous couple posts was someone starting to attack Supreme Court justices).

Also, I respectfully disagree that a judge's is job is to write law. They should go no farther than to interpret.

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