I'm all for giving the Secret Service the resources it needs to protect federal officials, but I'd argue against making that its sole mission. Having other components helps keep the institution more honest. Imagine if, under GW Bush, people had proposed turning the Secret Service into some sort of praetorian guard?

I agree with Gilroy. There is a reason all those other jobs were part of he original Secret Service mandate. It is good for agents to spend long hunks of their careers outside Washington hunting bad guys. We don't need an imperial guard.

The Secret Service, formed during Lincoln's administration (remember 'Wild, Wild West'?) was in the Treasury Department, and hunting counterfeiters was a large role.

Now it has been folded into Homeland Security- along with the Coast Guard, Fema, INS, Border Security, and a passel of other entities.

Janet Napolitano was on a first rate news organization last week (the Daily Show), and Anchor Man Jon Stewart asked her how all these organizations were able to communicate with each other. Her somewhat offhand reply- telephones and 'secret communication devices'- begs the question: are the Pres/VP, et al safer now than when the Secret Service was a part of Treasury?

Clinton's FEMA was a paragon of efficiency; a few years later Katrina hit, and we all know what kind of a 'heck of a job' it did. . .

"Imagine if, under GW Bush, people had proposed turning the Secret Service into some sort of praetorian guard?"

That would be news for all of five minutes. And Faux wouldn't even take the time to even mention it.

When Murdoch and his fellow social terrorists get this report...

They will air even more caustic language to help overwhelm the Secret Service.
"The more threats the better" will become a tactic and a rallying call.

Count on it.

Ever wonder who's coaching oddball Michael Steele?

http://bit.ly/3ppyiu

(satire)

I'll act like a right wing nut. This is all part of the right wing conspiracy to force the Obama administration to create more government and spend more money. The Teabagger protests for example require government to provide additional security and other measures, thus spending more tax payer dollars.

@bondwooley-I found the cow on the tracks metaphor he used for slowing healthcare reform. Being a train enthusiast, it's hard for a cow to slow a train, never mind stop it. The cow catcher, also known as the pilot (or pile it which Steele seems to also do) would simply make hamburger.

Day - you said it "a first rate news organization"
the only one left.

> The new demands are leading some officials, both
> inside and outside the agency, to raise the
> possibility of the service curtailing or dropping
> its role in fighting financial crime to focus
> more on protecting leaders

I had to deal with the Secret Service earlier this year when my employer was struck by large-scale credit card fraud, and I have to say that they were the most competent and professional investigatory agency I have ever encountered. I too agree that there is value in having multiple assignments for the Secret Service and would prefer to see their funding increased, and perhaps additional agents loaned from state and local police forces temporarily, rather than a Homeland inSecurity reshuffling.

Cranky

Of course, it was the Post Office Police that eventually caught the fraudsters, but that's another discussion!

It seems to me there's a certain imbalance between the secret service and its targets in that issuing threats against government officials can be done by any nutball, but investigating those threats requires highly trained personnel with expensive infrastructure backing them up.

So long as the number of nutballs is limited, the Service can keep up; but if you begin have organizations (right wing talk radio, Fox News, the GOP congressional caucus) building up the number of nutballs, they'll overwhelm the Secret Service, in much the same way guerrillas can overwhelm a professional army.

If we want to keep a handle on this then we're going to have to do something about the incitement currently being practiced by the various parts of the Wurlitzer.

I think it is a very topsy-turvey world when we start talking about changing the mission of the FBI because extremists--including Congresswomen Michelle Bachman of MN--are using their power, the public airwaves and social networking websites to broadcast sedition, hate speech, and acts of violence against the President. The concept of "loyal opposition" seems to have been lost completely. It is one thing to disagree with the President's policies. It is another to resort to threats and violence when you lose elections.

Perhaps we should also be talking about the public sphere and what is considered appropriate behavior by individuals who are in public positions. Maybe we need to rethink what is free speech and what consists of hate speech. Maybe we need to think about what constitutes slander and libel. Maybe we need to rethink fairness in broadcasting. The idea that we need to change the historic mission of the FBI because our public discourse has become so violent and polarized...talk about denial. The problem is not the FBI.

Anyone catch the new birther evidence? Seems to be an AP report from 2004 circulating in a Kenyan news source.

"Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations."

Definitely bogus, but none the less alarming. See post 35 at this wingnut alleged newspaper and forum.

http://dnronline.com/opinion_details.php?AID=41624&CHID=62&sub=Letters To The Editor

As much as we in the left hated GWB, it was only the fringe who spoke hatefully of him in public. You didn't have elected officials and prominent members of other organizations spouting the kind of language we hear now about BHO. That gives permission to wingnuts to act on their beliefs and widens the fringe.

Gosh, it's just too bad that we can't possibly increase the budget of the Secret Service and get them the staffing and resources they need, because then the wingnuts would dominate the airwaves with That Kenyan's Secret Political Police Force.

"There is a reason all those other jobs were part of he original Secret Service mandate. It is good for agents to spend long hunks of their careers outside Washington hunting bad guys."

Yeah there is a reason. It is because we didn't have an FBI or a SEC.

The Secret Service originally was tasked with tracking down counterfeiters, how this expanded to looking for missing children baffles me. And I don't think that the people on the Presidential Security details get rotated out to desk jobs checking financial reports. And lets not get trapped into loose analogies about the Praetorian Guard, the dynamics are much different than they were in the Late Empire where every ambitious general was a potential Emperor.

Frankly he notion that the Secret Service should be expanding its oversight of the financial sector by taking on mortgage fraud is a little nutty, there is nothing wrong with getting their mission a little more focused.

"As much as we in the left hated GWB, it was only the fringe who spoke hatefully of him in public. You didn't have elected officials and prominent members of other organizations spouting the kind of language we hear now about BHO"

Well under the Patriot Act a lot of the hate speech directed at Bush could have been determined, at the sole discretion of the White House and/or Fourth Branch to be an act of terrorism.

Title VIII alters the definitions of terrorism, and establishes or re-defines rules with which to deal with it. It redefined the term "domestic terrorism" to broadly include mass destruction as well as assassination or kidnapping as a terrorist activity. The definition also encompasses activities that are "dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" and are intended to "intimidate or coerce a civilian population," "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion," or are undertaken "to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping" while in the jurisdiction of the United States.

Was my writing 'Buck Fush' intended to "influence the policy of a government". Well to the degree that I hoped to do my tiny part to energize an anti-Bush political movement, I would say so. Would the government feel itself to be "intimidated" or "coerced" by such a mass movement? I suppose so, that is part of what I consider the democratic process, make policy I want or we will vote you out of office. But at the height of Bush-Chenyism such open opposition to the war was often considered prima-facia support of terrorism and the Patriot Act gave the President the right to stick you in a Navy prison cell right beside Jose Padilla. Whereupon John Woo would be able to come up with all kinds of reasons why the Presidents powers under Article II Sec II as augmented by the Patriot Act swept away those protections of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

It is a good thing I don't travel because based on some of my past speech in the 2002-2004 period I would not be surprised to find my name on the No Fly List. For all their blather about FEMA Concentration Camps the wingnuts can't in their hearts be worried about being swept up by Obama Storm Troopers, whereas there were all too many examples of Americans and Canadians just swept off the streets under Bush.

BTW when was the last time you heard about caged off 'Free Speech Zones', routine under Bush.

I firmly believe that if Bush had found even minimal amounts of live WMD ordnance in Iraq and if the war had turned out to even minimally resemble the Vulcan vision of world wide American military domination that all of us would still be taking Ari Fleisher's advice to "watch what you say, watch what you do" and that 1984 would start increasingly looking like a documentary.

I happen to live where both Clinton and Obama have chosen to spend some of their leisure time. The difference between their security arrangements is a measure of how times have changed.

When Clinton came in the 90s, his motorcade consisted of a motorcycle escort of two state police in front, and four light colored suburbans, one of which carried the SS. Clinton enjoyed being among crowds and people in general. He would stop unannounced at various places, giving his security detail fits, but he loved being the center of attention.

When Obama was here in August, he arrived on a helicopter (Clinton flew in on a 707 version of Airforce One) one of three identical ones to confuse any potential attackers. His arrival was not public (Clinton's always was) and he moved about with about ten motorcycle escorts and a motorcade of ten to twelve jet black SUVs with darkly tinted windows. You never knew which one he was in. His connection with the public was all but none existent. The island was literally crawling with SS and FBI all summer, as were the ports on the mainland. They too tried to stay out-of-sight, but those of us who live here year-around can discriminate between day tourists, seasonal residents, vacationers and security. They each have their own MO.

The Obamas, by their nature, may not be nearly as garrulous as Bill Clinton, especially on vacation, but the differences were stark. I relate this not by way of resentment, but understanding that the threats to Obama are far more severe than to any Rethug, or Clinton. We would have enjoyed having more direct contact with him, but we respect his family's right to both privacy and security.

The rule here has always been that celebrities, of whatever stripe, are to be left alone to enjoy their vacations. Until the Clinton era that rule prevailed. Everyone could travel about without fear of being bothered by press, groupies or hostile types. Even Jackie O, who spent a lot of time here in the summer before she got sick, would put on her sunglasses, a kerchief, and drive herself in a convertible the nearly twenty miles to one of our bigger towns. Those times are now long gone.

The SS has its hands full, we can only hope they are up to the job.

"searching for missing and exploited children" ?!?

Have we no police? Sheriffs? FBI? Surely this little task could be dropped immediately.

I'm with "Mxyzptlk at 11:24 AM". The fact that the people who are supposed to be the responsible ones are making assassination jokes, i.e., the govenor of Idaho and his 'put a tag on Obama' comment that didn't even get him arrested.

This should not be treated so lightly. Arrest these people even if it sends a message that we will not tolerate this behavior. Yes, you can release them if you determine that there is no threat but the idea is to arrest them and let the system work.

It is definitely time for all the nation's security agencies to share information. Unfortunately "the people" are overlooked as a source. I worked at a private, high security agency that checked out everyone and totally ignored any food service delivery contractors. I sent the information to Obama, was ignored and never contacted. This airport flies cabinet members, their families and members of congress on a routine basis. The best way to prove safety and security is to listen to people and to test the operations. High profile people actually like this airport because they don't check any bags and sweep them through without x-ray!

It is definitely time for all the nation's security agencies to share information. Unfortunately "the people" are overlooked as a source. I worked at a private, high security agency that checked out everyone and totally ignored any food service delivery contractors. I sent the information to Obama, was ignored and never contacted. This airport flies cabinet members, their families and members of congress on a routine basis. The best way to prove safety and security is to listen to people and to test the operations. High profile people actually like this airport because they don't check any bags and sweep them through without x-ray!