Students about to give Department of Education a Lesson

That’s right. A student group is suing the Department of Education, because, well, the Department of Education is apparently made up of a bunch of morons.
Students for Sensible Drug Policy is an incredible activist group that has been working tirelessly to overturn the stupid and counter-productive Higher Education Act provision that denies financial aid to those who get any kind of drug conviction. This law they’re fighting is the garbage created by sado-moralist Mark Souder and his ilk.
In order to pursue the next step in their effort, SSDP filed a Freedom Of Information request to find out state by state how many students had been denied financial aid because of this law. The Department of Education is happy to provide the information, and when requested to provide information that is in the public interest, it is standard procedure to waive the very large processing fee (about $4,000 in this case).
However, the tic-tac-toe playing, single-digit-composite-ACT-scoring, can’t-divide-by-10-in-their-head apparatchiks in the Department of Education decided (after looking at the website of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and concluding that these students were in favor of drug legalization) that providing the requested information would not serve the public interest, but rather the commercial interests of those who might profit from the legalization of drugs.
I kid you not.

• Students for Sensible Drug Policy
• Public Citizen lawsuit press release
• Text of the Lawsuit (pdf)
• DARE Generation Diary
• Jacob Sullum’s nice takedown at Hit and Run