Brickbats

Police arrested a 14-year-old boy at California's Crittenden Middle School for assault after he threw a football at another boy's leg during a football game. The boy who was hit was not hurt. The police report said the boy who threw the ball appeared to be angry, but officials offered no explanation for why the incident was serious enough to arrest anyone.

A District of Columbia truancy officer stopped several students who attend a private Catholic school and asked why they weren't in school. They explained that classes weren't in session that day. She didn't believe them, so they offered to call their parents and let one of them talk to her. That wasn't good enough. She forced them into a van and drove them home. The parents weren't happy about that, especially after they found the van didn't have enough seat belts for all the children.

Seven-year-old Lamya Cammon of Milwaukee kept playing with her hair in class, even after her teacher told her to stop. So the teacher used a pair of scissors to cut off one of Cammon's braids.

Britain's Office of Standards in Education, Children's Services, and Skills has proposed that parents who wish to homeschool their children be forced to undergo a criminal background check. The move is part of a proposal to make homeschoolers register with the government and tell it what they're teaching.

When a group of teenagers threw rocks at Renate Bowling's Lancashire, England, home, the 71-year-old went out to confront them. During the exchange, she poked one 17-year-old boy in the chest with her finger. The government has charged Bowling with common assault.

Andre Caldwell, a school bus driver in Palm Beach County, Florida, has been charged with two counts of cruelty to a child and one count of culpable negligence for instigating a fight between two groups of students on his bus. Caldwell reportedly told two Hispanic students, "If the black kids whoop your white ass, I ain't going to say nothing," before covering the bus' security camera with his hat so the fight wouldn't be recorded.

Sweden's Life Regiment Hussars are an elite military unit. During a recent training exercise, they were supposed to capture a house. They blew the doors and window frames out of someone's home before realizing they were in the wrong place. 

Cecil Bothwell was only recently sworn in as a member of the Asheville, North Carolina, City Council, and some folks are already threatening to go to court to get him thrown out of office. Has he been accused of corruption? Been caught with an underage girl? No, he's an avowed atheist, and the state constitution bars those who "deny the being of Almighty god" from holding office. The provision conflicts with the U.S. Constitution and can't be enforced, but Bothwell's opponents say they'll try to have him ousted anyway.