Dangerous letters
The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., needs to be more careful in the letters from readers it allows to be printed. There is one in Wednesday's paper that can be read, without too much trouble, as a call to assassinate President Obama.
After fulminating against "liberal" attempts to take over health care, the writer's rhetoric takes an apocalyptic turn. "It is so frightening to see what is happening in our country and the pace in which it is spinning out of control. Our forefathers must be churning in their graves. What they built and the bloodshed (sic) we spilled to protect and defend us is rapidly turning to sand."
And then the payoff line: "Someone has to stop all the takeovers and giveaways and do it quickly."
Someone.
The writer will no doubt say assassination wasn't the intent, but in the context of the rest of the letter this can be read as a call to murder and should not have been published. A weak-minded rightist, a Timothy McVeigh type, could be moved to action by words like that. Especially amid growing calls among the more dangerous elements of the right to do away with the President. Pennsylvania is not immune from that sort of thinking, or lack thereof. Newspapers need to be careful.
The Warren Times-Observer in Warren, Pennsylvania, actually ran a classified ad in May that expressed the hope that Obama would follow in the footsteps of "Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy," the four murdered U.S. presidents. No one on the classified ad staff apparently made the connection, and the publisher issued a public apology. The Secret Service is said to be investigating.
This is not a free speech issue. No one has the right under the First Amendment to publicly advocate the murder of another person, whether they use carefully coded language or not.
So Patriot-News, screen your letters more carefully. The editorial page and op-ed page are something I never fail to read, but I don't want to read rightwing garbage like today's letter.