Obama Execution Letter Prompts Apology From Pa. Newspaper

A Pennsylvania newspaper has issued an apology after it printed a letter calling for the execution of President Barack Obama.

The letter, printed on Memorial Day in the Daily Item of Sunbury, called the president the “coward-in-chief” and called for his execution “by guillotine, firing squad or public hanging.”

“Hey Barack, would you care to address the nation and expound on your grandioseplans for defeating this JV teamwhich is whipping you soundly?,” W. Richard Stover of Lewisburg, Pa. wrote in the 370-word letter.

The newspaper issued an apology Thursday, saying there was “no excuse” for printing the letter.

“No bells went off when the editor handling the letter read it and placed it on the opinion page,” the newspaper wrote in its response.

However, after receiving a deluge of complaints regarding the letter, the newspaper said it will “embrace the calls for heightened awareness and a higher standard for civil discourse” on its pages.

The Daily Item said it received hundreds of letters in response to Stover’s printed opinion. In those responses, residents say the paper crossed the line and displayed a lapse in judgement when they printed the tirade.

“Have your editors lost their minds? I am certainly no fan of the current administration, but to print such a letter on such a day of remembrance is cruel, unjustifiable and, frankly, dangerous,” wrote Sunbury resident Cindy Webber in a letter to the editor.

“On the day on which we are to remember our beloved fallen soldiers, you, The Daily Item, chose to feature an ill-informed letter calling for insurrection and our president’s execution. To what end would you do that? How does that honor either our soldiers or our American way of life? I am saddened and disgusted by your choice,” Ann Keeler Evans wrote in another letter to the editor.

Click here to view the responses the Daily Item received in response to Stover’s letter.

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