Just doin’ my job!

Regular readers know that I am not a fan of WorldNetDaily or Alan Keyes, nor am I impressed with the various Birth Certificate conspiracy theories. But sometimes fantasy collides with reality, and when it does, I have to become a patient analyst.
At least in terms of free speech, this is still a free country. People can rant all they want about anything they want, but when the government comes to get them, then I become alarmed. I would defend the free speech rights of Nazis or anyone else, and when I see allegations and discussion about someone being threatened with arrest and prosecution for free speech, I want to know what is going on.
Please bear with me, as I’m trying to be thorough here. What set me off was a claim — by Alan Keyes in WorldNetDaily — that a federal visit to question the Reverend James David Manning about his statements was “an intolerable assault on the constitutional freedom of every American.”

Rev. Manning produces a daily video series in which he has repeatedly and consistently aired these views. Now it appears that the YouTube account through which he shared these videos with the public has been suspended on the grounds that his views are too controversial. Close on the heels of this obvious effort to limit his ability to communicate with the public, he now reports that he has been visited by federal agents who questioned him about statements he made regarding “the birth certificate issue” and his opinion that Obama is an illegal alien, not qualified to be president of the United States. As a result of this visit, Rev. Manning says that he expects to be arrested and charged with making threats against the president.
I have followed Rev. Manning’s broadcasts and statements for some time. He is forthright and outspoken in his religious and political views. He speaks with a boldness that is surely offensive to people who believe that civility requires silence even in the face of the stratagems of deception now being perpetrated against the American people. But I see nothing that he has said or done that warrants interference with his freedom of speech. Both YouTube’s actions and those of the federal and New York City officials who visited his church appear to be in clear violation of his constitutional rights and part of an effort to intimidate him and others who are outspoken critics of the coup d’&eacutetat being perpetrated by the Obama faction and its fellow travelers among the elites, who are working to accomplish the overthrow of our constitutional republic.
The repression of Rev. Manning’s views is an intolerable assault on the constitutional freedom of every American. However disagreeable his voice may be to others, including the present occupant of the White House, his right to voice his criticisms is clear and undeniable. So is his right to seek redress of grievances that threaten the sovereignty of the American people and of every American as a member of the sovereign body of the people. Respect for these rights is one of the bedrock prerequisites of government of, by and for the people. Efforts to thwart and repress their exercise constitute a clear and present danger to the liberty of all Americans. Like the darkening skies and rising winds that announce the landfall of a hurricane, this move to silence Rev. Manning ominously foreshadows the next phase of the elite assault against the Constitution and people of the United States.
The repression of Rev. Manning’s views is an intolerable assault on the constitutional freedom of every American.

Etc.
Assuming the federal visit took place (which I think it did), is it an assault on the constitutional freedom of every American? Exactly what happened? Are questions like that still relevant? Perhaps not to conspiracy theorists like Keyes, but my worry is that if statements like that go unexamined, the chorus of people thinking we’re living under martial law and being ruled by a foreign usurper will grow. (Which means that as an enemy of civil war in the United States, I feel an obligation to pay attention when they make claims like this one.)
Manning has a number of defenders who simply say he never threatened the life of anyone but that “God will use his arrest to finally bring about the truth regarding Obama’s citizenship.” And Manning himself has released this long explanation of why he does not advocate the assassination of Barack Obama.

It took me some time to locate the actual video in question which interested the feds, which I found referred to (but not linked) at a Freeper discussion and in various posts.
I had long considered Manning to be a kook, but while searching for the video that led to the federal visit, I learned that the man (Wiki entry here) is even more of a kook than I thought. Perhaps I am sick and jaded, but I find his videos quite entertaining from a humor standpoint, and his buffoonish style reminds me of Jeremiah Wright.
Here in “White folk ain’t gonna take it no mo!,” he carries on at great length about how white folks will and should riot, how NRA members will be coming into black neighborhoods to shoot people, and he concludes by singing a song about Barack Obama’s alleged homosexuality:
“Obama and Larry Sinclair, they had a steamy love affair!”
I am not alone in finding him funny; Howard Stern knows talent when he sees it, and has had him on his show.
And in what I was looking for — the video which interested the federal agents — he calls Glenn Beck a “Nazi Idiot,” beseeches the Tea Bag people to go viral about the birth certificate issue, and generally condemns the futility of the Tea Party Movement for its failure to properly combat the destruction of the Constitution and the United States, which requires focusing on the real issue, which Manning sees as Obama’s foreign birth.
In the video, he actually says “Hang him!” and “Shoot him!” in reference to President Obama, and as I try to be thorough, my transcription of his words follows.

At 4:16 comes this advice for the “Tea Bag” people:

Don’t you understand? White and black. They don’t care!
And you act like you don’t care! I’m telling you. Runnin around with these tea parties ain’t gonna do nothing. All these elections all these people all this stuff is going on. And if Obama fails they’ll put a bullet in his head and get somebody else up there. They’ll have John McCain doin. They don’t care! And John McCain will set out and do it.
So will Sarah Palin! You gotta clean house! Gotta take Obama to trial, put him in jail for the rest of his life, or hang him!
Shoot him on the Washington — First crime, find him guilty and the punishment for treason is, a death sentence!
And then clean the rest out. Go get Hilllary. Go get John McCain. Go get George Bush. Go get Dick Cheney too! Get em all!
And then we can start over again. Reconstruct this great nation….

When someone says “hang him!” and “shoot him!” with reference to the president of the United States, it is the job of the Secret Service to investigate — which they probably did, and which they certainly should. Considering his statements in the video, it is extremely misleading to say that “federal agents” “questioned him about statements he made regarding “the birth certificate issue” and his opinion that Obama is an illegal alien. I don’t know whether his arrest is imminent as he claims it is, but he was really pushing the envelope, and what he said almost sounds as if it had been deliberately scripted to provoke an investigation, yet because he does not actually advocate assassination, it falls short of the standard needed to bring actual charges. I can remember back in the early 70s late 60s when a Black Panther leader said “We will kill Richard Nixon,” (along with “any motherf-cker that stands in the way of our freedom”) they were unable to make a charge stick, as it was not specific enough. Unless the legal standard has changed since then, I think Manning’s call for trials followed by executions does not rise to the level of a direct threat that bringing a formal legal charge would require.
But they had to question him — and they should question anyone who talks like that in order to find out exactly what they mean, and whether there was a threat to kill the president. (Legally, the Secret Service has to investigate such statements as part of their job.)
As to why he would talk that way, it’s pure speculation on my part, but a post in support of Manning made me think that the goal might be to deliberately trigger an arrest in order to get a foot in the door for an actual federal court trial on the Birth Certificate issue:

Though he did not go into detail about the specifics of the alleged encounter (and probably with good reason), Manning did say that the agents asked him about certain statements that he made about President Obama in a video message distributed by ATLAH Ministries entitled “Tea Party Members: Go Viral On The Birth Certificate”.
Manning can explain this alot better than I can, so further details regarding the comments in question can be heard in the video by Pastor Manning at the end of this post.
Pastor Manning also said he expects to be arrested within the next few days and charged with “the threat against the life of a U.S. President”, and that he believes that this arrest is “imminent”.
However, Manning says he welcomes the arrest and will not attempt to resist. He believes it is possible that God will use his arrest to finally bring about the truth regarding Obama’s citizenship.

The latter is quite interesting (although I don’t think it’s up to God), because if he had been charged with threatening the life of the president, his lawyers might claim in his defense that because the law makes it a crime to threaten the president of the United States, and because every element of the crime must be proven, that it is vital to his defense to explore the birth certificate issue in detail. Doubtless, some of the more radical Birth Certificate Truthers (some or whom seem already allied with Manning) could be expected to support this position wholeheartedly — as their one hope of finally seeing the “long form” they’ve been demanding. Of course, the downside is that if the documents prove conclusively that Obama was born in Hawaii, then the case would continue. (Unless the “natural born citizen” argument is raised too. But for reasons I explained here, I think that the courts would reject it out of hand.)
Again, this is pure speculation, but if my suspicions are correct, the whole matter reveals not an “intolerable assault on the constitutional freedom of every American,” but shows the irresponsible lengths some people are willing to go for an irresponsible cause.
So basically, Reverend Manning was just doing his job when he said what he said. And the Secret Service were doing theirs.
And because I don’t want a civil war, I’m just doing mine.
MORE: Presidential treason is not new. It didn’t start with Obama, or even Bush.