The Secret Service has a weapon against assassins

In the Wall Street Journal today, Eric Felton does a nice job of skewering the Secret Service for how it will recover from its near-fatal failure at Butler PA on July 13. Sure, it plans to hire more special agents, the men and occasional woman whose job it is to take a bullet for the president if a bullet comes their way. The starting salary is $63,381 a year, a bit above the national average.

More striking are two openings for Lead Public Affairs Specialist, better known as a flack. If your talents lie more toward glossing over failure, rather than preventing it, you can earn twice as much: $139,395 a year. The retirement benefits are commensurate, along with better odds of living that long.