Where is the country I grew up in?

Yeah, I know I'm slow on this one, its been busy out the last couple of days. But in my catching up today I saw this mentioned more than once.

I know Zero Tolerance is the current justification (cop-out) for teachers to use when thinking is just too hard, and apparently for cops as well, but taking it to this extent, terrorizing an 11 year old in this manner, is verging on institutionalized child abuse. I would be arrested for handcuffing my child and locking him up as punishment for drawing something I didn't like. How, then, can this be countenanced?

She says she told her son to cooperate and tell the truth, but was horrified when they told her they were arresting him and then handcuffed him and hauled him away in a patrol car. His mother says she begged police to let her drive her son to the police department and to let her stay with him through the booking process but they refused.

They put him in a cell, took his mug shot and fingerprinted him. He says he thought he was going to jail and would never be able to go home again.

Is this the next stop on that train?

In 2004, the Berlin Appellate Court ruled that the goal of the East German 're-education system' was to "convey to the pupils the feeling of individual powerlessness and to break their individual desire for self-assertion." This was "incompatible" with the "fundamental principles of a liberal and democratic constitutional order."

In many cases, merely the fact that the parents were critics of the regime was enough to send a child to a home for years. Kerstin Dietzel, an education researcher at the University of Magdeburg in eastern Germany, often cites the case of Friedlinde Kupka, whose story is symptomatic for so many in the former East Germany. Kupka, a single mother, applied for an exit visa in 1971, and she persisted in her efforts for months. Stubborn cases like hers quickly became matters for the East German secret police, the Stasi. Its guideline 1/76 regulated the "subversion" of individuals hostile to the state by such means as "systematically discrediting the public reputation" or "systematically arranging for professional and social failures." Friedlinde Kupka lost her job as a secretary. When she rejected a job as a cleaning woman, she became unemployed in a country that preached full employment. This enabled the Rostock District Court to sentence Kupka, who was pregnant at the time, to 10 months in prison for "antisocial behavior."

Into the Castle Basement

Her nine-year-old daughter was institutionalized and her son, who was born a short time later, was given to adoptive parents loyal to the party six days after birth. A family court denied Kupka custody of her children, on the grounds that she was incapable of "raising the children to become responsible citizens." Kupka was deported from the GDR in 1975. The government blocked all of her attempts to contact the children.

There's more at the links. RTWT.

In other news, when asked about the meltdown in North Africa Obama voted present.