The United States Secret Service has confirmed that it has been authorized by Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano to offer protection for GOP candidate Herman Cain.

NBC Washington reports that the Secret Service discovered a bullet had hit an exterior window of the White House and was stopped by ballistic glass.

What good is being a guy people want to have a beer with, if you’re not allowed to have a beer with them? According to pool reports, President Obama had to scuttle plans to drink with White House reporters and staffers Tuesday night, during the Iowa leg of his bus tour, when the Secret Service got wind of the idea. The President apologized to reporters on Air Force One, and joked that he hoped Press Secretary Jay Carney picked up the tab, or at least paid for his own drinks.

John McCain‘s recent disparaging remarks about Tea Party poster women Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell had many either breathlessly announcing that he was “back” or, alternately, opining that the Republican Arizona Senator “is Gollum.” Either way, it seemed that McCain felt strongly about the Tea Party’s influence in Washington and was truly and sincerely speaking his mind, however bluntly and lacking in tact his remarks may have been. And the media ate that up because Politicians Saying What They Mean is to us what candy is to a baby or, more accurately, what sweet corruptible human flesh is to Cthulhu.

Huh. Well, you don’t see this everyday. Just a month ago, Daniel Bongino was willing to take a bullet for President Obama. Now he’s on Fox News talking about the the problems with the “institutional left.” Bongino just left his 12 year and two president career as a Secret Service agent to try and get the Republican nomination in the tough race to unseat Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin in 2012. Today, he explained to Neil Cavuto why he made the switch.

The Obamas have begun a six-day tour of Europe today with a stop in Ireland and already you can see the foreign media just lining up to take snippy shots at them. I mean, just look at this headline from The Daily Mail where they make fun of the First Lady’s hair getting blown in the wind. God, how petty can you be? Don’t you think we can actually cover important stuff like what being discussed during these – wait, what’s that? Obama’s armored car got caught on a ramp trying to leave the US embassy in Dublin? And there’s video? Ok, forget everything I just said, that’s hilarious!

Yesterday, we told you about a rather unprofessional-sounding, critical Tweet that appeared on the Secret Service’s official Twitter account: “Had to monitor Fox for a story. Can’t. Deal. With. The. Blathering.” The Tweet was quickly deleted, but not before prompting a wave of Retweets.

Now, the Secret Service has issued an apology for the offending Tweet through its spokesperson, Edwin Donovan. As we’d guessed yesterday, the mistake was a result of someone confusing his or her own personal account with the official Secret Service account.

Running a professional Twitter account can be difficult enough as it is – you have to strike a balance between informing your followers, keeping them engaged, and making sure your content is original and relevant rather than so much white noise cluttering people’s Twitter feeds. But that all becomes doubly challenging when whomever is running your professional, official Twitter account has his or her own, personal account as well because, sometimes, the wires can get crossed.

That might be what happened to whomever was in charge of Tweeting for the Secret Service’s official Twitter account recently.

During President Obama’s January State of the Union address, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA 10) tweeted “Mr. President, you don’t believe in the Constitution. You believe in socialism.”

Broun became embroiled in another controversy when, at a Tuesday town hall meeting, he was asked “who is going to shoot Obama?” and responded with stunning nonchalance.

Oof. Welcome to the new decade where apparently we are on our own when it comes to security. Of course you remember, last month when the Salahis created quite the media stir after they slipped the Secret Service “crashed” a White House state dinner. Now the Secret Service confirms that there was a third party crasher, which in light of the aftermath of the Christmas Bomber is no longer at all amusing.

There were several disappointments at Thursday’s Crasher-gate hearing, but chief among them were Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan‘s continued insistence that the now-famous security breach posed no threat to the President, and the committee’s focus on Social Secretary Desiree Rogers‘ role in said breach. This is absurd on two counts.

During House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Crashergate, the Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan spent the morning on the hot seat for his agency’s failure to repel uninvited guests Michaele and Tareq Salahi from last Tuesday’s White House state dinner. Among the revelations this morning is the embarrassing fact that, according to Sullivan, the Secret Service learned of the breach on Facebook.

As a Congressional hearing gets underway to drill down on how the uninvited Salahi couple managed to breach White House security, the White House has removed any and all doubt as to whether the Secret Service might have had a legitimate excuse for letting the couple past the first checkpoint.

The saga of would-be reality stars and accused White House Party Crashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi continues to unroll slowly, as NBC fortuitously scores scoop after scoop. The latest: The Salahis’ attorney provided The Today Show with copies of their emails with Defense Department White House Liaison Michele Jones. If this is the bombshell evidence they promised to bring Matt Lauer in their meager Today interview Monday, they’re in trouble. These emails are all smoke, no gun

At the heart of the story of Michaele and Tareq Salahi’s big adventure at last week’s state dinner is a security breach so unbelievable, I actually don’t believe it. However, the President would do well to heed the alarm being sounded by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and “In the President’s Secret Service” author Ronald Kessler in this clip from yesterday’s “Today Show.” King calls Obama our “most threatened President ever,” and Kessler says “it’s only a matter of time before there’s an assassination.”

The White House press corps peppered Press Secretary Robert Gibbs with questions about the party crashers, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, and he appeared to place the blame squarely on the Secret Service.

During today’s briefing, several correspondents tried to get Gibbs to expand on the announced investigation and vague public comments by the Secret Service. They didn’t have much luck.

Looking back over the last few days at the events surrounding Tareq and Michaele Salahi — the Virginian couple who crashed last week’s White House state dinner — it’s hard not to wonder whether we haven’t just witnessed the invention of some brand new type of reality game show: extreme reality. Unlike Balloon Boy all signs point to the Salahis wanting to be caught. Now they get to tell their story to the Secret Service.

The latest development in the saga of the polo-playing, dove-throwing socialites who crashed the first state dinner of the Obama administration is something that we suggested yesterday: Michaele and Tareq Salahi may have had help from the inside.

How does a pair of socialite reality-show wannabes crash their way into the most exclusive event in the nation — in the same room as senators, celebrities, and the President? Tareq and Michaele Salahi somehow managed to brazen their way past the Secret Service and into the White House without a hitch, leaving the news to break on their Facebook page. How did they do it?