Gack! According to this “CNN article”:http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/01/31/students.amendment.ap/index.html, high school kids don’t understand what the First Amendment protects:

_when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories._

The past few days it’s seemed like the Intarweb has been trying especially hard to make me angry. I was able to ignore most of the “disturbing”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/01/26/MNGKQB0FSQ1.DTL “reports”:http://www.fordvehicles.com/autoshow/concept/synus/ up to now, but this one has me hoppin’ mad:

_The nation’s new “education secretary”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Spellings “denounced PBS on Tuesday”:http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3009795 for spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian characters, saying many parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles._

_…The episode features two lesbian couples, although the focus is on farm life and maple sugaring._

It’s hard to describe my seething anger over this particular issue. It reminds me of how racist parents wouldn’t let their children watch Sesame Street because it showed white and “colored” children playing together happily. How dare lesbians make sugar in Vermont! Decent people shouldn’t have to watch that!

Grrrr…