Secret Service thought 7th Grader was Terrorist

Fox 13 News in Seattle reports on a 7th grader who was considered a terrorist because of a post that he made out of concern for the President's welfare. Once again, this is a matter of the government acting more like a police state. Give me a break -- since when do the ramblings of a 13 year old boy who by all accounts has not gotten into any trouble qualify as terrorism? This is just one bizarre instance of the government overreacting. The mother was not even notified by the school principal, who left it to a school guard to notify her. There have been plenty of other such overreactions by the government, including considering someone a terrorist who was trying to pay back their student loans and many instances of targeting anti-war activists who were simply exercising their Constitutional right to freedom of assembly in 2003 and 2004.

We need a government who will respect the rights of people to say what they want and when they want. Sure, when someone actually makes a threat on the President's life, the Secret Service and other entities have every right to take action. But that did not even come remotely close to qualifying as a threat. Last time we checked, the 1st Amendment was still in effect. What kind of a message does this sort of bizarre police state behavior send to our children? All this does is send the message that this is no longer a government by the people for the people, but a government which says one thing but does another.

The Secret Service needs to clean up their act and determine if proper policies were followed. If they were, then they need to be rewritten so that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. If not, then whoever was responsible for interrogating a kid for 30 minutes without his parents being present should be terminated from his position.