Celebrate Inaugural Security!

This year’s National Bollard Festival® will salute the brave men, women, and sniffer dogs who protected two million people during the Presidential Inaugural festivities, say producers of the Washington, DC event.

Crowds will gather on the chilly National Mall and give a standing ovation to members of the U.S. Capitol Police, Secret Service, Federal Protective Service, National Park Police, FBI, DC Metropolitan Police Department, Senate Sergeant-at-Arms and dozens of security corporations with federal contracts. The exact date and time of the event is being withheld for security reasons.

The Purple Ticket Mass Choir will give an a cappella doo-wop concert in a tunnel under the Capitol grounds. “It’s standing room only,” said a U.S. Capitol Police officer, “but there’s a great echo.” The rest of the program is available on a need-to-know basis.

Some Republicans are upset about the festival. “Who installed all those bollards, checkpoints, gates, roadblocks and metal detectors, anyway?” said a former high-ranking DHS official on condition of anonymity. “Who put machine gun teams in Union Station and Metro and closed First Street between the Russell and Dirksen buildings? The Bush administration! Now these guys are claiming credit. It’s just not fair.” 

Colleagues remind such whiners that the PATRIOT Act still allows discrete detention of disgruntled dissenters and there’s plenty of room at Guantánamo.

 

Image by Mike Licht (bollards courtesy of DHS and U.S. taxpayers). Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Festival theme song here. Festival map (classified, but leaked to the Washington Post).

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Tags: humor, Inauguration, Purple Tunnel of Doom