16-Year-Old Girl Wants “Someone to Assassinate Obama”
Twitter has a great amount of influence on how today’s teenagers express themselves, and the ugly thing that can come from it is the way it can lead them to trouble. A tweet sent out by Alyssa Douglas, a high-school student from Clarksville, Ohio, on Thursday night before President Barack Obama’s NDC speech said:
“Someone needs to assassinate Obama … like ASAP.”
The short tweet quickly got Douglas in trouble. The Clinton-Massie School District officials had a meeting with Douglas and her parents the very next day. The Secret Service took the threat seriously, as the agency investigates all sorts of threats, including social media and short message threats. Mark Porter, special agent in charge at the Cincinnati field office, said that social media threats are investigated regularly every couple of months.
Teenagers may not realize that posting death threats like the one Douglas posted can have dire legal consequences after being passed on to the Secret Service’s Intelligence Division. For your information, threats against the President are illegal under a specific federal statute and are punishable by a fine, up to five years in prison, or both.
So what will be the outcome of the Douglas case? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Asmara Wreksono
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This is good in a way. Now her parents, most likely the source of this hate, will have to grapple with it.
Do some not understand that twitter is a public place like facebook and myspace where anyone can view what you post.
I wonder if this idiot fully realises what she's done? Even if she faces no legal consequences (I'm sure the secret service will rightfully conclude that this is just a brain dead moron being a brain dead moron) she has probably heavily damaged her future. There's a simple rule that today's youth needs to learn: Once something is on the internet, it's there forever. College admissions, HR departments etc . . all have a pretty standard practice now of running an applicants name through google, this will surely be the top hit for the rest of her life. I've personally seen a resume torn up when the applicants non-private facebook profile picture was him hitting a bong. This girl is screwed.
oh, i don't know... i can already see her college admission essay all about the life-changing seven-word mistake she made at sixteen years old... and as much as the tweet is reprehensible , it's easy for me to imagine that she'll learn a valuable lesosn and be a better person for the experience.