And in the "What's This Country Coming To" Department

This one has left me totally f@#&ing speechless, and that's pretty hard to do.

Conservative icon Newt Gingrich met with a group of rebellious Sonoma high school students Saturday, saying he was proud of them for defying a ban on flags in their senior class photo.

Gingrich, the Georgia Republican who engineered a GOP takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, was in Sonoma County for a speaking engagement Saturday night.

He also met with 10 seniors from Sonoma Valley High School, where two students were suspended and a third faces the same fate after refusing to surrender American flags during the class photo session.

"It's such an amazing story and so out of sync with what's going on in the rest of the country," Gingrich said during a 30-minute session on the patio at Piatti Ristorante on the Sonoma Plaza.

The principal and administrators of this "school" should be run out of town on a rail...at the very least.