BRICKBATS

Police in Chestnuthill Township, Pennsylvania, have charged Larry Liero with disorderly conduct and open lewdness. Liero, a senior at Pleasant Valley High School, mooned two eighth graders. He faces up to one year in prison. School officials also suspended Liero and banned him from graduation ceremonies.

Video shows police firing weapons from a helicopter at a car they are pursuing through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Officers say they were pursuing drug dealer Marcio “The Mathematician” Pereira. Pereira was found dead in another car the following day, so they appear to have gotten him. But the video shows that many of the rounds they fired also struck nearby buildings.

Vermont state Sen. Peter Galbraith, D-Windham, spent hours questioning a fellow senator about a campaign finance bill. Finally, Senate Majority Leader Philip Baruth, D-Chittenden, had enough. He rose and cited Mason's Manual rule that no one can speak tediously and said, “I believe the senator has spoken tediously.” Sen. Richard Mazza, D-Grand Isle, was more blunt. “You're saying nothing,” he said to Galbraith. “No one's listening. Don't you get it.” Lt. Gov Phil Scott ultimately said he would not rule that Galbraith had spoken tediously. To do so, he said, would set a precedent.

Chinese officials have responded to a wave of Tibetans setting themselves on fire to protest the occupation of their country. They've arrested people they accuse of helping others set themselves of fire and seized more than 1,800 satellite TV dishes in an effort to keep news from spreading across Tibet.

Andrea Benitez didn't take it well when she didn't get the table she wanted or believed she'd been promised at a Mexico City restaurant. Unfortunately for the restaurant, she's the daughter of the federal attorney for consumer protection, Humberto Benitez Trevino. Just a few hours later, inspectors from his office showed up and closed the restaurant. Benitez Trevino has apologized for his daughter's actions and said he knew nothing about them. The government has launched an investigation.

Live and Let DieLuzerne County, Pennsylvania, Interim Sheriff John Robshaw says law enforcement officers and military personnel are the only individuals who should be allowed to have fully automatic weapons. So he has refused to sign any Class III weapons permits since he took office in 2012. Thomas F. Braddock Jr. is one of the people whose permit Robshaw has refused to sign for, blocking his attempt to buy a fully automatic weapon. He says the refusal won't keep him from acquiring the weapon he wants. It will just force him to go through a more lengthy and expensive legal process.

Ron Tuitt has been fired from his job as a second-grade teacher at a Paterson, New Jersey, elementary school for urinating in bottles during class and forcing students to take the bottles to the restroom and flush the contents. Court documents claim Tuitt did this at least three times a week between 2006 and 2011. Peter Tirri, president of the city's teachers union, defended Tuitt and said he was being unfairly treated because of his popularity with students.

It started with a group of high school students presenting a quilt they'd made as a gift to the Martinsville, West Virginia, city council. It ended with one council member accusing the students of racial insensitivity and reducing some of them to tears. Students from the Piedmont Governor's School made the quilt, and they were trying to explain how each of the squares represented their educational journey. But council woman Sharon Brooks-Hodge was fixated on a black figure on the quilt, calling it offensive to blacks and a "negative image." Even after students explained that it represented them at the start of their journey, she still insisted it was offensive. When questioned about her remarks by a local TV station, Hodge said "I am not one of your locally home grown house negroes. I don’t shuffle, I don’t tap dance, and I don’t take out the garbage."

A Turkish court has given classical pianist Fazil Say a 10-month suspended sentence for defaming Islam on Twitter. One of his tweets, for instance, mocked the rapid call to prayer at a local mosque, with Say asking if the announcer had a woman or an alcoholic drink he was in a hurry to get to.

In New York, an Albany High School teacher, who wasn't identified by local media, has been suspended after asking students to write a letter to a Nazi official arguing that Jews are evil. The assignment was given before the class was scheduled to read "Night," a memoir by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. District Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard apologized for the assignment, calling it insensitive but not malicious.

"I am the senator, you are the citizen. You need to be quiet." That was what North Carolina state Sen. Tommy Tucker, R-Waxhaw, said to Hal Tanner. Tanner had just asked for a recorded vote from the State and Local Goverment Committee on a bill that would shift public notification of local government actions to the Internet and away from newspapers. The committee had just had a voice vote on the bill, and Tucker, the committee's co-chairman, said it had passed. Tanner, publisher of the Goldsboro New-Argus, said the bill failed the voice vote and asked for a vote on the record. Tucker denied telling Tanner to shut up, though the remark was confirmed by others at the hearing.

Antonio Martinez was just walking between his home and the bakery his family owns in Vista, California, when a San Diego sheriff's deputy decided to stop him and ask him about a domestic violence incident. A neighbor tried to explain that Martinez has Down syndrome and wasn't doing anything wrong, but the deputy then pepper sprayed and struck Martinez with a baton. Deputies took him into custody for possible obstruction of justice. But they released him without filing charges.

When a single dad signed his daughter up for females-only swim lessons at Toronto's Dennis R. Timbrell Recreation Centre, he didn't realize just how seriously staff took that "females only" stuff. Chris, whose last name wasn't reported by local media, said that when the two arrived at the center he was informed he wouldnot be allowed to watch the lessons. He said that nothing on the city's website, where he'd signed up for the lessons, mentioned that. City aquatics director Anne Jackson said the females-only classes are designed to accomodate the "cultural and religious practices and requirements" of some residents. Don't worry, the city also offers males-only classes, and the mothers of boys who take them aren't allowed to watch.

Officials with Ohio's Clark Shawnee School District barred Ethan Clos from returning to kindergarten until he gets rid of his Mohawk haircut. The say it violates a dress code ban on distracting dress or grooming. When a local TV station asked why Clos must change his haircut while a local high school coach had been allowed to sport a blond Mohawk, Superintendent Gregg Morris said the two situations were completely different.

Police in Bloomfield, Connecticut, arrested Joseph Stravinkas on charges of breach of peace in the second degree, threatening in the second degree and interfering with an officer. They initially reported he had been standing on a street corner and pulled out a rifle as a motorcade carrying President Barack Obama passed by. But the next day they acknowledged he'd actually been arrested about a half hour before the motorcade passed by after someone spotted him plinking cans with a BB gun in the backyard of a house near the motorcade route.

Hawaii state Rep. Faye Hanohano has apologized for using racial slurs and verbally attacking state workers. When the workers were hanging art in her office, she complained that she didn't want anything made by "Haoles, Japs, or Pakes." That's whites, Japanese, and Chinese to those not from Hawaii.

Former Princeton, West Virginia, police officer Christopher Winkler was in his uniform when he met a 17-year-old boy and tried to get him to perform oral sex on him to pay off a debt. Winkler pleaded guilty to bribery and faced up to 10 years in prison. But Judge William Sadler instead gave him a 10-year suspended sentence and ordered him to serve up to five years home confinement.

For many years, barns across the South sported ads for Rock City, a tourist attraction near Chattanooga. When Ben Morris bought an old barn near Cumming, Georgia, he was delighted to find a faded sign reading "See Rock City." So he slapped another layer of paint on it to bring out the letters and preserve a bit of history. Now, he's being threatened with fines for violating Forsyth County's 10-year-old ban on roof-top signs.

Port St. Lucie, Florida, police have charged Daneta McPherson with harrassing a five-year-old special needs student. Video captured McPherson, a school bus aide with the St. Lucie County school system, screaming at the boy, grabbing him, and forcing him into a seat, causing his head to slam into a bus window. In fact, police say five separate incidents were captured on video.

When U.S. Border Patrol agent Brandon Carrier spotted a white SUV on a New York road he says he became suspicious because the driver had both hands on the wheel. As he followed the vehicle, he noted that the driver always drove under the speed limit, did not pass slower cars and, when the road widened to four lanes, moved into the right-hand lane allowing faster vehicles to pass by. That led him to pull it over and call for a drug dog. Agents found a tire full of marijuana. But a judge threw out charges against the vehicle's two occupants. Judge Kathleen Martin Rogers ruled that careful driving does not create a reasonable suspicion that someone is committing a crime.

Officials at Wamsutta Middle School in Massachusetts suspended Morgan LaPlaume for one day after they caught her with a butter knife. The girl was only using the knife to cut a pear, but officials say the school has a zero tolerance policy on knives.

Three years ago, an Arkansas court found police officer Coleman Brackney guilty of negligent homicide in the shooting death of James Ahern. Brackney spent one month in jail and was fired from the Bella Vista police department. But he later got the conviction expunged, and a state board ruled that he could once again serve as a police officer. The Sulphur Springs City Council recently hired Brackney as their new police chief.

Zimbabwean police have been seizing radios in villages across the country. Officials say the radios are being used to spread hate speech. But human rights activists worry it's part of a clamp down on media before elections later this year.

Libyan officials banned author Bernard-Henri Levy from traveling to that country with former French president Nicolas Sarkozy because Levy is Jewish. They reportedly said they feared Levy would become a target for Islamic extremists.

Kitchen staff at England's Castle View School have been ordered to no longer cut flapjacks, or what Americans call granola, into triangles. The order came after one student was hit in the face by a flapjack thrown by another student. Staff must now cut the flapjacks into squares or rectangles. Officials say the triangular flapjacks are a safety risk, but others note that square flapjacks have an even greater number of pointy edges.