This truly is an egregious story from England:

Two schoolboys were given detention after refusing to kneel down and ‘pray to Allah’ during a religious education lesson.

Parents were outraged that the two boys from year seven (11 to 12-year-olds) were punished for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.

They said forcing their children to take part in the exercise at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent – which included wearing Muslim headgear – was a breach of their human rights.

At least we can say that there will always be an Island once known as “England.”

I got this story from Glenn Reynolds, who has a rather bizarre spin: “THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, we’d see schoolboys punished for refusing to kneel and pray in class.” Perhaps he didn’t notice that the story is from England, where George Bush is not president (something for that troubled country to be thankful for). Bloggers should check for certain clues to avoid making this mistake, including noting the .co.uk web address, the part of the article that says that Alsager High School is near Stoke-on-Trent, which as it turns out, is in England.

UPDATE: Reynolds has an even stranger response to my post.

Clark Stooksbury is surprised to learn that Stoke-on-Trent is in England. I guess he wasn’t lucky enough to have Mr. Wolfenbarger for geography like I did. He also seems a bit unclear on the point of this “They Tole Me” series, which highlights the way in which apocalyptic things said about the Bush Administration tend to come true in rather different settings. I’m pointing that out here, just in case anyone else hasn’t been paying attention.

Actually, I wasn’t surprised about that at all since the link is to an English paper.

I had assumed his “They Tole Me” series was simply a sardonic response to the loonier attacks on the Bush administration. Now I know he means them literally, which leads me to wonder why he doesn’t link to, or at least explain who told him that if George Bush were reelected, that we would see school boys punished for refusing to kneel and pray in class. My theory is that nobody did. I searched his site and found numerous posts of this sort that it is doubtful that anybody actually told him would happen if Bush were reelected, such as this one saying “THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, PEOPLE WOULD BE ARRESTED FOR “OFFENSIVE” YOUTUBE VIDEOS.” As it turns out, YouTube wasn’t started until February of 2005. So I wonder who told him that.