should not have attempted to use intimidation and threat tactics on something that should have been chalked up to teenage shennanigans.

The person at the Youth in Government organization should not have placed the call to the principal--they should have known that an 18 yr old, who is old enough to vote, has a constitutionally protected right of free speech. Of all the people in this scenario, an organization that deals with government issues should be up on that.

The principal is certainly culpable, but there are others who are just as culpable as he is, namely, the two entities I mentioned above.

Jones-Sontag attempted to intimidate Emma Sullivan through the thinly veiled threat of impacting her college career before the girl even graduated high school by contacting a school agency with the purpose of punishing the girl for what she said. She attempted to sic school officials on Sullivan.

What this has done is expose blowsalot's office staff as a waste hole of taxpayer money, where they have nothing better to do with taxpayer money than to do name searches on Twitter to find out how they will intimidate criticism of the governor.

Let's extrapolate this further: let's say that the school district decided to side with blowsalot... let's say that the principal wrung an apology out of the girl by holding her final grades hostage. What was to stop Jones-Sontag--or anyone's office lackey--from going after the employer of a 40 yr old man, if he said something unflattering about the governor? Where does this line of intimidation and threat stop? This "say something not nice and we'll make you pay for it" strategy needs to be strangled in its crib. This is the pricise reason why our government's consitution says that the state cannot infringe upon a citizen's right to free speech. The governor is the head of his state--clearly, his staff doesn't understand that they aren't a private company... ...yet.