St. John's Church.

This Episcopal church was a beehive of activity in the morning when President Bush and family went to services and offered up The Prayer Of Righteous Whoopass to God Almighty for prevailing over the Forces of Coastal Big City Darkness: "Thank you, Jesus, for putting that highfalootin rich-ass East Coast snob John Kerry in his place. Please smite all his henchmen hiding in the corners of newsrooms and universities of This Great Nation and place upon the New York Times a plague of boils. Amen."

OK, so that didn't really happen but it would have been OK if it did. By the time I got there, the presidential security bubble had long ago moved on.

St. John's is about a block away from the White House, with the open square of Lafayette Park between them. There were supposed to be all kinds of protestors holding a die-in at Lafayette Park, but it was all fenced off. You needed a ticket to get in, so that wasn't happenning for me.

There were no protestors to be found, so I pressed on. They showed up after I left and did their die-in on the street, a couple dozen of them pretending like they were casualties in Iraq. However, there weren't many people around to gawk at their Profoundly Significant Political Statement and the police could not be bothered to even give them a warning. The streets were closed so they weren't impeding any traffic. It got kinda cold lying there dead on the pavement. After an hour they just got up and slunk off.

St. John's Episcopal Church was built in 1815 just for the President and his family. President James Madison and every president since has attended services there. Its parish house, attached behind it, used to be the British Legation. Daniel Webster signed a treaty with the British in its parish house which defined the Canadian border.