Don't Scare the President

Don't Scare the President:

I know nobody's really happy to see him traipsing around the heartland, but it's rude to scare your guests. I mean, if you bring out such dangerous crowds, it's only natural that they'd call in the SWAT Team.

Seriously, though, what on earth is this? Ever since my eye doctor, Sal Culosi, was shot and killed by a SWAT Team for 'gambling on sporting events,' I've had a very baleful notion of calling out the SWAT team for anything except the special cases that SWAT teams are really intended to address. Calling them out, as seems to be common, for serving ordinary warrants is wrong; calling them out because a few senior citizens are engaged in a perfectly peaceful First Amendment exercise is indefensible.

If the President is this afraid of Americans, he should resign. If the Secret Service is this afraid of Americans' First Amendment rights, they need to seriously revisit their doctrine.

UPDATE: A friend of Sal Culosi's writes to object that he would not want to be associated with my sentiments. Insofar as the political sentiments are involved, that may well be true; I cite him only in the paragraph about SWAT teams. All politics aside, he was a good man and I liked him. I think of him whenever I see cases of SWAT-type teams being used outside of the very rare and special cases for which they were designed. While they may be necessary in that limited context, they are not appropriate to be used against ordinary citizens engaged in peaceful lives. It's simply reckless to field that kind of force against normal people who mean no harm.