The Enemy Within

Our executive branch's Secret Service, on the job twenty-four/seven, has defused another glowering threat to our national security.

Fourteen-year-old freshman Julia Wilson was pulled out of her biology class at Sacramento's McClatchy High School on Wednesday and grilled by two SS agents. According to the AP's account, Julia had used her web page at Myspace.com to post "a picture of the president, scrawled 'Kill Bush' across the top and drew a dagger stabbing his outstretched hand. She later replaced her page on the social-networking site after learning in her eighth-grade history class that such threats are a federal offense."

She told the Secret Service guys she'd made a mistake with the original post, but they weren't having any mea culpa.

According to the Sacramento Bee, Julia said the agents "threatened her by saying she could be sent to juvenile hall for making the threat. 'They yelled at me a lot,' she said. 'They were unnecessarily mean.'"

The girl's parents were upset about not being present when she was grilled. But an assistant principal at the school said he usually does not notify parents when law enforcement comes to the school to interview students because "parents usually interfere with an investigation."

A regional ACLU lawyer, Ann Brick, believes Julia Wilson's Myspace post did not sound like a "true threat" to the president, and said the offending page was political speech that is protected by the First Amendment.

Apparently the Sacramento area is a hotbed of insurrection, and little Julia Wilson is not the only area resident to have posed a threat against the person and dignity of the president recently. According to the Bee, "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."

At this time the Secret Service has not investigated any of my friends yet, although several of them have been known to sit in their living rooms sending out hostile thought beams in the direction of the White House.