It would be churlish of me to state outright that I think the Secret Service is lying to us about their inability to identify who brought the cocaine into the White House, so let me instead gently suggest that the Secret Service might be lying to us. It’s not as if there is any shortage of precedent here; the Secret Service’s oath may be to the Constitution, but their loyalty historically has belonged to the president and his family (especially in the post-JFK era), not to his political enemies in the other party, and certainly not to the prying eyes of the media. The job of guarding the president, his family, and his residence is a political one as much as a professional one in the sense that trust and discretion are every bit as important as physical bravery and competence — especially when one must, to name a random example for no reason, play babysitter to a recidivist drug felon who also happens to be the president’s sole surviving son.

So I would certainly never say, as Noah Pollak did, that “this is like if the Hamburglar lived at the White House and all the hamburgers got stolen and the Secret Service was like we just don’t have any leads, not sure what happened to all those hamburgers.” (That sort of corrosive humor has no place in the pages of National Review.) The jury remains out as to the culprit. But forgive me my cynicism if I am asked to swallow the claim that the Secret Service has no idea who that culprit is. Either they do, or half the people working White House security should have been sacked a week ago.

[Or both. And I’m a big fan of ‘both’. — Ed]