Media ignores Secret Service laxity

By Libby

I'm working today so I don't have time to pursue the latest news but this story hasn't received enough attention in any event. I blogged about the alarming laxity of Obama's Secret Service detail at Newshoggers and The Detroit News but I haven't really highlighted the story here. I won't rehash the details about the Secret Service allowing thousands of people into his rally without even a cursory screening since Media Bloodhound offers an excellent summary background at the link. Even more importantly, he's noticed that the MSM has ignored this story altogether despite numerous accounts from around the country indicating this was not an isolated instance in Dallas.

But here's the money graf.

In fact, on March 1, 2003, this administration officially made the U.S. Secret Service part of the United States Department of Homeland Security. (You might have heard of that crack federal department, the same one that seven years after 9/11 still can't ensure our airline cargo is checked.) Before that change, since its inception in 1865, the Secret Service had been part of the United States Department of Treasury, operating as a distinct organization within that department beginning in 1883. So what's your guess? That Secret Service improved or worsened under this administration after it was subsumed by the Department of Homeland Security? I would take odds on the latter, but I'm not a betting man.

I suppose I must have read some kind of announcement of this at the time, but clearly the import of the change didn't register at the time. Obama, to his credit, graciously praises the detail assigned to him, but considering the dismal track record of the DHS, I would be rather nervous myself, if I was depending on the agency for protection. Of all the failures of the Bush administration, the DHS is in some ways the greatest one. The next president would do well to disband this ineffcient atrocity along with its Orwellian designation and start from scratch.