A first-grader is suspended and faces expulsion from an Ohio elementary school for taking a plastic knife from the school cafeteria. The school board said the plastic knife violated the school’s zero-tolerance policy for weapons.
In Dallas, a 97-year old woman was arrested, handcuffed, hands behind her back, and taken to jail. And her transgression was . . .? She failed to pay a traffic ticket.
Tommy Johnson Jr., an American drag racer with an impeccable reputation, not mention natural talent, travels to Europe to compete in the FIA’s Top Fuel Series. He wins every race not cancelled by ran rain, and with two races left in the season and needing only one round to clinch, he’s stripped of his license.
The message handed down Wednesday is that Johnson’s appeal of a 24-month suspension was reduced to 12 months but he was considered guilty of violating the series’ anti-doping rules, even though they believed there was never an intent for the doctor-prescribed drug in Johnson’s system to be used as a means of performance enhancement.
Johnson’s plastic-knife violation or unpaid parking ticket, his zero-tolerance infraction, was for having a Dexedrinbe in his system to treat a severe case of narcolepsy, a sleeping disorder which can put its victims to sleep without warning.
This is hardly the condition you want untreated when someone is behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler, much less an 8,000-horsepower, nitro-burning dragster.