Michael Collins: Just Short of Treason in Georgia and Kansas

It's official. The crazies have arrived for the 2012 presidential race, florid in their deviant and repulsive rhetoric. Andrew B. Adler, editor of The Atlanta Jewish Times, called on Israel's President Benjamin Netanyahu to "Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel's existence." This reference to President Barack Obama appeared in the print edition of the paper on January 13, and was first published online by Gawker on the 20th. Right wing Republican Mike O'Neal, speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives, forwarded an email referring to the president that quoted Psalm 109.8: "Let his days be few and brief, and let others step forward to replace him." The Lawrence Journal World noted that the very next verse, 101.9 indicates how the president should be replaced: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." The First Amendment is ignored when reactionary mayors want to stop the free speech and assemblies of Occupy Wall Street. However, free speech is expanded beyond the limits of the law when religious extremists in Atlanta and Kansas step well outside of the boundaries of US Code. The US Code states: "whoever knowlingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both."