John Freshwater, an eighth-grade science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio, is accused of branding a cross on a student’s arm with a high-voltage electrical device normally used in the classroom to teach the characteristics of gases. Freshwater has been repeatedly warned by the school district not to decorate his class with religious artifacts, not to teach creationism, and not to teach intelligent design, but here’s the important fact that I think should be brought out at the pending federal trial in Columbus: he was never warned by the district not to brand crosses on students. How was he expected to know that?