truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

New York City high school chemistry teacher Elihu McMahon, 69, reports daily to a do-nothing job, at $77,000 a year, as the result of being ordered out of the classroom based on various complAin'ts and administrative findings. In fact, according to a February New York Post story, he has spent about three- fourths of his time in the last 15 years in such jobs (since New York teachers have generous job protections), costing the schools an estimated $600,000 in salary. Among the complAin'ts against him: racist remarks to students (McMahon is black), insubordination, incompetent teaching, improper grading, and sexual harassment (although McMahon blames the problems on bad administrators).

Fine Points of Privacy Law: Patient privacy regulations (under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) were recently blamed for hospitals' placing restrictions on ward visits by Santa Claus (in Davenport, Iowa, December) and by clergy members (in Morgantown, W.Va., January), unless all patients give permission. And a Silver Spring, Md., woman was billed $17,000 by Washington (D.C.) Hospital Center before the hospital was allowed to tell her who the patient was, because of federal privacy laws. (The patient was her missing-person husband, who had been killed by a hit-and-run driver, news the police were late in giving her.) [Washington Post, 1-20- 04

Donnie Newsome, the chief administrator (called the "judge-executive") of Knott County, Ky., was convicted in October 2003 of buying votes, then denied bail during his appeal because the judge found him a "danger" to the community, and then sentenced in March 2004 to two years in prison, but Newsome still manages the county's affairs from a detention facility in Lexington, getting briefings from an assistant during visiting hours. (Kentucky law does not require the resignation of convicted officials until their appeals are exhausted.)

Americans continue to be divided over the wisdom of "zero tolerance" laws that require heavy punishment even for slight, technical violations, especially as applied to public school students. In December, for example, the Bossier Parish, La., School Board voted to uphold the year-long expulsion of a tenth-grade girl for "drug" possession, specifically an Advil tablet. And in January, a Rio Rancho, N.Mex., middle school student was drug- suspended for five days for possession of a Gas-X tablet. (National media attention eventually caused both school districts to lessen the penalties.)

In December, Australia's TV Channel 7 reported that many schools across the country, at the behest of the Australasian Performing Rights Association, were discouraging parents from making keepsake movies of their kids' appearances in Christmas musicals, because recording the holiday songs might violate copyright law.

In December, New Hampshire's state drug abuse and prevention program was turned down for a $17 million grant on the sole ground, said the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, that its application was typed with smaller margins than permitted. The federal agency did not give the state an opportunity to correct the formatting, even though the victims of the rejection were not the grant-writers but drug-addicted patients.