The plot to assassinate Obama before he was even elected gets the paperback thriller treatment from the London Independent. The Denver pair Shawn Adolf and his cousin Tharin Gartrell were so confused that the threat was never severe. “Adolf and Gartrell may have had some fearsome weaponry, and a vague affiliation with a white supremacist biker gang called the Sons of Silence,” writes Andrew Gumbell. “But they were also rank amateurs living in a crystal methamphetamine-induced haze of paranoia and race hatred.” When the cops stopped one in his truck they found “two high-powered rifles, a silencer, a bulletproof vest, camouflage clothing, and three fake identification cards. But it was also clear that Gartrell was high on meth as well as drunk. The truck contained enough drug-making equipment to be considered a mobile meth lab.” And the pair will not be charged for attempted murder, just illegal drugs and weapons possession. Even the prosecutor, Troy Eid, says “he is absolutely confident the ‘meth heads’, as he calls them, never posed a risk to Obama or anyone else.”