CAPITAL CHAOS

As we have noted before, a wise anti-terrorism program would eliminate the costly protection of eminently replaceable figures like George Bush and most of the Congress and assign better security to the irreplaceable like fine musicians, poets, chefs, and scientists.

But that's not how things are done in this war on terror in which an
inordinate amount of funds are spent on protecting the people who
approve the spending of inordinate amount of funds. They are, and
rightfully so given their policies, scared. The devil take the rest of
us.

Thus yesterday the occupants of the White House and the U.S. Capitol were massively evacuated while the mayor of Washington, just a few blocks away, wasn't even told what was going on.

AP - At the Capitol, lawmakers, tourists and reporters raced out of the building, dodging the speeding motorcades of Latin American leaders who had been meeting with members of Congress. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., was hustled to a secure location. Police, rushing to get House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi out of the building, lifted her out of her shoes.

Armed security officers raced through the Capitol shouting for people to leave. "This is not a drill!" some yelled as they moved people away from the building. "There's a plane coming," warned another.

WONKETTE - Reporting on today's mass hysteria at the Capitol has done little to clarify whether Hill denizens behaved like bored middle school students during a fire drill (Fox's contention) or if they ran away like little girls scared of some huge symbolic penis. One Wonkette operative reports that "the goddamn cops on the 2nd floor of the cannon building were basically yelling at us to run out of the building.... i tried walking, which just got me yelled at even more."

A second operative writes that others were also above the whole
"running" thing: About 5 minutes before the all clear was signaled,
Brownback and his staff started walking back. A police officer tried to stop him, but Brownback blew him off with 'don't bother me' type of hand wave and continued on. We think our operative my be confusing the "don't bother me" type hand wave with the "Fuck it, I know I'm going to heaven" one. Either way: very smooth. . .

A former FEMA official is saying on Fox News that "the word 'running' is probably inappropriate. . . we have to figure out what language to use in the future." On the other hand, Sen. Lautenberg says that someone came into the hall and yelled, "Come on, you only have two minutes!" and that they did run. Far. "I saw a lot of very tired people. I must tell you, a very heavy woman running next to me."

Our favorite eyewitness description comes from Suzanne Malavaux,
however, who gives this appropriately deadpan account:

"One man told me this is not a joke, and he said run, get off of the
grounds. . . and then the tone changed. At that point, I yelled, I
asked him do we go inside or get off the grounds? We wanted
clarification, and then he started yelling, get out of here, get off of
the grounds, run. And that is when we started moving rather quickly. For what it's worth, the video on CNN shows at least one woman going somewhere between a canter and gallop.

JOE STRUPP, EDITOR & PUBLISHER - "I was standing outside the Senate floor waiting for them to wrap up a vote, and the police said to exit the building," said Anne Gearan of The Associated Press. "Then they started yelling louder and louder so everyone left." She said some people were running, but most veteran journalists calmly walked. "They pulled us down to the park across from [nearby] Union Station, and I didn't hear anyone panic.". . .

(Article here...)