You know what I hate?

I hate visitor centers. So, it might or might not come as a surprise that nothing makes me want to punch the computer more than a little project called the United States Capitol Visitor Center.

A couple days ago, The New York Times printed an update on the still-under-construction, $540-million-and-counting project that remains a hole beneath the Capitol. Despite the hole, the Times has already proclaimed the visitor center a "grand hall" that will allow visitors "to stroll through interactive museum presentations devoted to the history of the building and to Congress," and boast two theaters that will show a 12-minute orientation film. Because, as the millions of people who have visited the Capitol have learned, you have to be orientated to experience the Capitol in all its grandeur. And who would just want to go into the building itself to just see it? We need the grand hall to prepare us to enter this great symbol of democracy.

And, the happy news continues:

“We are not cutting corners,” said Tom Fontana, a spokesman for the project. “All these things have to be just right.”

So, the Capitol Visitor Center is a "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" sort of thing. No matter that U.S. soldiers fighting an urban ground war in Iraq might or might not have proper training or body armor, or that veterans are on months-long waiting lists to see doctors.

The displays in the center will teach people about Congress and democracy, something many Americans don't know a lot about because we don't fund our schools well. And there will be space to exhibit artifacts from the Capitol that have been in hiding, instead of being displayed in museums built very near the Capitol for this purpose. A tunnel from the Capitol to the Library of Congress is being excavated so visitors won't have to walk across the street.

We will spare no expense to build a new entrance to this already-grand building, which came pretty close to being destroyed by a Boeing 757 that didn't plan on going through the metal detectors inside the Capitol's front doors on Sept. 11, 2001. But, because of terrorists who never walked up those front steps, neither can we ever again. How's that for a celebrated symbol of democracy? What an outrage.

P.S. Don't miss the masturbatory Times slide show about the center's construction, which makes it sound like Americans have been standing in line since the beginning of time, braving the elements, just to get inside the Capitol. They have not. In fact, it has only been a handful of years since the Capitol's front steps were cordoned off, and citizens forced to take tours of two or three rooms in the building if they hope to see it at all.