Amid all the concern about slippage in the city’s maintenance of order, it’s encouraging to see the parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, taking action to regulate the art venders that you can hardly stroll through a city park without tripping over. These columns have a deep reservoir of sympathy for both artists and small-scale entrepreneurs, but that doesn’t extend to giving up the city’s green space and turning it over, rent-free, to retailers. The venders compete with genuine art galleries that take the trouble to pay rent rather than squatting on city-owned land. There’s no reason that they shouldn’t be subject to a permitting process that keeps them under control.

The art venders are invoking the First Amendment. In fact, 150 of them rallied outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday, one holding a sign that said “Bloomberg is anti-free speech.” There are genuine threats to the First Amendment and to free speech that are on the scene this very day, starting with the McCain-Feingold effort to limit political speech in the campaign season and including the actions of the government of Iran, which regularly shuts down newspapers. We haven’t seen any street protests over either of those far more pernicious free-speech threats. If the art venders in question were all selling edi torial cartoons hostile to the mayor, or if the permits are going to be given or withheld based on the political content of the art, that’s a whole nother ballgame. But no one is claiming that is the issue here.

The ringleader of the protest was one Robert Lederman, the artist best known for his poorly executed portraits of Mayor Giuliani — as, among other things, Hitler, Mussolini, and a Klansman. The fact that Mayor Bloomberg is now being targeted by the same man who vilified Mr. Giuliani will inspire confidence in Mr. Bloomberg among all of those of use who are grateful to Mr. Giuliani for his efforts to clean up New York.