Not that they ever officially left, but Politics Daily's Shahzad Chaudhary reports an uptick in anti-war protest activity as President Obama weighs his options in Afghanistan, including more arrests at the Capitol this year than last:

With waning public approval of the Afghanistan war, however, antiwar groups have noticed an increase in support. "We've had a lot of decentralized action in October," said Gael Murphy, co-founder of Code Pink.

Antiwar actions such as the committee hearing protest, in which Blome and Hubert participated in earlier this month, have slowly started to reemerge. So far this year there have been eight official "disruption of Congress" arrests, compared with only four in all of 2008, according to Capitol Hill Police. These types of protests are likely to increase, said Murphy.

Code Pink has been around since 2002, regularly disrupting activities on Capitol Hill while decked out in full pink regalia, known for pulling theatrical pranks.

It was founded by, and continues to be led by, a handful of early-middle-aged women who gave up their lives to come live in a communal house in Washington, DC, to dedicate themselves to protesting the war in Iraq at every opportunity.

While Chaudhary reports that their activity dropped off after Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, they were quite active during the next year, turning immediately on the Democrats who suddenly controlled the purse strings for the Iraq war effort. They dedicated themselves to holding Democrats responsible for the war--"you're in power now, it's up to you to make it stop," basically, was how they put it--and some of their more sensationalistic protests have happened since the Democrats took power.

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