hey, secret service department of clownland security goons, look over here… KILL BUSH!
grumble, mutter, gripe, complain…
Now she’s fighting back
By Ashlee Vance
16th October 2006
Not satisfied with creating militants abroad, the US has decided to nurture homegrown government haters.
California teenager Julia Wilson has dedicated herself to organising student protests against the Iraq war in an act of retaliation against a firm visit from the Secret Service.
US investigators last week pulled the student out of her classroom for questioning about a MySpace page that showed President Bush being stabbed in the hand with the words “Kill Bush” scribbled above the photo. Both Wilson and her parents thought the Secret Service’s tactics inappropriate.
“I wasn’t dangerous,” honours student Wilson told the AP. “I mean, look at what’s (stenciled) on my backpack — it’s a heart. I’m a very peace-loving person. I’m against the war in Iraq. I’m not going to kill the president.”
According to reports, the Secret Service agents – apparently huge MySpace fans – first stopped by the 14-year-old’s house (naturally, they would assume that she was a delinquent). The agents contacted Wilson’s mother and then promised to return later when they could interview the lass along with her parents.
Instead, the agents stormed Wilson’s school in Northern California and grilled her for 15 minutes.
“They yelled at me a lot,” she told the newswire. “They were unnecessarily mean.”
The agents also threatened to haul Wilson off to juvenile hall.
Class acts.
Both Wilson and her parents conceded that the Secret Service agents were right to look into the matter, as threatening the President is illegal. They, however, thought the deception and verbal rough-up to be over the line.
Wilson now plans to create a new MySpace page to help students organise protests against the Iraq war.
but there are “normal” people in bush’s mind: there are republican voters, suspects, and outright terrorists…
Yeah, that sounds about right. Dinking around in other places as opposed to actually doing their jobs. Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Overreaction.
I can see how what Julia did was going too far, but it was obviously with nothing more than a classless, juvenile grab for attention.
Nothing meriting a school visit from the Secret Service. Why couldn’t they wait for her to come home? Did they think she wouldn’t obey her mom’s orders? And even then, why pull her out of class, and not wait for her mother to arrive? She wanted that right, she should have been granted that. Treat normal people like CITIZENS, Bush, not criminals!
Talk about overreaction.
~Infin
Here is how Julia Wilson’s family tells their story:
Two Secret Service agents arrived at their Land Park home about 2:30 Wednesday afternoon, Kirstie Wilson said. They told her they wanted to speak with her daughter about threats to the president that she had posted on MySpace.
“She was in molecular biology, and I said I really didn’t want to take her out of class for this,” Kirstie Wilson said. “I said I’d make sure she came right home from school.”
She asked the agents to come back in an hour, and they left.
Then Wilson sent her daughter a text message instructing her to come straight home from school.
“… there are two men from the secret service that want to talk with you. Apparently you made some death threats against president bush. Dont worry youre not going to jail or anything like that but they take these things very seriously these days,” Kirstie Wilson wrote.
“Are you serious!?!? omg. Am I in a lot of trouble”? her daughter replied, using common teenage shorthand for “Oh, my God.”
Kirstie Wilson called her husband. While they were on the phone, she received another text message from her daughter: “They took me out of class.”
It was a 15- to 20-minute interview, Julia said. Agents asked her about her father’s job, her e-mail address, and her Social Security number. They asked about the MySpace page she had created last year as an eighth-grader at Sutter Middle School.
“I told them I just really don’t agree with Bush’s politics,” Julia said Thursday. “I don’t have any plans of harming Bush in any way. I’m very peaceful; I just don’t like Bush.”
The MySpace page under question was a group page, similar to an online club.
Most of the groups Julia is a part of are fan clubs for movie stars like Jake Gyllenhaal and Ewan McGregor. The group that got her in trouble was called something like “People who want to stab Bush” — Julia said she doesn’t remember the exact name because she soon changed it.
After an eighth-grade history lesson in which she learned that threatening the president is against the law, Julia said she changed the group name to “So Bush is an idiot but hey what else is new?”
The group primarily consisted of her teenage friends who share her liberal political interests, Julia said. She deleted the group page over the summer when she decided that MySpace was juvenile and taking up too much time.
Moose and Wilson say they had no idea what their daughter had posted online.
“I was more than happy to have them talk to her about the severity of what she did. But I wanted to be here with her,” Kirstie Wilson said.
McClatchy Assistant Principal Paul Belluomini said he usually does not notify parents when law enforcement officials come to school to interview students.
“Parents usually interfere with an investigation, so we usually don’t notify them until it’s done,” he said.
Sacramento City Unified School District policy calls for parents to be notified but doesn’t say whether it should happen before or after a student is interviewed. State law doesn’t require parental notification.
In any case, said Ann Brick, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Julia Wilson’s post did not sound like a “true threat” to the president, making it political speech that is protected by the First Amendment.
“The courts have to distinguish between political rhetoric and hyperbole and a real threat,” Brick said. “A reasonable person would have to interpret what was said as indication of a serious intent to commit harm.”
Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, said in the current political climate, “the threshold that brings (agents) in has gotten lower.”
“It’s a cautionary tale for kids who are on MySpace that putting something on MySpace like ‘Kill the President’ is not the same as saying it on e-mail or over the phone,” Scheer said. “The government is not systematically listening to all phone calls or going through e-mails, but it probably does search the Internet.”
how’s this?
U.S. agents question teen
By Laurel Rosenhall and Ryan Lillis
October 13, 2006
The latest Sacramento resident to be questioned by federal agents in possible threats against President Bush is a 14-year-old girl with a heart on her backpack and braces on her teeth, a freckle-nosed adolescent who is passionate about liberal politics and cute movie stars.
Her name is Julia Wilson, and she learned a vivid civics lesson Wednesday when two Secret Service agents pulled her out of biology class at McClatchy High School to ask about comments and images she posted on MySpace.
Beneath the words “Kill Bush,” Julia posted a cartoonish photo-collage of a knife stabbing the hand of the president. It was one of a few images Julia said she used to decorate an anti-Bush Web page she moderated on MySpace, the social networking Web site that is hugely popular among teenagers.
The Secret Service refused to answer questions about the case or even confirm an investigation. Eric Zahren, a Secret Service spokesman, said the agency does not discuss its work
"because we don’t have to"“due to the sensitivity of our mission.”But Julia’s mother, Kirstie Wilson, and an assistant principal at McClatchy High said two agents showed them badges stating they were with the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security.
Federal law prohibits making serious threats against the president, and Julia and her parents say what she did was wrong.
The couple are disturbed, however, that federal agents questioned a child at school — without her parents present. And First Amendment lawyers question whether the Secret Service over-reacted to a 14-year-old’s comments on a Web site made for casual socializing.
“I don’t condone what she did, but it seems a little over the top to me,” said Julia’s father, Jim Moose. “You’d think they could look at the situation and determine that she’s not a credible threat.”
Earlier this month, federal officials arrested two Sacramento-area men for allegedly threatening the president. Elk Grove resident Michael Lee Braun has been charged with sending two threatening letters to the El Dorado Hills country club where Bush recently made an appearance. Rocklin resident Howard J. Kinsey is accused of threatening the president through a text message.
continued in the next comment
http://www.channel4.com/more4/drama/d/death_president.html
Death Of A President
This is the show that has been airing freely in the UK, although numerous US tv channels have flat out refused to air it already. It appears the US broadcasting people are too scared/worried about its content to take it on and air in their own country. It’s only fiction but it’s being treated like banned material that some marxist state has decided is worth banging you up inside for 30 years for being in possession of!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0853096/
I don’t doubt that this could have happened, but the writing style puts me off and makes me wonder if it’s anecdotal. Is there another source that might have the same data?