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Secret Service Critics Pounce After White House Breach
HughPickens.com writes On Friday evening, a man jumped the White House fence, sprinted across the North Lawn toward the residence, and was eventually tackled by agents, but not before he managed to actually enter the building. Now CBS reports that the security breach at the White House is prompting a new round of criticism for the Secret Service, with lawmakers and outside voices saying the incident highlights glaring deficiencies in the agency's protection of the president and the first family. "Because of corner-cutting and an ingrained cultural attitude by management of 'we make do with less,' the Secret Service is not protecting the White House with adequate agents and uniformed officers and is not keeping up to date with the latest devices for detecting intruders and weapons of mass destruction," says Ronald Kessler. "The fact that the Secret Service does not even provide a lock for the front door of the White House demonstrates its arrogance." But the Secret Service must also consider the consequences of overreaction says White House correspondent Major Garrett. "If you have a jumper and he is unarmed and has no bags or backpacks or briefcase, do you unleash a dog and risk having cell phone video shot from Pennsylvania Avenue of an unarmed, mentally ill person being bitten or menaced by an attack dog?" But Kessler says Julia Pierson, the first woman to head the Secret Service, has some explaining to do. "If the intruder were carrying chemical, biological or radiological weapons and President Obama and his family had been in, we would have had a dead president as well as a dead first family."
There was a time that a citizen could walk right up to the white house.
Back when rather few people actually traveled any significant distance. Also back in those days the federal government mattered rather less than it does today. It's only since the Civil War that the federal government has started to play more of a role than state government in the every day lives of people.
What has changed with our society that our president needs to live in a castle with a moat and defense force?
A lot has changed. Maybe the fact that every president since Johnson has been the target of known assassination attempts or plots. Four presidents have been assassinated (Kennedy, Lincoln, McKinley and Garfield) and two were wounded by would-be assassins (Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt). When you are the leader of a nation there are some crazy people out there who will kill you if they have the chance.
Losing your nation's leader is a BIG deal. It causes very serious problems no matter what country you are talking about.
For FY 2014, the budget allocation for the Secret Service was 1.546 billion.
As of July 31, 2014 there is 17.6 trillion in debt.
Cutting the Secret Service budget to 0 would relieve 0.00878% of the debt.
Nice try, though.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.