Boston Scared Stupid

This past week Boston was set on edge by some clever advertisement from a Cartoon Network program. Roads were shut down and the police were on alert as these strange boxes were figured out by the powers that be. My question is this; have we descended so far into to the abyss of over protection that we can't even take a few moments to realize a real threat from a fake one? The fact that it took the entire day for the necessary departments to figure out that these things were not a legitimate threat is very disconcerting. If they can't tell the difference between real and fake how can we as the people of this city feel confident in our leaders to recognize an actual threat. I understand that in the post 9/11 society we need to be cautious that is completely understandable, but being cautious and smart are two different things. There is a reason that the department that heads up these kind of things is called intelligence, it eludes to the fact that the people working there actually have some.