David McElroy

If cupcakes are topped with little green WW II soldiers, they somehow become dangerous or threatening if they’re brought into a school. Whatever the case, it was enough to get a Michigan 9-year-old and his parents into trouble with his school. It seems like another case of insane “safety” overreach by out-of-touch school administrators.

Casey Fountain’s third grade son brought cupcakes to school last week to share with his classmates in celebration of his ninth birthday. The boy’s mother made the cupcakes and decorated them with small green soldiers that the boy likes — very much like the G.I. Joe figures that every generation of kids has been playing with for decades.

But when the boy got to school with the “insensitive” cupcakes, they were confiscated because of the figures. The principal called the boy’s father and told him that it was insensitive because of the shootings in Connecticut last year. (Did army infantry invade the school? I must have missed that.)

The boy’s father called the media to complain, but the school refused to go on camera to talk about the case, issuing a strange statement instead. Here was the strangest part of the statement:

“On the other hand, there are those who feel that guns create fear in schools and we need to put solid security measures in place  plus practice routines to be prepared in case an emergency should ever occur,” the statement said. “Living in a democratic society entails respect for opposing opinions.” [Emphasis mine.]

So this is the school’s way of showing “respect for opposing opinions”?

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Rand Paul has a better chance of being elected president than his father ever had. That’s partly because he’s more willing to play the pragmatic party political game, but it’s also partly because he’s not the doctrinaire libertarian that his father generally was.

Paul’s filibuster in the U.S. Senate Wednesday was nothing but political theater, but it ended up achieving something unexpected. It flushed out some of the highest-ranking Republicans and forced them to show the disdain they feel whenever individual liberties are concerned.

Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham not only didn’t support Paul, but they spent Thursday actively attacking him. McCain took to the Senate floor to attack Paul’s concern that the Obama administration would ever use drone strikes on Americans inside the borders of the country. Graham not only attacked Paul, but praised Obama’s use of drone strikes to kill people on the other side of the world.

After starting his filibuster alone Wednesday, Paul was eventually joined by a few Republican senators and one Democratic senator. While they talked about constitutional rights and lambasted the Obama administration for its refusal to say that it didn’t have legal authority to unilaterally kill Americans in this country, where were McCain and Graham?

They were with the Republican establishment having dinner with Obama.

If you’re one of the many conservatives who believe that the Republican Party is your savior when it comes to battling big government, think again. There’s a small core of GOP politicians who are somewhat more likely to be on the side of individual freedom than the statist old guard is, but those who believe in freedom are a minority in their own party.

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I just read the the Navy’s Blue Angels are going to cancel their flying shows this year because of budget cuts. I’m really upset about this.

If there’s no budget deal by midnight tonight, about $85 billion in budget cuts will kick in. For weeks, I’ve been bombarded with stories about how “draconian” these cuts will be. Even though everybody has known for months that the cuts are coming, Barack Obama and congressional Republicans act like teen-agers in cars playing chicken near a cliff.

Even though Obama gets to decide what cuts are made, he calls them “dumb, arbitrary cuts” that are “unnecessary and inexcusable.”

For instance, Joe Biden isn’t going to be able to fly home on the weekends aboard his Air Force jet. Instead, he’s going to have to go back to riding an Amtrak train. This is horrible. It’s upsetting. How could we let such a thing happen?

Various federal agencies are telling their employees that they’ll be taking one unpaid day off every week through the end of the year unless a budget deal is reached. (The IRS is delaying this particular cut until after tax season, so you can tell what their priorities are.) How will we possibly survive with a 20 percent reduction in the hours worked by these various bureaucrats? It’s outrageous that they won’t be in their offices doing … well, whatever it is that they do.

The White House wants to apply maximum pressure on Congress to keep spending, so it has released a list of what cuts will hit each and every state. Here’s the list of cuts that I’m supposed to be scared about here in Alabama, for instance. And I am. I’m terrified.

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