Like one of those characters who leaves the band of heroes mid-movie only to make a sudden return to save the day at the climax (OK, I’m thinking about Brad Dexter in “The Magnificent Seven,” and come to think of it, he gets shot), veteran Ethics Alarms pugilist Steve-O-in-NJ vanished for more than a month but came galloping back with an interesting, wide ranging, politically provocative and bitter post about the ex-Secret Service agent’s tell-all book,  its relevance to the Presidential race, my contention that an agent might have an obligation to assist a POTUS with less than savory—but legal!—activities, and when he really gets rolling, much, much more.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, The Association of Former Agents of the United States Secret Service Condemns Former Agent Gary Byrne And His Clinton Exposé “Crisis in Character”…GOOD.

I think the formal pledge of confidentiality was only instituted in 2000. So legally he may be ok, depending on when he left and whether the pledge was retroactive. Ethically what he is doing is pretty slimy. Unfortunately, in this campaign all bets are off, and he can probably hide behind rhetoric that casts him as a private, concerned citizen exercising his First Amendment rights to make sure that this country does not go down a VERY dangerous path with a female near-Caligula at the helm (alluding to Caligula’s random and capricious abuse of power, not his perversion) .

I have to say, the statement that they are obligated to help the President cheat on the First Lady, a la wheeling FDR to Lucy Mercer, does NOT sit well with me. The Secret Service are law enforcement officers before they are anything else, and they are officers who enforce laws against fraud and deception, i.e. counterfeiting, certain kinds of check fraud, and I think at some point they may also have worked on credit card fraud. As such they need to be doing things better and cleaner than Joe Average. They are not the President’s personal valets, chauffeurs, or manservants, and their role is not to enable the President to commit acts for personal gain or gratification that we ordinary citizens wouldn’t tolerate from ourselves or others. That’s not only setting one set of ethics for the First Family and another for the rank and file of citizens, it’s saying that officers otherwise sworn to uphold the law against fraud have to aid in those dubious ethics.

Maybe this sounds a little bit old-style Boy Scout-ish, but I couldn’t blame a Secret Service agent who told a President who was at least as concerned with chasing ass as he was with running the country that “my job is to protect you, sir, but you will not drag me into your slimy personal affairs and then tell me to keep it quiet.”

I have a very hard time seeing objections to this as anything other than a partisan issue at this point. Traditionally the left, or at least the media, LOVES whistleblowers – Smedley Butler (though he was equal parts conspiracy theorist), Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, Karen Silkwood, Joseph Wilson (whose accusations sparked the Plame non-affair) and the tiptop whistleblower of all, W. Mark Felt. At least they love them when they expose rotten behavior that helps bring down leaders they oppose or undermines the legitimacy of policies they oppose. Those that speak up in a way that brings down or damages their pet people or causes – Whitaker Chambers exposing Alger Hiss for the slimy Soviet double agent he was, Edward Snowden for leaking mass surveillance info on Obama’s watch, and let’s not forget the many women Hillary waged a real “war on women” on after they revealed her husband was a serial adulterer, seducer, and all-around slug – not so much.

Now this agent is reopening the old wounds first made by Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson in the waning days of Bill’s administration, and it just happens to be when she is campaigning to try to bring back those good old politically correct but prosperous days of the 1990s (albeit with five times the political correctness and without the prosperity). Still, to the left and the media she’s their girl so anything this guy says couldn’t possibly true, and even if it is, he needs to be attacked from every angle.

I guarantee you, if the partisan positions were reversed, and this were a Republican candidate who had used his protective detail to run around on his wife or abused officers, he ‘d be DONE. If it were a lesser Democrat, he’d probably be done. Eliot Spitzer was a bully (“I’m a fucking steamroller and I’ll roll right over you!”) as well as an abuser of those assigned to protect him. He had dreams of being the first Jewish President. He also wasn’t Presidential material, though he didn’t know it, and when push came to shove he fell. Bill DeBlasio apparently had his greasy but oh-so-progressive fingers in the workings of the NYPD. Though he’s denying any wrongdoing, I think this is the beginning of the end for him as he is exposed as nothing more than a partisan hack and a power and money grubber. However, because it was Bill, who was such a great guy (if you like serial adulterers and perjurers) and Hillary (whose narrative as becoming the first female President must go on at all costs), no amount of wrongdoing and lousy behavior is too much.

Hell, Hillary responded to this week’s absolutely worthless debate over gun control in the Senate, which achieved absolutely nothing, with the one-word tweet “Enough” and the media is acting like Moses came down from Mount Sinai, his face shining with the absorbed glory of God (a mistranslation there is why he is sometimes shown with horns, as an irrelevant but interesting side note) and the perfect guide to human behavior in his hand. Is this what we have to look forward to? Government by single-word pronouncement?