I'm glad for the commuters who avoided having to suffer through the traffic jam, but part of me wishes the Virginia officials had just carried out the White House orders. That would have been another PR nightmare for both of the Georges. It would have lost Allen the few Northern Virginia votes he hasn't lost already.

The Washington Post has a longer story.

I should scan the Post first, but reading the blogs is so much more fun and more current.  Usually.

Interestingly, the story I cite is from Winston-Salem NC.  Does this story have legs too?

READ THE POST STORY.

Okay, here's a pep-rally story.  The Examiner is a freebie that gets thrown onto a lot of suburban driveways.  This morning the headline on the edition delivered in western Fairfax was "Online Community gives Webb a 'boost'"  http://www.examiner....

The Internet’s handling of elections “might take off. It might become bigger than any of us,” said Toni Travis, a political scientist at George Mason University. “One, it moves fast. Two, it is reaching a certain age group that we need to turn out to vote. And three, that age group is politically aware.”

Well, I saw the Post story on DCist, so reading blogs worked for me.

According to the Va. GOP, and their Norquistian bedfellows like Va. Club for Growth, there's no need to spend money to fix No. Va.'s traffic problems.  [ed. note: Norquistian means someone is Faustian, only worse because they're miserly; at least the devil will spend money to have a good time]

A nice reprint of the Eugene Robinson story on Allen in the Bermuda papers.  http://www.theroyalg...

What a perfect metaphor for the politics of Bush and Allen. Their solution to traffic problems: instead of investing in transportation improvements for everybody, attempt to take over the road for the exclusive use of the president.

Yes, it is a perfect metaphor for their politics.

www.fark.com has picked up the traffic story -- this is a very highly read site -- and very funny if you've never been there

Yep, here's the link. So maybe this will provide some negative publicity for the Georges even though the plan was never carried out. Not as much publicity, I'm sure, but no commuters had to be trapped in a traffic jam.

Of course, when Bill Clinton shut down LAX so he could get a haircut from his flamboyant Hollywood hairdo boy, that was ok.

And when Bubba shut down Route 29 from DC to Cville so he could drive unimpeded to his pre-inauguration gala at Monticello, that was fine, too.

What a bunch of hypocrites.

Presidents are special -- they get a little extra nice treatment that sometimes inconveniences the rest of us.  Get over it.

It just amazes me how Bush and his people can not learn from past mistakes.  In the days following 9/11, Bush decided to visit the site of the Pentagon attack in the middle of the evening rush hour.  Traffic had been snarled badly due to street closing resulting from the attacks, the highway closures that resulted from Bush's short trip across the Potomac brought total gridlock to the DC area.

So I guess we should not be surprised that Bush and his people make the same mistake a second time.