Like a Wet Security Blanket

Recently a little bird whispered a few talking points in my ear. Sure, he was preaching to the choir, and these ideas were already kicking around in the back of my mind...but he helped to fill in the blanks.

The president wants to run on the premise that his anti-terror policies are working, and are better than those of John Kerry.

Just how effective are these policies? Well, during the Republican National Convention, an event where the Republican mayor and Republican governor tripled the number of arraignments per day in order to process up to 1000 arrests per day, the city complained that the arrests of roughly 1700 protesters (over at least three days, 560 per day) had taxed the system to such an extent that they were unable to process them in time frame set out by law.

Even still, there were no fewer than four separate incidents where the Secret Service, now under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security, were unable to keep non-violent protesters away from the President, Vice President, or his family. Imagine if these people had plotted for years to kill the president.

Let's sum that up:

  1. The Republican convention expects 1000 arraignments per day;
  2. New York triples the number of arraignment hearings per day to deal with the 1000 arraignments per day;
  3. New York gets 560 arraignments per day;
  4. New York complains that the courts were overburdened;
  5. Multiple protesters are still arrested on the floor of the RNC convention, in shooting distance of the president, the vice president, or his daughters;
  6. And these people weren't scheming fanatics.

In an unrelated event, during a rally last week, where the audience had been carefully screened and asked to sign a form stating that they were supporters of the Bush Administration, a mother of a soldier who died in Iraq managed to confront the president's wife, wearing a T-shirt that read "President Bush You Killed My Son,'' before the Secret Service arrested her.

And let's sum that up:

  1. The president holds a rally exclusively for supporters;
  2. A woman gets past security wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt;
  3. And causes a ruckus before the Secret Service arrests her.

If the president can't enforce his own security, how can he hope to make the US secure?