So the Secret Service agents charged with standing guard over Vice President Biden’s Greenville, Delaware, home stay in an adjacent cottage, for which they must pay rent. To the vice president. In order to protect him. From evil.

Mr. Biden, listed not as vice president in federal purchasing documents but as a “vendor,” is eligible for up to $66,000 by the time the government contract expires in the fall of 2013, the records show.

Officials say the arrangement came about when a previous tenant moved out of the cottage and the Secret Service moved in.

Edwin M. Donovan, special agent in charge at the Secret Service’s Office of Government and Public Affairs in Washington, said the agency pays $2,200 in rent per-month, the same amount a previous tenant had paid before moving out.

Now no one would deny that the vice president of the United States needs Secret Service protection, especially when you tend to say silly things during a serious economic oopsie. And Greenville is a nicey-nice part of Delaware. But I’m telling you that $2,200 is more than most people pay for their mortgage in the First State.

And yet, who am I to question the wisdom of the man who once said: “Next time a Republican tells you anything about fiscal responsibility, laugh at them [sic].”

No doubt the vice president is having the last laugh. At whom, I have no idea…