Bad Poetry is Not a Crime

The California Supreme Court handed down a decision yesterday that will sadly blunt the nation's ongoing war on bad angst-ridden adolescent poetry. The case involved a high school student who showed some other students some really bad poetry. Not only was it bad, it was about stuff like death and evil and made reference to the then-ongoing stream of high school shootings. The readers promptly reported it (Ashcroft would be so proud!) and the William the Bloody in training was arrested and charged with making threats. He fought the case to the California Supreme Court, which held that the poems were not actual threats. As anyone who has ever taken an English lit class can tell you.