This popped up on Twitter late yesterday and has made its way to the New York Daily News: President Obama Can’t Be in the Same Room As Forks Anymore?

Dan Amira writes:

Just a few days after announcing that his administration would no longer deport about 800,000 young illegal immigrants, you would think that President Obama would be received as something of a hero by NALEO, the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, before whom Obama is giving a speech this afternoon in Orlando. But the Secret Service wasn’t taking any chances. As hundreds of Latino elected officials were enjoying their lunch at Disney’s Contemporary Resort earlier today, it was announced that forks would be collected before Obama took the stage. It was also mentioned that knives, too, were entirely absent from the lunch for “a reason.”

The NYDN article includes numerous clearly marked photographs of the Preezy of the United Steezy at photo ops where attendees were wielding possibly lethal forks (and knives).

As usual, the conservative Twitterverse responded with appropriate snark.

M C Lewis ‏@novelpolitics dubbed it “Forkless Friday” and el SOOPer ‏@SooperMexican hashtagged the whole Secret Service op #ForksAndFurious.

✞♕In God I Trust♕✞ ‏@InGodIDoTrust tweeted:

New suit $250.00. Cost to see Obama in person $45,000. Secret Service takes your Forks aways cause they don’t trust you….Priceless

and:

Is the Secret Service that inept or is Obama that paranoid? Taking forks away from Latinos They should be ashamed.

In March, in spite of disclaimers that it was not about security concerns, the G8 economic summit was moved from Chicago to the safety of the presidential compound at Camp David in Maryland.

Did it have anything to do with the escalating Chicago crime rate?

It was reported at the end of March that, in the first three months of the year, the murder rate was up 35% over the same period of the previous year. The following month, that number was upticked to 60%:

Homicides in Chicago spiked by 60 percent during the first three months of the year despite an increase in police resources in some of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, according to new police crime statistics.

The Chicago Police Department data showed that nonfatal shootings also rose sharply in the first quarter compared with the same three months in 2011.

Last week, Chicago’s The Daily reported that “more Chicago residents — 228 — have been killed so far this year in the city than the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan – 144 — over the same period.”

How to explain this increase in violence? Experts are stumped, claiming not to know (except for saying it may have something to do with a warmer winter).

Maybe they’re not looking at the real criteria — or looking in the wrong places. Maybe it has something to do with menacing forks.