Free Republic

The head of the Secret Service accepted full responsibility Thursday for last week's security breach at President Barack Obama's first state dinner, but he said that the president and Vice President Joe Biden were never in danger from a party-crashing couple who shook hands and posed for pictures with them. Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan told the House Homeland Security Committee that his agents were at fault for allowing uninvited Washington socialites Tareq and Michaele Salahi into a lavish state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Sullivan told the committee that three uniformed agents had been put on administrative...

Ostensibly, White House party crashers Tareq Salahi and his wife could facilely be dismissed as another pair of publicity infatuated cretins. Commentators have been quick to compare them to the deranged Balloon Boy parents, desperate for fame at any price. Obamanutz devotes an entire chapter to the putrification of our pop culture that has spawned and enabled this kind of narcissism. Two strangers getting access to the President of the United States is disturbing enough by itself. We were told early on that Salahi is “half Palestinian.” That’s not the half of it. The Salahi’s are deeply in debt as...