Letters to Obama

McSweeney's has a list of letters written by kids to the President-elect. Most are in line with what you might expect, but I thought this one was particularly notable:

Dear Barack Obama,

I have a great idea for you: you should set up a special phone, a special place just for kids to call the president if they find things that are dangerous and can affect people, like someone smoking. This would be a special place for kids to talk to Barack Obama and let him know what's going on.

Another important thing that I want to talk to you about is cars and buses. There is a bus called the Galactic Wizard which runs on biofuel or vegetable oil. I think, instead of polluting the environment, scientists should work on those buses. You should make it so that everyone turns off any light whenever they are not in the room—that way we can save the environment and also pay less on our electricity. We can't just use up the environment until we have nothing, or we will starve to death. Nobody wants that, do they? I want to tell you, Barack Obama, if one day I could travel around the world and help people, I would definitely do it.

Dhamaril Nunez, age 9
Boston

The $1 million question (or has inflation pushed it up to the $1 billion question? Or $1 trillion??) is whether young Dhamaril Nunez will foster what is obviously a sharp intellect and -- maybe more questionably -- an interest in meaningful issues or will he end up like the rest of us, drinking too much coffee to shake off too little sleep, making sure that we always have a smaller iPod than the guy next to us at work, and wondering whether this time Britney's comeback will stick. I'd hope for the former, but would put my money on the latter. Fight the good fight young Dhamaril! Fight it hard...

As for you el Presidente, set up that damn phone! It sounds like you'd get far better ideas from nine-year-olds than Congress -- and I mean you Madame Speaker!