You are free to do as we tell you

• The Secret Service has cracked down on a 7th-grade essayist.

These things are reliably hilarious:

The boy's homework assignment for English class was to write what he would do on a perfect day. In addition to the president and Winfrey, the boy wrote that violence should be directed at executives of Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart, police and school officials said. "His perfect day would be to see the destruction of these people," Schools Superintendent David Raiche said.

I can hear some bureaucratic twit reading the words “violence should be directed at” with just the right amount of nasal officiousness. Maybe the kid’s screwed up, and maybe he was simply joking, but calling in the Secret Service seems a teeny, tiny bit extreme. I think he might have a point... does that mean the G-men are going to kick in my door, too?