CNN reports: The social networking site Facebook on Monday pulled a third-party application that allows users to create polls after a site member built a poll asking if President Obama should be killed.
The U.S. Secret Service, the agency assigned to protect the president, has launched an investigation, agency spokesman James Mackin said.
“As is usually the case, our vigilant users reported it to us first,” Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt told CNN. “The USSS [Secret Service] sent us an e-mail late this morning PDT asking us to take it down. At that point, it had already been removed, and we let them know.”
Schnitt said the application “was immediately suspended while the inappropriate content could be removed by the developer and until such time as the developer institutes better procedures to monitor their user-generated content.”
Facebook allows third-party developers to create applications — such as polls and quizzes — which are then made available to Facebook users, who use the applications to create specific content. Users may choose to make their content available to the general population of Facebook or limit it only to their friends.
In this case, Schnitt said, the user made the poll asking whether Obama should be killed available to the general public.
The possible responses to the poll were “yes,” “maybe,” “if he cuts my health care” and “no.”
Schnitt said the poll “appears to have been posted over the weekend.”
(Source: CNN)
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6 Responses
There is a fine line drawn in federal law concerning the First Amendment. We may criticize the President from now until doomsday. But don’t, don’t talk about assasination attempts. It could really get you into hot water.
On the other hand, when people were making jokes about President Bush about killing him and making movies about it, did the Secret Service launch an investigation? The media just gave a big yawn.
So what were the results of the poll?
Kill Obama? Chas v’sholom! We need Obama. We need him to flush the alien and dangerous notion of the god-emperor — the American Caesar — from this country’s politics. We need him to destroy the concept of liberalism as a savior religion. We need him to assure that this country’s elites, who have bought into this grotesque primitivism, are embarrassed as thoroughly as they deserve.
Impeach Obama, but dont kill him, for crying out loud.
Uh locknload,who do you think is one of the elitists? Tell me who registered their two daughters this past January in a private school in Washington, D.C.?
Flatbush Bubby, you are sorely mistaken. There is no fine line. It is perfectly lawful to talk about assassination, and even to advocate it. It is even lawful to address a political rally and say that “If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is Obama”. This is not a difficult question of law; the law is absolutely clear that this is OK, and any policeman who dared to arrest someone for saying that would lose his house to a lawsuit. Normally police get qualified immunity, but not when the law is as clear as it is on this.
You can be sure that if they find whoever was responsible for this facebook poll they will not arrest him; they will probably violate his rights by harassing him and questioning him despite knowing that he has done nothing wrong, but they will stop short of arresting him, because they know the law and they don’t want to lose their houses.