Secret Service agents are famously willing to take it – as in taking a bullet for the President or anyone else for whom they are providing security. They are also, it seems, willing to dish it out. Though not quite so lethally. Just in the nasty, bureaucratic, secretive ways of Washington. From Eric Katz at Government Executive, we learn that:
Seems that:
In doing so, they:
This was not just the work of a few rogue operators. As it turns out:
Also, according to an inspector general’s report:
Fear not, however, says Department of Homeland Security boss Jeh Johnson. Because he is confident that Secret Service head, Joe Clancy:
Which sounds real good and real tough. But, then, we learn from Carol D. Leonnig and Jerry Markon, at the Washington Post, that Director Clancy:
So, when Johnson says, “Activities like those described in the [IG’s] report must not, and will not, be tolerated,” Does that mean that all the guilty, to include Director Clancy, will pay a hard price? Or will things work out with the Secret Service the way they did at the IRS, the VA, and all those other agencies where, we have been told, intolerable conduct will not be tolerated … except when it is. Which is, pretty much, all the time.
Jay Cost, in this wonderful piece, What the Hell Is Going On? tries to account for The fraying of the national political consensus.
Could be, in part, because the government operates, almost routinely, as a law unto itself.
