Is the Secret Service Doing Its Job in Protecting the Candidates - Or Has It Been FEMA-ized by Bush and His Cronies?

On Feb. 19, Bill O’Reilly told a caller into his Fox News radio show that he won’t “go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama” unless he finds out that she really did say she has lacked pride in her country.
“I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.”
- O’Reilly

BILL O’REILLY: “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that’s how she really feels — that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever — then that’s legit. We’ll track it down.”

Well, Bill - get out your white sheets:

MICHELLE OBAMA: “What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback. And let me tell you something — for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I’ve seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it’s made me proud.”

Emphasis added. (Video available at same link.)

Later, O’Reilly issued an unapologetic apology in which he brazenly lied about what he actually said that was offensive:

O’REILLY: “While talking to a radio caller, I said there should be no lynching in the case, that comment off Clarence Thomas saying he was the victim of a high tech lynching (he said that on 60 Minutes, you may remember). I’m sorry if my statement offended anybody. That, of course, was not the intention. Context is everything.”

Just seven days prior to O’Reilly’s comments, George Bush made the extraordinary proclamation that lynching was bad:

GEORGE BUSH: “The era of rampant lynching is a shameful chapter in American history. The noose is not a symbol of prairie justice, but of gross injustice. Displaying one is not a harmless prank. And lynching is not a word to be mentioned in jest. As a civil society, we must understand that noose displays and lynching jokes are deeply offensive. They are wrong. And they have no place in America today.”

The context of Bush’s statement is the fact that nooses and other references to lynching have come to be considered snarky fun in certain quarters among the Republican racist base, inspired by the nooses tied to a tree in a schoolyard in Jena, La. Bush, to his credit, was trying to tell them what should be obvious: Lynching is murder and treating it lightly can be dangerous.

In an unrelated coincidence, there’s an allegation, reported in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, that federal agents relaxed security around Barack Obama at a rally in Texas, the home of Fox News’ core audience:

Security details at Barack Obama’s rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.

The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.

Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department’s homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order — apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service — was meant to speed up the long lines outside and fill the arena’s vacant seats before Obama came on.

With a leading rightwing opinion leader suggesting to his followers in the Fox News audience — among whom are some truly unhinged and highly suggestible individuals — that lynching Obama’s wife might be in order, the Secret Service should be beefing up the candidate’s security, not relaxing it.

Let’s hope they’re getting the message now.

Update: On Friday, the Secret Service denied security at the Obama rally was relaxed. Instead, a spokesman says, screening the attendees in Dallas for weapons was never part of the plan.

Heckuva job, guys.

What underlies this is the question of how the Secret Service is protecting candidates. If someone as influential as Bill O’Reilly was known to be riffing about killing Laura Bush, it wouldn’t surprise us to learn the Secret Service accounted for the threat from his followers in their security planning for the Bushes. It appears O’Reilly’s use of dangerous language did not prompt extra security measures for Obama in this instance.

The incident in Dallas, if there was one, was probably an anomaly. If it is part of a pattern, it could suggest that Bush has FEMA-ized the Secret Service by loading it up with political hacks and cronies of his hangers-on.