when has america become so unamerican?

saw a news bit on cnn today. the california supreme court is reviewing a boy's 100day sentence in juvenile hall for writing a violent poem.
100 days in juvenile detention for writing a poem?

i've written about this society's propensity for knee-jerk reactions before. everything in this country hangs on a freakin pendulum. we swing all the way to the left for a while, then something happens and instead of trying to find a solution in the middle we swing all the way to the right.

kids are being suspended from school for bringing toy g.i. joe guns to school (yes... the miniature kind that goes into the action figure's hand). they're being expelled for pointing fingers in the fashion of a gun at another student in grade school. and now, a boy has lost 100 days of his freedom for writing a violent poem.

if the kid really is prone to violence, shouldn't the parents and the community get involved to try to heal him instead of throwing him into a system where he'll surely be exposed to real violent behavior? do we now just ignore the problem with recidivism in the juvenile system?

this really ticks me off.

someone called his poem "criminal conduct."
criminal? to write a poem?
we're punishing violent thoughts now? does that mean we get to throw hollywood script writers in jail too? but apparently, showing a man's head get blown up on big screen isn't criminal, while writing about it in a personal poem is.

i'd much rather a kid write his violent thoughts down on paper than being forced to carry out his anger in his actions... on other people. let's see. paper... people... paper... people... give me a break. send the kid to therapy if you will. don't send him to the juvy hall. what's that going to do for him except harden him into a real criminal? save the beds in the detention hall for the kids who really need it. you know... murderers... rapists... arsonists... people like that.

america used to be about rights. we say we give so many rights to our citizens not granted to any other citizens in this world... but it seems to me that all this talk about rights is just that. talk.
let's face it. one of our MOST fundamental rights is under attack now.
what's next? i'm too scared to even think about it.