DALLAS -- Security details at Barack Obama's rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.

The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.

Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department's homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order -- apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service -- was meant to speed up the long lines outside and fill the arena's vacant seats before Obama came on.

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Larry Comments:

This is the way dirty politics is played. Secret Service halts weapons inspections for an hour before Obama rally in Dallas begins. Dallas, where handguns are plentiful, murder capital of the country. Dallas, where JFK, to whom Obama has been compared, was assassinated. Texas is home turf of Bush, who, of course, controls Secret Service directly and without examination.

Message to Obama: This could happen again. Not a democracy. Not really.