Phil Bailey, political director of the South Carolina Senate Democratic Caucus, inflamed religious and political passions in one of the most conservative states when he called Republican Gov. Nikki Haley the “Sikh Jesus.” Bailey’s own party demanded that he delete his Twitter account, which he promptly did. The GOP wants him fired.

“Everybody is in agreement that what he did was inappropriate,” said Democratic state Sen. Brad Hutto. “… I don’t even know exactly what Twitter is, but he’s not going to be doing it.”

“The old CFO” needs a new media strategist. That’s the takeaway from the firing of Gene Morphis, the former chief financial officer of the clothing and accessories chain Francesca’s Holdings. He was fired for tweeting details about the company under the Twitter handle @theoldcfo.

From The Wall Street Journal: “The company said it launched an internal investigation with the assistance of outside counsel after discovering the activity on Friday afternoon. The company said Mr. Morphis was ‘terminated for cause’” three days later. As of now, Morphis’ tweets — and his Facebook page and blog — are still online.

When will the Twitterverse learn that tragedy is no joking matter? Make light of death and destruction and you’ll likely face the same professional fate as Russian Ekaterina Solovyeva, who lost her job as an Aeroflot stewardess over a tweet about a plane crash.

“Huh? Did a Superjet crash?” she tweeted. “Hahaha! This aircraft sucks, it’s a pity it wasn’t in Aeroflot, that would be one less.” The crash reportedly killed all 45 people on board the Sukhoi Superjet 100.

Gloucester High School punished these five students, including four athletes, for directing racist tweets at professional hockey player Joel Ward, who is black. Along with many other Twitter users, the student posted the tweets after Ward scored the winning goal for the Washington Capitals in a playoff game against the Boston Bruins.

The school did not release the names of the students, and The Times explained its decision not to identify them. But their Twitter handles and Google searches provided clues into most of their identities:

• Jim Smith, the father of one of the students, sent a letter of apology to the Gloucester Times on behalf of his son. One of the Twitter handles includes the name Ryan Smith.
• Another Twitter handle includes the name Owen Parisi. According to a Facebook profile that features a profile picture of a hockey goalie, an Owen Parisi is in the Class of 2015 at Gloucester High School. The now-deleted Twitter page of @OwenParisi included a similar hockey photo as a profile picture.
• The Twitter handle @Glidden24 belonged to a Jesse Glidden, the same name of another hockey goalie at Gloucester High School. A Jesse Glidden also is a Facebook friend of Owen Parisi.
• A fourth Twitter handle includes the name Steven Cardone, which is the name of a football player at Gloucester High School.

The fifth student used the Twitter handle @devin_GeraldHart635.

The Gloucester students were not alone in tweeting racist comments about Ward, nor were they the only young people to do so. A mother in Attleboro, Mass., made her son apologize for writing saying Ward “deserves to hang” and revoked his Twitter privileges. And a student at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire also faced disciplined under the school’s code of conduct.

Tweeting profanity is not what the doctor ordered to treat teenage insomnia. Austin Carroll, a 17-year-old senior at Garrett High School near Fort Wayne, Ind., tried it and his attempt at late-night vulgar humor earned him expulsion.

Carroll’s punishment made him an online celebrity as critics of the school rushed to defend his right to free speech, even if, as the school alleges, he used a school-provided computer or the school’s network to send the tweets. (Carroll, who had been reprimanded before for misbehaving on Twitter and at school, said he used his own computer.) Police were called to the school because of the outcry.

But one school official tweeted a pointed reminder about the bounds of free speech: “Freedom of speech is our right, but it doesn’t (always) make it appropriate. Think before you type people. #austincarroll.”

By his own admission, Marcus Higgins was “mad at the situation” surrounding the shooting death of Trayvon Martin when he posted what he thought was the address and phone number of the man who shot Martin. Higgins tweeted the information more than 100 times on March 23, and film director Spike Lee retweeted it.

But Higgins (and Lee and others who retweeted him) should have counted to 10 and checked their facts. The address led to the home of an elderly Florida couple, David and Elaine McClain, who have lived there for years. The unwanted, sometimes hostile attention triggered by Lee’s retweet caused them to fear for their lives.

Higgins initially refuted reports that he posted the wrong address. But when the celebrity gossip show “Inside Edition” apparently contacted him, Higgins recanted and apologized repeatedly, insisting that he will personally write to the Florida couple, too. As of now, however, Higgins hasn’t deleted his erroneous tweets. Neither has Lee.

UPDATE, 9:40 p.m.: Lee just apologized for his retweet. “I Deeply Apologize To The McClain Family For Retweeting Their Address. It Was A Mistake. Please Leave The McClain’s In Peace. Justice In Court.” But he still has not deleted the tweet with the McClains’ address.

UPDATE, March 29: Lee “agreed to compensate the McClains for their loss and for the disruption into their lives. He’s taken full responsibility.”

Minnesota teenager Mike Stone might argue that he should be inducted into the Twitter Hall of Fame for the Twitter publicity stunt that made him briefly famous. But inviting a porn star to a high school prom is shameful juvenile behavior, so Stone will be memorialized here instead.

Thankfully, the adults in charge of Tartan High School had the good sense to realize that a room full of testosterone-ravaged teen boys is no place for adult film stars looking to score free press. The school said the two porn stars who accepted Stone’s Twitter invitations won’t be allowed to attend the event.

By his own father’s account, 23-year-old Florida resident Rusty Braxton is like other “typical” kids who “talk before they put their brains in gear.” But Braxton’s brainless Twitter chatter about Occupy Wall Street protesters needing to “kill a cop or 2” made him the target of a police investigation.

Braxton insisted that his tweet was misunderstood. “Never would I advocate cop killing regardless how brutal they were being,” he told The Daily Caller. “I was saying for us to have the kind [of revolution] they have overseas we’d have to do that. It was just a rebelrouser [sic] trying to cause a stink and clearly worked.”

Braxton deleted the tweet in question and later closed his Twitter account. He also made his Facebook account private after journalists discovered photos of him there brandishing weapons.

The Twitter war between Israel and Palestine turned figuratively bloody when Khulood Badawi, the Jerusalem-based national officer for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, posted a false photographic account of a Palestinian child allegedly killed by Israel.

“Palestine is bleeding,” she tweeted. “Another child killed by Israel. Another father carrying a child into a grave in Gaza.” The problem: The photo was from 2006, and the girl pictured in it died either in a car or playground accident.

Badawi later deleted the tweet and photo and apologized while also emphasizing, “This is my personal [Twitter] account.” But Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, wrote a letter demanding that Badawi be fired.

One accidental tweet undermined the reputation that sports writer Tony Grossi had built during two decades of covering the Cleveland Browns. The Plain Dealer moved Grossi off the beat after he called Browns owner Randy Lerner “a pathetic figure, the most irrelevant billionaire in the world.”

Grossi objected to the newspaper’s decision to reassign him. “We’re given these marching orders to tweet your beat, to gather and attract a following, to be provocative, because it’s good for our brand to interact with the readers,” he said. “But we’re all learning the perils of this new invention.”

Update, March 8: Grossi announced via Twitter that he is leaving the Plain Dealer after more than 30 years at the paper. He’s covering the Browns again for SportsTime Ohio.