mycatharsis.com

I should know better by now, I suppose, but when I saw the headline ‘Florida schools randomly drug testing students’ on the DrudgeReport, I figured this was just one school doing something a bit out of the norm, something schools have certainly been known for lately, with ‘zero’ tolerance policies, suspensions for hugs, etc.  Sure, the idea of school as parent AND law enforcement is pretty radical, but when you have thousands of schools, one or two of them are always going to go a bit crazy with their newfound power.

Like I said, I should have known better.  John Walters, head of the DEA and a true radical among radicals (he once called growers of marijuana ‘violent criminal terrorists’), thinks enough of this type of expansion of government power to make a personal visit to the Tampa area to tout it!

This president and his administration tried to coin the phrase ‘compassionate conservatism’ to describe his administration.  Unfortunately, for them and us, they instead had another phrase coined about them, ‘big government conservative’.  A phrase in pretty common use now, and one I had never really heard used much before the last few years.   For a little perspective, it was only in 1995 that the Supreme Court ruled drug testing of athletes only to be constitutional.  As is inevitable, the creep of government power only works one way, and in 2002, that was expanded, again by the Supreme Court, to include ALL students involved in ANY extracurricular activity.

Anyone want to place bets that random drug testing of innocents will stay relegated to the realm of students only? Obviously, drug testing is currently common in the workplace, but how long before the government comes knocking at your door wearing a latex glove and handing you a cup?