At 1847 local time, Michael Jackson remains dead. Arizona schools were on the minds of the Supreme Court yesterday. They issued two ruling in cases that originated in our fair state. Generally speaking, if anything that reaches the high court originated in Arizona, you can count on it being fairly odd. In the case of the Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, the court ruled on the legality of the strip search of a 13-year old middle school student by Safford school officials. Safford is a small town in Southeast Arizona, made most famous by the Albert Brooks movie, Lost In America. Safford is the place where Brooks and Julie Haggerty finally decide that returning to their old lives isn't such a bad idea. Safford student, Savana Redding was accused by another student of possessing Ibuprofen and Naproxen, the active ingredient in Aleve, at school. Miss Redding denied the allegation when questioned. School officials searched her clothing and then ordered her to strip to her undies and pull on the elastic bands so that anything hidden in her drawers, might fall out. The search found no contraband on her person. In case you think I made this up, check for yourself here. Why we need SCOTUS to sort this out is a mystery to me. Any right-thinking person should be able to see the constitutional violation in this. The court relied on the fact that the drugs in question are legal and relatively benign in making its ruling. I don't care if she had a thermonuclear device in her skivvies, strip searching a 13-year old at school is way over the line, especially if the school administration is doing the searching. This zero-tolerance nonsense is for the birds. In the second case, Horne v. Flores, a group of parents in the Nogales, AZ. school district sued the state contending that not enough taxpayer money was being spent to teach Spanish speakers English. The federal district judge, who presides right here in Hooterville, sided with the parents and not only ordered the state to pay more in the Nogales district, but ordered it to pay more in all districts in the state. In this case the court voided that lower court ruling basically saying the the lower court judge should have gathered some facts about the other districts before summarily ruling that the state needed to provide more money to every district. One last bit of educational news from here in Hooterville. The superintendent of schools for one of the upscale districts, The Tanque Verde School District, was arrested by the ICE this past week. It seems he signed up for an excursion to Mexico where he hoped to have sex, or as his enrollment form called it "relaxed intimacy" with a 13-year old boy. He was arrested trying to enter Mexico, but has pleaded not guilty. Unfortunately for Mr. Albert Thomas "Tom" Rogers, the FBI orchestrated the "tour" in order to catch guys like him. Mr. Rogers remains in the slammer in Yuma, AZ, being held without bail. He did do the right thing and resign his post. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky