a few points
you're right. a person who makes a joke in bad taste should be looked down on. it's only when take to the level of a secret service investigation, censorship and nation-wide press that I begin to have a problem with it.
second nobody made a threat. some kids jokingly said (in a format that has is known to be comedy to anybody who is educated enough to read the joke in the first place) that of all the kids in their class he was the most likely to kill the president. not that he was going to do it, just that he was the most likely to.
guess what. in any group of people one of them is going to be "most likely to" do anything. so somebody in that class is 'the most likely to try and kill Bush', these kids just speculated as to who that might be.
anybody with 2 brain-cells to rub together should have been able to put together the facts that this is a joke, high-school kids aren't known for witty humor, and even stupid speech should be protected.
and finally, nothing "threatening or damaging' was said about the president. no comment was made about him at all. it was a comment from one group of students about the character of another student, in a comedy forum. the only one with a right to be offended is the student the caption was made about and he isn't the one launching the investigation.
