After spending four nights in an Ocala juvenile jail, the 11-year-old Lake County boy detained for his "deadly" makeshift slingshot returned home to his parents Tuesday night.

Kevin Cottle said he didn't deliberately try to hit another student at Tavares Middle School with his home-made slingshot.

…

The sixth-grader at Tavares Middle was arrested Friday when he was accused of using a toy balloon slingshot to hit another student in the chest. He faces second-degree felony charges of shooting or throwing a deadly missile.

Shooting or throwing a deadly missile? Are they crazy in their frickin' heads?

This has got to stop. Zero-tolerance is becoming nothing but a way for administrators to "make examples" of certain students and for what? To prove they are the big bad administrators who know all and should never be questioned?

I want to know who decided to call the police in the first place, over a toy? Talk about wasting the resources of the police department and the money of the taxpayers.

Samuel Oliver, the Tavares attorney representing Kevin, said Tuesday he expected authorities to downgrade allegations lodged against the boy.

Prosecutors are "apparently skeptical of whether or not this merited the charge that was levied by the Sheriff's Office," he said.

Ya think?

Once again administrators and teachers are acting with zero intelligence. They won't use red ink anymore because it may stigmatize the children, but they have no problem calling the police and slapping the student in cuffs. Hypocrites.

Last season, at the beginning of each race, I took notice of those drivers who did and did not show respect to our nation's flag during the National Anthem. This season, I am doing things a bit different. I am not going to be pointing out those drivers who chose not to show respect to our flag, but I will do a weekly post highlighting those drivers who do show respect to our flag.

This week's driver of the week? Joe Nemechek

There may have been other drivers, but they were not caught on camera.

Bird flu spread in Asia as Laos reported its first-ever human case of the virus, following an outbreak in poultry.

The lethal H5N1 strain of avian influenza infected a 15- year-old girl in Laos, the World Health Organization and the health ministry said in the e-mailed statement. The teenager, who is in the hospital, is from a suburb of the capital, Vientiane, where an outbreak of the H5N1 virus in fowl was confirmed on Feb. 7, the agencies said.

[Source: Bloomberg]

NASCAR continued its crackdown on cheating Monday, fining three more crew chiefs for violations committed in the days leading up to the Daytona 500.

Scott Miller, Lee McCall and Randy Seals each were fined $10,000 by NASCAR, which has made more punitive measures for rulebreakers a point of emphasis this season.

Scott Miller, Jeff Burton's crew chief, was fined for using an unapproved rear spring lower truck trailing arm mount. Lee McCall, crew chief for Mike Bliss, and Randy Seals, Kevin Lepage's crew chief, were both using unapproved lower rear spring mounts.

NASCAR collected a lot of money before, during, and after Daytona.

Where does the money collected from these fines go? Does NASCAR donate it to charity? Does it go to help drivers who have been injured and can never race again? Surely it goes to some worthwhile group of people who could really use the money to change their lives…

Nope, nope, and no it doesn't.

The money collected from fines is put into a driver's point fund and at the end of the year it is divided between the top 25 teams. As long as a team finishes in the top 25, they will receive a cut from the fund, even if they were one of the teams fined during the season.

In 2004, the fines totaled $384,000 and champion Kurt Busch, who was fined $21,000 over the course of the season, received $84,000 from the drivers fund at the end of the season.

This year the fines from Daytona alone total $280,000. If teams keep cheating, which we all know they will, this could be the most lucrative year ever for a payout from the drivers fund.

Maybe NASCAR shouldn't call them fines. Maybe they should call them short-term investments that pay performance dividends at the end of the year?

In the latest Test Pattern I give offer my opinion of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada.

Last year, 1st Lt. Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq with his Army brigade citing the legality of the war in Iraq.

In a desperate bid to justify his actions, Watada took his case to the people, publicly announcing his intention to disobey orders. He has also spent the last year speaking out publicly against the war, claiming he is protected by the First Amendment.

You can hear what was on my mind at the time in the latest episode of Test Pattern. You can subscribe at ISPN Media, or you can click the ODEO player link below.