Facebook Pulls Obama Assassination Poll--Federal Probe Launched

Image via Wikipedia

The online survey appeared on Facebook Sept. 26, posing the following question and possible responses: "Should Obama be killed? ...No, Maybe, Yes, Yes if he cuts my health care."

The add-on application used by the still unidentified poll poster has been suspended by Facebook. As if the survey weren't unsettling enough, according to The Los Angeles Times, the poll purportedly elicited 730 responses.

Pursuant to federal law (18 U.S.C. sec. 871), threatening the President subjects an individual to a fine and up to five years' imprisonment.  Criminal defense attorneys and First Amendment scholars will doubtless weigh in on whether the poll constitutes an imminent threat that violates the law or is merely a distasteful exercise of free speech.

For now, the Facebook freak who posted the poll should prepare to be "poked" by the U.S. Secret Service, which has begun an investigation. More chilling than the "surveying shut-in" are the 730 individuals who participated in the poll. Did they think they were going to win a prize, or is there something more sinister here?

"TUOL" has watched gun-toting Town Hall protestors compare President Obama to Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot in the same breath, and is afraid of the answer to the above question.