Michelle Malkin rants again: Public school lunacy of the day:

A second-grader in Taunton, MA was kicked out of school, suspended, and ordered to undergo a mental evaluation for…

…drawing a picture of Jesus Christ on the cross.

(Hat tip: Michael Graham)

One picture of Jesus gets a kid booted from the classroom.

But Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan’s years of jihadist threats got him…a promotion and access to open season on our troops.

And GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings’ not-safe-for-school radical activism got him…a job as Safe Schools czar.

Lunacy.

Of course, there are a few problems with Malkin’s description of the story. For example, the fact that it’s not true at all.

Taunton officials dispute reports on Jesus sketch.

School officials say that the account in yesterday’s Taunton Daily Gazette was rife with errors and that the father’s description of what happened is untrue.

“The report is totally inaccurate,’’ Julie Hackett, superintendent of the Taunton public schools, said in an interview in her office yesterday. “The inaccuracies in the original media story have resulted in a great deal of criticism and scrutiny of the system that is unwarranted.’’

Dino F. Ciliberti, editor of the Gazette, did not return calls yesterday.

Hackett said the student, age 9, was never suspended and that neither he nor other students at the Maxham Elementary School were asked by the teacher to sketch something that reminded them of Christmas or any religious holiday, as the Gazette and other media reported and the father suggested, although his story changed as he explained it.

She said it was unclear whether the boy, who put his name above a stick figure portrait of Christ on the cross, had drawn the picture in school, which his teacher discovered Dec. 2.

“Religion had nothing to do with this at all, 100 percent nothing to do with it,’’ Hackett said, adding that Taunton is known as “The Christmas City.’’

Another little detail that Malkin failed to mention is that the child drew a picture of himself on the cross, not “Jesus Christ.” And he even labeled it with his own name.

But why let measly old facts get in the way of a good “Christian persecution” rant?

UPDATE at 12/16/09 3:44:04 pm:

A representative comment at Malkin’s site, out of hundreds of similar comments:

On December 15th, 2009 at 10:12 am, b-cat said:

Satan is running the school system.

And they’re yelling for the teacher to be hunted down and exposed:

On December 15th, 2009 at 10:43 am, RedDog said:

ordered to undergo a mental evaluation for…

Ordered by whom? That person should be publicly exposed (along with the apparatchik school teacher who informed on the child) then reprimanded. The reprimand should become part of her “permanent record”.