Canceling White House tours to deal with the sequester.

My first reaction to this was that Obama is trying to shape public opinion by cutting things that ordinary people will feel and get irritated about. But then I read this:

Administration officials say the decision was made by the Secret Service, which estimated that ending the tours for roughly 11,000 people a week would save $74,000 in weekly overtime costs. That adds up to about $2 million in savings through the end of the fiscal year in September, it said.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said another 37 officers are needed to secure the White House grounds during public tours. The agency is looking for ways to trim a mandatory $84 million from its budget without resorting to layoffs, he said.

Why are 11,000 people a week tromping through the White House? Look at it from the outside and move on. It's a residence and a round-the-clock workplace, not America's patriotism museum.

“The White House is our house! Please let us visit!” the students pleaded in a brief Facebook video, which was featured on ABC’s “World News Tonight” to dramatize the human costs of the political gridlock that has gripped Washington.

“There were a lot of groans, and then a lot of questions about why can’t they get it worked out,” said Karen Thalacker, whose son Malcolm Newell, 12, had his picture taken with Obama when he was campaigning in Iowa in 2007.

“They’re getting a lesson in advocacy,” Thalacker said of the students’ Internet activism, “and about how their government works.”

Here's my internet activism to you kids: Learn about government from reading and studying. Have you read the Constitution? Have you read The Federalist Papers? Have you read at least 10 of the most important Supreme Court cases? Develop your mind. You don't need to go running around inside a building where people have to work. Quit getting so jazzed up at meeting celebrities and gawking at mansions. That only makes you easier prey for power-seekers who would love you to feel awed.

End White House tours permanently.

And to you parents and teachers: Quit using children in politics. Teach them some useful things that will make them effective citizens some day. Don't teach idolatry. So your child got his picture taken with Obama. So the children groaned when they didn't get what you told them they should want. That's all evidence of how you've softened them up to be pathetic little subjects.