Why that house in particular?
Trumpy lies and rhetoric make things happen. In other news –
An intruder broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home early Friday morning and “violently assaulted” her husband, Paul Pelosi, according to a statement from Drew Hammill, the speaker’s spokesperson.
“The assailant is in custody and the motivation for the attack is under investigation,” the statement read.
“Mr. Pelosi was taken to the hospital, where he is receiving excellent medical care and is expected to make a full recovery.”
The motive is under investigation but I’m going to go right ahead and speculate that it’s likely to be trumpy maga-y proud boysy stop the stealy rage. The Feds are on the case.
More from CNN:
Which, for anyone who doesn’t remember, was one of the chants used on Jan 6th.
Freemage, good point.
Does she not have Secret Service protection? I remember in the ’90s (and even well inton the ’00s) Madeline Albright always had Secret Service cars parked outside her townhouse in Georgetown, even when she wasn’t there. Surely Pelosi deserves the same treatment, especially after 1/6.
@3,
I believe the U.S. Capitol Police has a protective detail that covers the Speaker and other members of Congress. Although the Speaker is in the presidential line of succession, she isn’t automatically covered by the Secret Service, though I assume the USSS coordinates with the Capitol Police detail on contingency plans.
The CNN update page said there was no security at the house because she is in DC.
Right, that doesn’t surprise me.
It would be easy in retrospect to say that of course there should be 24-hour security around every residence and family member of the Speaker, but what is the stopping point? Just the Speaker, or every member of Congress? Just the immediate family, or adult children/siblings who live elsewhere? How much are taxpayers willing to pay, and how much intrusion into their lives are public officials and their relatives willing to tolerate? (There are people who turn down Secret Service protection — by law, I think only the current President and VP are required to accept. I think Nixon gave his up at some point in his post-presidency, in the days when lifetime protection for former presidents was the norm.)
Pelosi is not technically but pretty close to being a co-boss of the Capitol Police, so I suspect if she wanted her husband and/or residence covered, it probably would have been. I’m sure she feels terrible about that now, but as toxic as the current political environment is, this is still a pretty unprecedented thing.
Screechy, that reminds me of a college friend who was talking about his trip to Israel. He talked about the security, how armed soldiers would jump out if you stopped to talk to a child on the street. I was about to sympathize, saying wouldn’t it be awful to live that way when he went on to say he wished we had that here.
I imagine constant security makes ordinary life impossible, and I can see why she might not want to have her home covered at all times, just to get a sense of normality (even though normality and Speaker of the House probably don’t go together in many ways, but still…) I think I would hate living under constant security surveillance.
This is why we don’t want guns everywhere: a society in which many people go around armed is one in which everyone *needs* to go around armed. Instead of living relatively worry free hyper vigilance is required. The gun people already live in a state of hyper vigilance so fail to see the tradeoff (or alternatively are too dim to notice).