Opinion
President Obama Literally in Gun Sights
T
he bullet-riddled tee shirt of
President Obama posted
brazenly on Facebook by
seven semi-automatic gun toting
men among them a Peoria, Ariz.,
police sergeant was much more
than the by now standard non-stop
litany of racist cartoons, depic-
tions, web postings, and kooky
loose talk threats against President
Obama. The gun-toting men and
the police sergeant were taking
target practice on the president’s
likeness at an undisclosed desert
locale. This is Arizona. The state
where many legislators think it’s
ok to pack guns in the legislature,
and for citizens to openly pack
them in public. This is the state
where former Arizona congress-
woman Gabrielle Giffords was
nearly killed in an assassination
attempt, and where there’s a wide
body of respectable opinion start-
ing with a finger in the face of the
president by Governor Jan Brew-
er, that openly loathes the presi-
dent’s policies and in many cases
him personally. The gun-toting
men made a virtual public call for
the gunning down of the president.
It comes against the backdrop of
Secret Service reports that the rate
of threats against the President
Obama has increased 400 percent
from the 3,000 a year or so under
President George W. Bush. He
receives dozens of assassination
threats continuously, and that
number has been steady before
and during the campaign and
T HE L AST
W ORD
Earl Ofari
Hutchinson
increased after he took office. Fed-
eral law is very clear on Threaten-
ing the President of the United
States. It is a class D felony under
United States Code Title
18, Section 871. It consists
of knowingly and willfully
mailing or otherwise mak-
ing “any threat to take the
life of, to kidnap, or to
inflict bodily harm upon
the President of the United
States.”
The Secret Service has
taken the threats against
the president seriously and has
diligently investigated every one
of them. In a few cases, prosecu-
tors have brought charges. But
here is the problem, in fact several
problems. How seriously do other
public officials take them, espe-
cially in places like Peoria, Ari-
zona? Peoria, Arizona, officials
did not suspend the police ser-
geant pending review and investi-
gation, let alone fire him or call for
a prosecution of him or his gun
toting pals. Their weak, duck and
dodge response was at worst that
he may have violated the police
department’s employee conduct
rules on the use of social media.
There was no immediate response
from Peoria, Arizona, Mayor Bob
Barrett or Peoria, city council per-
sons to calls for them to take
action against the officer and men
involved.
The Secret Service also has had
other worries, namely about
staffing. At one point, in 2010
there was a report that in a budget
request the Secret Service was
understaffed and under-resourced.
trail. This didn’t ease the jitters
over his safety. Several congres-
sional members even then
demanded that Secret Service offi-
cials provide all the resources and
personnel they could to ensure
Obama’s and the other presidential
candidates’ security. They heard
the whispers and nervous ques-
tions from his constituents about
Obama’s safety.
During the presidential cam-
paign in 2008, the flood of crank,
right murder of JFK.
There is nothing shadowy or
conspiratorial about what police
sergeant Pat Shearer and his gun-
packing friends in Peoria, Arizona,
did. It was brazen and very open.
The clueless Shearer for his part
saw nothing inappropriate, let
alone, dangerous, about what he
did. He chalked it up to much ado
about nothing or as he put it, he
didn’t think that shooting up a t-
shirt with President Obama’s face
on it “was that big a deal.”
It was more than a big
deal. The target in their in
gun sights was not a regu-
lar bullseye, a likeness of
Howdy Dowdy, or a cactus
plant. It was President
Obama. Federal prosecu-
tors should see it as the
“big deal” that it is and
bring charges.
The concern over Obama’s safety has been
intense since he announced he would seek the
presidency in February 2007
The Service denied it and insisted
it had the resources and personnel
to meet any security issue involv-
ing the president. But the presi-
dent’s hands on meet the people
routine during his non-stop road
travels throughout the country is a
constant challenge to any protec-
tive and enforcement agency.
The concern over Obama’s safe-
ty has been intense since he
announced he would seek the
presidency in February 2007. He
had the dubious distinction of
being the earliest presidential con-
tender to be assigned Secret Serv-
ice protection on the campaign
crackpot, and screwball threats
that promised murder and may-
hem toward Obama continued to
pour in. This prompted the Secret
Service to tighten security and
take even more elaborate meas-
ures to ensure his safety. This was
especially important given the
deep doubt and even paranoid sus-
picion that some blacks have that
shadowy government agencies
were complicit in the assassination
of Martin Luther King, Jr, and the
fervent belief of millions of other
Americans that the CIA or other
government agencies were deeply
complicit in the killing, if not out-
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an
author and political analyst. He is
a weekly co-host of the Al Sharp-
ton Show on American Urban
Radio Network. He is the author
of How Obama Governed: The
Year of Crisis and Challenge. He
is an associate editor of New
America Media. He is host of the
weekly Hutchinson Report News-
maker Hour heard weekly on the
nationally network broadcast
Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on
Twitter: http://twitter.com/earl-
hutchinson
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February 1, 2012 The Portland Skanner Page 5