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Er. Wow. Girl says something "subversive" on LJ, and the FBI turn up on her doorstep.
I have a cold, and I can't think, but still - does that seem completely insane to anyone else?
I have a cold, and I can't think, but still - does that seem completely insane to anyone else?
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Its their job to follow up on these things, just because we don't like the current president doesn't mean its ridiculous for them to follow up to this kind of thing.
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The fact that everything one puts out on the Net, can or is able to be read by someone... This is far from new.
This person writes that; "I said some rather inflammatory things about George W. Bush in a public post in my LJ, done in a satirical style. We laughed, we ranted, we all said some things. I thought it was a fairly harmless (and rather obvious) attempt at humor..."
Dear This Person.... How long have you been on the Net? Have you not yet learned that _someone_ will usually be unable to discern satirical style and/or humor? Have you never seen a *Flame War*?
Don't know about you, but I don't want anything 'threatening' to be directed at me. If you feel the same, then don't direct anything 'threatening' at anyone else. It seems kind of common sense.
Yes, common sense. Not an abridgment of my Freedom of Speech or whatever... Simple common sense. Imho.
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There is a vast difference between a threat and a credible threat. It sounds like thie "uniter" has managed to put people on edge.
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What is crap, and insane, is that someone would deliberately go and make the Secret Service think that investigating that innocent person was part of their job.
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The insane part was the person who reported them. *shrugs*
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I just blink a lot when I contrast this with the level of security our President gets. I have twice been in a position where I could have assassinated or at least attacked our President before anything could have been done to stop me (theoretically speaking; in practice I had neither the means nor the desire).
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It's when people get specific with their prayer requests that Mister Black Suit gets concerned. :)
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X is bad. All X must come to an end.
This particular X is bad. This particular X must come to an end.
How is the latter a worse statement?
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I don't think its a matter of how bad it is. Wishing for an end to the world is a damned sight worse than wishing for a president to perish. However ending the world is beyond the scope of most people thanfully. Conspiracies aside, it IS within the abilities of an individual to kill a president. Now if our hypothetical group were praying for the death of the president it would be a different matter. The method or phrase being used is of less consequence than the idea expressed.
For that matter, the FBI presumably does not operate using that kind of absolute logic when they have teams of experts and decades of experience to tell them what they need to keep an eye out for. I doubt they have the resources to cover every single threat made against the president AND their regular duties.
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"The method or phrase being used is of less consequence than the idea expressed."
Which brings me to my next point. No one is saying you cannot express whatever you want but you can expect ears to prick up at certain ideas. It is a federal crime to threaten the president, stupid or not it is the law and you can't break laws and expect no consequences just because you think they're stupid.
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So it's perfectly okay to think "all white people must die," but it's criminal to think "Jay Leno must die?"
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This is not to say that the FBI wouldn't take at least a passing interest in extremist groups but thats not the issue here.. or at least it wasn't, or something...
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Unless you're a "faith-based Presimident," I guess.
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Or something.
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That said, it seems like an obviously throwaway statement to me but obviously not to some folk.
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For example, there have been ministers who have not merely been investigated, but actually prosecuted, for preaching the the President was hell-bound because of a given policy. I don't know of such a case in this administration, but that's been how broad an approach they've taken to the concept of "threaten the President" for a very long time.
During the Clinton Administration, Senator Jesse Helms scored himself a visit from the Secret Service after mentioning in public that Clinton had better not visit any military bases in South Carolina, because the soldiers down there weren't too hapy with him. (As an amusing side note, Clinton visited their base shortly afterwards and jogged around it in a windbreaker jacket that said "COMMANDER IN CHIEF" in big yellow letters.
If the approach that the government has always taken to threats against the President is understood, it's completely predictable that the Secret Service would have visited this person once they were aware of the journal entry.