The Cluster Bomb Bunny

Last year we had the Gayster Bunny, and this year it's the Cluster Bomb Bunny:

Seven-year-old Alvin Mitchell worked intently yesterday on what looked to be a blue balloon wrapped around a tennis ball. It was a fake version of a cluster bomb, and the real thing, he pronounced, can "blow you up and kill you."

The fake bombs Alvin and a dozen other children were making at a peace workshop will be put to use Monday in Lafayette Square. As hundreds attend the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn, a smaller group will gather at the park on the north side for what is being billed as a "family-friendly Easter cluster-bomb hunt."

It used to be that an Easter egg hunt was just an Easter egg hunt. It had no message beyond cute kids playing with colored eggs. Now the venerable White House Easter Egg Roll, which dates to the 1870s, has become an occasion for at least two groups to make a statement that is as much about politics as it is about the spring holiday.

"Obviously, we're trying to spoof a little bit what will be happening on the South Lawn," said Brian Hennessey of the Vineeta Foundation, a local human rights group founded in 1995 that is the lead sponsor of the cluster-bomb hunt. "We're not trying to hit kids over the head with this; we want them to have fun. We also want to bring attention to the fact that our munitions cause a lot of death and destruction to civilians, especially children."

Teaching kids that America makes bombs to blow up other children is nothing more than child abuse. It's anti-war porn and I feel sorry for the kids who are participating, and sorrier for their parents who think this is an appropriate activity for their kids.