Unprecedented Security Watches Over DC

(NEWSER) - The developer whose software was used to create the “Should Obama be Killed?” Facebook poll has talked to the Secret Service. “The conversation with the SS was fine,” Jesse Farmer wrote on Twitter, but “If the goal was to resolve the issue + inform the SS, the way it went down was suboptimal.” Farmer appears to be upset that a third party pointed him out to the "SS," CNET explains. More»

Bloggers alerted law enforcement to potential danger

(NEWSER) - The Secret Service is looking into a Facebook poll that asked users to weigh in on whether the president should be killed. “We are taking the appropriate investigative steps,” said a rep for the agency. The poll, which has already been taken down, offered four possible answers to the question "should obama be killed?": “yes,” “no,” “maybe,” and, perhaps most tellingly, “If he cuts my health care,” Plum Line reports. More»

Multiple gun owner charged with threatening the prez after statements in bank

(NEWSER) - The Secret Service is hunting a man who took all of his money out of a Utah bank and told the teller he was on a "mission to kill" the president, the Salt Lake Tribune. Daniel James Murray has been charged with making threats against the president. Authorities say he has at least eight registered firearms. More»

Writer savors the spirit of goodwill amid throng at inauguration

(NEWSER) - The lines were "the longest I have ever stood in," and the day was arctic, but there were no complaints to be heard from the jubilant throng in Washington yesterday, Garrison Keillor writes in Salon. "All kinds of people, the slim and sleek, the XXXLs, the heavily insulated, the carefree" slowly trekked toward the Capitol for the swearing-in of a new leader and the emergence of "a new America," Keillor writes—all radiating goodwill and a sense of the enormity of the occasion. "I simply was grateful to be among it." More»

Diva fired up to give Obama R-E-S-P-E-C-T at biggest gig of her life

(NEWSER) - Aretha Franklin is psyched to sing to the biggest audience of her life in Washington today, she tells the Times of London. When she thinks of Obama she thinks of "jubilation all over the world," the Queen of Soul says. "Dancing in Africa, dancing in London, dancing in Japan—people are so happy about this inauguration." Aretha won't divulge what she plans to sing, although she says Obama is definitely due some R-E-S-P-E-C-T. More»