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Plastic pellet incident at Va. school ends in expulsion, assault charges
Washington Postf ^ | February 2, 2011 | Kevin Sieff

Posted on 02/02/2011 5:07:09 AM PST by Second Amendment First

Andrew Mikel II admits it was a stupid thing to do. In December, bored and craving attention, the 14-year-old used a plastic tube to blow small plastic pellets at fellow students in Spotsylvania High School. In one lunch period, he scored three hits.

"They flinched. They looked annoyed," Mikel said.

The school district saw it as more than a childish prank. School officials expelled him for possession and use of a weapon, and they called a deputy sheriff to the scene, said Mikel and his father, Andrew Mikel Sr.

The younger Mikel, a freshman, said he was charged with three counts of misdemeanor assault. The case was first reported by the Web site WorldNetDaily.

Spotsylvania school officials declined to comment on the incident, citing student confidentiality rules. But documents that the school produced when Mikel's father filed a Freedom of Information Act request show internal division over the matter.

The federal Gun-Free Schools Act mandates that schools expel students who take weapons, including hand guns, explosive devices and projectile weapons, to school. E-mail traffic among school officials showed they ruled that Mikel's plastic tube, which was fashioned from a pen casing, met the definition of a projectile weapon because it was "used to intimidate, threaten or harm others."

School officials in some e-mails referred to the plastic casing as a "metal tube." The plastic pellets were called "B-Bs."

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: banglist; discipline; gunfreeschoolsact; highschool; publicschools; zerotolerance
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To: DustyMoment
Shall I go on??

In this regard, I recall the words attributed to Winston Churchill that if you are young and conservative you have no heart; old and Liberal you have no brain.

The crux of Churchill's statement is that the maturation of one's ideological belief structure is a learning process that involves moving from emotional-based decisions to rational/logic/experiential-based ones.

Since the Great Society electoral patterns have been marked by the younger voting generations making a difference to elect Liberals based on emotional factors, but then quickly becoming disillusioned (fact and experiential factors) and falling back on Conservatives. Xers elected Clinton, true. But then they turned around and helped usher in the 1995 Republican Congressional majority and President Bush - and now form the cohort of the resurgent Conservative movement (being born in 1964, Sarah Palin is a cusp Xer, for instance). Millenials elected Obama, and it looks like they contributed adequately to the GOP wins last year and are poised to make the difference in kicking him out in 2012 (we'll still have to see).


61 posted on 02/02/2011 6:46:51 AM PST by tanknetter
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To: Venturer

About 20 years ago I was substituting in the HS and a lot of kids were bringing squirt guns and the teachers were POed. This kid was squirting other kids while trying to conceal the gun but I saw it, I went up to him, grabbed the gun and squirted him until the water was gone and gave it back to him. Everybody laughed but they probably would have thrown us both out of the school if they had known.


62 posted on 02/02/2011 6:48:23 AM PST by tiki
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To: Second Amendment First
Headline should read: D*ckwads Arrest Paperwads
63 posted on 02/02/2011 6:50:55 AM PST by hfr ( open windows, giant paper airplanes, spitwads, pea shooters, match rockets, firecrackers, . . .)
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To: Venturer

My husband and his friends had a competition to see who could get the most paddlings. That worked fine until they got a new principal and he knocked them across the room with one whack. All but a few behaved after that


64 posted on 02/02/2011 6:51:06 AM PST by tiki
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To: macquire
We had fans. They would go vroom vroom vroom and it would be so hot the sweat dripping off your nose would be blurring the blue lines on your paper. If you didn't pop someone with a spitball every so often you would fall asleep.

We would most likely have slept through school and have no education at all without spitballs!

65 posted on 02/02/2011 6:51:11 AM PST by SWAMPSNIPER (The Second Amendment, A Matter of Fact, Not a Matter of Opinion)
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To: Second Amendment First

!!!!!WARNING!!!!!

Parents if you send you kid to your collectivist government schools you kid has a serious chance of being a felon for life!

( Is the free babysitting worth it?)


66 posted on 02/02/2011 6:51:40 AM PST by wintertime (Good ideas win! Why? Because people are not stupid!)
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To: Little Ray

The first time my son’s school had a woman principal she outlawed everything, you could basically go out and stand in the school yard at recess. The kids were unruly because they had too much pent up energy.


67 posted on 02/02/2011 6:54:05 AM PST by tiki
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To: tanknetter

A conservative is a liberal who has had his nose rubbed in the poop of reality.


68 posted on 02/02/2011 6:54:15 AM PST by wintertime (Good ideas win! Why? Because people are not stupid!)
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To: tanknetter
THAT is one of the fundamental flaws of the Boomer generation.
BS. Most of what ails America today came from the "greatest" generation.
They gave us Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Great Society, "Civil Rights," Korea and Vietnam.
WTF was so great about them?
69 posted on 02/02/2011 7:18:14 AM PST by oh8eleven (RVN '67-'68)
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To: Second Amendment First

The Principlas of 50 years ago were not frightened of parents. They got backing from the School Board.

Today if aparent complains they all crap their jeans.


70 posted on 02/02/2011 7:22:53 AM PST by Venturer
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To: GlockThe Vote
Typically boomers, the worst generation ever in this nation.

There are a lot of pinheads that agree with you.

71 posted on 02/02/2011 7:34:16 AM PST by jimt
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To: Portcall24
They’d stick in the ceiling every time and have to remove with a broom.

We used to take the soft butter pads in the lunch room and lay them in the middle of the napkins. Let it hang down and pop it by pulling. Those would stick on the ceiling in warm weather and drop on the next lunch bunch or people eating. We also stuck the plastic milk glasses on the underside of the dining tables. When the weather got hotter, they would start falling off.

72 posted on 02/02/2011 8:05:20 AM PST by Arrowhead1952 (America has two cancers - democrats and RINOS.)
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To: GlockThe Vote
Typically boomers, the worst generation ever in this nation.

Tell it to them kid.

73 posted on 02/02/2011 8:10:34 AM PST by Ditto (Nov 2, 2010 -- Partial cleaning accomplished. More trash to remove in 2012)
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To: noinfringers2

Good story. Reminded me of the Senior that was dating a girl from our Sophomore class back in 1968. He was trying to be cool and drinking a beer to impress her. Chugged it down with his right hand and whipped it out the car window - but the car window was closed.....

He had lacerations on his hand and arm...bad ones.

Was in a car once when the guy in the front passenger seat threw a firecracker out his window and the wind blew it back in the back window seat and right into the bag of firecrackers on the floor of the car....now that was a mess.


74 posted on 02/02/2011 8:28:34 AM PST by macquire
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To: Second Amendment First

ya... and when ya did get caught, ya just got your ass whipped...


75 posted on 02/02/2011 8:34:31 AM PST by sit-rep
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To: Ditto

I was speaking as a whole. No one is going to argue that those who served in Vietnam gave the umlitate sacrifice and are the best this naton has to offer.


76 posted on 02/02/2011 8:38:24 AM PST by GlockThe Vote (Who needs Al Queda to worry about when we have Obama?)
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To: GlockThe Vote
I was speaking as a whole.

When the "whole" of the Boomer generation came of voting age, we elected Ronald Reagan.

Where did the youth vote go in the last presidential election?

Check your stereotypes.

77 posted on 02/02/2011 8:52:58 AM PST by Ditto (Nov 2, 2010 -- Partial cleaning accomplished. More trash to remove in 2012)
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To: Venturer

“The Principlas of 50 years ago were not frightened of parents. They got backing from the School Board.”

Maybe, but 39 years ago, when the principal at my small-town HS told my step-mom he was going to punish my brother for fighting back when he was attacked on the school ground, she said if he did, she would kick the S&&& out of him. It was a family rule not to start a fight, but if someone else started it, we’d get OUR butt kicked when we went home if we didn’t FINISH it.

Lil bro didn’t get punished after all. Step-mom is about 5’2’, blond & blue. Not very big. Tough enough to chew nails and spit bullets, though. Oh, and her dad was a bare-knuckles prize fighter in his youth, had no sons, so taught his daughters. She used to make the boys in the neighborhood play dolls with her...

Principal make a very SMART choice, that day.


78 posted on 02/02/2011 10:05:07 AM PST by Old Student
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To: Second Amendment First

These are the same idiots who would let the TSA fondle their daughters genitals in the name of “security” Where do I go to secede?


79 posted on 02/02/2011 10:05:12 AM PST by mistfree (The Law! How Quaint.)
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To: GlockThe Vote
I was speaking as a whole.
No, you were speaking as an @hole. As I pointed out in another post just above ...You're no different than the jackass(es) on FR who make the claim that all cops are bad.
So tell me - what generation are you and WTF's your claim to fame?
80 posted on 02/02/2011 10:07:38 AM PST by oh8eleven (RVN '67-'68)
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