Remember your mother's advice to "courtesy flush"? No doubt 19-year-old Jesse Huffman, a student at Montana State University-Bozeman, is wishing he'd heeded that advice. According to the Great Falls Tribune, after Huffman and four friends returned from a trip to Alberta, border officials at the Port of Sweet Grass (on the U.S. side) ordered a random search of the car, resulting in an illegal possession of alcohol charge for the driver. But while this was happening, Huffman asked to use the port's bathroom. When he finished, officers discovered their toilet was clogged. And apparently there isn't a plunger within 40 miles. Fuming, the port authority officials charged Huffman with a misdemeanor crime--for allegedly deliberately stopping up a toilet--that could lead to a revoking of Huffman's federal college loans, $1,000 in fines, and six months in jail. Huffman insists his clogging was unintentional, that he suffers Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and that he used, "at most," a fifth of a roll of toilet paper.

Could the port authorities be straining their case? If the officers go to trial and push for heavy fines and jail time, won't that only clog a legal system already flush with litigation? But if Huffman wins, it will most certainly be his crowning moment.