Something to preoccupy us while we wait for Trumpageddon tonight. If you thought the Matt Damon clusterfark was a big deal on social media, get a load of where this one’s at:

Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.

— President Obama (@POTUS44) September 16, 2015

Hillary tweeted her encouragement too, along with many, many others. Ahmed Mohamed is 14 years old, goes to school in Texas, and is into engineering. He built his own clock at home over the weekend and brought it in to school on Monday to show one of his teachers. Another teacher saw it and was suspicious. She confiscated the clock and told the principal; they questioned him but he was allegedly “passive aggressive” in his answers. At some point the cops were brought in. Mohammed told them it was a clock but “was not forthcoming at that time about any other details,” according to the local police chief. So they … arrested him on suspicion of possessing a hoax bomb, defined as “a device that is intended to cause anyone to be alarmed or a reaction of any type by law enforcement officers.” The chief announced today that no charges will be filed because, er, it turns out it really was a clock, just like the kid said.

The Internet is outraged and the incident has been duly hashtagged for your enjoyment. Here’s a popular tweet from CAIR’s Chicago chapter…

In solidarity with @IStandWithAhmed CAIR-Chicago staff brought our clocks to work too. #IStandWithAhmed pic.twitter.com/NK9CWhyfru

— CAIR-Chicago (@cairchicago) September 16, 2015

…and here’s what the clock actually looked like:

“I think this wouldn’t even be a question if his name wasn’t Ahmed Mohamed,” said one CAIR spokesman. Maybe, but plenty of non-Muslim kids have been suspended in post-Columbine America for bringing less frightening-looking “devices” than this into school. Ian Tuttle has a non-exhaustive list at NRO. Says John Nolte, “If it takes The Right Kind of Victim to finally get the Left and media discussing school weapons hysteria, fine.” Agreed, although school weapons hysteria typically involves suspensions, not actual arrests by the local PD. What I want to know is, how many questions did these cops ask before concluding that Mohamed intended to alarm people with the clock’s appearance? If he’s an engineering nerd and had a habit of tinkering with homemade contraptions, presumably his engineering teacher or his parents or his classmates could have him set them straight on that before they hauled him in. (According to one report, the engineering teacher had given him permission to bring the clock to school.) Did he tell a single person at school that the clock was a bomb, even jokingly? If not, and if it was obvious that the clock was not in fact a bomb — something a cop would be able to tell fairly quickly, I assume — then why put him through the ordeal of arresting and even cuffing him?

In lieu of your exit question, a terrifying thought from Sonny Bunch: “Oh God. There’s going to be a clock bomb question [at the debate] tonight isn’t there.” Probably. And someone’s going to flub the answer and that’s all the media will be talking about tomorrow.