The American Spectator

p> MAN SERVANTS br> Presumptive yada yada Sen. John Kerry likes to tell folks that he and former President Bill Clinton are on the same page. Apparently, that’s true, at least when it comes to the way Kerry treats his Secret Service detail. /p>

While spending a weekend at the $9 million estate owned by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, Kerry was driving his security detail crazy. Instead of sending an aide or assistant into town for what amounted to two bicycle tire tubes, Kerry insisted on going himself, requiring the detail to follow. But Kerry, ever thinking of the little guy, insisted that the detail not use lights or sirens to clear traffic. The end result was that the detail had to work twice as hard to clear the way for Kerry and his $10 errand.

Further, Kerry decided to hit the beach and the water, but didn’t want the detail too close behind. Half the detail was forced to sit on the beach with binoculars while Kerry went out on the water in his wife’s 31-foot cruiser. In the end, the wind died down, so Kerry came back in. Yet another pointless jaunt to waste other peoples’ time.

You’ll recall that on private trips home to Massachusetts, Kerry has forced the Secret Service to do everything from book shopping to bicycle pickups. “He’s not as bad as President Clinton, but some of these guys aren’t happy about the way the family treats them,” says a uniformed Secret Service officer. “There is a lot of talk that the Kerry family just treats these folks like more hired help.”

p> DIRTY MONEY br> So much attention is being focused on the record-setting pace of the Kerry campaign’s fundraising, that the campaign is now trying to see if the $100 million it has raised in the past three months is all legal. /p>