Is the Secret Service Targeting the Birthers?

[bluestateguy]

Might be time for some tax audits and indefinite detention to make an example out of some of the more whackadoo Birthers.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/secret-service-targeting-birthers

Thu Jan. 7, 2010 3:05 AM PST

Over the past year, Secret Service agents charged with protecting President Obama seem to have taken a keen interest in the Birther movement, the committed group of anti-Obama activists around the country who claim the president was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and is thus ineligible to serve. The idea has been widely and repeatedly debunked (see FactCheck.org's thorough takedown here), but that hasn't stopped Birthers from doggedly making their case in American courtrooms, to US attorneys, and even to a rural county grand jury, in the hopes that a judge will rule in their favor and Obama might eventually be removed from office. Those efforts have failed spectacularly, but they seem to have succeeded in placing the Birthers on the radar of the Secret Service.

At least a half-dozen prominent anti-Obama activists who've petitioned various federal agencies or courts to investigate the president's citizenship or publicly questioned his eligibility to serve say they've been visited by Secret Service or Homeland Security agents. Dr. Orly Taitz, the "Queen Bee" of the Birther movement, says, "A number of my supporters had visits from Secret Service, from different agencies, INS, Homeland Security. There are a whole number of people who got these visits to intimidate and harrass them." She says federal agents visited her home once; however, she was not there to be interviewed.*

Of particular concern to the Secret Service, it seems, are the individuals who are trying to interest federal prosecutors in bringing criminal charges against the president for fraud and treason, a movement spearheaded by a retired Navy lieutenant commander, Walter Fitzpatrick III. Last March, Fitzpatrick sent an "indictment" for treason to the US attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, asking the prosecutors to act on it. Two days later, he noted on his blog, two Secret Service agents showed up at his house along with a couple of local cops, to see what sort of threat he might pose to the president. "I'm still here," Fitzpatrick reported afterward. Fitzpatrick was contacted by the Secret Service again in July after he sent his complaint to the US attorney in Washington, DC.

more

[Tempest]

1. As well they should

From the article:

The real question, of course, is whether any of the Birthers might actually be dangerous. Many of the plaintiffs in the Birther lawsuits have been active or former military people. Orly Taitz reportedly recruited many of them at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot and military gun show, a semi-annual Kentucky event that's a hotbed of right-wing and racist radicalism. And some of the Birthers' anti-Obama rhetoric can be pretty extreme. Taitz has even suggested that "it might be time" to exercise "our second amendment right to bear arms and organise in militias."

[notadmblnd]

5. Can't her citizenship be revoked?

She certainly is behaving in a seditious manner.

[WeDidIt]

7. Only upon conviction of treason

as I understand the law.

IANAL.

[yurbud]

2. I think the birthers are about as much threat to Obama as Barney Fife was to criminals

there more likely to shoot themselves in the foot or nuts than get a bullet anywhere near Obama.

[jbnow]

6. She has booths at gun shows. She especially seeks out

cops and military.
People with guns may be idiots, it doesn't mean they aren't dangerous.
People who have guns AND believe he is a dangerous duplicitous usurper are dangerous and motivated.

I suspect some were visited after common statements like "We must stop him at any cost"

I suspect some are making up being visited

[yurbud]

8. I can't believe anyone that stupid could be a cop.

[blondeatlast]

3. I wouldn't use the word "targeting" to describe it, but they wouldn't be doing their

jobs well if they didn't scrutinize those nutjobs.

Crazy? Definitely--bit some aren't as stupid as we'd like to think they are.

[Sebastian Doyle]

4. I think there should be a definite line here.

Free speech, even goddamn STUPID free speech should be protected. However, it does cross the line, for example when you have religious cults literally praying for the President to DIE. And when that cult sends its members to Presidential events with loaded assault rifles. That is where you need to call in the investigations, because those are the ones who represent an actual danger - not just to President Obama and his family who are surrounded by armed guards, but to others at such events who don't have such protection.