Tommy Christopher is Asylum's White House correspondent.

As a rookie White House reporter, I often find myself gormlessly wandering into places I'm not supposed to be, so I was grateful not to be the guy who got hassled by the Secret Service for snapping an unauthorized picture of the Presidential limo yesterday.

I was copping a smoke outside the briefing room, where the Secret Service was prepping two of the presidential limos to take him to an event at the Ritz Carlton. They were checking something under the hood when one of the agents pointed through the briefing room window and shouted, "Hey! C'mere!"

Apparently, he had seen one of the cable news tech guys shooting a picture with his iPhone. He made the guy come outside, and show him that he had deleted the photo.

See, there's this rule.

Nobody is allowed to photograph the presidential limos while either the hood or the trunk are open. I already knew this because the same agent had told me the rule a minute earlier. You also can't shoot the interiors of the limos.

Although I didn't take any pictures while the hood was open, I did get a pretty good look. I can tell you that there were no signs of any hookers or Kenyan birth certificates, but I thought I saw something that looked an awful lot like a flux capacitor.

I also learned that the limos, sensibly enough, all have the same license plate number. How much do you wanna bet someone at the DMV broke their balls about that the first time they asked about it?

The presidential limo is quite an impressive ride. While everyone knows the thing has got to be a rolling fortress, the strict rules are in place to keep specific measures safely secret. All in all, I'd say the iPhone guy got off easy. As I reminded him later, Gitmo is still open.