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Kudos to the Wall Street Journal editorial page today (as usual, no link--I'm reading the dead-tree edition because I don't have access to the subscription-only online version), for casting a spotlight on the widespread--and highly undemocratic--tradition under which senators can place "holds" on presidential nominees, delaying or preventing confirmation votes. While all of the fuss lately has been over filibusters and whether GOP senators will use the "nuclear option" to end their use for judicial nominations, little attention has been paid to this other, even more pernicious, practice. At least with filibusters, senators can be made to stand up and state their reasons for opposing a nominee. But they can use holds to indefinitely block nominations for any reason--or no reason--and anonymously, to boot.

Here's a little piece of advice if you're in the military and looking to turn a profit on a do-it-yourself move: Don't drive a 10,000-pound forklift onto the scales to boost the total weight of your household goods to 21,000 pounds. It's a bit obvious, and you're just going to end up with a bad-conduct discharge out of the whole deal.

Ever wonder how (or why) we do what we do here at GovExec.com? Want to talk about any of stuff that appears in this somewhat random collection of items we call Fedlog? Now's your chance to make it a two-way conversation. Next Wednesday, May 4, from noon to 1 p.m. ET, I'll submit to any and all manner of questions (or taunts and insults, if you prefer) in our weekly GovExec Live! online chat. Start sending in your questions now.

Bad news for all those who thought the Ab Energizer was going to give them six-pack abs without the hassle of situps or crunches: The Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement under which the marketers of the Energizer and certain retailers will pay more than $2 million for making false claims about the product.

Things must be getting a little slow over at the Supreme Court. The justices have decided to take on the issue of whether the Postal Service can be held responsible for the injuries a woman received when she slipped on a pile of mail that had been dropped in front of her door. Apparently, the lower courts haven't been able to agree on exactly whether the Postal Service is liable for "negligent transmission of letters."

Happy 15th birthday, Hubble Space Telescope!

NASA today announced the members of its new Exploration
Systems Advisory Committee. They include Dr. Kenneth M. Baldwin, a professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California-Irvine; Dr. Amy Kronenberg, program leader for radiation biology at the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and retired Air Force Col. Larry Graviss, vice president of Sverdrup Technology Inc. of Tullahoma, Tenn. Oh, and also Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, a missile defense analyst in Beverly Hills, Calif. Yeah, that's the same Skunk Baxter who played guitar for the Doobie Brothers--and whose second career in the aerospace world appears to be, ahem, skyrocketing.

For those of you who wonder, as I have, why Bruce Springsteen hasn't recorded that many tunes that could be classified as love songs over the years, the Boss himself explained last week during an Asbury Park, N.J., warmup show for his new solo tour. Part of the reason, he declared, was that his father "kind of spoiled the whole thing" when he was a kid. Love songs, the elder Springsteen informed his young son, "were a government conspiracy to get you married and force you to pay taxes." (Apparently the marriage penalty wasn't as big a deal back then.) "I don't agree," the younger Springsteen hastened to tell his audience.

So here's the power of the press for ya: Frank Moss, the deputy assistant secretary for passport services at the State Department, emailed me this morning about my whiny column on the less-than-stellar service I received at a passport processing office. We had a very nice conversation, in which I was happy to inform him that the passports for my children had arrived within two weeks of applying for them. I also should note that I've gotten a few e-mails, and several people have posted items in the Mailbag, saying they've had very good experiences at passport application offices. So this is clearly not a systemic problem. Still, next time I need a Social Security card or an SBA loan or something, I think I'll write a column before I go in to apply, so I can get the VIP treatment in advance.

In his weekly radio address Saturday, President Bush took the time to thank Congress for granting his request for tens of billions of dollars in supplemental spending for the war on terror. And, pointedly, he asked them again to be sure not to add anything for 150 programs targeted for elimination in his fiscal 2006 budget on the grounds they're not working. "Every government program was created with good intentions," he said, "but not all are matching good intentions with good results."

Take cover, residents of Moundsville, W.Va.! Prisoners are bustin' out of the slammer, fleeing the pen, blastin' out of the pokey, and just generally sticking it to the man. Luckily it's just the annual mock prison riot but on by the Office of Law Enforcement Technology Commercialization and the National Institute of Justice at the former West Virginia Penitentiary, coming your way May 2-4.

Now this is just not playing fair. Scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (who are conducting endlessly interesting research, I'm belatedly discovering) were trying to figure out how to get male pink hibiscus mealybugs to congregate together so the pests could be more easily detected. At some, point the light bulb went off in somebody's head, and they hit on the obvious answer: Develop a bait using the two compounds that make up the female mealybug's sex pheromone. Now the scientists are using the formula as (in ARS's own words) a "sex lure." Oh, that's just dirty pool.

Here I thought it was just my teenage daughter and her friends who got themselves into trouble with their addiction to instant messaging. Apparently, it's members of the Air Force, too. Six airmen have been sanctioned for making inappropriate comments on the Air Force Instant Messenger service on the Air Force Portal, and five others have disciplinary actions pending.

In the world of print journalism in general and newspapering in particular, there has been much hand-wringing lately about steadily declining circulation numbers. Many explanations have been offered, from the explosion of television news to the growth of news Web sites. But Jon Ham, the publisher of Carolina Journal, offers a novel explanation this week: Newspapers, he says, love government too much. "Newspaper reporters and editors have always covered the public sector," he writes. "But while they used to cover it as a preventative to corruption and abuse of power, they now cover it as a partner in the effort to get government more involved in people's lives. Implicit in government coverage these days are that non-defense government programs are good and the more people are attached to some government program, the better society will be." This strikes me as a dubious argument at best. Maybe it's because I'm not the least biased observer, given that all of the journalism we do at Government Executive is centered around the subject of what government does. Or maybe it's because of the regular knee-jerk skewering virtually every federal program takes in the nation's papers as being rife with corruption, waste and mismanagement.

Think you can tell the IRS how to do its job better? Then speak up. The agency is recruiting members for its Taxpayer Advisory Panel until April 29.

Don't assume that just because you're a military service member, the new law prohibiting cigarette lighters an airplanes don't apply to you. It does, according to the Pentagon. The law, which took effect April 14, applies not only to commercial airline travelers, but military and civilian passengers on chartered U.S. military overseas flights. You can't bring "anything that produces a flame," TSA says. Except matches, for some reason. You can bring four books of those, if you like.

What is it with Denny's and federal employees? First the restaurant chain had to fight for years back in the '90s to restore its image after six black Secret Service agents said they were denied service at an Annapolis, Md., restaurant. Now, the Washington Times reports, Denny's has again been forced to apologize, this time after an employee at an Arizona franchise typed in information on a Border Patrol agent's order identifying him as "Border Ass Whole." The employee has since been fired, presumably for lack of civility and not bad spelling.

This is off-topic, but I just got a chuckle out of this headline in the Washington Times: "Einstein's Intellect Remains Unmatched." And in other news, Picasso Still Considered Pretty Darn Good Painter.

Robin Givhan--the Post's fashion reporter, for those who don't know--takes a shot at U.N. ambassador nominee John Bolton's hair today, characterizing it as "drooping over his forehead as if he'd stepped from the shower and shaken his hair dry in the manner of an Afghan hound." Not the most substantative critique, but whatever. She goes on however, to fire a shot that hits well below the belt, calling Bolton's 'do "a bureaucrat's hairstyle, one that is willfully dismissive of the value of a polished appearance...."

At the risk of beating a dead horse on this Canada-Mexico passport thing, here's a truly incredible comment from President Bush on his own administration's initiative: "When I first read that in the newspaper, about the need to have passports, particularly today's crossings that take place -- about a million, for example, in the state of Texas -- I said, what's going on here. I thought there was a better way to do -- to expedite legal flow of traffic and people." First read it in the newspaper? That splashing sound you hear is Condoleezza Rice and the entire Bureau of Consular Affairs being thrown over the side of the White House ship.

It's the little things that count. That's why the Navy is leaving no bureaucratic stone unturned in its effort to approve new uniforms for sailors. Here's how a Navy press release yesterday described the ongoing process: "As sailors around the fleet continue to assess the new Navy Working and Service Uniform concepts, a panel of petty officers, chiefs and officers began discussing the second phase of Task Force Uniform (TFU) during a uniform board scheduled April 12-15. As with phase one, this 28-sailor panel representing sailors and commands around the globe is being guided by the TFU charter outlined by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), the CNOs's 2004 Guidance to the Fleet, as well as their experience with the proposed changes seen to date."

Has Tom Davis been watching a few too many Quention Tarantino movies lately? At a conference yesterday, he offered up this rather gruesome image: "When the government wants to lose weight, they usually try to cut off some fingers and toes, when they should be cutting off fat." What's wrong with a good old-fashioned diet, Congressman? But Davis wasn't finished. He also offered up this image: "Technology is like a steamroller. You're either on board or flattened on the pavement."

The president of the United States has "My Sharona" on his iPod. I'm speechless. Speechless. I have no speech. But I'll have something to talk about if I ever meet the president. Because maybe he once waited in line for several hours to get tickets to see the Knack, too.

More on the impending boom in passport applications: In her press conference Wednesday, Bureau of Consular Affairs chief Maura Harty went out of her way to thank members of the media for being there, because they could help get out the word that people should take their time applying for passports to allow the agency to gear up to process millions of new applications. "I don't want anybody to run out tomorrow and buy a passport because two years and half from now, they're thinking about a trip," she said. But today's "Comings and Goings" column in the Post Travel section quotes deputy assistant secretary Daniel Smith as saying that even though the new regulations won't take full effect for quite some time, "to avoid a last minute crunch, we're encouraging people to apply for travel documents as soon as possible." Sounds like they need to get on the same page in Foggy Bottom.

Here's one of those stories about how policy initiatives translate into real work on the front lines: At a press conference yesterday, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Maura Harty said that with the new border security initiative requiring many people to have passports to travel to Canada and Mexico, the passport processing workload is expected to increase dramatically. The Bureau of Consular Affairs processed 8.8 million passport applications in 2004. They're projecting 10.5 million for this year, 12 million in 2006, 14 million in 2007, and 17 million in 2008. In a cringe-inducing effort to be hip, Harty talked up the agency's current efforts to process expedited passport applications, saying, "You can turn that bad boy around in some cases in as short as a day."

Never let it be said that the Defense Commissary Agency doesn't want to save the planet. Or money. I just got forwarded a DeCA press release noting that Earth Day is a great day for customers to buy into the agency's push to reduce double bagging at commissaries. Of course, the release (which I couldn't find on the DeCA Web site) acknowledges that "the principle aim [also the 'principal' aim, I'm guessing] is to control rising grocery bag costs by reducing double bagging in commissaries worldwide, and to encourage a switch from plastic to paper in U.S. commissaries, but the environmental approach is a great side benefit." Back in February, DeCA was pushing this initiative purely as a cost-saving move. Adding the whole save-the-planet thing is a very nice touch.

Now the president himself has gone to personally inspect that Bureau of the Public Debt filing cabinet that contains the Social Security "trust fund."

Matthew Christ, a Foreign Service officer, was arrested Monday on charges of masterminding a plot to sell U.S. visas in Lithuania, AP reports. His alleged payoff? More than $40,000 and--go figure--a vintage BMW motorcycle. Update: The State Department says, "Employees who commit visa malfeasance are a very small percentage of our work force. The overwhelming majority of State Department employees are dedicated public servants who work tirelessly to protect the visa process and serve the U.S. public interest." Well, that's good to know!

Check out the transcript of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's news conference yesterday on the department's ongoing TOPOFF 3 terrorism response exercise. Some reporters are clearly trying to play along and get him to respond as a participant, but he's so concerned about a War of the Worlds scenario unfolding, he won't join in.

I love this on so many levels: the Transportation Department, which oversees the nation's time zones (who knew?) has told the good people of Indiana that it's OK, they can go ahead and join (most) of the rest of the country in observing Daylight Saving Time in June, if the state's general assembly ever gets around to approving the shift. The department had initially said that if the Hoosiers didn't get their act together by last weekend, they'd have to wait until next year, according to AP.

I'd be a lot more comfortable about the space shuttle's return to flight as early as next month if there was a huge, sweeping consensus that the agency's cuture had dramatically changed. But as the NY Times notes today, that's too much to hope for. In fact, the consensus actually seems to be that culture change will take so long that there's essentially no choice but to fly the shuttle before the organizational overhaul takes full effect--if ever. So we'll all be crossing our fingers for some time to come.

If you believe this, then you don't remember what day it is.