Opinion: Live Large. Think Big. Come Strapped.

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Fort Worth Star-Telegram Obama-rally-security-standdown story: Shocker? Stone gas? A great Dallas tradition revived for a new era? Much ado about nothing?

Jack Douglas reported Wednesday that security details, on apparent orders from the Secret Service, stopped screening for weapons more than an hour before the candidates took the stage. He followed up a little while ago with a response from the Secret Service and some interesting nothing-to-see-here comments from people who had had similar experiences at other rallies. (More on that in a moment.)

Dan Gifford, who hipped me to this story, sends in a roundup of related items:

‘Security surrounding Barack Obama has been stepped up amid fears he could be an assassination target.’

‘For many black supporters, there is a lot of anxiety that he will be killed, and it is on people’s minds. You can’t make a prediction like this — like he has ‘a 50 percent chance of getting shot.’ But the greater his visibility and the greater his access to people, there is a danger.’

‘Today the phrase ‘assassinate Obama’ appeared on a list of the top 100 Google search terms.’

As Robert Greene noted after the L.A. debates, security is not exactly written in stone at campaign events. Getting into the Democrats’ event in the Kodak Theater was quite frenzied, and although I did pass through a metal detector it didn’t look to me like there was any systematic security there. I’d be surprised if everybody at that event was screened for weapons: In fact, given the Hindenburg-style chaos inside and outside the theater, I’d say nobody would have gotten into the Dems’ debate at all if the security had been regulation-tight. The Republicans didn’t search me or even ask for tickets, which I initially took as welcome evidence that I was considered the ‘right sort’ out in Ronald Reagan country, but they didn’t seem to be sniffing anybody else either.

It’s not exactly comforting that security arrangements don’t seem to make any sense at a lot of venues, but it does argue against the idea that there was anything especially fishy in Dallas. Kudos to the local cops for bringing it up, anyway.