I would kick his {{{ass}}}. Ooops that one didn't delete right. Ok now. Didn't the brat confess? Or is your lawyer going to say that he was forced into confessing? If you don't want people to "mudsling" then keep your brat from doing such stupid things. And no..I don't believe everything I read and that's why I poked fun at the article in the first place. As far as your kid goes I quote a famous philosopher. "Stupid is as stupid does". What a dork to get caught in the first place. And if I'm wrong and he's not your brat then I say that this could easily have been your brat. Now go deal with your kids and either contribute here reguarly or go away.

He isn't my son... I can hardly wait for the day when the entire story is told, with the truth. Somethings are not done out of stupidity but innocent ignorance. This incident was never a prank on the school as indicated, or meant to cause anyone harm.

why don't you set us ignorant people straight instead of keeping us in such suspense. Are you ashamed of the truth or is the truth more embarassing than the BOMB story. Instead of whining about what is said how about enlightening us with a little truth instead of alot of babble. You might find a bunch of support for the kid by sharing the truth rather than keeping it such a secret. Soooo don't hold back...let us have it.

Respectfully,
Get Real

She may only know the "truth" as told to her by a teenager. It's been my experience that teenagers rarely come home and tell anything other than a self serving story. Loving parents want to believe and feel the need to stand behind their child. When situations become this serious you have to seek the real truth.

Perhaps you should re-read the article, never said the device had gun powder, said it was a black substance. The head master of the school said it was a joke, but is that what really what the kid said, or is Landmark just trying to cover themselves. Some of us know the truth, unfortunately those of you out there that don't. We are all praying the truth comes soon. This family doesn't deserve the gossip and speculation. Why are people so quick to tear down others without knowing the entire truth?

the point of my comments. I have no way of knowing if it were gun powder or not. I don't even care if it was a live firecraker or not. My point is how the writer of the article and the comments of the top cop made it appear they had thwarted another Columbine. I think my point is quite clear and my thoughts are with the family when I say punish the kid and drop it. A jokes a joke and terrorist act is a terrorist act. Deal with each appropriately. Now get your panties out of a wad. One of the punishments this brat needs to deal with is the negative impact his actions are causing his family. Sin does have it's consequences doesn't it. Well he's dealing with them now. Perhaps he'll learn from it. I hope.

I know for a fact that a lot of us that know what the truth is, have learned that the truth is something that is put in the background instead of the foreground. Assuming that all children have street smarts and are malicious brats is sad.... some kids are just kids. Bad choices are sometimes the way we grow up. Unfortunately...

Who out there hasn't made a bad choice? Do we ruin a child's future and a family over a stupid mistake?

Thirty years ago we would have laughed his stupid actions off as a lark. All I can say is thank goodness they can't go back 30 years or so or they would probably hang a bunch of us for our previous shenanigans.

Just think about a poor guy in the backseat now. I think as an 18 yr old senior, I'd have to register as a sex offender.

That "kid" "angel" um...yeah...that violent felon needs to be charged as an adult. Git Real, that home made firecracker actually does do alot of damage, I know from my brother's personal experience.
My brother and his friends for a year at least... experimented with these "firecrackers". His friend lost his arm above the elbow because of it. The incident happened at our local sheriff's home...his son was one of my brother's friends. The whole thing caused quite a commotion in our county. All of the boys had been repeatedly warned to stop playing with these "toys". The lesson did not hit home for them until the next day and they were forced by "parents who are parents"(not friends) to clean up the mess. My dad said it was the hardest thing he ever had to do.....but it had to be done. He said the driveway looked like a pig had been slaughtered in it. Part of David's arm bone was stuck in the chest freezer in the garage. None of the boys EVER played with fireworks again sadly they learned the hard way. They were lucky to be alive. There is a reason why most fireworks are illegal, and it is not just to keep people from having fun.

What do you "REALLY" know about this, nothing but what you think you have read. No one ever said this was a firecracker. Get real!

about this is what the paper wrote. I'm really glad you decided to register with your user name a few hours ago so you could jump on here and attempt to "put me in my place". Well it's nice of you to join us here. Hope you will take the time to pontificate with us in the future. Ok. Have it your way. I stand corrected. It wasn't a firecracker...it was a ((((EDITED)))) BOMB!

Go ahead Git real I think you can take him/her. Even if he's a guy he's got a girls name so I think you can take em out. Watch out for the kid though I think he's got a pen in his back pocket. Do it in Fayette and not Fairburn and it won't be a "major" felony.

because the 15 year old brat is a white kid in a black town and they don't like our kind.

Then find a tall tree (Can lions climb trees?) I think you could.

And then there's your story. I agree whole heartedly on the stupidity of the act and I am the first one in line to hold the scumbags accountable. But this is an everyday event for teenagers and charging him with a major felony is a little over the top. Our county child molesters get off easier than this stupid punk. I guess my point centered more around the fact that the press makes a bigger deal out this than if someones child is preyed upon. Could we agree that a good canning might be appropriate?

For kids I mean. It is the only way to get through to them. They are just like dogs they like to get attention, even if it is negative attention. One other thing a felony is a felony, their is no such thing as a major felony.(I think the police chief was just exagerating for emphasis) Anything that causes five hundred dollars of property or other damage is a felony.

Yeah, but look at the great big headlines they get out of story like this. Git Real is right. The pedophiles often times get a pass while this kid with a ballpoint pen will get the death penalty.

And Skyspy--- don't ban fireworks. We had loads of fun with M-80's. It's part of a well rounded childhood. For every one kid who gets a limb blown off, there's at least a hundred having a good, wholesome time.

I think fireworks are great as long as they hurt themselves and their careless idiot parents.The problem is with these new wave parents(friends). These (friends)will be the first to complain and blame everyone but themselves when thier kid gets hurt. "The police should have cracked down on them, this would have never happened" "The teachers should have known this would have happened and stopped it" " If only all of our neighbors had reported and called the police the other millions of times our kid was playing with fireworks this would have never happened" Yeah it is always someone elses fault is'nt it?? " If only the neighboring states were not selling fireworks we would have never been forced to buy our kids those fireworks"
The perverts are getting even bigger headlines on the news thanks to Chief Murray.

I didn't get into the golf cart thing. And I am not an old maid.

This turkey got nailed and should be punished.

The golf cart thieves got nailed and should be punished.

Too many kids from well off developments get kicks out of pulling stunts like vandalism and joy ride theft. Nail their butts and, I wish, the parents who created the monsters with their superior attitudes.

Too many kids and adults, criminals, come from non wealthy areas. They never learned morals, respect or any such thing. Way too many into bling, dissing, revenge and such. They come from a destructive culture that will make too many of them prison material.

This nonsense is happening across all levels of society. Our society is in decay. Too much mutli-culturalism, self-esteem, political correctness, blame someone else, liberalism and so on.

We need a moral foundation in this country. It is pretty much gone.

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Keeping it real and to the core of the issue, not the peripherals.

PTC Guy--

I run the risk of "blowing my cover" here, but here's a thing that just got accepted for a national magazine.

It answers the question of why we lack a moral foundation.
******************

Paul’s discussion in Romans chapter one reads like the script for a tragedy, but a tragedy on a grand scale, telling of the ruination not of one man, but of an entire race of men. The fatal flaw is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge the Creator and a propensity to worship created things instead. If the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the rejection of God is the source of folly. A fool and his money may soon be parted, but his dignity is not far behind.

Scripture records several boneheaded business transactions in which fools have swapped the priceless for the worthless. Esau exchanged his birthright for a bowl of soup. The people of Israel bypassed an artesian spring, choosing instead to sop up what stagnant water remained in their broken cisterns. Here, Paul’s idolaters exchanged the glory of the Creator for mere likenesses of mere creatures. It is as if the prisoners in Plato’s cave, having been outside to see a colored and textured world and offered their freedom, opted to return to the world of pale shadows on the fire lit wall.

The analogy is a fair one because Paul’s idolaters are also captives held in dark places. Their rejection of God resulted in a darkening of their intellect — including a loss of moral discernment — and an enslavement to degrading passions. When God is eclipsed by either an idol or an idea, moral vision grows dim. When the divine nature is denied, human nature is diminished.

The “degrading” and “shameful” deeds that Paul describes are today not merely practiced but celebrated. As C.S. Lewis observed, Our collective instincts are all askew on sexual matters. Malcolm Muggeridge once observed that the motto of western society was copulo ergo sum. This could wind up on the dollar.

STILL SHOCKING SINGER

Paul might have told us that such practices are just business as usual in a society that has cast off any ties to the Creator and been set adrift. But not even a divinely inspired apostle could have foretold the direction in which we may be headed.

Consider Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University. He is perhaps best known for his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, in which he argues that the interests of sentient animals count equally with those of individual humans.

In that book, Singer compares chicken magnate Frank Perdue to Adolph Hitler, as each is responsible for his respective “holocaust.” In one essay, he balances the interests of children who are bitten by rats against those of the rats themselves and asks if we are morally justified in exterminating the rats for the sake of the children’s health? For him, this is a genuine moral dilemma because the rats enjoy moral standing equal to that of the children.

The dilemma might be relaxed (in favor of the rats) if the waifs are below a certain age. According to Singer, there is no good sense in which we may say that infants have any rights, such as a right to life. “Killing a disabled infant is sometimes not wrong, given that the infant like any infant is not a person as I see it” he told CBS News. (Are you keeping score? So far we have “Save the chickens! Kill the babies!”) One might think that there is little else that Singer could say that would shock.

But then I happened upon a more recent article by Singer. “Heavy Petting” is Singer’s defense of the permissibility of bestiality: sex with animals. Reading this reminded me of a Weird Al skit in which he plays a talk show host. “Sex with furniture: What do you think?” he asks an audience member.

But Singer is serious.

He begins by noting that many sexual taboos — from the use of contraceptives to sodomy (a “part of the joy of sex,” he says) — have been broken down. But “not every taboo has crumbled. Heard anyone chatting at parties lately about how good it is having sex with their dog? Probably not. Sex with animals is still definitely taboo.”

Why, Singer asks, the lingering opposition to bestiality? He suggests that it stems, in part, from the old “out of touch” view that all non-reproductive sex is immoral (“heavy petters” are probably not knitting baby stockings).

Christians think that only humans have been created in God’s image, and that this sets them apart. To the contrary, he asserts, “we are animals, indeed more specifically, we are great apes.” And because this is so, bestiality “ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings.” Bestiality is morally objectionable only when it entails cruelty to the animal, “But sex with animals does not always involve cruelty.”

TWISTED DESIGN

As far as I know, no furred or feathered participant has given his opinion on the activity, but cruel or not, bestiality is a perversion. The word is gathering dust these days, but its original sense means the “twisting” of a thing away from its purpose and towards inappropriate ends — a misuse of the thing.

But the concept of misuse makes sense only within the context of design. Table knives, for instance, are designed to cut meat or spread butter, not to screw wheels onto go-karts. A rock, on the other hand, is not designed for anything, and is not “misused” as a hammer, a paperweight, or a weapon.

Singer’s worldview has no place for the concept of design. He would affirm with Bertrand Russell that “man is a product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving” and with Jean-Paul Sartre that we are more like rocks than table knives, that we are not for anything.

For all three, if there is no God, then, as Sartre famously put it, “existence is prior to essence.” “First of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene,” and then it is up to each individual to determine his own “essence” or establish for himself what it is for him to flourish or live well. Sartre does not mince words: “If I've discarded God the Father, there has to be someone to invent values. You've got to take things as they are.”

A Christian, indeed anyone who accepts the moral law (the thing C. S. Lewis called The Tao), believes that, to invoke Sartre’s language, perversion is an egregious instance of failing to align our existence with our essence. If we “take things as they are” — or as Singer supposes they are — there can be no serious talk of sexual perversion of any kind. Such failure is just impossible in a purposeless universe. If God does not exist, bestiality is permitted.

And other things even Singer has not (yet) advocated. Why not incest? Indeed, if “Heavy Petting” were bound up in a collection of essays that also included an essay on “Filial Love,” the latter would be no more outrageous than the first.

On Singer’s worldview, it is likely that the origins of this “taboo,” like those against bestiality, are rooted in “epigenetic rules” — propensities to believe and behave in certain ways — that were selected for their reproductive advantage. Now, as Michael Ruse observes in Taking Darwin Seriously, “our technology has outstripped our biological nature.”

Sentiments that helped ensure success on the savannahs might prove either inadequate or irrelevant in a modern urban setting. Thus, as C. S. Lewis summarized the position in The Abolition of Man, “the old taboos served some real purpose in helping to preserve the species, but contraceptives have modified this and we can now abandon many of the taboos.” With the risk of pregnancy and inbreeding removed, contraceptives may be of assistance here as well.

SINGER’S ABYSS

We have thus learned from our ethicist that sex with animals is OK so long as we keep these strict moral guidelines in mind: always remember that “no” means no, whether bleated or barked, and, whatever you do, be gentle. Similarly, why not suppose that the taboo against incest may be circumvented just so long as it is consensual and one remembers to “practice safe sex”?

“One by one, the taboos have fallen,” Singer gloats. His ensuing discussion is a tragic example of descent into a moral abyss. It is the same story that Paul told us, but this time told from the perspective of the idolaters themselves who see it as a comedy. Perhaps Singer is cheerful about such implications of his worldview. I, on the other hand see a reductio.

Moral reasoning must begin somewhere. The observation that sex with animals is perverse is as good a starting point as any. If the denial of the imago dei puts us in bed with the beasts, then so much the worse for that denial.

Singer’s article can be found at www.nerve.com/Opinions/Singer/heavyPetting/main.asp; the quote from Russell is taken from “A Free Man’s Worship,” in Why I Am Not a Christian and that from Sartre from Existentialism and Human Emotions.

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"Every time I'm in Georgia I eat a peach for peace."
--Duane Allman

I heard a Peta gal on TV asked if a baby human and animal were at risk of being hit by a car and you could save only one, which would you save.

She said the animal.

What a pit our country has become.

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Keeping it real and to the core of the issue, not the peripherals.

Bet that pulled in some curious browsers.

Anyway, the PETA position is downright goofy. But if you read very far into the essay, you saw that Singer is actually defending the morality of sex with animals (as long as the animals are not harmed in the process).

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"Every time I'm in Georgia I eat a peach for peace."
--Duane Allman

Don't get it. What is wrong with sex with animals? I do that all the time. You think that wheel in my cage is just for running around? I'll send you a web cam shot.

Goofball.

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"Every time I'm in Georgia I eat a peach for peace."
--Duane Allman

Brrrr!

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Keeping it real and to the core of the issue, not the peripherals.