University of Texas Republican calls killing Obama "tempting"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I realize that this is just one person, and one tweet, but the problem is much larger than this one nitwit. There's a streak of dangerous craziness on the right, and at the core of the Republican Party:

Hours after Pennsylvania State Police arrested a 21-year-old Idaho man for allegedly firing a semi-automatic rifle at the White House, the top student official for the College Republicans at the University of Texas tweeted that the idea of assassinating President Obama was "tempting."

At 2:29 p.m. ET, UT's Lauren E. Pierce wrote: "Y'all as tempting as it may be, don't shoot Obama. We need him to go down in history as the WORST president we've EVER had! #2012."

Pierce, the president of the College Republicans at UT Austin, told ABC News the comment was a "joke" and that the "whole [shooting incident] was stupid." Giggling, she said that an attempted assassination would "only make the situation worse."

"Insofar as she's a representative [of the College Republicans], maybe it shouldn't be said, but she's made a positive statement in a way," said Cassie Wright, the group's vice president.

"I don't really see anything wrong with it," Wright added. "It's just a personal comment, not representative of any group. Just freedom of speech, you know?"

Oh, right, freedom of speech. Sure.

Oh, and it was just a joke. Hilarious. 

Bullshit. Maybe Pierce was trying to be funny, but she just exposed herself to the world as a fucking idiot with a warped sense of humor, a warped sense of politics, and a warped sense of reality.

I'm sure there are many on the right who also find it "tempting" to kill the president, but not jokingly at all. Even if this was a joke, there was a hell of a lot of truth behind it.

As ABL writes at Balloon Juice: "Only in the addled-Republican mind could a tweet calling for other similarly-addled minds not to assassinate the President be interpreted as a positive statement."

It's a sick, sick mind, indeed.

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As Think Progress notes, Pierce has since apologized: "I apologize for my previous tweet. It was in poor taste and and should never have been written."

But such poor taste (if not much worse) was hardly a first for her: "Earlier this month, she tweeted a picture of a sign that read, 'zoo has African lion, White House has a lyin' African.'"

Charming.

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And, by the way, her Twitter feed now appears to be private. One wonders what she's hiding.