"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." That bit of American folk wisdom evidently was not part of the cultural patrimony of Kristja Falvo, a mother in Oklahoma. When her little boy Philip came home from sixth grade and said the other kids made fun of him, she was so eager to soothe his feelings that she made a federal case out of it. Literally. I bet when Philip was first toddling around, and bumped into a table, she spanked the table and scolded it too. "Did the table hit you? Bad table!"...