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Threatening the president of the United States is a federal felony under United States Code Title 18, Section 871. It consists of knowingly and willfully mailing or otherwise making "any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict great bodily harm upon the president of the United States". The law also includes presidential candidates, vice presidents, and former presidents. The Secret Service investigates suspected violations of this law and monitors those who have a history of threatening the president. Threatening the president is considered a political offense. Immigrants who commit this crime can be deported. Because the offense consists of pure speech, the courts have issued rulings attempting to balance the government's interest in protecting the president with free speech rights under the First Amendment. According to the book Stalking, Threatening, and Attacking Public Figures, "Hundreds of celebrity howlers threaten the president of the United States every year, sometimes because they disagree with his policies, but more often just because he is the president." Frequency The first prosecutions under the statute, enacted in 1917, occurred during the highly charged, hyperpatriotic years of World War I, and the decisions handed down by the courts in these early cases reflected intolerance for any words demonstrating even a vague spirit of disloyalty. There was a relative moratorium on prosecutions under this statute until the World War II era. The number increased during the turbulent Vietnam War era. They have tended to fall when the country has not been directly embroiled in a national crisis situation. The number of reported threats rose from 2,400 in 1965 to 12,800 in 1969. According to Ronald Kessler, President George W. Bush received about 3,000 threats a year, while his successor Barack Obama received about four times that amount. This figure has been disputed by Secret Service director Mark Sullivan, who says that Obama received about as many threats as the previous two presidents. According to the U.S. Attorneys' Manual, "Media attention given to certain kinds of criminal activity seems to generate further criminal activity; this is especially true concerning presidential threats which is well documented by data previously supplied by the United States Secret Service. For example, in the six-month period following the March 30, 1981, attempt on the life of President Reagan, the average number of threats against protectees of the Secret Service increased by over 150 percent from a similar period during the prior year." For this reason, the agency recommends considering the use of sealed affidavits to keep news of threats from leaking to the press. Incidents Convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 871 have been sustained for declaring that "President Wilson ought to be killed. It is a wonder some one has not done it already. If I had an opportunity, I would do it myself"; and for declaring that "Wilson is a wooden-headed son of a bitch. I wish Wilson was in hell, and if I had the power I would put him there." In a later era, a conviction was sustained for displaying posters urging passersby to "hang [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt". In 1935, 52-year-old Austin Phelps Palmer, a mechanical engineer, wrote two letters to President Roosevelt, blaming him for the loss of his $1 million fortune. In one letter, he wrote, "Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Communist and destroyer of private business. I warn you, if you destroy my business I will strangle you with my own hands. May your soul be exterminated in hell." Months later, newspapers reported that a dumbfounded Palmer was arrested after federal agents, who'd spent months tracking him down, showed up at the doorstep of his luxury apartment. His servant accompanied him to his arraignment, where he was charged with sending threatening letters to the President. Palmer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. A number of Nazi sympathizers were prosecuted for threatening Roosevelt. In 1940, Edward De Roulhac Blount was arrested for saying he would kill the president at the first opportunity he got. He pleaded guilty to two counts of threatening the president and was sentenced to two to six years in prison. Federal prosecutors found two birthday greetings to Adolf Hitler on Blount's yacht. In 1943, William Thomas Reid, a known Nazi sympathizer, was arrested for telling an associate in the oil business, "President Roosevelt is one guy I hate. If I had the money, I would go to Washington and kill the president and if he ever comes south I will." Reid was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison. In a 1971 interview, comedian Groucho Marx told Flash magazine, "I think the only hope this country has is Nixon's assassination." U.S. Attorney James L. Browning Jr. opined, "It is one thing to say that 'I (or we) will kill Richard Nixon' when you are the leader of an organization which advocates killing people and overthrowing the Government; it is quite another to utter the words which are attributed to Mr. Marx, an alleged comedian." In July 2003, the Los Angeles Times published a Sunday editorial cartoon by Michael Ramirez that depicted a man pointing a gun at President Bush’s head; it was a takeoff on the 1969 Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Eddie Adams that showed South Vietnamese National Police Chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner (Capt. Nguyễn Văn Lém) at point-blank range. The cartoon prompted a visit from the Secret Service, but no charges were filed. In 2005, a teacher instructed her senior civics and economics class to take photographs to illustrate the rights contained in the Bill of Rights. One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb's-down sign with his own hand next to the president's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster." A Wal-Mart photo department employee reported it to police, and the Secret Service investigated. No charges were filed. In 2007, Purdue University teaching assistant Vikram Buddhi was convicted of posting messages to Yahoo Finance criticizing the Iraq War and stating, "Call for the assassination of GW Bush" and "Rape and Kill Laura Bush." The defense had argued that the defendant never explicitly threatened anyone. In September 2009 the Secret Service investigated Facebook polls that asked whether President Barack Obama should be assassinated. Some question has arisen as to how to handle Facebook groups such as "LETS KILL BUSH WITH SHOES" (a reference to the 2008 Muntadhar al-Zaidi shoe incident) which had 484 members as of September 2009; similar issues have arisen on MySpace. Tweets have come under Secret Service investigation, including ones that said "ASSASSINATION! America, we survived the Assassinations of Lincoln & Kennedy. We'll surely get over a bullet to Barrack [sic] Obama's head," and "The .... Discover the Charlie Spiering popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Charlie Spiering books.