Zero Tolerance Watch

For some reason, Zero Tolerance seems to produce Infinite Humor

GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME SCHOOL: Joshua Phelps, a 17-year-old senior at Pine Bush High School in Crawford, N.Y., was looking for an extracurricular activity to participate in to round out his college application when he spotted an ad for the school's Civil War Club. He signed up and spent a weekend in a mock battle against Confederate soldiers in a replay of the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville. Back at school, a security guard noticed something in Phelps' car: a militia uniform, complete with a (gasp!) fake musket. The guard called police, who arrested Phelps on weapons charges. In addition to criminal charges, the school has suspended Phelps for five days pending an expulsion hearing for violation of its zero tolerance weapons policy. Police Chief Daniel McCann calls the bust proper. "The musket was found in his car on the high school grounds and could have been used," he says, perhaps to fire a small rock or something. (Middletown Times Herald-Record) ...Surely no one there has any spare rocks in their heads that he could use for that, though, right?

If the fake musket was anything like other fake guns I've seen, the only way it could be used to "fire" a small rock or something would be if you used it as a bat. So why are baseball bats allowed on campuses?

A friend of mine tells the story of one of her friends who was arrested for possession of a deadly weapon. Charges were dropped when the police noticed the weapon was a fake, and in fact didn't even have a barrel.

Here, the amusement value comes from a typo on the paperwork. The charge was typoed as "Possession of a dead weapon."