Scary Fact of the Day

Time published a fact that will send chills down the spine of anyone who cares about our civil liberties:

- 74% of high-school students believe that people should not be allowed to burn or deface the American flag to make a political statement.

- 36% of high-school students believe that newspapers should get government approval before printing a story.

Which raises the question: do they even teach the First Amendment in schools anymore?

The first number I can understand, since September 11 was part of these kids' formative years - hopefully they can temper their emotional attachment to the flag with a healthy dose of First Amendment understanding as the memories of the attacks recede. But the latter number is scary, even if a significant amount of students were just fooling around when they filled in the bubbles.

Your grain of salt for the day: no error margin was listed. It's a USA Today poll, and those are usually +/- 4%.

Your other grain of salt: these kids are in an environment - high school - where authority does control the media. That probably warps the numbers a little bit - we should consider that an unknown number of respondents gave their answers out of sheer complacency. Which is just as dangerous, really.