There is a line between acting out of an abundance of caution and entering the theater of the absurd. Authorities in Irving, Texas, appear to have barreled across that line this week when they mistook a student-made clock for a fake bomb and marched a handcuffed 14-year-old freshman, Ahmed Muhamed, out of school and into juvenile detention.
Not all of the details of Ahmed's arrest, and subsequent release, are known yet, including why school officials and police presumed a device Ahmed insisted was a clock was actually the prop in a possible bomb hoax. Was it something he did or said?