Secret Service and Press Not Doing Their Jobs

In a story breaking out into the Blogosphere, seems Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has let the cat out of the bag that the Secret Service is not doing their job. Seems that the Secret Service is so busy keeping reporters in their pen, and away from Sarah Palin that they are failing (deliberately) to get the names of the people hurtling verbal threats in Senator Obama's direction such as "Kill Him". OK, I can buy that, and I can agree that the Secret Service should not keep reporters from interviewing people in the crowd.

Conversely, I would accuse Dana and the rest of the press from failing themselves in their duties. A blogger put together a picture of Obama and a Noose and posted it to the internet with the caption, "The Fucking Solution". Some of us contacted the Secret Service (who apparently is DOING NOTHING), and many more of us have blogged about it. Yet, this egregious assault on humanity, this most viscious of hate speech has been completely ignored by the major media. A noose appears on a college campus, and it is front page news, and makes the six o'clock news, but let some nut job post Obama and a Noose on his blog, and they are fine with that? Or did they leave the story alone because it happened in the heat of an election. Seems to me, that if Dana is going to throw stones in the direction of the Secret Service, he should throw a few at himself as well.

Dana Milbank

Washington Post Columnist
Thursday, October 16, 2008; 1:00 PM

Post columnist Dana Milbank serves as the capital's foremost critic of political theater in his Washington Sketch columns and videos. He was online live Thursday, Oct 16 at 1 p.m. ET to take your questions and comments about the things politicians say -- and the absurd ways they find to say them.

Dana Milbank:

Glad you asked, because I saw this earlier. This is actually about the incident in Scranton, not the one in Clearwater, Fla, that I wrote about here.

I wasn't at the Scranton event, but I have to say the Secret Service is in dangerous territory here. In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they've started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. This is a serious violation of their duty -- protecting the protectee -- and gets into assisting with the political aspirations of the candidate. It also often makes it impossible for reporters to get into the crowd to question the people who say vulgar things. So they prevent reporters from getting near the people doing the shouting, then claim it's unfounded because the reporters can't get close enough to identify the person.