Swat team in trouble

Mark Steyn:

Do you know Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison?

If you do, don't approach them. Call 911 and order up a SWAT team. They're believed to be in the vicinity of McMinnville, Ore., where they're a clear and present danger to the community. Mashburn and Cornelison were recently charged with five counts of felony sexual abuse, and District Attorney Bradley Berry has pledged to have them registered for life as sex offenders.

Oh, by the way, the defendants are in the seventh grade.

Messrs Mashburn and Cornelison are pupils at Patton Middle School. They were arrested in February after being observed in the vestibule, swatting girls on the butt. Butt-swatting had apparently become a form of greeting at the school – like "a handshake we do," as one female student put it. On "Slap Butt Fridays," boys and girls would hail each other with a cheery application of manual friction to the posterior, akin to a Masonic greeting.

Don't ask me why. The rear end seems to me to be far more prominent in society than it was back when I was a lad. There is a best-selling children's book, "The Day My Butt Went Psycho," by Andy Griffiths. No, not that Andy Griffiths. There were no psycho butts in Mayberry. This Andy Griffiths is an Australian. The U.S. edition was painstakingly translated from the original Aussie (The Day My Bum Went Psycho). And speaking of psycho butts, former senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said the other day: "The biggest problem is my butt hurts. Is that normal?"

Gee, I dunno. Standing next to Hillary at the YouTube debate will do that to you. Oh, wait, my mistake. He was taking part in a charity bicycle ride with Lance Armstrong. The Day My Butt Went Cycling.

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But that was then, and this is now. So, upon being caught butt-swatting, Mashburn and Cornelison were called to the principal's office, where they were questioned for several hours by vice principal Steve Tillery and McMinnville Police officer Marshall Roache. At the end of the afternoon, two boys who'd never been in any kind of trouble before were read their Miranda rights and led off in handcuffs to spend five days in juvenile jail.

Tough, but I guess they learned their lesson, right?

Ha! The state of Oregon was only warming up. After a court appearance in shackles and prison garb, the defendants were charged with multiple counts of felony sexual abuse, banned from school and forbidden any contact with their friends.

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Who are the perverts in this story? The DA and police in this story are acting like Saudi sex cops instead of sane law enforcement officers with real jobs prosecuting real criminals. Why not just give the boys a swat on the but and send them home?