Cody Webb, a student at Hempfield High School in Pennsylvania, was arrested in March after authorities said a phoned-in bomb threat had been traced to the Webb number. Cody was summoned to the principal's office and then escorted out of the building in front of his friends. He spent nearly two weeks in juvenile detention, and criminal charges were filed.
But then they were unfiled, after Cody's heroic attorney, Tim Andrews, pointed out that the times of the calls actually did not match because the school had forgotten about daylight savings time.
Daylight savings time, according to Wikipedia, was thought up by Ben Franklin in 1784 as a joke, but was eventually taken seriously and forced upon the rest of the world by members of the golfing cult, who insist on getting up as early as possible to hit a ball around a field with a stick. The non-golfing benefits of DST are debatable and most of the world does not bother with it.
Areas In Thrall to the Golfing Oligarchy
(Blue = Enslaved; Red = Free; Orange = No Good Courses Anyway)
DST was abolished in Kazakhstan in 2005, apparently based on a variety of "health concerns," and there must have been something to that because its president was then reelected with 92 percent of the vote, and anyone who's been elected president of a country must know what he's doing. On the other hand, he is a criminal, and this is a country that did not figure out for quite some time that Borat was kidding.
Among the drawbacks of DST is the need to remember about it, which is what tripped up the Hempfield authorities. Webb had admitted he called in, but said he had called the school's hotline to find out whether bad weather would force classes to be cancelled. When authorities re-checked the call log, they confirmed that Webb's call was almost exactly one hour before the threatening call came in.
The assistant DA on the case said he moved to dismiss the charges as soon as the mistake was found, by which time Cody had been sitting in jail for twelve days. Police said that in light of this new evidence, they were "investigating another possible origin of the call," presumably someone who actually made it. Cody, looking appropriately sullen in the video at the link below, said he felt "betrayed" by the school. "At this point," he continued, "I don't think I'll ever go back there at all." Probably, he has.
Link: WTAE Pittsburgh
Link: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
