Tea at Trianon: On the Security Failure at Butler

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, July 20, 2024

On the Security Failure at Butler

From Collin Rugg on X:

Senator Josh Hawley says whistleblowers have come forward, alleges the Biden DHS assigned “unprepared and inexperienced personnel” to Trump who weren’t even Secret Service.
“Whistleblowers who have direct knowledge of the event have approached my office. According to the allegations, the July 13 rally was considered to be a loose' security event,” Hawley said in a letter to Mayorkas. “For example, detection canines were not used to monitor entry and detect threats in the usual manner. Individuals without proper designations were able to gain access to backstage areas.”
“Department personnel did not appropriately police the security buffer around the podium and were also not stationed at regular intervals around the event's security perimeter.”
“In addition, whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).”
“This is especially concerning given that HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocols typically used at these types of events, according to the allegations.” (Read more.)

From The National Pulse:

United States Secret Service (USSS) Director Kimberly Cheatle was lambasted by a group of Republican United States Senators as she walked through the Republican National Convention (RNC) on Wednesday. The Senators demanded answers and transparency regarding the security failures that led to Saturday’s attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump.
“This was an assassination attempt! You owe the people answers. You owe President Trump answers,” shouted Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) as she and others kept stride with Cheatle through the convention concourse. Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), meanwhile, accused the USSS director of “stonewalling.” (Read more.)