Calling President Obama Names...

I was reading a story earlier on today about a British teenager who sent President Obama an email message. The message is allegedly a drunken rant, but the gist of it was that the president was a "prick"!

I am sure he is not the only one in the whole wide world that thinks that, but he is probably one of the few that have bothered to get online and track down a working email address for the White House and fire off his little tirade.

Unfortunately, for the teen, Luke Angel, the FBI intercepted the message, made a few calls to the British police, and the local coppers came around to his house in Silsoe, Bedfordshire, and reprimanded him.

For his efforts, Mr. Angel is now apparently banned from travelling to the US for life. Yep, I had to read that twice myself. I find it hard to believe that calling the president of the US a prick warrants quite such an extreme measure. There simply has to be more to it, doesn't there?

Let's face it, there is a big difference from calling someone a prick and threatening to kill them. There is a big difference between calling someone a prick and using a racial epithet, even.

According to the US Department of Homeland Security there are 60 reasons why someone might find themselves on the "banned from the USA" list. I only have 59 others to track down. Hopefully, they are a lot more serious than this one! I wonder if Mr. Angel would have been banned had he called President Obama a wanker? What about a clown? Or perhaps a Nazi?

On a personal note, I like the fella and like the idea that Obama is president. I actually would have voted for the fella if I was a US citizen with the right to vote. I reckon that he is doing a pretty good job in a very tough gig. I always thought he had much thicker skin than that. After all, the president lived in Indonesia for three or so years in his formative years, and you have to be tough inside and out to survive that!

This story surely must be a beat-up...the US is not really banning people from travelling to the US for calling the president names, are they?