Let’s be blunt. Barack Obama is a black man who happens to be the president of the United States. From the moment he announced his candidacy back in February of 2007, there have been counter-assault teams following him pretty much everywhere he goes.
Congress, it’s time for you to up the Secret Service’s budget, the president’s life must be protected. He has two young children to raise, a wife he loves and who loves him, and a country pinning too many hopes, and too many dreams on him. It’s time to reevaluate his protection.
Most—if not all—of us remember the stories last year from the campaign trail. Stories that gave pause. Stories about the Secret Service falling short, not necessarily because of carelessness, but because they’ve been stretched too thin. There was a story in early 2008 of the Service only using metal detectors on a portion of a crowd for an Obama rally in Dallas of all places.
Dallas Story
There was some question about whether there was really any breach of protocol in this particular instance, but the fact that the local police were concerned tells me that things could’ve been a little tighter.
There was also the story which circulated in January, and recounted in the book In the President’s Secret Service, of people invited to a private meeting with Obama without proper vetting by the Service. While these invited VIPs were screened through metal detectors, they were then allowed to walk along a public path and boarded "secure" buses and were not checked again before they met with the president.
http://www.unian.net/...
And today, there was the "man with gun" incident in New Hampshire.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
For those unfamiliar with this incident: a man protesting President Obama’s healthcare reform initiative was at a church near the site of the town hall with a gun strapped to his hip. He also brandished a sign which read "Time to water the tree of liberty." Anyone familiar with Thomas Jefferson knows this sign was a reference to Jefferson’s "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Now, before I go any further, I would like to say that I think the police and Secret Service responded to this nut in exactly the right way. Instead of arresting him and turning him into the new Joe the Plumber, Orly Taitz, or Sarah Palin, the police and Service simply watched him, and kept him away from the president. I would also like to point out that the sign the gentlemen carried is speech protected by the first amendment, and his right to carry his registered weapon is protected by the laws of the state of New Hampshire.
Now, each of these incidents taken individually might be written off as minor flubs—or simply nothing more than reports of flubs—by the Service, and the sad tale of a nut from the great state of New Hampshire. But taken as a part and parcel of the sad tale of a rightwing out of control, of birthers and deathers, of Becks’ and Limbaughs’, the current level of vitriol emanating from the collective thing we know as the far right, lunatic fringe, it tells us we must guard against the unthinkable.
Therefore, I am urging Congress to hold hearings into the United States Secret Services’ budget, and if there are holes and they are stretched to thin, please, for the love of the Republic fix these problems.
I know this talk is unpleasant. But Obama’s death—God forbid—would be a horrible blow to this country, it would setback race relations a hundred years, and more importantly, it would take a man—whatever his foibles—who is, by all accounts, a magnificent father and husband away from a young family that needs him very much.