Brickbat: Without a Prayer
Officials at Minnesota's Anoka-Hennepin school district have ordered Jake Balthazor, 15, to stop wearing a rosary. Balthazor says he was wearing it to honor his grandmother, who is battling cancer. But school officials say rosaries are a gang symbol and school rules bar students from wearing "any apparel, jewelry, accessories, or matter of grooming which by virtue of its color arrangement, trademark, or any other attribute (as a primary purpose) denotes membership in an organized gang." After local media reported the rosary ban, however, they said they would try to work out a compromise with the boy.