When the Secret Service comes calling

December 5, 4:00 PMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

Previous Next

1 comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Dallas Libertarian Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Hughes and hubby, laying low in Lufkin
(source: Lufkin Daily News)
 

A few weeks before the November 4 presidential election, Lufkin, Texas resident Jessica Hughes received a call from the Obama Volunteers of Texarkana.

The exchange, Ms Hughes told the Lufkin Daily News, went like this: "She asked if I was an Obama supporter, to which I replied, 'No, I don't support him. Your guy is a socialist who voted four times in the state Senate to let little babies die in hospital closets; I think you should find something better to do with your time.' (And then) I hung up."

A few days later two Secret Service agents came calling. They wanted to know about the Obama death threat she made to one of his campaign volunteers, "I will never support Obama and he will wind up dead on a hospital floor."

In the weeks that followed, this story became a number one hit on the “Send This to Everyone You Know” email parade.

Everyone seemed to find something in this episode to be outraged about. Federal Agents had no business browbeating this good small town Republican Texas woman. They had no business questioning her free speech rights. They had no business twisting her words like that, and besides, everyone is outraged about abortion and already hate Barack Obama, so there. Send this email to everyone you know!

Since the story chewed up so much email bandwidth it might be worthwhile finding out if the story is even true. The people at Snopes.com, those intrepid investigators of Urban Legends and email hoaxes, marked this one as "Undetermined."

Aha, another reason to be outraged. Almost immediately, “Send This to Everyone You Know” emails began circulating, charging that Snopes was sitting on the story until after the election. One pass-it-on email claimed Snopes was run by a villainous arch-liberal husband and wife team who labeled the article "Undecided" to protect their precious Obama. It was a conspiracy.

But not a very well kept one, since your intrepid Dallas/Ft. Worth Libertarian Examiner had no problem locating the story on the Lufkin Daily News website, published on October 7, complete with a photo of the smiling Ms Hughes and hubby.

The site looks and clicks and acts like a real website, so it’s either a real website or a really really good fake. The only other option is claiming that Ms Hughes lied to the Lufkin Daily News reporter.

And to other reporters as well? Two days later the Texarkana Gazette ran their own story on the incident, since that East Texas town is where the campaign call originated.

Then, on November 30, the Libertarian Enterprise published its own account of the unaccountable event. William Warren, representing the ALG News Bureau, dug deep, interviewing both Ms Hughes and Jessica Savage, the Lufkin Daily News reporter, but was, not surprisingly, unable to shake a word out of either the Secret Service or the Obama Campaign.

So why won't this story die? Maybe it's because, at this writing, nearly two months after the first article hit the porches and door stoops of Lufkin, Snopes.com is still listing the story "Undecided."