In the stupidest case of school administrators taking federal agencies’ names in vain since a Huntsville, AL school swore a phone call from the NSA prompted its secret social media monitoring program, a middle school principal from Espanola, NM is threatening to sic the FBI on a student who threw an American flag out a classroom window.
A middle school principal said a student was misbehaving with his friends and took things too far. The student threw an American flag out a second-story classroom window. Now the principal says the 14-year-old needs to be held accountable.
Sure, maybe a stern discussion with him and his parents and a couple of weeks of detention would do the trick. But that’s not enough for Principal Robert Archuleta. He has already suspended the student for 10 days and is now pushing for his expulsion. But he also wants the feds to take control of the situation… because jingoism.
“He says, ‘Because I was just messing around,’ and he started to laugh,” Archuleta said. “Then the other kids were laughing, the kids that were with him. ‘There goes the flag.’ That was his last statement.”
The principal is a veteran. His father is also a veteran who fought in World War II.
“A lot of men have died over [the flag], men and women,” Archuleta said. “We fought to keep our country safe and to keep it free.”
Well, let’s stop you right there, Robert. Nobody “died over the flag.” The flag is a symbol of this country and what it stands for, but it is not what people die “over.” They die defending this country and the freedoms it affords its citizens — among them being the right to throw a flag out the window. It’s not as starkly effective as burning it, but it’s pretty much the same thing.