AP’s Frederic Frommer gets to the seat of the problem: “Bathroom Break: Will inauguration have enough?”

To Conrad Harrell of port-a-potty toilet supplier Don’s Johns, Tuesday’s inauguration of Barack Obama will be historic, but not in the way you might think. “This is the largest temporary restroom event in the history of the United States,” he said.

I’m wondering if there will be T-shirts commemorating this?

Don’s Johns is providing many of the 5,000 port-a-potties for the inauguration, but other suppliers are at work as well, such as Mr. John, Johnny Blue and Johnny on the Spot. In all, there will be 5,000 port-a-potties from about 10 vendors for Barack Obama’s inauguration as president. On Thursday, they stood ready on the National Mall, port-a-potty-to-port-a-potty, some green, some blue, others gray.

The big question: will they be able to handle the call — er, nature’s call — of the up to 2 million people? “We think we’ve reached an appropriate number and can accommodate the crowds,” said Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, a privately funded organization that is picking up the cost. But Bill Line, a spokesman for the National Park Service, said there really was no way to say for certain. “Ultimately, does anybody know how many people will show up?” he asked.

Inquiring minds and all that.

Photo courtesy Flickr user Metal Chris under Creative Commons license.

CNN features, on the 4th of July no less, a piece entitled “National Mall in monumental disrepair, activists say.”

This gathering place known as America’s “front yard” stretches from the Capitol to the Potomac River and is home to the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials and Washington Monument, but it’s starting to look like “an old rundown, worn-out mall that looks like it was abandoned 30 years ago,” says Judy Feldman of the National Coalition to Save Our Mall.

People are part of the problem. The National Mall has more visitors each year than Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon parks combined, according to the National Park Service. “If you had 25 million people coming through your front yard, it might not look so nice either,” said Bill Line of the park service.

The mall has an annual budget of about $31 million. But its backlogged maintenance needs are estimated at more than eight times that amount — $258 million.

I drive past the Mall twice a day during the week and visit it quite often on foot.  The main aesthetic problems, it seems to me, are the ugly security barriers and the scourge of tour buses.

Whining about the grass being spotty or the proliferation of tents selling souvenirs and foodstuffs, though, strikes me as silly. This being the height of tourist season, there are hordes of people trampling over the grass.   It’s simply not going to look like a golf course. (John Denver set forth the relationship in song a quarter century ago:  “More people, more scars upon the land.”)  Moreover, even if it did, you wouldn’t be able to see it with with all those people. It’s a major tourist destination and people want to eat and buy crap like CIA t-shirts to prove that they visited the nation’s capitol and demonstrate their unique, ironic wit.

One would think it would be relatively easy to lay on additional staff during the peak months to ensure that the trash cans don’t overflow.  Beyond that, though, performing major repairs and preventative maintenance is not only expensive but it generally requires closing popular attractions or, at minimum, rendering them much less enjoyable for months, if not years, on end.  One doesn’t simply call out a repairman, write a check, and have it done between noon and 4 pm next Tuesday.

Ralph Peters observes,

Today, the Newseum – a 250,000-square-foot homage to journalism that cost $450 million to build – opens on Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and the Capitol.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Other than the (symbolic?) fact that the building’s an architectural mishmash, it’s this: There’s no museum in the vicinity of the National Mall dedicated to our military.

My immediate reaction was, What the heck is he talking about? (Or words to that effect.) After all, the Mall is home to a massive World War Two Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and myriad statues and tributes to America’s fighting men. And Arlington National Cemetery and other memorials are within a short ride on the Metro.

It’s true, though, that there’s no single museum dedicated to the military. On the other hand, there’s a International Spy Museum, which like the Newseum is privately financed, which has plenty of references to military intelligence. And many of the Smithsonian Museums have tributes to the military and military men and women: The National Air and Space Museum and its Udvar-Hazy annex, the National Museum of American History, and the National Portrait Gallery come most readily to mind in that regard. DC is also home to the Navy Museum, although it’s way out at the Navy Yard.

Do we really need more than that?

Cato’s William Niskanen argues in today’s Washington Examiner, as I have numerous times in this space, that the solution to the lack of congressional representation for D.C. residents is not an unconstitutional single vote in the House but rather retrocession to Maryland.

Mayor Adrian Fenty might not like it, but retrocession would be superior for most District residents on political, fiscal and economic grounds. Politically, District voters would get full representation in the House of Representatives, plus the opportunity to vote for the two senators from Maryland, the several senior state officials and the local legislators.

[...]

The most likely new residents of Washington, Md., would be those who are now most deterred by the District’s high taxes and poor government services: wealthier individuals and families, those with school-age children, those who expect to leave estates and businesses — especially unincorporated businesses, restaurants and hotels.

[...]

Retrocession would also lead to a division of government roles between the District and the state of Maryland. A division of roles similar to that now in Maryland would leave the new city of Washington, Md., with control of K-12 education, police, fire, corrections and streets; and most expenditures for parks and recreation, housing and waste disposal.

The Washington government would no longer bear the rapidly increasing costs of Medicaid, the responsibility for administering the University of the District of Columbia, and the special problems of providing long-term incarceration. Maryland would assume the responsibility for providing higher education, public welfare, health and hospitals, highways and prisons.

Aside from the not-insignificant problem that neither the citizens of Maryland nor the residents of the District support this idea, it makes plenty of sense. And, again, it has the additional advantage of being constitutionally permissible.

My only caveat is that I would not retrocede the entirety of the District but only residential D.C. I would still keep the government district, including the White House, Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court, and the National Mall as a separate District under the current constitutional scheme. The Framers showed wisdom in having the seat of government separate from the influence of any single state. They did not, however, anticipate half a million people moving there and being disenfranchised.

The almost-complete U.S. Embassy in Iraq is a sight to behold.

The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will be the world’s largest and most expensive foreign mission, though it may not be large enough or secure enough to cope with the chaos in Iraq. The Bush administration designed the 104-acre compound — set to open in September in what today is a war zone — to be an ultra-secure enclave. Yet it also hoped that downtown Baghdad would cease being a battleground when diplomats moved in.

Over the long term, depending on which way the seesaw of sectarian division and grinding warfare teeters, the massive city-within-a-city could prove too enormous for the job of managing diminished U.S. interests in Iraq. The $592 million embassy occupies a chunk of prime real estate two-thirds the size of Washington’s National Mall, with desk space for about 1,000 people behind high, blast-resistant walls. The compound is a symbol both of how much the United States has invested in Iraq and how the circumstances of its involvement are changing.

The embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget. Still, not all has gone according to plan. The 21-building complex on the Tigris River was envisioned three years ago partly as a headquarters for the democratic expansion in the Middle East that
President Bush identified as the organizing principle for foreign policy in his second term. The complex quickly could become a white elephant if the U.S. scales back its presence and ambitions in Iraq. Although the U.S. probably will have forces in Iraq for years to come, it is not clear how much of the traditional work of diplomacy can proceed amid the violence and what the future holds for Iraq’s government.

To put it mildly. Aside from the unlikelihood of this behemoth serving as the epicenter for managing relations with a democratic Middle East any time soon, the very idea of this is monumentally stupid. Its very existence helps undermine the good relations we’re trying to build. Surely, a permanent, armed mini-city can not instill much confidence in the average Iraqi that we think of ourselves as something other than colonial overlords.

Noting the recent groundbreaking on a Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, Radley Balko reflects on the proliferation of monuments on the National Mall.

Plans are also in the works for an African-American History Museum on the National Mall and a memorial to President Eisenhower. And it’s probably just a matter of time before conservatives in Congress again begin agitating for a Ronald Reagan Memorial. It’s likely that we’ll also get a memorial to Sept. 11, and/or to the victims of, and the war on, terrorism.

The National Mall, originally envisioned by Washington, D.C.’s planner and architect Pierre L’Enfant (that’s right, the man who built our nation’s capital was French!) as a serene place for public celebration and quiet contemplation, is quickly turning into a kind of kitchy amusement park for aggrieved parties and special interests.

Recent additions — the FDR Memorial, the World War II Memorial, and the National Museum of the American Indian — have added more clutter, more traffic, and further obstructed the serene views L’Enfant intended.

[...]

Times change, of course. And it’s certainly understandable why Congress might want to add more recent events of significance to the roster of history and collective memory that lines the Mall. But we’re to the point now where some groups — some deserving, some not — have come to see a slice of real estate in America’s backyard as a symbol of how seriously we take their grievances, significance or contribution.
[...]

The mall in many ways presents a tidy symbol of what’s happened to the federal government over the last half-century, all the more appropriate given that it’s owned by the federal government, and lies between the Capitol in the White House.

Another analogy is to Halls of Fame. Once a mediocrity is allowed in, the bar is forever lowered with the argument that “If George Harrison (or Phil Rizzuto) is in, then by God _________ deserves to be in!”

But Balko is right. No one disputes that Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln deserve monuments. There might be more debate over FDR but just barely. But Eisenhower? He was largely unremarkable as president. And we’ve already got a WWII Memorial where he can be honored.

I understand the rationale behind the Vietnam Memorial and it has undeniably been a success. It’s one of the biggest draws in town. Yet it’s creation led to a Korea Memorial. Which led to a WWII Memorial. Which led to a Women Veterans Memorial. Why not African American Veterans? Or the Navajo Code Talkers? Or U.S. Marines? Paratroopers? Arguably, all are more significant in national military affairs than women. Certainly, blacks and Indians have a stronger claim of mistreatment.

The Washington Monument was evacuated about an hour ago after a low credibility bomb threat.

Washington Monument Evacuated
(AP)

The Washington Monument was evacuated Friday after a bomb threat was called in to local police. U.S. Park Police Sgt. Scott Fear said the call came in at 2:24 p.m. EDT and the monument was evacuated a short time later. Bomb-sniffing dogs were called in and two blocks between Constitution and Independence avenues were closed off. An initial search turned up nothing worrisome.

A law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because other agencies were handling the case, said the credibility of the threat was low but officials did not want to take any chances.

The Washington Monument, which was built in the 1800s and dedicated on Feb. 21, 1885, rises 555 feet over the National Mall. It reopened to the public last spring after undergoing a seven-month, $15 million security overhaul that included vehicle barriers and a new lighting system.

One certainly can’t blame the Park Police but we’ve gotten to the point where idiots can shut down cities with a mere phone call.