David Eid’s failure to take the assassination threat as seriously as it indeed was points to his own gross incompetence. It’s no wonder he would lash out at people he calls nameless and faceless. Those are the only people he can get away with lashing out at. If he referred to the very open and well known bloggers by name, the resulting fallout would be worse than the problems he already has. He owes his frustrations all to himself, though, and deep down inside him somewhere he knows it.

Thank you for your reporting, even if you are not a face-less, nameless, lunatic blogger.

380. On August 24, 2008, the day before the Democratic National Convention began in Denver, Colorado, police arrested a white supremacist and meth head Tharin Gartrell after a traffic stop. In his truck, authorities found two rifles, one with a scope, walkie-talkies, a bulletproof vest, and fake IDs. This quickly led to the arrest of Shawn Adolf and Nathan Johnson. The three had been doing meth in the Denver Hyatt with two women, one the underage girlfriend of Johnson. According to this girlfriend, the men had been discussing ways to kill Barack Obama, the soon to be nominated Democratic Presidential candidate, whom they thought would also be staying in the Hyatt. (He wasn’t) The men then considered smuggling a gun in a camera into Obama’s acceptance speech in INVESCO Field. According to federal records, Adolf said, “It would not matter if he killed Senator Obama because police would simply add a murder charge to his pending charges.” When asked if there were a plot, Nathan Johnson is reported as saying, “Looking back at it, I don’t want to say yes, but I don’t want to say no.” Robert Sawyer who led the FBI investigation recommended that the men be charged with conspiracy to kill Obama. Despite this, the US Attorney for Colorado Troy Eid, a Rove footsoldier who had done unreported lobbying for Jack Abramoff, refused to do so and declared, “The law recognizes a difference between a true threat — one that can be carried out — and the reported racist rantings of a drug addict,” and described the plot as “more aspirational, perhaps, than operational.” The men will be held on drug, weapons, and other outstanding warrants.
Eid’s actions, or rather lack thereof, raise two interesting questions. Would he have done the same if these men had been discussing the assassination of a Republican, like George Bush or John McCain? And would he have declined to press conspiracy charges if the men had had Middle Eastern sounding names instead of being homegrown domestic terrorists?

Is the idea here that Eid is pining for the good old days when it was so much easier to bury a story and cover up ineptitude and inappropriate political decisions?