A minor point on the complaints about “emergency” funding for Obama’s inauguration. While the word is intelligence agencies have detected no credible threat to any inaugural event or to Obama, you have to figure the inaugural ranks as one of the all-time most tempting terrorist targets. Three million people (or who knows how many) jammed into one space, tons of media from all over the world with their cameras beaming images live to every corner of the globe; lots of tourists and people who don’t know the area for the first time; all complicated by near-freezing temperatures. An evacuation from a threat would be almost unimaginably difficult, perhaps the worst since lower Manhattan was evacuated the afternoon of 9/11.

Heaven forbid it happens. But there’s always that possibility of Inauguration Day turning into a real emergency, and thus designating some of the security expenditures as for an “emergency” will probably be far from the worst outrage of the Obama years.