It's 2:00. Do you know where your President is?

My day at the Inaugural parade was downright uneventful, considering the things I'm reading in the Washington Post online. I did not see the protesters who threw a lamp post at police. I did not see the police who responded to protesters with pepper spray. I did see that the security presence was as overwhelming in terms of sheer numbers as the newspapers say it was. Police officers were lined up shoulder to shoulder down the whole length of the parade route. There were snipers on every rooftop along Pennsylvania Avenue, as far up and down as I could see. From time to time, I'd notice some nondescript spectator wearing a high-end earpiece like the ones you see on secret service agents and carrying a bag much larger than the ones that had been permitted through the checkpoints. In my youth, I spent enough years living on army bases that I'm not fazed by a reasonable presence of armed guards, but this was downright surreal.

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For the folks who could not go to the Inauguration who asked me to turn my back on the President for their sakes, too, I can only report that I did so with deeply felt intent. If I'd turned my back one full revolution for every person who made this strange request of me, Bush would have had to stop his motorcade to wait through a good half-hour of pirouettes. And wouldn't that have been a sight worth seeing?