No Excuse For This

Huffington Post reported earlier today:

In a high school geometry class, parallel lines and angles intersected with talk of presidential assassination Monday, when an Alabama teacher used an unfortunate hypothetical as a classroom example.

"He was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president,'" said Joseph Brown, a senior in the Corner High School geometry class, according to the Birmingham News.

The Secret Service went to the Jefferson County high school to investigate the matter after someone informed them about the statement. (The unnamed teacher was neither arrested nor charged with a crime).

"We did not find a credible threat," Roy Sex­ton, special agent in charge of Birmingham's Secret Service office, told the News. "As far as the Secret Service is concerned, we looked into it, we talked to the gentleman and we have closed our investigation."

According to district Superintendent Phil Hammonds, the teacher has been placed on paid administrative leave and may face eventual termination.

"As a district, we are embarrassed by his actions and what he said," Hammonds told the News. "There is nothing that can be said to rationalize what was said. We take this very seriously. There is no place in our society for a person to make these comments."

Obviously, no one is to blame but the teacher, as the district seems to be as baffled as everyone else, but this is just another example of a frightening new trend of mixing threats of violence with political viewpoints.