Second the motion!
It is true that PJ's original intent was to document the SCO case for posterity. Initially she did not have a real opinion about SCO. She was looking forward to the trial and observing the tactics of two sets of high profile lawyers. That changed pretty quick of course once SCO and their lawyers showed their true colors.
But still the original mission of Groklaw - to document in depth the SCO trial - is accomplished.
In the process she has also shown the power of harnessing the FOSS methodology to other fields.
There is nothing stopping the ACLU, or the EFF, or anyone else from doing the same about issues that matter to them, but we cant really expect PJ to be the one to do it.
An honorary doctorate in LAW for PJ sounds like an excellent idea. Maybe at the next OSCON? Tell Tim O'Reilly to start promoting it!

First let me recommend you read Bertrand Meyer's write up on teaching introductory programming. Meyer is the inventor of the EIFFEL language, and the Design by Contract methodology. He teaches at the Zurich Technical institute.
Even if your students are not at the first year university level, some of his thoughts would be of value.

Second let me say that there are enough accomplished youngsters out there that you do not want to turn them off by boring them with trivia.
Meyer's approach is to use a well established library building blocks and let the student start by making calls to the library to implement some interesting new features.
Once hooked on the 'coolness' of being able to tell the computer what to do, some/most of them will want to know why and how this all works.

Third, given the almost total video orientation of today's youth I would suggest that the 'first program' should not be 'hello world' but instead be drawing a smiley face on the screen. Or something of similar graphical nature and complexity.
There was a language called LOGO developed for the commodore 64 that had that approach. Very easy to make a 'turtle' crawl around the screen and make figures/shapes. Learning to direct the 'turtle' was how the kids got introduced to statements, loops, conditionals etc.

softcoder