Koch's Comments: The Secret Service

The New York Times reported on May 10th, "Secret Service supervisors shared crude sexual jokes and engaged in racially derogatory banter about blacks, and passed around an anecdote about a possible assassination of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, according to internal e-mail disclosed in a federal court filing on Friday by lawyers for black Secret Service agents...The messages were written mainly from 2003 through 2005, and were sent to and from e-mail accounts of at least 20 Secret Service supervisors."

This is a horror of the worst kind and requires immediate attention by Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey. Mukasey should use his best investigators, including Patrick Fitzgerald, who obtained the conviction in the Lewis "Scooter" Libby case.

In ancient times, the Praetorian Guard who guarded the Roman Caesars often did the assassinating.  In modern times, security guards have been responsible for the assassinations of Anwar Sadat and Indira Gandhi, and the recent attacks on Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and his wife.  Abraham Lincoln was assassinated because his guard left his post.  There are many more such illustrations.

The next president may be Senator Barack Obama whose life has already been in danger, requiring an early assignment of Secret Service operatives. We must make certain to the best of our ability that whoever is elected our next president is guarded by Secret Service operatives who are loyal, persons of integrity and dedicated to protecting the President of the United States.

******************************************************************************

I will be suspending my commentaries for the next several weeks, because I will be hospitalized on May 18th to have an operation on my spine on May 21st. Hopefully, I will be discharged from the hospital at the end of that week to begin two weeks of recuperation.

My medical condition which I have had for about a year and a half is diagnosed as stenosis of the spine which involves arthritis, a narrowing of the spine and the impingement on nerves, causing discomfort and some pain when I walk.

The prognosis, I am told, is excellent with a 92 percent recovery rate and a very low mortality rate. So, all things considered, I am very fortunate and have little anxiety. I have some anxiety, of course, since surgery and general anesthesia are never a walk in the park and, at age 83, they are even more impacting.

I've been very fortunate that in the past, I have recovered from health setbacks with few permanent effects.  My stroke in 1987, as my doctors then described it, "a small stroke," to which I replied, "small for you," left no permanent damage, so far as I know. My motor ability was totally unaffected. My heart attack in 1999 left some residual damage. I walk slower.

When confronted with my current condition, I tried all the intermediary measures available - exercise and three epidurals, but they did not work and I found myself walking less in order to avoid the distress and pain from walking and tilting to the left. That is not the way I want to lead my life, hence, the decision to have the operation.

God willing, in a few weeks, I will be fully recovered.

Not to be melodramatic or alarmist, but I have had a wonderful sojourn here and if, for whatever reason, God takes me, I have no regrets and thank the Almighty for the opportunities I have been given.