I've seen a fair number of motorcades here in Manhattan over the years, including some for presidents of the United States, and while I might question the security specifics of this one, I think what was done here is unfortunate but understandable:
Witnesses say a pregnant woman in labor was prevented by authorities from crossing a Los Angeles street to a hospital Wednesday because the road had been closed for President Barack Obama's impending motorcade.A half hour does seem like a hell of a long time. But in these circumstances, some restrictions -- yes, even this one -- seem reasonable. Sure, we haven't had a presidential assassination in half a century, but Ronald Reagan was shot, and Gerald Ford was shot at twice. It could happen again.
The unidentified woman was barred from walking the few hundred feet to the hospital for at least 30 minutes as authorities waited for the president's motorcade to pass by, witness Carrie Clifford told TheBlaze early Thursday morning....
If we had a pregnant-woman exception to presidential motorcade security, is it completely unthinkable that a would-be assassin might take advantage of that? Is it too melodramatic to imagine a team of killers using a pregnant woman to stop a presidential motorcade and then breach security? Or that a pregnant woman might cross into the motorcade's path and make a threat to herself or others, thus putting the president at risk? Or -- even though it seems highly unlikely in L.A. in July -- isn't it possible that a female suicide bomber might dress in such a way as to disguise her bomb as a pregnancy?
Maybe you'll say that kind of thing happens only in the movies. Are you sure? You want to stake presidents' lives on that?
I don't care what the president is doing -- I think tight security is reasonable. Unless you don't care whether a president -- or whether this president -- is vulnerable to violence.
A lot of the same people who are criticizing security in this case are aghast that performance-art pranksters scaled the Brooklyn Bridge and bleached some American flags. They could have had a bomb! we were told. Yeah, and something similar could be said for this pregnant woman.
