Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
There was a discussion on a mailing list I'm on a while. A list member had a friend with a Live Journal account. She had put up a satirical website poking fun at George W. Bush, and mentioned it in her LJ. Someone reading her Live Journal made an anonymous complaint to the Secret Service that she was threatening the President, and she got a visit from a couple of Secret Service agents. The agents were very professional and polite, had tea, looked at the site, agreed she was not illegal and no threat, and left.
She was a teenage girl, living at home with her family, about to graduate high school and go to college. Everyone was very freaked out about the visit.
I wondered what anyone expected. One of the jobs of the Secret Service is to protect the President. They are required to follow up on allegations like that, and to document the followup. They are paid to be paranoid and leave their sense of humor at home when they go to work. I felt constrained to point this out, and to make clear that it had nothing to do with the current administration. They would do the same on behalf of any seated President, because it was their job.
I didn't share the concern that the Secret Service visit was now on her record and would influence things like whether she got into the college of her choice. What record? Kept by whom? And looked at under what circumstances?
And I mourned the declining quality of education in the US. I knew the function of the Secret Service from Civics classes in Jr. High School, and could predict what would happen when a complaint was received. I was amazed at the folks who were surprised, and reserved my scorn for the idiot who made the complaint against her.
I have no use for the current administration, will cheer when they leave office, and will cross fingers the next one will do a better job (hard to imagine them doing a worse one), but I keep a sense of perspective about it all. People have, are, and will do all manner of things to get and hold power, but we aren't just this side of a police state yet.
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Dennis
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I had a patient once threaten the President. Being that it was one of my patients and that the threat was purely from a psychotic stance, we didn't think it was serious, but the rules require that we report these things. The field officers who came to interview the patient were very polite and professional and after review decided that the threat level was extremely low, especially since the patient got better with meds.
One of the Secret Service guys kept snarfing cookies from the snack counter though. When you work in a Franciscan hospital, you have a good bakery.
They wouldn't show me their Uzi's either.
