Intellectual Property Law

A Southern California man was charged Thursday with threatening a presidential candidate, for posting a racist note to a Yahoo message board in October expressing displeasure over Barack Obama's candidacy, and predicting "he will have a 50 cal in the head soon."

Walter Edward Bagdasarian, 47, was found with an arsenal of six weapons when Secret Service agents raided his La Mesa home in November, according to court records (.pdf). He had three handguns and three rifles, including a 30.06 with a telescopic sight and a Remington .50 caliber muzzle-loading rifle.

Bagdasarian is not accused of actually plotting against Obama, and he was released last month on a $100,000 real estate bond. Bagdasarian's attorney did not return a phone call Friday.

The post in question showed up on a Yahoo Finance board  on Oct. 22, about two weeks before the election, under the handle "californiaradial."  The message was titled "Shoot the nig."

"County fkd for another 4+ years, what nig has done ANYTHING right???? Long term???? Never in history, except sambos."

"Fk the niggar, he will have a 50 cal in the head soon," the message concludes.

The message thread has been deleted by Yahoo, but traces in Google's cache show that several other users announced that they were reporting californiaradial's comments. In subsequent posts, the author calls one critic a "crybaby," but does offer an explanation for the apparent threat. "I was drunk."

U.S. Secret Service agents in Los Angeles traced the post to Bagdasarian through the IP address. When they interviewed him, Bagdasarian reportedly admitted authoring the message.