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It just wouldn't look good for a law-and-order guy like the director of the FBI to try to shirk jury duty. So, Newsweek reports, when Robert Mueller got the call last week, he dutifully went down to a Washington courthouse and took his place in the jury pool. He was assigned to a murder case and wasn't officially released from duty--on the grounds that he'd tried cases in front of the judge handling the case as a U.S. attorney, worked with the prosecutor and a police detective involved with the case, and knew the defense lawyer--until 3:30 in the afternoon.

Official federal position on this year's hurricane season: fingers crossed.

Here's another one for the federal mascot files. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., isn't a fan of Yucca Mountain Johnny, the Energy Department's kid-friendly mascot for its nuclear-waste repository project. According to an editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Berkley recently offered an amendment to an energy appropriations bill that would have eliminated funding for portions of the DOE Web site, effectively killing off Yucca Mountain Johnny. The amendment was soundly rejected by the House, but the paper thinks Berkley's on to something:

Far too many government "informational" campaigns are the result of public agencies with way too much money on their hands. You don't have to be an opponent of Yucca Mountain to argue that spending taxpayer funds to create a cartoon character to teach children about safety at the nuclear repository is a dubious use of funds. Let's hope Yucca Mountain Johnny is eventually sealed up in a mine shaft, where he belongs.

The VA data theft response just gets more and more tangled. Now, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is concerned about plans for the IRS to help VA contact veterans by mail to let them know their personal information has been stolen. Here's Baucus' concern, outlined in a letter sent to outgoing Treasury Secretary John Snow Friday:

It is my understanding the IRS plans to hire private contractors to produce these letters, giving non-government employees access to the IRS’s confidential taxpayer information. Please provide me with a detailed report on how the notification process will work and what steps will be taken to protect the privacy of the veterans’ personal information.

From Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Memorial Day message:

From the first citizen soldiers who stood fast to defend their homes at Lexington and Concord, to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines securing our liberty and our way of life today, our country has been truly blessed by those who stepped forward to say, “Send me.”

It's a common refrain: Congress doesn't fully and appropriately exercise its powers of oversight over federal agencies. Now, Rep. John Tanner, D-Tenn., has a solution: Let's pass a law forcing ourselves to do it. He's introduced a bill, H.Res.841, that would require:

• Hearings within 60 days of inspector general reports that identify waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement over $1 million.


• Hearings and testimony from agency officials when the Government Accountability Office identifies an agency as high risk for mismanagement.


• Hearings featuring Cabinet secretaries when auditors issue disclaimers or corrections to an agency’s financial audit.


• At least two hearings a year on the results of performance reviews using the Office of Management and Budget’s Program Assessment Rating Tool.

VA Secretary James Nicholson's testimony on the veterans' data theft incident on Capitol Hill yesterday boils down to the following: Everybody but me screwed up. He said he's "outraged" and "mad as hell" about the "lapses of judgment on the behalf of my people." He insisted that "directives were issued," but "they were paid no attention to." He may be right about all of that, but as Nicholson also noted, he is "the person ultimately responsible to our veterans."

Members of Congress continue to hide behind bureaucrat-bashing as a means of defending the explosion of pork-barrel earmarks. Today's New York Times report on the efforts of Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., this week to eliminate funding for pet projects from two spending bills included some choice quotes:

• Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Ohio: "Who knows the needs of their constituents better, bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., or the people elected to Congress?"


• Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas: Money cut from the bills would simply revert to agencies to be doled out by "career bureaucrats."
  
• Rep. David Obey, D-Wis.: Legislators should control where the money goes because they know more than "the anonymous bureaucrats downtown."
  

Looks like more than one VA official is on the chopping block for letting data on 26 million veterans leave the building, where it could be stolen from an employee's home. Here's VA Secretary James Nicholson in a statement yesterday, on why it took so long for VA to report the theft of the data: “We are engaged in a very extensive review of individuals up and down the chain of command. As the person ultimately accountable to America’s veterans, I have the duty to know exactly what occurred and to hold people responsible."

President Bush can't seem to make up his mind about whether he wants us to get off the couch and get some fresh air, or focus on finding and keeping a roof over our heads. First, on Tuesday, he announced that June would be Great Outdoors Month. Then on Wednesday he declared that it would be National Home Ownership Month.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency says plans are in place for this year's hurricane season. Apparently the House of Representatives agrees that reforms have been put in place at all levels of government to protect people in the event of another catastrophe like Katrina, because they've moved on to the issue of saving pets. Monday, the House passed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Act (H.R. 3858), which mandates that states and localities develop plans for dealing with pets in the aftermath of disasters to qualify for FEMA funding.

“This bipartisan legislation is necessary because when asked to choose between abandoning their pets or their personal safety, many pet owners chose to risk their lives and would continue today to risk their lives and remain with their pets,” said one of the bill's co-sponsors, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn.

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., was among the small group of lawmakers who voted against the measure. "This is not a federal responsibility, it's a federal infringement on state authority," Westmoreland spokesman Brian Robinson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "And it just seems silly on top of it."

Now is where it starts to get sticky for the VA. The department waited two weeks to notify the FBI about the theft of 26.5 million veterans records, AP reports today. The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee has already scheduled a hearing on the issue for Thursday. And for now, the New York Times notes, the agency's refusal to offer an explanation for the delay is helping turn the situation into a "public relations disaster."

Within hours after the Veterans Affairs Department admitted that an employee had taken home data on millions of veterans that was later stolen, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., had already reached a verdict in the case: Heads must roll. "There’s no more personal and private information than a veteran’s medical information," Kerry said yesterday. "This is no way to treat those who have worn the uniform of our country. Someone needs to be fired, the perpetrators need to be caught, and the security system at the V.A. needs to be massively overhauled."

But as egregious a security violation as this was, if allowing theft of medical information is the crime, the VA employee in question appears to be innocent. The records that were taken included names, birthdates, and Social Security numbers, and possibly disability ratings for some veterans, but not medical records, says VA Secretary Jim Nicholson.

The Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory is trying to make a few bucks off of an anti-jet-lag diet developed by biologists at the facility two decades ago. Argonne has licensed software it developed to AntiJetLagDiet.com, allowing users (for a fee of $10.95 one way or $16.95 round-trip) to put together an individual diet to defeat the effects of jet lag on trips across three or more time zones. Argonne officials say hundreds of thousands of travelers have used the diet in the past 20 years, including President Reagan and federal travelers from the Army, Navy, Secret Service, Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Reserve System.

AP reports that the Energy Department is thinking about getting rid of its Office of Environment, Safety and Health, which sets health and safety rules for the 130,000 employees of the department and its contractors. The plan, which would involve distributing health and safety oversight operations to other DOE offices, has already drawn the ire of congressional Democrats.

Attention, pepper enthusiasts: The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has given the thumbs-up to South Korean growers to export their peppers to the United States. But there are several catches, APHIS says: "The peppers must be grown in the Republic of Korea in approved insect-proof, pest-free greenhouses and packed in pest exclusionary packinghouses. In order to safeguard against pest infestation during their movement, the peppers must be protected by an insect-proof mesh screen or plastic tarpaulin and packed in insect-proof containers."

Will they be able to effectively implement these rules? The Government Accountability Office reports that APHIS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which share responsibility for safeguarding agricultural imports, "face management and coordination problems that increase the vulnerability of U.S. agriculture to foreign pests and disease."

The Los Angeles Times reports today on the FBI's curious effort to force field office agents to accept positions at the agency's Washington headquarters. About one-fifth of the 1,500 top FBI jobs in Washington are vacant, the paper reports--partly because FBI Director Robert Mueller has created in recent years to beef up the agency's counterterrorist capability. And here's how the FBI is working to fill the open slots:

Agents in the field who have five years of supervisory experience are being required to apply for supervisory positions in Washington. People who refuse the transfer are dropped out of the ranks of management and forced to accept a pay cut. About 900 supervisors in field offices are subject to the policy. Most are in their 40s, in the prime of their careers.

The House Judiciary Committee is about to deliver a smackdown to the Federal Air Marshals Service, AP reports. A report due to be released next week concludes that the service's dress code, which is designed to ensure anonymity for agents, actually has the opposite effect. It's not exactly clear what that dress code is--for obvious reasons, I guess. The report also says air marshals shouldn't have to show their credentials when they check into hotels.

The Army reported yesterday on its efforts to launch an online weight loss program. Lt. Col. Danny Jaghab, who created the Web site that hosts the program, says it has been "hugely succesful," receiving more hits than almost any other page on the Army Knowledge Online portal. I'm not sure that intense interest among soldiers in a weight loss program is something the service should be bragging too much about.

The Transportation Security Administration is about to shift tactics, TIME reports. The agency plans to launch a new program, Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques, that focuses on observing passenger behavior rather than trying to find guns, knives and other banned items. "Select TSA employees," the magazine says, "will be trained to identify suspicious individuals who raise red flags by exhibiting unusual or anxious behavior, which can be as simple as changes in mannerisms, excessive sweating on a cool day, or changes in the pitch of a person's voice." But the agency insists it won't use race or ethnicity as factors in singling anybody out.

Management gurus say that one of the most important elements of effective leadership is communicating with your employees. But employees aren't supposed to take it upon themselves to intercept your communications. Kenneth Kwak, a former Education Department employee, has been sentenced to five months in prison and five months home confinement for placing software on his boss's computer that enabled him to access the supervisor's e-mail and monitor other activities, according to Business and Legal Reports.

Taxpayers are about to get hit by a very large bill for health benefits for retired public servants. The federal government has a $2.3 trillion liability for medical and disability benefits promised to civil servants and military personnel after they retire, USA Today reports. On top of that, the cost of future health benefits for state and local employees could top $1 trillion.

I'm watching the Michael Hayden confirmation hearings unfold, and have the following thought: When they film his life story, here's the guy who should play him.

HUD Secretary Alphonso "I Just Made Up That Story About Denying Contracts Based on Political Affiliation" Jackson better watch his back. Remember how it was all downhill for FEMA chief Michael Brown after President Bush toured the hurricane-ravaged Gulf region and praised the job "Brownie" was doing? Well, Bush busted out Jackson's nickname yesterday at a White House ceremony honoring the 2005 WNBA champion Sacramento Monarchs:

I want to thank my Cabinet Secretary, Alphonso Jackson. Welcome, A.J., thanks for coming. I knew you were a sports fan, and I knew you appreciated excellence on the court, so I'm not surprised you're here.

In a time of turbulence, here's some good news for the CIA: The New York Times reports that by next year, the agency will have tripled the number of trained case officers in its ranks. During outgoing director Porter Goss's tenure, the agency opened or reopened more than 20 stations abroad. And the agency continues to be overwhelmed with resumes from people seeking to join its ranks.

Susan Smith of Fedsmith highlights an interesting case decided last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. It involves Kent A. Robinson, who served for many years as an attorney in the Small Business Administration's Los Angeles office. SBA officials told him they wanted to promote him to a GS-14 management job and transfer him to the agency's Fresno, Calif., office. Robinson said he wasn't interested, arguing that "he had neither the desire nor the temperament to be a supervisory attorney," according to the appeals court's decision.

Go or you're fired, SBA said. Still, Robinson refused, so the agency started removal proceedings against him. He then retired, but challenged SBA's action before the Merit Systems Protection Board. He lost, both at MSPB and in the appeals court, because it's pretty clear-cut that an agency can fire you if you refuse to accept a reassignment.

The court said SBA had picked Robinson because of his "experience, his potential for leadership, the difficulties the SBA had eliciting a volunteer for the position, and the SBA’s desire to select a candidate for the Fresno position from a district office that already had at least three staff attorneys." All valid reasons, I suppose, but still: If someone insists they're not suited to be a manager, it might be a good idea to take them at their word. Because at the very least, that's likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When the U.S. military dreams up a worst-case scenario, it doesn't think small. This week, USA Today reports, U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command are conducting a training exercise involving the following simultaneous situations:

• A "dirty bomb" attack on Windsor, Ontario, near Detroit, killing more than 5,000 Canadians.


• Terrorist attacks in Detroit itself involving explosions of railcars containing chlorine and phosgene gas in which nearly 13,000 people die, 85,000 are hurt, and 3.5 million are forced to evacuate.


• The hijacking of an American airliner, which is later shot down by Canadian fighter jets, killing more than 100 passengers and crew members.


• A release of plague bacteria in Mexico City, killinf almost 8,00 people and sending thousands more across the U.S.-Mexican border.


• A bird-flu outbreak in the United States.


• A Category 3 hurricane hits New Orleans again.

You've got to hand it to the folks at the American Federation of Government Employees. They pass up no opportunity to capitalize on high-profile criminal cases to highlight their position on Bureau of Prisons staffing issues. In 2004, AFGE said Martha Stewart might be at risk during her stay at the federal minimum security prison in Alderson, W. Va., because of understaffing. Now, with Zacarias Moussaoui on his way to serve six life terms at the "supermax" federal facility in Florence, Colo., AFGE contends that the prison has seen "significant decreases" in staffing of "mission-critical posts" since last September.

Can't resist a little self-promotion here: The new editition of Fedcast, our news-talk video show, is online now. We taped it on the National Mall during Public Service Recognition Week festivities, and it's got something for everyone, from explosives detection robots to Customs puppies.

Pam Coltharp, director of the Call to Serve program at Louisiana State University--a partnership of OPM and the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service to improve federal recruiting efforts--has a name for the way engineering students react to the prospect of federal employment these days. She calls it the "FEMA Face," Federal Computer Week reports. It's clear that post-Katrina, agencies have an even bigger hill to climb in convincing college students that they can actually make a difference by working in government.

I'll have a full Outlook column on this subject in the June 1 issue of Government Executive.

Looks like Alphonso Jackson as taken a little trip to the woodshed, and come out relatively unscathed. It was almost inevitable that the White House would step in and distance President Bush from Jackson's recent boast that he quashed a HUD contract won by a political foe of the president. (Jackson now says he made up the story.) And sure enough, here's White House Press Secretary Tony Snow today (courtesy of AP), slapping Jackson's wrist but not throwing him over the side:

Alphonso Jackson has admitted that what he said earlier was improper, that it was a mistake and the president accepts that and still supports a man with whom he's had a long and close relationship.

Biologists at the U.S. Geological Survey's Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md., are "beaming with pride," the Fish and Wildlife Service reports, because whooping cranes number 13 and 18 from a flock they are closely monitoring have become the proud parents of two chicks. The parents were hatched in a lab, raised by human caretakers in costume and taught how to migrate by pilots of ultralight aircraft. The hatching of the chicks marks a milestone in the effort to reintroduce a wild whooping crane flock in eastern North America.

From the National Institute on Drug Abuse: "NIDA Research Uncovers the Neurobiology of Dread."

What do Walt Disney, Google and the State Department have in common? They were chosen as the top three most ideal places to work in a poll of 37,000 college seniors. BusinessWeek reports that the Philadelphia-based Universum Communication’s annual poll also put two other federal agencies -- the FBI and the CIA -- at numbers four and five, respectively.

Universum CEO Claudia Tattanelli credits popular television shows such as 24 and Alias with creating a glamorous, recognizable brand for these agencies, boosting their popularity among the 20-something set.
The shows, Tatanelli told BusinessWeek, have "highlighted a possibility in the government they never saw before.”--Karen Rutzick

President Bush gave the commencement address at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College yesterday, saying "there has never been a more hopeful day to graduate in the state of Mississippi." Meanwhile, the Gulf Times reported that this year, "FEMA is ready for hurricane season." But in this case, the "Gulf" in question is the Persian one; the Gulf Times is published out of Doha, Qatar.

From today's New York Times story on the FBI's post-9/11 focus on public corruption cases:

In 2004 and 2005, more than 1,060 government employees were convicted of corrupt activities, including 177 federal officials, 158 state officials, 360 local officials and 365 police officers, according to F.B.I. statistics. The number of convictions rose 27 percent from 2004 to 2005.

President Bush has ordered the creation of an Identity Theft Task Force to increase efforts to find and prosecute offenders, improve public outreach and boost safeguards over personal data held by federal agencies. The members of the group -- which will be chaired by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and include the secretaries of Treasury, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security -- have 180 days to prepare a strategic plan to "improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the federal government's activities in the areas of identity theft awareness, prevention, detection, and prosecution."

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., immediately called the move "a year late and a lot out of step."

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., wants to remove waste from the contracting process for the removal of, well, waste from hurricane-ravaged areas of his state.

I can only hope that ex-FEMA Director Mike Brown didn't learn everything he knew about federal management from the e-newsletters he was reading. (You have to go all the way down to page 528 of the document to see what I'm referring to).

Readers point out a few more mascots I missed:

• Owlie Skywarn of the National Weather Service.


• The EPA's Thirstin, who has something to do with ground and drinking water.


• EPA also makes use of Sammy Soil to teach kids about conservation, but it's unclear to me if he's an official federal mascot or not--and if he is, exactly which agency he belongs to.


• And who could forget the evil twin of the Energy Ant, the Energy Hog?

• Les the Sea Turtle, mascot of the Navy's Waste Reduction Afloat Protects the Sea program.


• Pablo the Eagle, representing the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.


• Captain Fish of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (you have to scroll near bottom of the page to see the picture of him).

DefenseTech reports that the Transportation Security Administration is in the market for a contractor to manage the fitness center in its Pentagon City headquarters. The agency wants the center to be self-sustaining; DefenseTech questions whether that can happen with only 220 members paying $312 a year.

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson has a rather interesting view of the federal contracting process. Witness his April 28 speech in Dallas to the Real Estate Executive Council, reported on by the Dallas Business Journal. In the address, the HUD chief talked about his dealings with a representative of an advertising contractor seeking to do business with the agency:

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the [General Services Administration] list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Update: Well, it didn't take long for the congressional reaction to kick in. Sen. Frank Lautenberg wants President Bush to demand Jackson's resignation. Updated update: Jackson's spokeswoman has announced his defense: He said it, but it wasn't true. It couldn't be, because Jackson is "not part of the contracting process."

According to an online survey conducted by the Council for Excellence in Government, Apollo 13 is the most popular government-themed movie. The Washington Post’s Reliable Source column reports that the council believes Tom Hanks and crew won because astronauts are still seen as “romantic and exciting.” The survey, which concluded Saturday, was conducted in connection with Public Service Recognition Week.--Daniel Pulliam

The responses are flooding in on additional federal mascots. Many are coming from USDA, whose agencies clearly have a serious case of mutual mascot envy. The Food Safety and Inspection Service has two: BAC, (short for Bacterium), who teaches kids about the dangers of germs, and Thermy, whose job is to promote the importance of avoiding undercooked food ("It's safe to bite when the temperature is right," is his Johnnie Cochran-esque slogan.) The Rural Utilities Service has Rus the Surfin' Squirrel, a small-town Midwesterner who loves the Internet.

The Energy Department features the Energy Ant, created in 1975 to tell kids about using energy wisely ("Ants are very energy-efficient creatures," the department says.)

The Federal Trade Commission has Dewie the E-Turtle, who "carries his security shell no matter what he’s doing on the Internet."

In the "fading into history" category, there's the Bureau of Land Management's Johnny Horizon, an environmental spokesman. I can't find an official image, but here's an e-Bay posting for a Johnny Horizon patch from 1976. There are other references to him are out there, too. For example, here are the minutes from a 2003 meeting of BLM's Northeast California Resource Advisory Council, in which a participant reports on a recommendation that "BLM needs a new symbol to represent the importance of caring for the land, such as the old Johnny Horizon mascot."

Finally, here's an all-star lineup for you: BAC, Power Panther, Smokey Bear, Woodsy Owl, and Thermy at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

Last week's post on Rex the Homeland Security Mountain Lion's appearance at Public Service Recognition Week got me thinking about just how many agency mascots there are. Then I was flipping through the PSRW supplement in the Washington Post Express, and there it was: a coloring page for the kiddies featuring a whole lineup of the cuddly characters. It included the biggies (Smokey Bear, McGruff, Woodsy Owl), some I'd forgotten about (Mr. Zip, that weird little Postal Service stick figure) and a couple that are simply obscure (Rex and and the Food and Nutrition Service's Power Panther). Is that all of them, I wondered? Well, I found at least one more (and I swear I'm not making this up): the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain Johnny (courtesy of Wonkette). Anybody know of any others? Send the names my way and I'll make sure they get the publicity they deserve.

In the Bush administration's latest management score card, covering the second quarter of fiscal 2006, the Homeland Security Department received the highest rating, green, for its efforts to open up jobs to private-sector competition. That appeared to be a noteworthy improvement over the yellow rating for competitive sourcing that the department received in the last score card. But it turns out that the yellow grade was just a mistake. DHS actually earned a green for the first quarter, too, according to an Office of Management and Budget spokesman. The error in the score card went unnoticed by the department and the administration for about four months until the new report was released last week.--Daniel Pulliam

It's going to be "Have A Nice Day!" time at the Patent and Trademark Office this summer, as the agency sets out to decide whether Wal-Mart can claim exclusive rights to the bright yellow happy face that first grew to prominence in the early 1970s. Wal-Mart says it has invested billions of dollars over the years in advertisements linking its name to the shiny, upbeat image, the Los Angeles Times reports. But Frenchman Franklin Loufrani has been busy trademarking the smiley symbol all over the world in recent years.

The Pentagon is paying United Airlines $36,000 to run 13-minute videos touting military service during the airline's regular in-flight programming, AP reports.

Today's conventional wisdom is that Michael V. Hayden, deputy director of national intelligence, is President Bush's pick to replace Porter Goss as head of the CIA. For a look at what Hayden might do at the agency, see George Cahlink's Oct. 15, 2004 piece in Government Executive about Hayden's overhaul of the National Security Agency. Here's a preview: It involved "thinning out longtime employees to make way for new hires expert in different countries, outsourcing information technology, raising the notoriously secretive agency's profile, and consolidating management under a quasi-corporate structure."

NASA is pouring money into keeping the space shuttle flying and completing the International Space Station, at the expense of smaller missions and basic research, the National Research Council reported yesterday. The NRC's Space Studies Board "was particularly concerned that small, lower-cost space missions would be hit particularly hard and that programs to analyze and study data the agency got back from its space missions would be reduced by 15 percent," the New York Times reports.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is once again trying to toughen up its policy on drunk driving by its employees, AP reports. Under the new policy, the agency will terminate driving privilges for employees arrested for reckless driving or driving under the influence.

Senators Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are introducing a bill (S. 2694) that would let veterans hire lawyers for assistance in obtaining benefits from the Veterans Affairs Department. The bill would overturn a 150-year old restriction designed to protect members of the armed services from legal practitioners who at the time were deemed “ill trained and unscrupulous,” according to a Craig press release. So what’s changed since then? "I suppose that some would still warn that lawyers are not to be trusted, but the reality is that the laws are complex and I want veterans to have the option of hiring an attorney to help navigate the system, if they choose," says Craig, who chairs the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.--Jenny Mandel

Those wags over at The Onion tweak the space agency this week, with spoof story on a new exploration initiative: "NASA Announces Plan To Launch $700 Million Into Space." Fake quote from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin: "This is an exciting opportunity to study the effect of a hard-vacuum, zero-gravity environment on $50 and $100 bills."

"Feds' Watch List Eats Its Own:" That's the headline on a Wired News story about federal employees and military service members who have endured delays at airports because their names match those on terrorist watch lists. Among those snared in the system:

• A State Department diplomat who said he flys 100,000 miles a year.
  
  
  
  

  
  

• A U.S. Navy officer who has been enlisted since 1984.
  
  
  

  
  

• A high-ranking government employee with a better-than-top-secret clearance who is also a U.S. Army Reserve major.
  
  
  
  

  
  

• A federal employee traveling on government business who told Wired News he has endured "ridiculous delays at the airports, despite my travel order, federal ID and even my federal passport."
  
  
  
  

  
  

• A high-level civil servant at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
  
  
  
  

  
  

• An active-duty Army officer who had served four combat tours (including one in Afghanistan) and who holds a top-secret clearance.
  
  
  
  

  
  

The Chicago Tribune has a good piece today on the "hemorrhage of top talent" at the FBI to the private sector. Cruise lines, banks and food service companies are among those benefiting from an exodus of FBI security and counterterrorism officials. Senators grilled FBI Director Robert Mueller about the issue at a hearing Tuesday. His response: "Since Sept. 11 . . . everyone wants a security director . . . and many of these corporations can pay far more than the federal government."

FEMA is closing its long-range planning office in New Orleans--and again pointing the finger at local officials. They're not facing up to their obligation to plot recovery strategy for the long haul, FEMA says. The locals argue that FEMA isn't giving them what they really need to conduct such efforts--money.

A group of House Government Reform Committee Democrats have issued a study showing that political appointments of women and minorities have fallen under the Bush administration, while appointees overall are growing in number. According to the report:

• Political appointments increased 12 percent between 2000 and 2005, from 2,479 to 2,786.


• A 33 percent increase in Schedule C appointments more than made up for slight drops in presidential and political SES appointments that likely resulted from confirmation holdups.


• Minority appointees dropped from 26 percent in 2000 to 13 percent in 2005--largely due to a decline in appointments of African-Americans.


• The percentage of female appointees fell from 45 percent in 2000 to 36 percent in 2005.--Jenny Mandel

Cartoonists and comedians are having a field day with TSA, AP reports. But judging from the examples cited in the story--none of which could be characterized as laugh-out-loud funny--maybe it's time to lay off the screeners.

Here's Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, discussing the release yesterday of a survey his organization sponsored on college students' attitudes toward public service:

The JFK message of "ask not" is not good enough for this generation. What you really need is something that offers up the opportunity for doing good, but also doing well.

I don't want to quote Stier out of context; in his other remarks he makes it clear that he's not just talking about pay and benefits, but about making sure young people know that federal jobs offer the opportunity to do interesting work and make a difference. But those things fall under the "ask not" category--and remain the most attractive elements of federal service. That's because government can't win the compensation competition. Private-sector salaries are always going to be higher, and government's nice health and retirement benefits aren't the kinds of things that attract your average college student to a job.

Interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal today about how the new Freedom Tower rising from the ashes of the World Trade Center will rely heavily on attracting federal agencies as tenants. Some tidbits:

• "An estimated 25% of the commercial office space at Ground Zero -- and at least 38% of the Freedom Tower -- will be filled by government tenants....But persuading government employees to work there may prove challenging. Some 750 customs and immigration workers fled from 6 World Trade before it was destroyed when the north Twin Tower collapsed."


• Real estate experts say that while the large percentage of federal agencies may be necessary to make the project viable, they also will make it difficult to attract private-sector organizations. One issue: agencies typically like plain, bare-bones lobbies in their buildings, which private firms typically disdain.


• Agencies, especially the more secretive ones, aren't all that wild about mixing with the private sector, either.


• The situation echoes the early years of the first World Trade Center, which was finished in 1973. It also struggled to find corporate tenants, and relied on government agencies to fill office space initially.

Federal doctors can be whistleblowers, too, the Merit Systems Protection Board has ruled. The decision stems from the case of Jonathan Fishbein, a National Institutes of Health researcher who was hired under special Title 42 provisions that allow agencies to pay top salaries to attract doctors. He was later fired after raising allegations of sloppy research practices that he said could endanger patients. An administrative judge ruled that federal whistleblower protections did not apply to Title 42 employees, but the MSPB reversed that ruling. Fishbein, by the way, recently was reinstated and settled a lawsuit he had filed over his firing.

Christopher Steele, a senior executive at Los Alamos National Laboratory who has strongly criticized safety procedures at the lab, has been transferred to a new job, the Los Angeles Times reports. Energy Department officials say he's getting what amounts to a promotion, to oversee safety training at DOE facilities across the country. Steele's take: They're trying to shut me up.

AP reports that a program that provides job training, placement, tuition and child care benefits to military spouses in in jeopardy because the Labor Department is withdrawing the grant money that supports it. The money comes from a fund that is supposed to be used for emergencies. Mason Bishop, Labor's deputy assistant secretary for employment and training, says not to worry; he thinks the department can find funding for the program in other job training accounts. That would be a wise move. Politically, I would guess the last thing Labor officials want to be seen as doing is cutting support for military families.

If President Bush and FEMA thought the worst was behind them in terms of criticism of the Katrina response, they may need to think again. Here's none other than Bruce Springsteen at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival yesterday:

The criminal ineptitude makes you furious. This is what happens when political cronyism guts the very agencies that are supposed to serve American citizens in times of trial and hardship.

Presidents would like to be remembered for their promotion of grand ideals on the world stage. But it's more likely that a government leader's legacy will come down to how well the agencies under his control managed the challenges they were confronted with during his time in office.