Good riddance to some VERY bad rubbish.
Two weeks ago, I mentioned that one of the most notorious wingnuts on Facebook, Everest Wilhelmsen, was actively soliciting funding for an effort to arrest and assassinate President Obama. His premise? Obama has supposedly committed so many illegal acts that his life is now forfeit, and under the Second Amendment anyone can kill him with impunity.
Well, as of this morning, Wilhelmsen's plans have been severely crippled. His main vehicle for this was a Facebook group called "Reward for Capture of Obama." Apparently after numerous complaints, someone at Facebook must have realized that this group was not only a flagrant violation of its community standards, but is also outrageously illegal. Sometime around 7:30 Eastern, Facebook deleted the group. Here's the happy news via a notification in my Facebook dashboard:
Good riddance to some VERY bad rubbish.
Apparently neither Wilhelmsen and his cronies have figured out what hit them yet. I checked out another group he's set up targeting Hillary Clinton, "
Reward for Capture of Clinton"--and so far, nothing. That group needs to go as well--it is also 100,000 percent illegal. It argues that Hillary is not only guilty of "murdering" Chris Stevens and three other diplomats, but that she was complicit in covering up Obama's "ineligibility to be president." The latter "offense," in Wilhelmsen's eyes, carries a death sentence--Wilhelmsen has declared that any government official who refuses to declare that Obama is illegally president
can also be assassinated with impunity.
Those of us on Facebook who were firing off complaints about these groups were starting to wonder if public shaming was the only way to get Facebook to remove them. We've also complained to the Secret Service and FBI, and at least one Secret Service agent who fielded a complaint was shocked Facebook wasn't taking this seriously. Well, something must have changed--and hopefully Wilhelmsen and his buddies will be getting a knock on the door soon. They need to get a not-so-friendly reminder that THIS IS A FELONY. They want to lose five years of their lives (this is a federal offense, so five years means five years)? Not be able to get a decent job or a loan? Please proceed.
The group targeting Hillary still needs to go, as much as I want to get a little Schadenfreude when they find out their effort to kill the president got deep-sixed. Still, I think we can afford to spike the football.
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