The Secret Service Sucks
Posted by Michelle Moquin on September 30th, 2014
Good morning!
I realize my title may be construed as harsh, but don’t you think that if the safest place in the U.S., The White House, is majorly breached and the Secret Service are responsible for protecting our president and his family, and they don’t, they pretty much suck. Either that or they’re just not concerned about the well-being and safety of the president and his family, as they should be, and then well…that still sucks. I do, therefore, think my title is appropriate. Because it is their job…they are getting paid to protect the First Family.
And then that brings to light another question of “Is their racism involved here?” I know, I know…I’m always accusing and illuminating racism…..But there is just too many layers breached and too many opportunities to prevent that breach that just didn’t happen, and should have.
And now we are privy to the fact that this fence jumper, Omar Gonzalez, actually made it further into the White House, all the way into the East Room, wielding a knife, rather than just entering the reported foyer. Hello! A knife kills - we’ve seen sick evidence this past month on how easily a knife can kill. If one of the Obama girls was grabbed by Gonzales…well, we all know what could happen with a knife.
How did this happen when the Secret Service are supposed to be the best…are supposed to protect the president and his family?
Let’s not forget that Gonzalez was stopped twice before, and he was caring guns/ammunition, maps to the White House, etc., were found on him and nothing was done then. Wha’at??!!
Here’s the write from CNN.
Officials: Fence jumper made it into East Room of White House
Washington (CNN) – The man who jumped the White House fence earlier this month and breached the mansion’s doors actually made it farther than originally thought, officials said Monday.
Omar Gonzalez, a 42-year-old Iraq war veteran who had a knife in his pocket, overcame one Secret Service officer and ran into the East Room of the White House, where he was then subdued, a federal law enforcement said.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who was provided the information by whistleblowers during his congressional investigation into the incident, also confirmed the details of what now appears to be a wild chase through the main floor of the White House, first reported by the Washington Post.
The Secret Service had previously stated that Gonzalez was stopped after entering the front door of the North Portico.
Gonzalez ran through much of the main floor, past a stairway that leads up to the first family’s residence, and was ultimately stopped at the far southern end of the East Room. He also reached the doorway to the Green Room, an area that looks out on the South Lawn.
No shots were fired inside the White House, the federal law official said.
Official: Secret Service twice interviewed, released would-be White House intruder
The Secret Service has not yet commented on the new details.
“I could not be more proud of the individual agents, but I worry that Director (Julia) Pierson and the leadership there at the Secret Service is failing them,” Chaffetz said Monday on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”
Pierson will face tough questions at an already-scheduled hearing on Tuesday before the House Oversight Committee.
A Republican from Utah who sits on the committee, said he wants to know why an audible alarm in the White House had been muted after ushers said it was making too many noises.
And shortly after the incident earlier this month, the Secret Service issued a statement saying officers “showed tremendous restraint and discipline in dealing with” Gonzalez.
Chaffetz said he has a problem with that, too.
“I don’t want tremendous restraint,” he said. “I want to see overwhelming force to deter somebody. When you have the situation where you have the apparent lax security, you’re unfortunately going to invite more attacks. And that’s the concern.”
Pierson sent a letter to committee chairman Darrell Issa last Friday raising concerns about an holding open discussion on security issues and urged the chairman to allow some of her testimony to take place in a classified setting.
“Simply put, publicly airing the very security measures employed by the Secret Service and the various challenges we confront at the White House complex will arm those who desire to cause injury – or worse – to the President and First Family with critical information, and doing so would be beyond reckless,” Pierson wrote.
How the Secret Service could beef up White House security
CNN has learned from a Democratic source on the Oversight Committee that Issa has agreed to Pierson’s request, and will hold a separate, classified session on Tuesday.
The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, praised the decision to protect the agency’s mission.
“This is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, but an American issue, and the last thing we should do is give people like Gonzalez a road map for how to attack the President or other officials,” Cummings said in a written statement to CNN.
Readers: I agree with the reporter…”Restraint?” C’mon, bring the intruder down! This is the protection of the president of the United States and his family. This was not some thug on the streets; this was in the White House. If you can’t discern the difference or the degree of importance here, you shouldn’t be the Secret Service director. Yeah, I’m addressing you Ms. Pierson.
Now this morning we have the hearings going on questioning the Secret Service Director, Ms. Pierson, on why her agents did nothing. And they are drilling her…and rightly so. Did you watch? My opinion has not changed. This woman and all of the agents need to be fired. Obama has a big pair, no doubt, but when it comes to the actions, or lack thereof, from the Secret Service, he is being way too soft and lenient. This is his safety and the safety of his family. Fire them all.
And if that isn’t reason enough to be fired, Ms Pierson is also being drilled about the gun shots that were fired at the White House and entered into the White House in November 2011. The agents heard the gun shots, smelled the gun shots being fired, heard the sound of debris falling…and still did nothing. They claim that the gun shots were merely a construction vehicle backfiring nearby. Yeah…6-8 backfires. I don’t think so.
It wasn’t until days later that a housekeeper noticed some damage in the White House and found bullet holes. Wha’at??!! It takes no training to look around for evidence of bullet holes but it seems that the Secret Service didn’t bother to do something as simple as that. There lack of action shows very little concern for the safety of the First Family.
When the repub’s biggest goal is to destroy Obama, they will do whatever is necessary. The repub controlled House of Representatives put in place a drastic budget cut and the Secret Service had requested a staff reduction of over 300 employees in 2013. They also went from 13 training as year down to 6 and now there are no trainings. Not that less Secret Service agents should affect the ability of the ones on duty doing his or her job, nor do you need training to snoop around for bullet holes. The housekeeper certainly doesn’t have any training. All it takes is a little caring and curiosity. But when training is eliminated, what kind of message do you think this sends?
The media won’t address it but I will. Would these budget cuts and a reduction in Secret Service agents have been made if Obama was a white man? Is it unfair to say that if Obama was white, Gonzales would’ve been taken out? Not to mention that if Gonzales were black would he ever have been able to set foot inside of the White House, let alone have gotten in as far as he did, without being brought down?
This whole thing is shocking. Fire Ms Pierson and all the agents.
What are your thoughts? What are your questions? Blog me.
Aimee: As I mentioned, Ruth didn’t need anyone else to agree with her nomination of Mark, but I did ask if anyone else wanted to nominate him and you gave your vote. :) He is a member.
Lewis: I did a search and found this, “Hundreds of voters are disenfranchised by North Carolina’s new voting restrictions,” which is what I am assuming you are referring to. Do you know the verdict from last Thursday? I could not find it.
Dave: And according to the above quoted write, even Vets who were registered and whose registration was incorrectly terminated while he was away fighting for our country. Repubs will do whatever it takes to win.
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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October 1st, 2014 at 6:11 am
Michelle I couldn’t get in to voice my appreciation of your concern about our President. I agree with you that some racism may be involved. After all it was admitted in the inquiry that he has 3 times as many death threats as any of his predecessors.
October 1st, 2014 at 6:17 am
Hafa adai
Thought you might find this interesting. Air Force KC-135 refuels F-22 Raptors in mid-air. Published on Sep 30, 2014
The F-22 Raptor may be the most technologically sophisticated fighter plane ever to serve in combat. But when it gets thirsty, it relies on a plane that has been doing its job since the Eisenhower administration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRhpELOmsug
October 1st, 2014 at 7:08 am
Michelle, I live in WI. Here is how far the Right is willing to go to steal votes or force 300,000 voters to lose their vote.
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WI Election Officials and Advocates Scrambling After Voter ID Reinstated
Wisconsin election officials and advocates are being forced to make an “extraordinary effort” to adjust to voter ID restrictions that were just reinstated by a federal appellate court. Thousands of absentee ballots have already been sent to voters, and the majority of Department of Motor Vehicle service centers that issue IDs are only open only two days per week.
On September 12, just seven weeks before election day, a panel of three 7th Circuit appellate judges — all appointed by Republican presidents — reinstated Wisconsin’s voter ID law, which federal district Judge Lynn Adelman had blocked in April as unconstitutional and violative of the Voting Rights Act.
Around 300,000 Wisconsin voters don’t have the forms of identification required to vote under the law, a disproportionate number of whom are people of color. Opponents of the law have asked the full 7th Circuit to review the September 12 ruling, but if the order stands, all voters will now have to bring identification to the polls, which they have not needed in the past.
With less than 49 days before election day, voting rights advocates will have to work overtime to educate the public and get state-issued IDs into the hands of those who don’t have them — a nearly impossible task, since Department of Motor Vehicle service centers in 48 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties are only open two days a week, usually for around five hours each day. This means there are only fourteen days for voters in many counties to obtain an ID card.
State election officials are also in a “pinch,” says Government Accountability Board (GAB) director Kevin Kennedy. Poll workers will have to be trained on the law and its requirements, which few had expected to be reinstated this soon before the election. Kennedy says this will require an “extraordinary effort” from state and local election officials.
11,000 absentee ballots without an ID requirement have already been mailed — and now, election officials will have to contact each absentee voters and tell them they’ll need to submit a photocopy of their ID. If they don’t, the absentee ballot will not be counted.
For Many Voters, Just 14 Days to Obtain ID
Key to the 7th Circuit’s order reinstating voter ID was a last-minute rule issued by the Walker administration the evening before oral argument. The rule provided that the Department of Motor Vehicles would accept a wider range of supporting documents (like baptismal certificates) to obtain an ID card, which the court said “reduces the likelihood of irreparable injury” and limits the law’s burden on voters.
Many Wisconsinites will still face enormous difficulties in getting the ID they need to vote, even if the DMV is more lenient in issuing identification cards.
Sixty out of the 90 DMV service centers in Wisconsin are only open part-time, approximately two to three days per week. Ten of those are open only sporadically; at least two won’t be open at all before election day.
As the Cap Times notes:
If you live in Fort Atkinson, the local service center in the city building is open from 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on the second and fourth Thursday of the month. That leaves three days before the election — Sept. 25, Oct. 9 and Oct. 23 — to appear in person as required to get an ID.
The closest DMV alternatives for Fort Atkinson residents are in Watertown and Janesville, both about 20 miles away.
“If you consider that someone looking to get a valid ID doesn’t currently have a valid driver’s license, travel could be an issue,” the Cap Times noted, in an enormous understatement. Around 257,000 Wisconsinites don’t have a car in their household, according to an amicus brief filed by One Wisconsin Now.
“Many Latino and working class voters have two jobs, are raising families, have inflexible schedules or lack cars,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Executive Director of Voces de la Frontera, a Latino advocacy organization. Yet if they want to exercise their right to vote, they must take off work and get a ride to a DMV, hopefully during the extremely limited time period it is open.
Latino voters are 2.6 times as likely as white voters to lack the forms of ID required to vote under the law.
“The Department of Motor Vehicles has now become the guardian at the gates of our polling places to determine who has the right to vote,” Neumann-Ortiz says.
7th Circuit Dismissed Burdens on Voters
The 7th Circuit panel did not address the limited hours for Wisconsin DMVs. But they should have considered it.
In lifting Judge Adelman’s injunction, the all-Republican panel declared that Adelman deviated from U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Crawford v. Marion County, a 2008 case that upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s voter ID law.
The panel ignored the evidence before Judge Adelman showing that the burdens on Wisconsin voters are more significant than those that faced Indiana voters in the Crawford case.
Wisconsin has just 90 DMVs, and only 30 are open during regular business hours; Indiana has 140 Bureaus of Motor Vehicles, and nearly all are open full time.
Indiana has 124 BMVs open on the weekend. Wisconsin has only one service center that is open on Saturday, throughout the entire state.
Plus, more Wisconsin voters than Indiana voters lacked the forms of ID required under their respective states’ law. Nine percent of Wisconsin voters (300,000 people) don’t have ID, versus just one percent of Indiana voters in Crawford.
In other words, more Wisconsin voters would need to get ID cards in order to exercise their right to vote than Indiana voters in the Crawford case, and they would have fewer DMVs where they can get that ID.
Judge Adelman also found that, even if election integrity can justify voter ID restrictions in the abstract, it doesn’t apply when applied to the evidence in Wisconsin. “Virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin and it is exceedingly unlikely that voter impersonation will become a problem in Wisconsin in the foreseeable future,” he wrote.
Based on extensive evidence of the voter ID law’s impact on eligible Wisconsin voters, and the lack of evidence of voter fraud in the state, Judge Adelman said he came to a different decision than the U.S. Supreme Court in Crawford. The Republican judges on the 7th Circuit panel ignored that evidence.
Best Run Elections In Country?
The ACLU and the Advancement Project have asked the full 7th Circuit to review the order reinstating the voter ID law.
If voter ID remains in place for November, civic engagement groups will have their work cut out for them in the next seven weeks.
“We are focusing our efforts on empowering, educating, and mobilizing the African-American community to ensure that every single eligible voter in Wisconsin has all the tools they need in order to participate in what is supposed to be a free, fair and accessible democracy,” said Mike Wilder, co-chair of the Wisconsin African-American Civic Engagement Roundtable.
The last-minute reinstatement of the law will require advocacy groups to divert resources away from their other activities.
“We must now raise money to pay for educational literature that we did not anticipate, [spend] additional time and training to communicate with voters the new requirements, and overcome yet another hurdle in motivating people to vote,” said Neumann-Ortiz.
The voter ID law combines with other recent initiatives that will make it harder to vote.
Earlier this year, Walker signed bills that passed along party lines eliminating early voting on the weekends and cutting hours during the week. This means that more people will be showing up at polling stations on election day, where confusion over the newly reinstated law is likely.
Another measure allows poll observers — including voter vigilantes like True the Vote — to effectively hover over voters, and stand as close as 36 inches from the registration table (although polling place inspectors can place poll watchers as far as eight feet away).
The last-minute reinstatement of voter ID could provide more opportunities for vigilante poll watchers to disrupt the election process and challenge voters.
Andrea Kaminski, Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said “confusion over the voter ID requirement will be one more issue” they will be watching for on election day. The League “will be watching for signs of people being disenfranchised as a result of confusion, and some other poll watchers will no doubt be challenging voters,” she said.
In 2012, Wisconsin ranked among the best in the country for election performance, according to Pew Charitable Trusts.
Democracy
- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/node/12603#sthash.Ml2sHELz.dpuf
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The republican appointed federal judges are encouraged by the bought and paid for S.T.A.R.K. on SCOTUS to do whatever they want when it comes to the law. They just make if for the republicans from the bench.
October 1st, 2014 at 7:11 am
The white majority just doesn’t care what happens to this president or his family.
October 1st, 2014 at 7:14 am
I too live in WI. It is just terrible what happens in this state. Our state supreme court has a 4 member republican majority and they just refuse to indite crooked republican politicians.
The Governor gets a pass on whatever illegal action he takes. They are not bashful about making law from the bench. This state is fucked.
October 1st, 2014 at 7:24 am
Sending another typhoon towards Japan will not help to solve the problem. It could exacerbate it. Time is needed to evacuate the West China Basin.