Yesterday someone calling themselves “Republican Patriot” left a comment on my site saying:
I would like to see someone assasinate Obama and Hillary. We will all die if either of those two become president. The time may come when patriots are force to take action.
I appended a note to the comment reading as follows:
Now this is an interesting case. It seems to me like a fairly transparent attempt by a lefty to plant hate speech on my site, under the guise of being a righty. If it’s not, then it borders on a threat of assassination. The Secret Service may be interested.
So the commenter is either a) being deceitful or b) a possibly dangerous person. Either way, I see no privacy interest in the IP address.
The IP is from UCLA. Interestingly, it has been used on this blog three times before, always to make lefty points. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, as I obviously don’t know if this is a fixed IP address that is unique to one computer, or one that is shared by many people.
There is one way to find out for sure.
After all, perhaps this is a real threat of assassination. In that case, UCLA would certainly want to investigate. If not them, the Secret Service might be interested. Surely one of those entities could find out whether this threat came from an identifiable person.
What do you folks think I should do?
I am inclined to let it go. Within thirteen minutes, a commenter from the same IP calling himself “westlox” left this comment:
I would like to see bad things happend to Clinton but anyone who advocates the assasination of an American politician is not a patriot. Assassination is an afront to democracy. (once she is a non-politician then she is fair game)
You are not a patriot but a fascist.
And sixteen minutes later, commenter “coronet” used the same IP address in this comment:
Are you forced to give Goldstein props because if you don’t he will slap you with is dick?
So I’m thinking it’s not really a serious threat. It’s just another attempt by a lefty to manufacture “hate speech from the right.”
Your thoughts?