STEPHENS CITY - Bleeding-heart liberals are crying foul after a front-page article ran in the Washington Tribune which revealed that nine-year-old grade school student Jenny Smith has a crush on her classmate Robert Doe. Though the newspaper is protecting the anonymity of its source on the story, liberals claim that Karl Rove leaked the information to retaliate against Jenny for unpatriotic statements she wrote in a class essay.

Last week, Jenny's teacher assigned her class to write an essay regarding their hopes for the world in the future. Jenny's essay included the provocative passage that, "I hope that one day there will be no war." Jenny's teacher ignored the statement when deciding to post Jenny's essay on the class bulletin board with all of the other essays, and that neglect led to a major crisis in the school.

By the end of the week, the entire fourth grade became divided on the issue. Some students supported the war in Iraq; other students sided with Jenny in providing aid and comfort to the enemy. The groups clashed at recess on Friday, with pro-terrorism students chanting, "No more war!" while pro-America students responded, "Our Dads can beat up your Dads!"

Jenny's teacher referred Jenny to the school counselor, who recommended that Jenny be sent to juvenile detention where she could receive medical treatment. Despite Jenny's age and her counselor's duty of confidentially, her counselor nevertheless discussed his decision with reporters:

"Obviously, this is a cry for help. Jenny has an unhealthy amount of empathy for people she doesn't know. It would have been appropriate for her to write about how she hoped to have lots of children in the future, or how she hoped for a robot that would do housework. Instead, her head is filled with violent images of people dying in another country. In a case like this, we feel it is best to separate the child from her parents and see that she receives mental reconditioning in a government-run facility, along with some drugs to calm her mind down and keep her from thinking too much."

However, juvenile detention was not the end of the controversy for Jenny. Last Monday, the Washington Tribune was the first to break the story on Jenny's crush on Robert. Robert has a history of misbehavior which includes crushing milk cartons before they are emptied and refusal to put his crayons back in the box. One source familiar with Robert, who wished to be identified only as Booger, says that Robert is widely considered to be a "jerk-face" among his peers. Robert himself has refused to comment upon the allegations, except for a brief statement in which he said, "Ew, girls are gross!"

Initially, it was unclear how the information regarding Jenny's crush was leaked. According to Jenny, she told no one, but only wrote about her crush in her Barbie Electronic Diary.

New light was shed on the mystery Wednesday when an anonymous source from within the CIA leaked the existence of a spying program created by President Bush that targeted the Barbie Electronic Diary. A chip in the diary gathers everything written in the diary and transmits it via satellite a database in the CIA. Hundreds of highly trained CIA agents then perpetually scan the database for evidence of terrorist plots.

Today, President Bush defended the program as vital to national security. "Terrorist threats could be everywhere. They could be hidden in a telephone call from your mother. They can be hidden in a Frank Zappa record if you play it backwards. They might be on soup labels. They may even be sent through telepathy. To keep America safe, we must leave no word uncollected, and everyone must be held responsible for what they say."

President Bush continued to speak of recent successes in foiling domestic terrorism plots by grade-school students. This week, the Secret Service investigated a seventh-grade student in Rhode Island who arguably threatened to kill President Bush if the words he wrote in an essay are interpreted in a certain implausible way.

"What if that boy had weapons of mass destruction? He could have, you know. But the fact that we stopped his plot shows that all of my terrorism policies work. It may be true that the boy had no connection to a terrorist organization at all, and it may be true that my spying programs didn't catch him, and it may be true that spending millions of dollars investigation a seventh-grader's essay is a waste, but even though all that's true, you're unpatriotic if you say it."

When asked about the source of the leak, President Bush said, "When I find the bastard who tattled on the Barbie Electronic Diary program, he's dead. I want his head on a pike." When asked if that also applied to the leak of information about Jenny's crush, the President said, "We don't know who leaked that. But let me assure you that I talked to him, and he said he didn't mean to leak it, because nobody can prove whether he meant to or not. And our lawyers advise me that we can get away with it."

President Bush later clarified that, "It's all Jenny's fault, because if she wouldn't write unpatriotic things, the people who I don't know about and do not direct in any way wouldn't have to release embarassing information as a warning to everyone else. I don't want these disclosures to happen, because I'd just rather kill my political enemies outright, but then the liberals would get all uppity about that. So really it's the liberals' fault."

Privately, some Administration officials worried about the damage that this latest scandal might cause. After sacrificing Scooter Libby over the Plame leak, the Chief of Staff has not had enough time to find a replacement fall guy.

Still, the Administration remained focused on security. When asked about the Jenny Smith case in congressional hearings today, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said, "Leaking to the public information about illegal spying seriously damages our ability to investigate terrorists through illegal methods. An informed public is the most serious threat to our fight against terrorism. I hope we find the sources of these leaks and eliminate them so that we can continue the life-or-death business of reading Barbie Electronic Diaries, warrantless wiretapping, and the even more wanton violations of civil rights that you don't know about yet."

Jenny Smith is worried about what other information in her diary might be leaked to the media. The White House says that little Jenny has nothing to worry about, because that information is used for legitimate purposes only, as long as you do not know about the other uses. "Jenny can trust the government's use of this information, she has absolutely nothing to worry about," says Karl Rove. He added, "I expect though that Jenny will come to appreciate the necessity of our program. I don't think it would be wise for any girl who still wet her bed to be making any more fusses about politics."