The inevitable parade of nutcases will be in full flower tonight as the President delivers his State of the Union speech, as Stephanie Mansfield reports for the Washington Times. She also covered a couple of pre-speech events that sound absolutely hilarious, in a clueless-1960s-flashback manner:

Liberal activists -- among them graying leftovers from the Vietnam-era antiwar movement -- plan to gather near the Capitol tonight, banging pots and pans to drown out President Bush's State of the Union address.

Yesterday, opponents of the Iraq war kicked off their latest round of demonstrations with an "Impeachment Forum" held downtown in a private dining room at Busboys and Poets.

Featured speakers were 78-year-old former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; longtime war protester Marcus Raskin, 71, who is head of the Institute for Policy Studies; and Cindy Sheehan, mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq. ...

Last week, the group "World Can't Wait -- Drive Out the Bush Regime" was denied a permit to gather on the Mall for security reasons. The group won a federal lawsuit and has been given permission to bang away while Mr. Bush speaks to a joint session of Congress at 9 p.m. The group's Web site has gathered endorsements from left-leaning celebrities such as Susan Sarandon, Jane Fonda, Harry Belafonte and Sean Penn, but it's unlikely that any stars will show up for tonight's protest.

That's a shame; the evening would have had so much more atmosphere had a limousine-liberal sighting gone along with the pots-and-pans protest on the Mall. (Would Sarandon have brought a maid to bang the pots and pans?) When last we saw the "World Can't Wait" protestors, they had gathered outside of the Greater Exodus Baptist Church to protest Justice Sunday III -- all two of them, as I recall. Here's a link to their advisory board, which lists as its first member Lynne Stewart, the attorney convicted of passing messages from her terrorist clients to their followers, resulting in several deaths.

However, the best part of the article reviews the events already held by the group, including a luncheon yesterday. To demonstrate their overall cluelessness, one of their featured speakers was former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. He told the gathering that George Bush "is the greatest threat to peace and human rights." Of course, one has to recall that Clark flew in from Baghdad, where he's presently representing Saddam Hussein and trying to keep him from getting executed for his genocides.

Instead of banging pots and pans, I will be live-blogging tonight's speech and the reactions afterwards. Keep checking back here at CQ for running commentary.

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