Tuesday, September 29, 2009

It appears there are no limits on heavy handed silliness...

Seems a tasteless individual posted a poll inquiring under what circumstances Obama extinguishment might be appropriate. The Secret Service is *investigating* and liberal pundits are proposing the poll poster be prosecuted to the "full extent of the law".

Oooh! The shock! The horror! Our poor wittle dewicate pwesident might curl up in a foetal ball in the corner and cry himself to sleep!

Not.

After the initial liberal temper tantrum occuring whenever someone implies they might not *like* the "annointed one", the poll was taken down by Facebook. A second poll appeared inquiring if readers felt the originator of the first poll should be arrested, only to be taken down.

Now, there's this funny thing called the First Amendment that guards the odd concept "freedom of speech". The first poll, while tacky as all get-out, neither was a threat (simply asking if someone feels the planet or nation would be better off w/o a given individual) nor a crime. And played properly (evil dark side emerges) could have been a lovely red herring to draw out potential risks WORTHY of investigation.

The SECOND poll was a clearly legitimate political question - to what extent are we, as a nation, willing to respect non-violent speech we disapprove of? Does the first amendment apply only to speech we like?

If someone wants to ask "should the President be done in?" I don't see a crime. I suggest the crime occurs (*conspiracy*) when the questioner ventures to ask "would you help me do a *given bad act*?" I would further suggest that the proposed operating mechanism must ALSO be practically doable in order to be chargeable - asking someone to arrange meteorite impacts, lightning bolts, earth opening up and swallowing, etc - should not be chargeable, nor get more than a phone call from the Secret Service suggesting "that's a MEAN thing to say!"

I'm thinking the Secret Service and a fair number of liberal pundits need to unbunch their collective panties and engage in remedial "Constitutional Law & Principals for Dummies" courses.

1 comment:

Drang said...

Why can they make a movie about the fictional murder of one president and yet not allow a poll asking if another should be...? Oh, yeah, it Bush, that makes it OK.

I may get me one of those "Miss me yet?" tshirts.