A measure of how bad it's getting

Cosmic Iguana provided the link to a story coming out of Winchester, Kentucky, where a high school junior has been arrested for a short story he wrote, according to local TV news.

William Poole, 18, was tossed into jail after his grandparents read his journal, found a story he was working on for English class that involved zombies overrunning a high school, and turned it over to police, who charged him with making terrorist threats.

It's important to note that the story is clearly fiction, does not mention anything related to any local institutions or officials, and contains no threats against anyone. It apparently was a Night of the Living Dead-type story. Doesn't matter, the cops say. Totally irrelevant.

[P]olice say the nature of the story makes it a felony. "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky," said Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill.

Let me repeat that: The nature of the story made it criminal. It is, they are saying, a crime - a felony, a terrorist threat - to write a fictional story about zombies overrunning a fictional high school filled with fictional characters.

It gets even more inane, if you can believe it:

On Thursday, a judge raised Poole's bond from one to five thousand dollars after prosecutors requested it, citing the seriousness of the charge.

On second thought, maybe the story isn't so fictional: Certainly the officials around Winchester, Kentucky seem to be brain dead.

Footnote: A woman in Bowling Green, Virginia has avoided jail time by pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge as part of a plea agreement. She'd been threatened with 10 days in jail for contempt of court because she violated a judge's order.

What was the order she violated? She shares custody of her two children with her ex-husband and the judge in the case had ordered her to not smoke around her children.

Now, I sure as hell am no fan of smoking: I endorse bans on smoking in public places and do not let anyone smoke inside my home. But frankly, just where in hell does this judge get off thinking he can on his own authority order someone to not engage in legal activities? Please don't lay "the welfare of the child" on me; I'm well aware of the dangers of second-hand smoke, in fact, I was telling people I was convinced of those risks long before it became accepted they existed.

The issue here, just as in Poole's case, is one of the arbitrary exercise of power. What if she was a political activist and the judge decided her politics would be "detrimental to the child?" (Not so outlandish an idea: I knew of a case back home where in the course of an acrimonious divorce, the wife tried to deny her soon-to-be-ex child visitation rights on the grounds that he was a communist.) Could he order her not to talk about her beliefs or engage in any political activity when her children were present? What if she works and he's convinced "a woman's place is in the home?" Could he order her not to talk to her children about her job or take them to her workplace? Once you say that legal actions can be banned, what are the limits?

Now, it may be that there are special circumstances of which I'm unaware that make this an exceptional case. Maybe the children have emphysema, for example. But still the trend toward arbitrary power is disturbing and the idea that we're just supposed to accept it, even more so.

By the way, the woman is appealing the original order. Unless there is some genuinely odd aspect such as I just suggested, I truly hope she wins. As much as I hate smoking, I hope she wins.