As most of my readers already know, Christopher Hitchens organized a demonstration of support in front of the Danish Embassy in Washington at noon today. I wish I could have been there, waving a block of Danish Esrom (like Havarti, but more pungent, and better). InstaPundit reports that Bill Kristol, Andrew Sullivan, and roughly 200 other people turned out, and provides pictures. I was glad to see on some site or other that at least one of the scholars at the Center for Hellenic Studies, right next door to the embassy, came out and joined the demonstration.

What I find disappointing, though not surprising, is who didn’t show up. Whitehaven Street is only a block long. (I’ve been there many times.) The most famous residents are Bill and Hillary Clinton. I have never been able to determine which of the eight or ten houses on the street is theirs: the Secret Service does a good job of keeping the number off the web, and their own selves invisible. But it does look a lot like the one in InstaPundit’s first picture. Here’s a picture of the Clinton house last fall for comparison: the porch roof is a different shape, but the rest is a close match, and they have been doing a lot of remodeling. It’s possible that the dumptruck in InstaPundit’s second picture belongs to a Clinton contractor. Even if the Clinton house is not the one in the picture, it can’t be more than a block away.

Hillary’s official website mentions that she was in town yesterday, interrogating “representatives from departments and agencies” for the Senate Armed Services Committee. I have been unable to determine whether Bill is in D.C., New York, Little Rock, or somewhere else. [See Update below.] Of course, she may have had unavoidable Senatorial duties to attend today, and he may be out of town, but perhaps someone should ask them at their next press conferences why they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, come to the demonstration.

To make my disappointment bipartisan, I should note that the grounds of the Naval Observatory nearly touch Whitehaven Street very near the Danish Embassy. It would have been nice if the Vice President or his wife or both had climbed their back fence and joined the demonstration. Of course, I didn’t even bother to try to find out whether Cheney’s undisclosed location of the day was at home. And I don’t think that members of the executive branch are quite so free as senators to express their opinions on international affairs without going through the State Department.

So, did anyone at the rally notice any Secret Service men hanging around? If so, were they Cheney men or Clinton men, or could you tell? VodkaPundit reports that there were only three D.C. cops at the rally.

Update: (2/25, 1:00am)

According to the second comment, Bill Clinton is in New Zealand. I’ll call that an excused absence.