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Julia arrived amidst a flurry of HOPE and expectations.Unfortunately things didn’t work out as well as we’d HOPEd and last week the Administration’s girl Director of Secret Service, Julia Pierson, stepped down due to creative differences. As an “unnamed official” told the Washington Post, she apparently had a different vision for the Service that clashed with the one that included protecting the President and his family. “In the spring, Pierson was irate at what she considered the excessive security measures her team had planned for the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, which Obama hosted this summer, demanding that it dismantle extra layers...

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson House should be ousted from her job, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday, agreeing with the recommendation of the top Democrat on the oversight committee. Mrs. Pelosi, the highest-ranking woman in American politics, said problems go beyond Ms. Pierson, who was put in charge of the Secret Service after a scandal involving agents who hired prostitutes in Cartagena in 2012. But Mrs. Pelosi said she accepts the analysis of Rep Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, who said he was displeased with Ms. Pierson’s leadership.

The United States Secret Service (USSS) is in a slump. The Secret Service used to be part of the Treasury Department. That was because, when the Service was established in 1865, "one-third to one-half" of all currency in circulation in the United States was counterfeit. What with this being just three months after the end of the Civil War, and all, the Secret Service's job was to put a stop to that. Presidential protection began as an "informal" part of the Service's duties in 1894 in President Grover Cleveland's second (and, as you remember, non-consecutive) term. The Secret Service...

CHICAGO — Just over a month until Election Day, President Obama is returning to a theme he hoped to make a centerpiece of the midterm campaign: the economy. Multiple crises overseas, the resignation of the Secret Service’s director after eye-popping threats to presidential safety, and the first case of Ebola in the United States have all kept Mr. Obama in a reactive mode. But in a speech Thursday at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., the president will go on the offensive and highlight the strides the economy has made since the near-economic collapse he inherited in 2009. He will also...

Behind the shocking revelations of incompetence and unprofessionalism that rocked the Secret Service this week is a longtime reporter who has been diligently uncovering the agency's secrets for years. Carol Leonnig, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who has worked at The Washington Post for nearly 15 years, has broken almost every single story on the agency, a series of shocking reports that on Wednesday resulted in the abrupt resignation of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson. (Pierson called the resignation “painful.”) In less than a week, Leonnig uncovered three scandals that pushed the agency’s first female leader out the door. First,...

WASHINGTON — Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland was at the grocery store the other day when he ran into an elderly black woman who expressed growing concern about President Obama’s safety. Why, she asked, wasn’t he being better protected by his Secret Service agents? The furor that led to this week’s resignation of the director of the Secret Service resonated deeply among blacks, outraged that those supposed to be guarding the first black president were somehow falling down on the job — and suspicious even without evidence that it may be deliberate. “It is something that is widespread in...

Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland was at the grocery store the other day when he ran into an elderly black woman who expressed growing concern about President Obama’s safety. Why, she asked, wasn’t he being better protected by his Secret Service agents? The furor that led to this week’s resignation of the director of the Secret Service resonated deeply among blacks, outraged that those supposed to be guarding the first black president were somehow falling down on the job — and suspicious even without evidence that it may be deliberate. “It is something that is widespread in black circles,”...

The White House sprayed by bullets. A hospital guard with a criminal record and a gun the Secret Service didn't know about riding on an elevator with the president in Atlanta. The fence-jumper who made it all the way into the East Room of the White House. Secret Service Director Julia Pierson had no choice but to resign on Wednesday afternoon. She did it a week or two late, but she did the right thing. The vaunted federal agency -- whose core duty is to protect the president of the United States, his family and his home - has become...

A former Secret Service agent told MailOnline that rank-and-file thought Julia Pierson 'was a joke from Day One' Secret Service supervisor said 'she doesn't know anything about security planning in a post-9/11 world' Another said she discussed making the elite corps that guards the president and his family 'more like Disney World' and 'more friendly' She shrunk the White House's countersurveillance force and reduced numbers of uniformed agents who guard the mansion's perimeter 'Cutting down the size of the White House perimeter detail was a morale-killer and I think it came back to bite her,' he said

Joe Clancy, the man in charge of cleaning up the Secret Service after a series of embarrassing security gaffes, is the ideal person to lead the agency through troubled waters, a former top Obama adviser said Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security named Clancy, director of corporate security for Comcast Corp., as interim acting director of the Secret Service after Julia Pierson resigned Wednesday. He retired from the agency in July 2011 after having served as special agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division, a role for which he was well-regarded, David Axelrod, one of Obama's oldest friends and...

Julia Pierson, the director of the United States Secret Service, resigned on Wednesday amid a rush of criticism over recent White House security breaches. "Today Julia Pierson, the Director of the United States Secret Service, offered her resignation, and I accepted it," said Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson. "I salute her 30 years of distinguished service to the Secret Service and the Nation." Joseph Clancy, the former special agent in charge of the presidential protective division of the Secret Service, will take over as interim director, Johnson said. Johnson also announced the formation of an independent panel to investigate...

The following is only partly satire; the rest is pure fact. Being able to discern which is which disqualifies the reader from government employment or contracting. As the old saying goes, “desperate times call for desperate measures.” With the glaring klieg lights of harsh congressional scrutiny being thrown onto several grave and alarming security lapses around the President and First Family, a humiliated and confused Obama administration is urgently in need of expert help. So much so, in fact, that they’re now awkwardly reaching out to someone whose skill at detecting suspicious perimeter intrusion at a gated complex (not to...

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson is facing bipartisan pressure to consider resigning, on the heels of her Capitol Hill testimony on major security failures that have thrown into doubt the safety of the president and his family. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who aggressively questioned Pierson at the House hearing, told Fox News that Pierson should either be fired or resign. Afterward, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., appeared to call for the same. He told MSNBC that he did "not feel comfortable with her in that position,” and that his confidence and trust in...

Yesterday Secret Service Director Julia Pierson fielded questions from furious and skeptical lawmakers after a number of serious failures by the agency to properly protect the President. Pierson started her testimony by saying she "takes full responsibility" for the failures, especially the most recent incident of fence jumper Omar Gonzales making it all the way inside the White House, but failed to answer a number of questions. Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy questioned Pierson on a shooting incident that occurred at the White House in 2011. Pierson failed to provide adequate answers as to why that incident was first classified as simply...

Imus would call it a "tension convention." There was palpable friction among members of the Morning Joe team today on the question of whether Secret Service Director Julia Pierson was an affirmative action hire. By the end, the almost unfailingly affable Willie Geist was smirking in frustration at Mika Brzezinski. When Brzezinski first broached the sensitive-for-liberals subject, she suggested that she was going to go further than her male colleagues dared. But by the time she circled back to the topic, Mika had for some reason lost her nerve. She was suddenly so cautious that Donny Deutsch chided her for...

A knife-wielding intruder allowed to run rampant through the first floor of the White House. Bullets that struck the window of Barack Obama's private residence but went unnoticed for days. A presidential bodyguard so drunk he passed out in hallway of a hotel. These are just some of the recent incidents that have shaken confidence in the Secret Service, the elite agency assigned to protect Mr Obama, his family and the White House. On Tuesday, Julia Pierson, the Secret Service's director, will face a grilling from members of Congress and a battle to convince them that her agents are up...