Herman Cain gets Secret Service protection

By Michael J.W. Stickings

CNN:

Presidential candidate Herman Cain will receive protection from the United States Secret Service, the agency confirms to CNN.

Cain will be the first candidate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2012 election cycle to be placed under the protection of this federal law enforcement agency.

It is not yet clear why Cain is getting Secret Service protection.

This is very early for any presidential candidate -- more specifically, for any candidate for a party's nomination for president -- to get such protection. Apparently "the Cain campaign requested coverage, and the review found that it met the criteria."

But... why? Perhaps he has received credible threats. Or perhaps, if we may apply a rather more cynical lens to it, he wants to appear to be the target of credible threats, which would feed his phony narrative of how the (racist) left is out to get him because he's a black conservative.

Or perhaps he just wants to be taken more seriously -- and you're taken pretty seriously if you have a Secret Service detail.

Anyway, there's something odd going on here.