Without intending to, administrators at Morton West High School have actually given student protesters a valuable civics lesson. If you directly challenge the power of authority figures, however minor your actual infraction, you will have the book thrown at you.

If, however, you commit high crimes and misdemeanors such as killing more than a million Iraqis and close to 4000 American soldiers in a fraudulent "defense" of empire, the powerful of both parties will decline to charge, let alone prosecute you. As Anatole France wrote long ago, "The majestic egalitarianism of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."

So thank you, Morton West administrators. You've given us all a valuable lesson on how American "democracy" increasingly works. And you've done your part in helping create the next generation of American radicals.