Sangria Ban Debate

That August body known as the Virginia General Assembly is debating the heady issue of legalizing ... Sangria.

The Commonwealth which Lacks Common Sense (see the abusive driving civil fines) outlawed the mixing of beer or wine with spirits years ago. It has fined restaurants for serving the concoction of wine, brandy, and triple-sec.

It's unclear if you can drop your own shot into a beer, but Purdue alumni should be worried.

Unpaid Bills Shut Down Wiretaps

Seems you don't have to worry so much about Uncle Sam listening in on your pizza orders after all. Turns out tons of federal wire taps were cut -- because Uncle Sam didn't pay his phone bills.

The Washington Post reports phone companies held up the information when the Justice Department failed to pay half of one-thousand bills -- including one for $66,000.

The FBI says they didn't lose any information. They got it when they paid their bills -- and late fees.

In a "post-9/11 world," let's hope Washington doesn't get a bill due on 9/12. (WaPo)

Making the A-List

Thousands of innocent Americans have been unable to get on airliners because Uncle Sam misidentified them as terrorists.

Deborah Sherman of television station KUSA in Denver interviewed 20 people in Colorado who all share the name "John Thompson."

All of them report trouble getting on airplanes.

There is an actual John Thompson on the terror watch list -- a member of the Ulster Defense Reiment in northern Ireland.

The rest fall victim to the government's No Fly List.

The Justice Department's inspector general says a good 38% of the list is inaccurate or out of date.

There doesn't seem to be any real order or planning with the list. Just a bunch of names. And if an airline finds a passenger who matches a name on the list -- he's not supposed to be on the plane.

KUSA found that while people snagged by false matches are forced to arrive hours early at airports to be cleared, terrorists on the list are still getting on airplanes. A new program to fix those problems, called Secure Flight, has cost taxpayers $200 million so far and may leave participating passengers vulnerable to identity theft.

The list is nearing a million names. Eventually, Washington may be able to keep us all safe from terrorists on planes -- simply by not letting any of us fly. (KUSA/HT: IRE)

Welcome to America

In the world of world wide tourism, Americans are replacing the French waiter as the stereotype of rudeness.

The Discover America advocacy campaign blames the decline on the whole unpleasant experience visitors are put through just to set foot on U.S. soil.

They claim that since the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. has seen overseas tourism group by 17%. That's cost us $94 billion and 200,000 jobs.

The problem -- rude welcomes, long lines, searches, suspicion, and all the red tape that politicians passed off as protection in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

But in giving in to fear -- instead of embracing the qualities that made America great like courage, resolve and openness -- we've become paranoid of even tourists heading for the Grand Canyon.

And that's created a rift between America and the world.

A visit to America should be one of the most powerful tools to make friends from around the world. And making friends can turn enemies away.

The "Ugly American" has come home. He needs to learn how to treat guests to his home. (AFP)

Colonel Sanders and Jim Perdue -- Terrorist Targets

Forget about foxes guarding the henhouse. Uncle Sam is about to order chicken farmers to have anti-terrorist security on a par with chemical plants and nuclear power stations.

A new order from the Department of Homeland Security could classify chicken houses as prime terrorist targets -- requiring expensive security measures.

The rule says any place with more than 7,500 pounds of propane gas -- about 1,785 gallons -- stored on the premises is a potential target for terrorists. Chicken houses are usually built in pairs -- each house equipped with at least a 1,000 gallon propane tank to heat it.

So about 50,000 chicken houses meet the standard to make them tighten security. From the Delmarva Daily Times:

U.S. Sens. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Tom Carper, D-Del., have co-authored a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff demanding answers for what they describe as a waste of government time and money.

Filling out the paperwork alone requires 25-30 hours -- longer if your chicken farm doesn't have high speed Internet. There's a $25,000 per day fine for delays in getting your chicken scratchings on Uncle Sam's forms back to Washington.

Propane is used to heat large facilities in rural parts of the country where there are no natural gas lines. So the rule could end up affecting campgrounds, grain elevators, and nursing homes among it's unintended consequences. (delmarvanow.com)

White House: Getting Priorities Straight

With all the troops home from Iraq, Osama bin Laden executed, and New Orleans rebuilt -- the White House has turned its attention to something really important: enforcing a dress code!

You may remember the huge flap when the Northwestern University Women's Lacrosse team showed up wearing flip flops to pose for a picture with the President (pictured at right). That was back in 2005. A tragedy the White House still simply refers to as "7/12."

Signs have gone up warning people about their clothing choices. It's been accompanied by an e-mail. Al Kamen in the Washington Post reports:

"The e-mail reminder was all in capital letters. It advised that there would be no jeans, sneakers, shorts, miniskirts, T-shirts, tank tops and -- with boldface added -- 'NO FLIP FLOPS.' (Which, of course, is good advice, if rarely followed in this town.)"

And in typical Bush administration tradition -- the blame for imposing the dress code falls squarely on -- wait for it -- Bill Clinton:

"When the Clintons came in, all hell broke loose" in terms of dress code -- and perhaps other things? -- one current aide said. "We're just trying to get things back on track."

Old hands from the Reagan administration were taken aback -- since the "Gipper" was a fan of jeans from his western movies days.

Mr. Kamen quotes one Reagan aide as saying "Do they have nothing else to do?" (WaPo)

Mice and Men and Hurricane Katrina

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government (CREW) reports the federal government failed to follow it's own disaster plan in response to Hurricane Katrina.

It took nearly two years and a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for CREW to get the 7,500 records from the Department of Homeland Security and compile them in their new report.

What's outlined in The Best Laid Plans: The Story of How the Government Ignored Its Own Gulf Coast Hurricane Plans:

Critically, CREW found that FEMA had created a “Southeast Louisiana
Catastrophic Hurricane Plan” (SLCHP), which forecast a range of specific
consequences, including:

• New Orleans would be flooded with 14-17 feet of water, the levee system
  inundated with at least 10 feet of water and the hurricane would move into
  Mississippi;


• One million people would evacuate, but flooding would trap at least
  250-350,000;


• Each hurricane victim would require a minimum of two Meals Ready to Eat, one gallon of water and eight pounds of ice per day.

CREW also posted the raw documents on their website.

Return to Liberty

Even though the Department of Homeland Security once said there were no national landmarks worthy of a terrorist attack in New York City, Uncle Sam has refused to reopen the Statue of Liberty to tourists since 9/11.

Nearly six years after the attack, Congress is pushing for the reopening. From The Bellingham Herald:

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., for the second year in a row added an amendment to a spending bill giving the National Park Service $1 million to study how to safely reopen the staircase to the statue's crown - something prohibited since the 2001 terror attacks.

Right now, you can only go as far as the pedestal. (The Bellingham Herald)

Vacationers Overwhelm Feds

Red tape and a massive summer vacation rush has pushed the feds to suspend their new passport rules -- for now. Effectively calling a truce in a turf war between the Departments of State and Homeland Security.

Long waiting lines and jammed phone lines overwhelmed Passport Offices where a backlog in issuing passports has meant waits of several months to get them. New rules required Americans traveling by air to anywhere in the Western Hemisphere to have a US passport to get back in the US.

You can now travel with proof of having applied for a passport -- available online -- but you'll have to go through some extra screening. (WaPo)

Red Tape, Long Lines -- Have a Nice Vacation!

Just what you need right before vacation -- long lines, red tape, and a sudden panic that your vacation is going down the drains because of government bureaucracy.

Last year, the federal government issued 7-million passports. They expect to double that this year -- and that's creating problems for American travelers.

New rules require anyone leaving the US to have a valid US passport to come back. That's got State Department phone lines jammed and long lines waiting outside passport offices as vacationers scramble to get their papers before their planned trips.

Special teams have been dispatched to several major US cities to handle the backlog of requests. Requests for passports are up 50% in some parts of the country. (NYT)

Waste & Red Tape Favored over a Break for Taxpayers

Come up with a plan to save Uncle Sam million millions of dollars and months of backlogs -- and the government will shoot it down.

Prakash Khatri works for the US Immigration Service. He cooked up a plan that'd save taxpayers $350 million. It'd also cut the time one million legal immigrants would have to spend in waiting lines from 45 hours to just about 15.

Can't have all that thrift and red tape cutting now, can we?

Apparently not. US Citizenship and Immigration Services killed the time and money saving plan. Seems it'd cut into their application renewal fees -- about 20% of the agency's $1.8 billion budget.

They don't want to give up that steady cash flow. But have no problem letting taxpayers pick up the slack for them. (Boston Globe)

Size Matters to the Postal Service

It's not enough the Post Office is raising stamp prices Monday -- 41-cents for first class. They're adding new rules for the shape and size of packages -- and they're not too clear on what those rules are.

If something's too thick -- more than a quarter inch -- or if you stiffen an envelope with cardboard to protect photos or DVD's of the kids you're mailing to Grandma, you may have to pay more.

MAY is the key word, because few people understand exactly how the Postal Service's rules will charge you to mail it. (CNN)

The Picture of Poor Health

A plan to clear up the red tape of military and veteran's health care died two years ago -- just as President Bush's nominee for Secretary of Veterans Affairs took office.

The VA employee working on the "Congingency Tracking System" told ABC News it'd been approved already. But was shelved when Jim Nicholson became Secretary.

ABC reports that as a result, seriously wounded troops, released from the military due to the severity of their wounds -- were released into the VA's sea of red tape.

The program only cost $1 million dollars to set up. But Sec Nicholson reportedly nixed it as being too expensive.

Sec Nicholson told ABC, he can't even remember the program.

But then, he had other things on his mind at the time.

The VA was dealing with a flood of wounded veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, had run up a $1 billion shortfall, and -- as the Washington Post reported at the time -- they had a different priority.

A memo at the time stressed that pictures of Sec Nicholson had to be hung immediately in all VA offices and hospitals. Amid the crises the VA faced at the time -- the memo called the pictures "highest priority" and demanded daily updates on the status of hanging pictures.

It's not a pretty picture emerging of Sec Nicholson.

And this is the man President Bush tapped to head up immediate reforms to problems at Walter Reed.

Heckuva job. (ABCNews/WaPo)

Oh, Forgot to tell You about the Radiation, Hope that Isn't a Problem

The folks at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory wanted to test some bombs near Tracy, California.

No problem. There are a lot of big empty spaces out there off Interstate 580. So the San Joaquin Air Pollution Control District granted a permit.

Oh. Just one thing. The scientists didn't bother to mention the bombs would disperse radioactive material -- depleted uranium.

That a problem?

Dang straight!

The air pollution authorities didn't find out what the scientists were actually planning until folks living in the area brought it to their attention.

The scientists say it's only a little radiation. You know, like being a little pregnant, or a little glowing in the dark at your onocologist's.

The smog control bureaucrats went nuclear on Lawrence Livermore for trying to slip that by them. They yanked the permit for the blasts. (News10 Sacremento)

Y'all's Government, Up on Blocks Out in Front of the FEMA Trailers

FEMA's trying to unload thouands of trailers -- bought with your money in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. At least 8,000 were never used. From the Washington Post:

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency hurriedly bought 145,000 trailers and mobile homes just before and after Katrina hit, spending $2.7 billion largely through no-bid contracts. Now, it is selling off as many as 41,000 of the homes, netting, so far, about 40 cents on each dollar spent by taxpayers.”

That would sound like a bargin to people in Arkansas who lost their homes to recent tornadoes.

Rep Mike Ross (D-AR) is trying to get FEMA to sell some of the trailers to people in his district left homeless by the storms.

But lobbyists for the house trailer industry have made it harder for FEMA to sell the trailers. The lobbyists don't want competition -- preferring the homeless pay full price for new trailers. (WaPo/HT: ThinkProgress.org)

The Bush Administration Playing Politics? That'd be a First!

Could the Bush administration be using the Department of Homeland Security to silence criticism of President Bush?

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln thinks so. And they're suing over it.

The University hired Waskar Ari of Bolivia to teach Latin American History. But the DHS won't let him in the country.

Seems Professor Ari was mistakenly identified as a supporter of Bolivian president Evo Morales -- a harsh critic of President Bush. Professor Ari was hired two years ago -- but has been kept out of the country all this time.

UNL filed a lawsuit last week demanding DHS consider Professor Ari's appeal. The feds have 60 days to file a response. (Lincoln Journal Star)

My, How Time Flies!

Tired of long waits at the Post Office? The braniacs at the US Postal Service have come to your rescue -- they've removed the clocks!

It won't speed up your service, but it will make it harder for you to realize how long you've been waiting in line for that poor service. The Postal Service has removed clocks from 37,000 of its Post Offices. They call it a "retail standardization program."
We told you back in August, 2005 how Indiana bureaucrats came up with the same idea to keep people's minds off the wait at their DMV offices.

A USPS spokesman tells the Fort Worth Star Telegram they want customers to focus on the service -- not the clock. Wonder how long before they make you surrender your watch before you enter a Post Office.

At least you can still use your perpetual calendars to time how long it takes for your letter to get where it's going. (AP)

Washington Math: We'll Save Money By Costing the States More

Colorado's cracking down on illegal immigrants using Medicaid.

New federal rules require patients to show proof of US citizenship for coverage.

It means 200 people will lose coverage in Colorado and it will save the state $300,000.

On the other hand, it'll cost Colorado $2.9 million dollars to enforce the new rules Washington wants.

Homeland Insecurity Strikes Again

When Cheshire, Massachusetts-- population 3,500 -- needed a new fire truck, they turned to Washington for help.

The braniacs at Homeland Security cut them a $665,962 check -- with one stipulation. They couldn't use any of that money to buy a firetruck.

The money is enough to cover the little village's annual fire department budget for 26 years.

But Homeland Seucrity decided what the village really needed was money to increase the number of firemen -- in case terrorists attack Cheshire.

And what would terrorists want to attack?

The Boston Globe suggests the Cheshire Cheese Monument -- commemorating the Thomas Jefferson's 1801 gift of a three-quarter ton cheese wheel to the town.

The money comes from the same Homeland Security Department which last year declared New York City -- home to the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge, and Statue of Liberty -- should have security funding cut because the city had no national landmarks.

Cheshire, Massachusetts only wanted a new fire truck.

But now Washington is requiring them to spend $600,000 to run radio and television commercials to recruit high school students into the Fire Department instead.