Texas woman harassed by Secret Service "Thought police"

This story appears in Tuesday's issue of The Lufkin Daily News, 10/6/08. This is totally absurd regardless of what party you choose to support in the Presidential campaign.

On Wednesday the 1st of October I received a call on my cell while in the car with my husband. It was a woman who identified herself as calling from the Obama Campaign. The phone # she called from was 903-798-6020 which lists as "Obama Volunteers of Texarkana " (Texas).

"No, I don't support him, your guy is a socialist who voted four times in the State Senate to let little babies die in hospital closets; I think you should find something better to do with your time." I hung up.

Thursday, October 2, I answered the front door to find the Secret Service. Immediately I thought of the call and was furious that apparently you are not allowed to call Obama a Socialist without the Secret Service coming to investigate. Instead, they asked me about the following comment, relayed by the Obama Volunteer of Texarkana who called me, unsolicited on my cell phone:

"I will never support Obama and he will wind up dead on a hospital floor." My husband laughed and told them "No, she called him a socialist but she never said a word about him dying.”I gave them my actual quote. The woman asked insolently “Oh? Well why would she make that up?”I replied that I supposed she wasn't happy about what I said about her candidate and the Agent said, "That's right, you were rude!" The last time I checked being rude wasn't a crime in America .

Luckily the big file they had gathered on me didn't indicate mental instability or a past life of stalking/crime, however they did want to know how I felt about Obama. That was my limit. I told the Agent in no uncertain terms that my thoughts were not pertinent to their investigation, that this was America and the last time I checked I was allowed to think whatever I wanted without being questioned by the Secret Service. In fact, even if I had said what she claimed, that isn't a threat. I told them (again) and my husband verified that the statement reported by Obama's volunteer was a lie. I asked them if there was a tape of the call and they said no. I said, "So on the word of a ticked off Obama supporter you are on my porch with no other evidence and you want to question me about my THOUGHTS!?" They informed me that there was no evidence she was an Obama supporter. Someone calling from his campaign. Are you kidding?

I was not allowed to know the name of my accuser at which point they informed me that it wasn't like I was in a court of law, YET, as if this was a good thing. I recognized this as a veiled threat. I told them I would happily go to court since I did nothing wrong and at least then my accuser would have to face me rather than sending the thought police to my house.

They then said they were trying to do me a favor, that they came to me first before embarrassing you by going to all your neighbors and family. Another threat? I told them to be my guest and talk to whomever they wanted but they weren't going to investigate my thoughts on my porch.

They also informed me that it would be easier if the next time a supporter calls me I just say "Yeah sure count me in, or just hang up" apparently so she won't get her undies in a bundle and give them more useless trips. Yeah right. I said "Look, someone calls me unsolicited on my cell phone to ask me to support their candidate and I can't tell them why I don't?" I said I was sorry they made a wasted trip but if they had a problem with some made up lie they needed to go talk to her about it because it wasn't my fault they had to drive from Houston for nothing.

At one point I went inside and got a notepad to record their badge numbers and they refused to show me their badges. They had done the quick flip when they arrived. I asked for a card and the female Agent refused to give me one stating “You're not going to get a card.” The male Agent gave me a card and told me I could contact Houston with any questions.

The fact that the volunteer lied, the fact that the Secret Service came to my house to question me about my thoughts and feelings and threaten to embarrass me to my neighbors and go to court if I didn't cooperate is not really the tragedy here. Because that girl on the phone doesn't have the pull to send the Secret Service to my home. Someone high in the ranks of a campaign working for a man who may be the next President of the United States of America felt comfortable bringing the force of the Federal Government to bear on a private citizen on nothing but the word of a partisan volunteer.

I want to file a counter complaint that false charges were made, that a false report was given to a peace officer. The Secret Service told me I cannot because they will protect the identity of the complainant. I also want the file they have on me destroyed and I want to know that my phone isn't tapped, et cetera. I am hearing a lot of "Out of my Jurisdiction."

Note: I have contacted several news organizations, Rep Gohmert, Sen Hutchison, the Atty General, Local Police Will keep you updated, pass it along.

http://www.lufkindailynews.com/hp/content/news/stories/2008/10/07/secret_service.html

You posted one of the pictures so many of us hated seeing so long ago...it still gives me the creeps it is SO NOT the AMERICA my heart believes in.

Elian. Oh, our little Elian.

However, that said-it absolutely gives one the same feeling reading the article here gives ya. I think she handled the agents exactly right, not giving up ONE- OUNCE of her rights.

Obama-who VOTED to ALLOW little ones to crumble and die without any COMFORT because they happened to survive later term abortions (murder by mom) IS SO SICK ALL OF AMERICA NEEDS TO VISUALIZE LITTLE INFANTS CRYING OUT FOR WARMTH< FOOD< TOUCH< AND CARE LEFT TO DIE BECAUSE THEY WERE UNLUCKY ENOUGH TO SURVIVE AN ABORTION ATTEMPT!!!

OBAMA................OBAMA...........I CALL YOU OUT YOU MURDERING THUG...............INFANTICIDE IS MURDER AND IN YOUR SMALL EVIL MIND IT IS A RIGHT!!! LOOK AT YOUR DTRS YOU THUG.....WOULD ONE OF THEM HAVE BEEN LEFT TO DIE ON A TABLE AT BIRTH IF YOU AND MS LOBSTER MICHELLE HAD UNDERGONE A BOTCHED ABORTION AND THE LITTLE ONE HAD LIVED?

YOU ARE AN ANIMAL, OBAMA.

Go BACK to Kenya and help your cousin RULE THEIR....apparently you like to interfere with OTHER NATIONS campaigns even as you are a sitting US SENATOR.

YOU ARE A CREEP.

A DIRTY, Pro-MURDER, lying CREEP!

I would like to take issue with the entire assumption that the equivalent of a national police force should be permitted to investigate anonymous tips which do not explicitly allege violence against a candidate for president of the United States.

The alternative is to accept an increased degree of risk of the assassination of the candidate. Which is the higher societal value? Is it more risky to representative government to increase the risk of assassination of the president or to permit secret investigations by a national police force, based on anonymous tips, coming from a partisan source, which do not explicitly alleged violence? I am inclined to think that the latter is more dangerous to our constitutional government.

The system has proven many times that it can cope with the assassination of the president. It is anticipated, the Constitution provides for it. The horror of assassination is that it is the ultimate voter fraud. It deprives the majority of the right it won in the election. There is also the factor of the threat of an assassination as a means to shape policy contrary to the will of the majority.

But is the only and unavoidable alternative to these Stalinist investigations the assassination of the President United States? I think not. After all, there are other lines of defense which protect the president. The president is shielded by layer after layer of protection. This layer is probably the outer perimeter and the least likely to lead to the prevention of an assassination. By definition, it will only identify a blabbermouth bent on assassination. In this case a blabbermouth who allegedly betrays herself over the phone in an unsolicited call from a stranger. So by stopping blabbermouths who would assassinate the president, we are dealing with the lunatic fringe. A serious, professional assassin, a jackal for instance, will not be unearthed because he is a blabbermouth. He might be betrayed by a Confederate, but that is an entirely different set of facts.

Short of encouraging a Gestapo state, the following protections could be put in place: Explicit threats might be investigated. The name of the tipster could be made public. The tipster could be subject to criminal sanctions or at least civil penalties if the claim is manufactured. The object of the investigation could have the right to the identity of the tipster. The object of the investigation could have the right to view the entire contents of investigators file. A tribunal could be established to adjudicate claims that the entire investigation should be expunged. At some time the object of the investigation should be informed that he is being investigated-even a murderer gets that protection when the cops are closing in on him.

Are the feds now identifying potential assassins by eavesdropping? Are they about to?

We are now vulnerable to a secret system which is obviously liable to be perverted by a tyrant who gets his hands on the levers of power. I will not mention names, but his initials could be Barak Obama. I understand that many investigations are kept secret: for example, grand jury investigations are not revealed. But theoretically grand juries have no warrant to investigate "intentions" or the mental eccentricity of citizens. Grand juries are there to investigate crimes or, at worst, conspiracies to commit crimes in which there is a least some overt act. That is not the case here.

We are weighing the threat of the commission of a crime, in this case assassination of the president, against individual liberties and the potential for tyranny which secret investigations represent. We make these judgments all the time and often weigh on the side of individual liberty. For example, we conclude that the price of racial profiling is not worth its obvious crime prevention dividends. The individual liberties protected in that case are hardly more than the feelings of minorities who are innocent and not guilty and are investigated only because of their race. I don't think there is much societal benefit in protecting the feelings of the guilty ones. Yet we have as a society decided to accept an increase crime rate to protect the feelings of innocent minority members.

The value to be protected against arising out of these kinds of investigations by a KGB-like national police force is very, very high on the scale: A police state. So we must ask ourselves where lies the greater risk to the greater value? Is the higher risk that a blabbermouth might get through many layers of protection and succeed in assassinating the president of the United States resulting in a catastrophic failure of our democracy rather than merely the constitutional remedy provided, the accession of the vice president? Or is the greater risk the imposition of a police state from which our democracy might never recover?

Defenders of these intrusions will no doubt point to the war on terrorism to justify them by having resort to argument by analogy or by a relativism. Essentially the argument is, we tolerate intrusions on our liberties out of necessity to prevent terrorist attacks. The assassination of President United States is the equivalent of a terrorist attack. Because we tolerate intrusions in one place we should tolerate intrusions in another place.

One need only consider the consequences of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand to recognize how very, very dangerous the assassination of a potential head a state can be. That assassination led to upward of 20 million dead, the destruction of several empires, and the end of at least four dynasties. But the assassination of the Archduke did not do these things in itself there was an intervening cause, the war waged in the aftermath. No assassination of an American president has ever led to a war or a civil war. Historians could rightly argue that the assassination in Sarajevo was only a catalyst but not the proximate efficient cause of The Great War.

Do the intrusions of our liberties which we tolerate in the war against terrorism justify similar intrusions to protect the president- or viewed from another perspective, are the risks similar enough to justify similar intrusions? The answer to the first question is without question, no. One intrusion cannot be cited to justify another intrusion anymore than one wrong can be raised to justify another. The question is not whether the government has done wrong elsewhere but whether the risks justify an intrusion here. So all of the references to the war on terrorism are simply irrelevant unless you believe that precedent should take precedence over reason.

A legitimate question is, indeed the only legitimate question, do the risks of potential assassination of a potential president justify intrusions which can lead to a potential tyranny? In my view, they do not unless the most stringent safeguards are put in place. We have many safeguards in place to protect us from intrusions generated by the war on terrorism. One wonders whether the left will be so clamorous for restrictions on government intrusions when they are doing the intruding for values which they peculiarly hold dear as leftists.

Whatever the greater risk, this current secret procedure is entirely alien to our tradition of individual liberties.

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