The bill had enough pork added on to it to keep the planet in bacon for years. Naturally, the Democrats aren't mentioning that part of the bill, but only the security-related portions. And naturally, the buttheads that form a large chunk of the Democratic constituency will not have the brains to pursue the issue past the DNC press releases.

It would also never occur to the average Democratic butthead to actually check the IAFF site to see what they might have actually said. IN other words, Steve Friess is full of shit.

On a local level, this budget trick is pulled frequently on us by our city government. Whenever spending gets tight, the first thing they threaten to cut is things like police, fire, and libraries. There is never a mention of the thousands spent on crap like art requirements for city construction, and other financial ratholes.

In this article, Bush addressed this issue:

He said he would not be forced to spend an unrequested $5 billion that Congress tacked onto an emergency $24 billion supplemental appropriation bill after the September 11 terrorist attacks, even though he had agreed to spend $1 billion of that for such projects as AIDS prevention in Africa and assistance to Israel and the Palestinians.

"Those who wrote the bill designed it so I have to spend all five of the extra billion dollars, or spend none of it," Mr. Bush told participants at Baylor University after eight sessions also attended by Vice President Richard B. Cheney and eight members of the Cabinet.



"Those are the rules they placed on my administration. I understand their position, and today they're going to learn mine. We'll spend none of it."

The crowd of 240 business and labor leaders, including many who had supported Vice President Al Gore and Democratic congressional candidates in the 2000 elections, applauded loudly.

Mr. Bush said, "A lot of that money has nothing to do with national emergency, and I'll give you one example: a new facility for storing the government's collection of bugs and worms."

Lawmakers also had included in the bill such items as $400 million for election reform and replacing punch-card voting machines, $9.3 million to beef up the Securities and Exchange Commission, $50 million for fighting forest fires, and $108.2 million for the Army Corps of Engineers.

In a news release yesterday, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, defended the bill and the bugs-and-worms project, which called for constructing a facility to house the Smithsonian's specimen collection. The collection, which is stored on the National Mall in 730,000 gallons of alcohol, is "the equivalent of several jet planes loaded with fuel," Mr. Byrd said, adding that to wait to spend the money would "take great risks with human lives."



And with that last brilliant piece of work by Byrd, acknowledged by almost everyone to be the Grand Overlord of Pork, I leave you.