Brickbats.

• Position: Police brutality, ponds in Oregon, distracted driving

Sgt. Eliezer Pabon of the New York Police Department shoved a handcuffed 14-year-old boy through a store window after the boy mouthed off at him. The boy suffered a punctured lung and had to have glass removed from his heart. Pabon's punishment: He was stripped of five vacation days.

Jon Carey says the pond on his 10-acre home near Butte Falls, Oregon, is the best part of the property that he and his wife bought two and a half years ago. The pond has been there for 40 years. But now the Jackson County watermaster says it is illegal. State law gives the county rights to all rainfall, and the Careys are not authorized to collect it.

Two Washington state lawmakers have introduced a bill that would make it illegal even to touch your phone while driving. The bill would also more than double the fine for distracted driving from $124 to $350.

When Elmo Jones of Aurora, Colorado, divorced his wife, the court found that her son was not fathered by Jones and refused to award her any child support. Despite that, the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.) began to garnish his military retirement benefits. When he complained, officials demanded he prove the boy was not his son. He sent them a copy of the court ruling and the results of a DNA test, but the agency continued to withhold his pay. Only after a local TV station began asking questions did the V.A. stop withholding the money.

Police in the United Arab Emirates have arrested a maid from Somalia for giving birth out of wedlock. The baby is being held In the prison nursery; the mother may visit only to feed him.

Thom as Opperman, the chairman of Germany's Social Democratic Party, has proposed fining Facebook 500,000 euros for each "fake" news story on the site. How will Facebook determine which news is fake...