Weekly Editorial Recap

Thursday

WHY ALLOW KIDS TO SPEAK, AT ALL?

In the spring of 2006, officials at Foothill High School, in suburban Henderson, required valedictorian Brittany McComb to submit her graduation speech to them for advance censorship, as has become standard policy.

Ms. McComb handed them a speech containing nine references to "God," two to "the Lord," one "Christ" and a half-dozen upper case pronouns. Six words, two biblical references and a comment about God giving his son to suffer an excruciating death were edited out. ...

Then, when Ms. McComb proceeded to deliver the unedited version at graduation ceremonies, authorities killed the power to her microphone. ...

Ms. McComb filed a lawsuit against Clark County School District staff and administrators for censoring her speech. But that lawsuit essentially ended in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, as a three-judge panel issued a memorandum reversing a federal judge's 2007 decision not to grant a district motion to dismiss the case. ...

School officials appear to have overreacted. No one seems to believe the U.S. Senate is "proselytizing" any specific religion when it allows a churchman to offer a benediction prior to its sessions. ...

That said, the decision of the 9th Circuit panel was predictable, and probably followed the wiser course available. ...

If the courts were to rule that officials have no control whatever over what's said at school functions, the practice of allowing students to speak would almost certainly be near extinction. ...

When Ms. McComb finishes her current semester at Oxford, she will return to Biola University, a private Christian college in La Mirada, Calif., from which she plans to graduate next spring.

In the end, we are considerably prouder of her than we are of an anonymous crowd of school functionaries, anxious to pull out their red pens and nip and tuck an honest and earnest testimony ... .

Brittany McComb was their valedictorian. She ... was the best they could produce. Yet they didn't trust her to spend a few minutes speaking her own mind -- explaining how she believes she did it?