Does more equal better? No. All eleven Secret Service johns had their “security clearances” canceled. That still leaves over 4 million Americans (or about 2 percent of the adult population) with “security clearances,” and, according to the director of national intelligence last October, just under 1.5 million federal employees with “top secret”clearances. Which helps explain why one army private was able singlehandedly to download bazillions of (admittedly mostly worthless) “secrets” for WikiLeaks. Imagine the entire population of New Zealand with security clearances, and the entire population of Philadelphia or Phoenix with “top secret” clearances.

And yet the more guys on the payroll, the less anyone does. For all the hooker-cavorting among a bored entourage with time on its hands, there was no one to proofread President Obama’s speech. So he stood up in public and attempted to pander to the Latins by referring to the sovereign British territory of the Falkland Islands by the designation of its temporary Argentine usurpers 30 years ago: “Las Malvinas.” Except that his writers got it wrong. So the president of the United States called it “the Maldives,” an entirely different bit of British Commonwealth real estate half a world away in the Indian Ocean. Were the speechwriting staff also face down in the hooker bar? “Jush a minute, baby. Hic. The preshhhiduh wansh a couple rewrites. ‘I call on London to return British Columbia to Colombia.’ Thash should do it. Lesh go back to my room and I’ll show you my prompter.”

It’s not just the entitlements. Everywhere you look in the bloated federal Leviathan, all is waste, all is excess. But the absurd imperial presidency is a good place to start.