The Secret Service group assigned to the White House, both uniformed and non-uniformed, are assigned to the “Office of the President,” not to the individual POTUS. They protect members of the Presidential staff and family as well as members of Congress and Senate if needed.
Point being - The Office holders may change but the Secret Service members quite often remain on that particular assignment. The most common reason for a Secret Service member assigned to White House detail to leave the team is job ‘burn-out.’ Most are married and the demands of the assigment are not conducive to a family routine.
Being assigned as a member of a protective team for the highest profile world leader is not a task for those lacking in dedication. They are not in it for the money; its a Civil Service job - starting at, I believe GS-14 level - which ain’t all that much living in D.C. Perks are part of the deal - travel on a moments notice, shifts of 18 - 20 hours routinely, free Air Force 1 ash trays and glasses, Diplo-Red passports, being under scrutiny every minute of your day - whoopee…but for the people who chose to be put in rotation for the teams it can be the highlight of their career. And it looks very good on your resume’ (c.v.) after you leave the Treasury Department. (You did know that the U.S. Secret Service was a division of the Treasury Department?)
There is an old maxim in the personal security business - “We have to do it right everytime, they only have to do it right once.”
[quote=“Comrade Stalin”]If I took a photo of someone posting on Forumosa or maybe their wife or child…and then tacked it to the wall with a red thumb tack through their head and then made a thumb’s-down sign with my own hand next to the photo and posted it here at Forumosa, I’d be banned and people here would be calling the police.[/quote]It is illegal to simply say “I want to kill the president” (I’ve seen “In the line of fire”) , even as a joke (like using the word “bomb” in an airport/aeroplane) but presumably you need to have more concrete plans in the case of other people ?
Probably proposed for a suspension, at the very least. I doubt anyone would call the cops, just because a post like that wouldn’t last long enough on the forums to attract any attention, I hope. We try to get rid of the nasty stuff as quickly as possible.
This has nothing to do with dissent, BTW, but rather the privacy of our members. I think it’s a good policy, but there’s always the feedback forum if you think there’s something wrong with it. [/quote]
A photo as I descibed would not in anyway concern the privacy of anyone but rather their safety. It would be a very obvious threat.
There’s a difference between dissent and stupidity. Too bad neither the student or his teacher are able to know that difference.
Oh, c’mon. A kid pinning up a picture and giving the thumb down sign does not require the secret service to come to your home and make a mountain out of a molehill.
I don’t blame the Wal Mart employees. They’re no doubt told to report things and did so in fear of losing their jobs. It should’ve been left at that.
[quote=“j99l88e77”]Oh, c’mon. A kid pinning up a picture and giving the thumb down sign does not require the secret service to come to your home and make a mountain out of a molehill.
I don’t blame the Wal Mart employees. They’re no doubt told to report things and did so in fear of losing their jobs. It should’ve been left at that.[/quote]
I do blame the WalMart employee, and the local police. They all made a big deal about this and ultimately got the Secret Service involved. The Secret Service investigated the matter and decided it was nothing to worry about.
I can’t believe anyone is actually defending the actions of the SS here. The poor kid was doing homework for a Bill of Rights assignment. What a sad statement about our rights. BTW, shouldn’t this be in the IP forum. Isn’t that where we usually keep Comrade Stalin?
[quote=“Tigerman”][quote=“j99l88e77”]Oh, c’mon. A kid pinning up a picture and giving the thumb down sign does not require the secret service to come to your home and make a mountain out of a molehill.
I don’t blame the Wal Mart employees. They’re no doubt told to report things and did so in fear of losing their jobs. It should’ve been left at that.[/quote]
I do blame the WalMart employee, and the local police. They all made a big deal about this and ultimately got the Secret Service involved. The Secret Service investigated the matter and decided it was nothing to worry about.
Why are some of you upset at the Secret Service?[/quote]
I re-read the article.
I originally mistook the above as if the secret service walked into the boy’s room at home. I think, however, they could’ve avoided going to the school.
Maybe the Wal Mart employee can’t make any comments because they are told by the home office to report anything and everything. Or maybe Wal Mart has a gung ho mentality. If the Wal Mart employee wasn’t given specific instructions to do so, then I do think he/she (she, I think) totally reacted out of hand. But… he/she could’ve let it slide. So… Who knows what actually happened there? Not us.
What about the local police? Sure, they’re “required” to report some things, but a police officer is at most times a “judgement of situation” job. I supposed if it were the NYPD they would’ve just told the Wal Mart employee to calm down, called the boy and asked him if he was a terrorist and gotten a good laugh out of it all.
All the secret service needed was a fax/scan of the photo and they could’ve asked the questions over the phone. Or no questions at all and just thrown their copy of the picture in the garbage and have a “secret” chuckle.
Maybe they’re still investigating it and checking out the parents. Because if the parents end up being terrorists then they would all be in trouble if something bad happens and they didn’t intercept the problem.
This is really a pretty stupid thread. The Secret Service is charged with protecting the President, which includes investigating any threats which get reported to them. They are required to do so – even a quick read of the link to the laws that Uncle Joe posted would tell you that.
His comments further show that in olden days, like about ten years ago, the Secret Service was not operating in a rational fashion, investigating and dismissing silly “art” projects as “yet another left-wing dickhead acting like a two-year-old”, but instead was politicized to the point that Clinton was harrassing anyone who spoke a word aginst him – as evidenced by the IRS auditing someone who engaged in a far more limited form of dissent than even the problem child (who is now a “poster child for the left”, ha-ha) in the current story did.
The Secret Service has investigated such drivel in every President’s term. In Reagan’s first term, some dumbass at my university put a cartoon in the school newspaper showing Reagan getting assassinated; the Secret Service came and had a chat with him, too – and let it drop as yet another tantrum by yet another left-wing pinhead.
If anyone overreacted, it was the Wal-Mart employee. And anyway, all of those photo-development places have silly policies; Walgreens (and many others) won’t even make prints of photos showing babies in the bathtub, because they might be “child pornography”.
The secret service had no need at all to show up at the school. Dismiss it? Yes. Again, all they needed was a copy of Evil Thumbtack Kid’s picture and they could’ve saved a lot of time.
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