THIS IS THE SEA Don't let the war end while I'm on vacation. Better yet, do. And before I leave, the recap. Seven months of counting equals 12,021 visits and 24,466 page hits at floricane.com. March's stats continue the upward trend with a total of 3,032 visits, or an average of 182 hits a day. Ooo la la. If I don't flip in the sea kayak and drown, you'll hear from me soon.

THE SPARRING CONTINUES Meanwhile, back in Washington... It looks like the 2001-2002 Foggy Bottom Blow-Out is being revisited this week, as the State Department and Department of Defense renew their tussling. This time it's about postwar Iraq, and who gets to run the show.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has rejected a team of officials proposed by the State Department to help run postwar Iraq in what sources described as an effort to ensure the Pentagon controls every aspect of reconstructing the country and forming a new government.

While vetoing the group of eight current and former State Department officials, including several ambassadors to Arab states, the Pentagon's top civilian leadership has planned prominent roles in the postwar administration for former CIA director R. James Woolsey and others who have long supported the idea of replacing Iraq's government, according to sources close to the issue.

The dispute is over who will occupy what are designed as de facto cabinet ministries under retired Gen. Jay M. Garner, the Pentagon-named head of a new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, until the country can be fully handed over to Iraqis.

57 YEARS OF LETTERS FROM AMERICA He's been reporting on America for the BBC for 57 years, and continues to file his dispatches at the age of 95. Alistair Cooke remains a sparkling voice.

NON, DUFY N'EST PAS UN PEINTRE FAUVE! Seeing Kirchner's work this weekend reminded me of the best exhibition I've seen, which was an amazing retrospective of Raoul Dufy at Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy, France. This year marks 50 years since he died.

1.2.F.U. Glen Friedman's photography captured an entire generation of skaters, punk rockers and rappers in the years before skating, punk rock and rap were on the cultural radar. From Tony Alva to Ian MacKaye to Run-DMC, Friedman's lens has helped to frame the beginning of several eras, including this photo that kicked it all off for me in 1984.

IT'S ALWAYS IN A TOWN NAMED "SALEM" Oregon's State Senate demonstrates that you don't actually need to be insane to honestly believe that the only good democracy is a democracy with teeth. And prisons. And probably a good, solid death penalty.

SALEM -- A bill that would define violent protesters as terrorists and subject them to possible life imprisonment came under attack Monday at a packed and sometimes tense legislative hearing. Antiwar activists and civil libertarians showed up in force to criticize Senate Bill 742, which they said contains overly broad language and gives police expanded powers to investigate people based on ethnicity.

The statements came during the bill's first hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Committee Chairman Sen. John Minnis, R-Wood Village, author of the bill, threatened to clear the hearing room after repeated bursts of applause for speakers and interruptions shouted from the audience. Minnis said he introduced the measure to put all crimes that could be construed as terrorism into a single law with tough punishment guidelines, and to require Oregon police agencies to cooperate with federal investigations into terrorists.

But the wording of the bill left many concerned that it could be applied to relatively minor acts of vandalism or misbehavior during a demonstration. The bill applies to acts of violence committed while someone is disrupting commerce, transportation, schools or universities.

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW (IS ANOTHER FOLK SINGER) Ah, the funny pages. How did we ever live without them? How did people form opinions on the world before Little Nemo and the Katzenjammer Kids entered our lives?

RADIO. LIVE TRANSMISSION. Radio Free Europe's "War In Iraq" page is one of the more comprehensive, and despite its affiliation with the U.S. government, it is surprisingly balanced. The Arab Press Comments section is particularly illuminating.

WEAPONS OF MASS AMUSEMENT More from Saddam Hussein's web log --

The invaders remain stuck about 60 Kilometers outside Baghdad. They should not be surprised. This city has long been known for having the worst traffic in Iraq. Between sandstorms, car crashes, jackknifed tractor trailers, rubbernecking delays, mating camels, and downed Hueys, it's always something. There have been a number of proposals over the years to widen the Baghdad Beltway, but they are always met by opposition from various nomadic Bedouin tribes screaming "Not In My Back Yard!!" Well, hell, they're nomads!! The whole damn desert is their backyard, for crying out loud! Move somewhere else! I try to gas them, but by then they've always wandered off to somewhere else.

LIGHT THROUGH THE FISSURE? As the United States enters a third week at war, and the initial flurry of panic abates about false starts, bad starts and non-starters, a new conversation is beginning in the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon.

The first 11 days of the war have brought back with a vengeance the deep splits that have long existed within the Bush administration and the Republican Party over policy toward Iraq.

Already there is a behind-the-scenes effort by former senior Republican government officials and party leaders to convince President Bush that the advice he has received from Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz -- a powerful triumvirate frequently at odds with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell -- has been wrong and even dangerous to long-term U.S. national interests.

Citing past public statements by Cheney and others about the prospective ease with which the Iraq war could be won and the warm welcome U.S. forces would receive from the Iraqi people, one former GOP appointee said he and his allies were looking at "whether this president has learned something from this bum advice he has been getting."

PUT ON YOUR RED SHOES The Starr Foster Dance Project has a two-day blitz in Richmond this weekend with the premiere of The Bet, and performances of Nineteen43, Thieves and Monster in the Closet at the Grace Street Theatre. Tickets are $10/$15 and the performances are Friday, April 4, and Saturday, April 5, at 8 p.m. Give them a shout at 804.828.2020 to make a reservation, and visit the company's website for more information.

WEEKENDS IN OCHRE AND ORANGE The photorealistic techniques of Gerhard Richter collided with the stark emotionalism of early German Expressionism this weekend as I blew through the District of Columbia to see art and visit friends. Richter's restraint emphasized his technical abilities as an artist, but even the works that impressed me the most failed to grab my emotions; it was inherently modern -- masterful, but difficult for me to access. Across the Mall at the National Gallery, the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner exploded in an aura of color, tension and pain. Kirchner's work exhibited a different sort of mastery, born not of reproduction, but of expression. It is very easy to see how Bauhaus could never have emerged in Germany without the work of Kirchner and his cohort in Die Brucke, and how Kirchner could never have emerged in Germany without the carefree bohemian lifestyle and the horrors of war that anchored his art, and fed his addictions and madness.

LIKE A feral cat in heat, "Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1880-1938" bangs into a trash can, knocking it over outside the sleepy window of Edouard Vuillard and Thomas Gainsborough, both now on view at the National Gallery of Art. Unlike either of those two genteel shows, the museum's latest exhibition is neither domestic nor elegant. An invigorating -- one might even say jarring -- wake-up call, Kirchner's art exudes a sense of the wild man, a mood of Eros and fear and madness that is sometimes difficult to look upon but equally hard to ignore.