The Secret Service isn't doing its job

You'll be glad to hear that while attendees at McCain/Palin rallies are hurling death threats at Barack Obama, the Secret Service is busy babysitting the media.

Yes. The Secret Service says it can't find the people in the crowd who keep calling for Barack Obama to be killed, and now we perhaps know why. Their agents are busy making sure that reporters don't leave their penned in areas and ask regular American citizens questions.

Now, how is it the Secret Service's job to play crowd control with reporters? Do they take sandwich orders too?

We know about this because Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank finally went public, and Huff Post caught it. Here's Milbank:

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.

So, instead of maximizing the number of agents they have to catch people calling for the Democratic presidential candidate to be killed, the Secret Service is busy doing the political bidding of the McCain campaign. Putting aside the issue of why the media puts up with this - did we really have to hear about it as an off-hand comment in an online chat - why is the Secret Service putting up with this?

But look on the bright side, I hear the Secret Service does windows.