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Fifth Column
Huffasnuffaluffagus Post expunges moonbat comments from thread on Cheney assasination attempt
2007-02-28
Pajamas Media February 27, 2007 4:58 PM

Over the last few hours, the more than 400 comments appended to the Huffington PostÂ’s news item on the attack in Afghanistan on a base being visited by Vice-President Dick Cheney have been expunged from the site. At first the comments were closed, then gradually shrunken and for a short time completely expunged from The Huffington Post as the heat on the Cheney hate fest built up over the day.

For earlier reports on this go HERE. (And here.) And for the PDF of the original file of the now erased Huffington comments, courtesy of Michelle Malkin, go HERE.

The comments now visible are evidently cherry-picked out of the original thread to give some sort of “tone” to the thread that it did not originally possess. It is really amazing what you can do to history with just a few strokes of the keyboard.

Now it is one thing to close comments, another thing to erase them, but something else altogether different to actually “edit” the thread to give a false impression. That seems to be what has been done here. To what purpose and on whose orders is not known.

So far, the nearly 400 commenters whose words have been erased from The Huffington Post are, well, “unvailable for comment.”
Posted by:Mike

#7  Well, Huffing posts have the same issues as RB. No public blogger wants statements advocating the killing of national, state, or local officials, or officers.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2007-02-28 16:33  

#6  Huffpost didn't like being compared with Kos as the new unhinged hate site.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2007-02-28 14:23  

#5  Jeez, you'd almost think they were "mean spirited" ot "intolerant" or sumthin...
Posted by: tu3031   2007-02-28 13:21  

#4  Maybe Huffy should get a sinktrap.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305   2007-02-28 13:08  

#3  A direct threat against a president or vice-president ("I'm gonna kill that sonofabitch Warren Gameliel Harding!") is a federal crime. A tasteless wish that someone would die, without threatening to do someone in ("I wish that sonofabitch Warren Gameliel Harding would drop dead alreay!" or "They tried to shoot that sonofabitch Warren Gameliel Harding; too bad they missed!") isn't. Because of the First Amendment protection of free speech, the authorities tend to be conservative in deciding whether or not to prosecute comments that are borderline threatening. The Huffablog commenters seem, from the examples I saw (I didn't read all 400+), to all have been tasteless, but not threatening enough to prosecute.
Posted by: Mike   2007-02-28 10:24  

#2  It is, but they seem to ignore it for the most part, it seems.
Posted by: DarthVader   2007-02-28 10:14  

#1  I hope the boys at the Secret Service are casting a stern eye over this material. I was under the impression it is a criminal act to call for the assassination of the Vice President (but I am a foreigner and relying on American films to reach this conclusion).
Posted by: Excalibur   2007-02-28 10:09  

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