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Here's a position you're not likely to find on USAJOBS: “implementation and execution manager” of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley's preferred term for the the "war czar" the White House is seeking, the New York Times reports. So what's the job description? “What we need,” Hadley says, “is someone with a lot of stature within the government who can make things happen.”

Have to wear a uniform to work? The Office of Personnel Management wants to double the annual amount you can be reimbursed for uniform maintenance, from $400 to $800, Federal Times reports. But the agency warns that not everybody will be eligible for the full reimbursement, just those that require expensive clothing, like firefighters.

CIA reviewers are straining under the burden of having to pass judgment on books written by former employees. Anybody who wants to publish a book about the agency's operations (including former CIA Director George Tenet) must submit the manuscript to the agency's Publications Review Board, which vets the material to assess whether it contains classified information. The board now gets about 100 submissions a month from would-be authors, USA Today reports. For the entire year 2000, the agency only received 300 submissions.

Amount of aid offered by U.S. allies after Hurricane Katrina: $854 million in cash and in oil.
Amount that was actually collected: $40 million.

That's according to a report in today's Washington Post. Most of the aid, including $400 million worth of oil, was simply never collected. Some offers of help were redirected to other sources, like the Red Cross. And the rest remains in bureaucratic limbo.

I know I've had a lot of Hatch Act stuff lately, but I can't resist posting this exchange between White House spokeswoman Dana Perino and CNN's Ed Henry at a press briefing yesterday:

Q Can I follow up? I just wondered why, then, did, according to apparently six witnesses that have apparently spoken to Congressman Waxman, say that at the end of the one of these briefings the head of the GSA said to, I think it was Scott Jennings, one of Karl Rove's aides: What, then, after getting this briefing can we do to go help Republican candidates? And he said, let's talk off line about that.

MS. PERINO: I never talked to Scott Jennings about that. I think that --

Q Well, why would he suggest that?

MS. PERINO: Well, I'm not going to speculate as to what he would have meant by that or not. I mean, he could have meant that that was an inappropriate comment to make in front of other people and talked about that off line, instead of embarrassing her in front of --

For someone who's "not going to speculate," that's pretty speculative -- and in a way that defends Jennings at GSA chief Lurita Doan's expense.

Office of Special Counsel chief Scott Bloch certainly isn't afraid of the limelight. He continued his unusually public discussion of his investigation into potential Hatch Act violations both at the General Services Administration and the White House this morning during an appearance on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal." One interesting item of discussion in host Brian Lamb's interview with Bloch concerned Robert Novak's column yesterday in the Washington Post. In it, Novak wrote:

Bloch, a devout Catholic, has been under attack for three years at the independent investigative agency because of his interpretation of statutes covering workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. He also has been publicly accused of hiring too many Catholics. Clay Johnson, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and another Texan brought to Washington by Bush, joined the attack on Bloch, a Bush appointee. The case became a cause celebre on the right when Bloch was told by a prominent Catholic layman close to Bush that it would be better if he resigned.

Bloch said a lot of "wild stories" had been spread about him by groups opposed to the position he took on sexual orientation discrimination. Asked directly by Lamb if he had been told he should resign, Bloch said, "I don't care to discuss that."

This just in from the Postal Service: "Be the First Jedi to Get the Star Wars Stamps!"

The Transportation Security Administration thinks its employees can learn a thing or two from video games. Here's an excerpt from a recent agency posting on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site:

This is a Request for Information (RFI) on a Serious Games Initiative for the Transportation Security Administration to introduce a new, innovative training style for training Transportation Security Officers (TSOs). The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) plays a critical role in safeguarding our nations transportation infrastructure in general and the security of the flying public in particular. Poorly performed screener functions can have far reaching catastrophic results. Therefore, it is essential to meet the challenge of maintaining the Transportation Security Officer (TSO) workforce at peak operational readiness, amidst rapidly changing circumstances. To that end, TSO training must be continual and ongoing, and therefore engaging to keep the learning community motivated.

The Operational and Technical Training Group within TSA is introducing a new, innovative training style at TSA to enhance and transform its portfolio of TSO Training methodologies. This will include a Serious Games approach that can be a valuable tool to motivate the screener community to learn and perform at optimal levels. The objective of this approach/initiative is to analyze, design, prototype, produce, deliver, and sustain a Serious Games training curriculum to satisfy the training needs and performance requirements of TSOs at TSA.

(Hat tip: Danger Room.)

"Naked Porn-Surfing Army Recruiter Arrested"

The hiring of private contractors in the intelligence community has surged since 9/11, USA Today reports. Contractors now form a "key part" of the intelligence workforce, says Ron Sanders, human capital chief in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. About 40 percent of those hired are collecting or analyzing information -- which are traditionally core functions performed by federal employees. According to Sanders, about a quarter of the contractor workers have been brought on as a way to get around federal hiring limits, and they typically make more money than federal employees. The overall number of both government employees and contractors in the intelligence agencies is classified.

From his official announcement today that he's joining the presidential race:

I'm running for President to make the government do its job, not your job; to do it with less and to do it better.

Oh, and he's also boldly opposed to "bloated, irresponsible and incompetent government."

What can we learn from the Virginia Tech tragedy? I don't know, but the secretaries of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services are going to tell us within 30 days.

The New York Times reports today on the Bush administration's regulatory approach, particularly at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. "Across Washington," the story says, "political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers." Bush appointees, it adds, "favor a 'voluntary compliance strategy,' reaching agreements with industry associations and companies to police themselves."

What the story doesn't say is that the voluntary compliance strategy long predates the Bush administration, especially at OSHA. Clinton administration officials began to adopt this approach 15 years ago, when it became apparent that their efforts to cut the size of the federal workforce were inconsistent with the idea of maintaining a huge federal regulatory and enforcement bureaucracy. Here's what Peter Hutchinson and David Osborne had to say about OSHA's efforts in Government Executive in 2000:

In 1992, OSHA officials in Maine pioneered a remarkably successful partnership called the Maine 200 Program. Its leaders were frustrated by the failure of their traditional inspect-and-fine approach: Although they won gold medals from headquarters for issuing the most citations and fines, the state's workplace safety and health records remained the worst in the nation. So they decided to try something different: They asked the 200 employers with the highest volume of injury claims (45 percent of the state's total) to create employee teams dedicated to improving safety. The teams would draw up action plans, conduct comprehensive surveys of hazards in their plants, and correct most of them within 12 months. As long as the company was making a good-faith effort, OSHA would forgo its traditional inspections and fines. But each quarter the employers had to file a report on their progress, and OSHA would visit occasionally to verify those reports. Employers who failed to fulfill their obligations would be subject to comprehensive inspections.

The Maine 200 effort won wide praise, and OSHA tried to take it nationwide in 1997. But the agency was forced to abandon that effort two years later, because the program was successfully challenged in court by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- and not on the grounds that it was too lenient in regulating businesses.

The Project on Government Oversight raises an interesting point about Office of Special Counsel Scott Bloch's announcement that he's investigating possible Hatch Act violations at the White House: Bloch, as GovExec's Daniel Pulliam reported in October 2005, is himself the target of an investigation ordered by Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the White House Office of Management and Budget. That probe, by Office of Personnel Management Inspector General Patrick McFarland, concerns allegations, as Daniel put it, that "the head of the small, independent agency responsible for protecting federal employees against prohibited personnel practices, including retaliation, improperly retaliated against his own employees."

Beth Daley, POGO's director of investigations, says, “It’s hard to believe that the Office of Special Counsel will be able to conduct a thorough investigation into the White House while Scott Bloch is under investigation himself." But don't you also have to wonder if Bloch might have an incentive to be especially thorough, since he's probing a White House that hasn't exactly had his back throughout his own travails?

You can't run for partisan political office if you work for the Office of Personnel Management. But you can if you work for USIS, the privatized OPM spinoff that conducts background investigations on individuals for the agency. The Clarion News of Pennsylvania reports today on candidates for the position of prothonotary (defined as "a chief clerk in certain courts of law") in Clarion County. They include Republican candidate and USIS employee Margie Burford Halvin, who, the newspaper reported, said at a candidates' forum that her work makes her "aware of the charges people are facing in the court system."

"U.S. Department of Labor's OSHA Announces Focus on Health Hazards of Microwave Popcorn Butter Flavorings Containing Diacetyl"

It's been clear for awhile now that the biggest of the issues facing embattled GSA Administrator Lurita Doan is the potential for Hatch Act violations stemming from a briefing conducted by a White House aide for political appointees at the agency. Now, not only have two senators jumped on the bandwagon and called for Doan's resignation (saying the meeting "crossed the line"), but the Washington Post reports that the Office of Special Counsel is expanding its probe of the briefing to look generally at whether White House actions have violated the Hatch Act. (The Los Angeles Times also reports on the expanded probe.)

Right now, it seems there are two ways this cuts for Doan:

• She becomes even more of a liability for the administration, because her actions led to a wider probe that could be very embarassing for the White House.


• It actually helps her, because a wider OSC investigation deflects attention away from her actions to what kinds of briefings the White House was holding at other agencies, and whether Bush staffers' actions crossed the line.

Here's OPM Director Linda Springer on the slaying of a NASA employee at the Johnson Space Center on Friday:

We express our sincere condolences, on behalf of the Federal Workforce, to the family of the Federal employee who was killed at the NASA Johnson Space Center Friday afternoon.

This latest tragedy at NASA, combined with the senseless Virginia Tech massacre and the grim anniversaries of the Columbine High School shootings and the deaths in the Federal Building in Oklahoma City remembered this week, have been difficult for all of us. These events remind us all of the need to be vigilant and to respect the security precautions taken in Federal buildings.

We ask all employees to remember the family of the NASA victim in our thoughts and prayers.

They say when it comes to retirement, it's all about keeping active. Nadyne Leedom of Denver, who spent 33 years working for the General Services Administration, certainly has heeded that advice. The Denver Post reports that Leedom still teaches exercise classes twice a week at a local community center, like she's been doing for more than 30 years. That may not seem that remarkable, until you take into account the fact that Leedom is 90 years old.

"Federal Legislation Introduced to Protect Public From Big Cat Attacks"

The 100 leaders of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents the agency's 11,000 field agents, are unanimous, the Washington Times reports: They have no confidence in Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar. The council's vote to approve a no-confidence resolution stems in part from the fact that Aguilar has not publicly supported Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, who were convicted of violating the civil rights of a drug-smuggling suspect they shot as he fled back into Mexico after abandoning more than 700 pounds of marijuana. Border Patrol spokesman Xavier Rios told the newspaper that there was "no greater advocate than Chief Aguilar for the agents in the field" and that Ramos and Compean "shot a man and made an effort to cover it up."

There's good news and bad news about Department of Veterans Affairs walk-in clinics, USA Today reports. The good news is that staffing at such centers has increased from 992 to 1,063 since 2004. The bad news is that the number of veterans visiting the centers has gone up from 8,965 to 21,681 over the same period. VA officials say they've got funding to open 23 new centers by Sept. 2008.

This week, the Coast Guard finally gave up on its outsourcing strategy for the Deepwater modernization program, opting to take over itself as lead systems integrator on the project. Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. who had been managing Deepwater since 2002 through a joint venture called Integrated Coast Guard Systems, have acknowledged that they are the targets of a Justice Department investigation.

In that context, it's worth remembering that as far back as April 2004, GovExec's Jason Peckenpaugh was reporting that Deepwater was "being tested by spiraling maintenance needs, mounting homeland security missions and cultural adjustments." Many of those issues, Peckenpaugh noted, "surfaced during the Deepwater overhaul of the Matagorda, a 110-foot patrol boat based in Key West, Fla." Here's what he wrote about how that went:

In February, 2003, the Matagorda limped into Bollinger, a subcontractor for ICGS. Almost immediately, metal workers received a surprise: Nearly a third of the ship's hull plating was corroded, the result of the relentless pace of patrols in the Caribbean. Many pipes were coated with rust. "If you leaned on them, they'd break right off," recalls Bobby Arnold, a Coast Guard representative at Bollinger. Because of the scale of repairs, the Matagorda redesign wasn't finished until March 2004, five months behind schedule.

Refurbishing the Matagorda was the first test of how the Coast Guard-ICGS partnership would work in the field, where some employees still puzzle over the division of labor between both parties. "When you figure it out, let me know," says a Coast Guard maintenance chief. "A lot of people are still confused by ICGS," says a mid-level Lockheed Martin official who has been working on Deepwater for ten months. "They think it's a civilian contractor, and it's not. It's a joint venture that Coast Guard people have entered into with the two companies." Not so, says the Coast Guard's [deputy chief Gregory] Giddens. "ICGS is a commercial entity, a joint venture between Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. We have an oversight responsibility for what they're doing, but we're not managing their effort."

The General Services Administration has found an official to head up its efforts to aid agencies in complying with President Bush's executive order earlier this year requiring the government to cut its energy consumption. That person is David Bibb, GSA's deputy administrator, who will serve as the agency's designated senior environmental official under Bush's order. Through its supply schedules, GSA notes, the agency sells agencies "everything from environmental assessments and energy
management programs to recycled paper, fluorescent lighting, paints, chemicals [and] pollution-prevention systems."

There are lots of perks to being a member of Congress, but one of them isn't special treatment if you're injured on the job. Susan Smith of Fedsmith reports today on the case of Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla, who suffered cuts on his face and an eye injury when a car he was riding in crashed into a security barrier that inadvertently deployed at the Cannon House Office Building. Sullivan filed suit against the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act in an effort to get compensation for his injuries. But federal officials pointed out that the Federal Employees Compensation Act is the exclusive remedy for feds injured on the job -- including members of Congress. So Sullivan was forced to file a FECA claim with the Labor Department. Still, he tried to keep his lawsuit open, complaining that he "has not received a penny to date" on his FECA claim. But a federal court dismissed that argument, saying that FECA was his only option. So for now, Sullivan has to wait his turn like any other injured fed.

Looks like the Defense Department is trying to get itself organized. The Milwaukee Business Journal reports that Spacesaver Storage Systems of Fort Atkinson, Wis., has won a $129 million contract to provide weapons cabinets and assorted accessories to the military. The Marine Corps Systems Command issued the contract via the General Services Administration's E-Buy system.

Now that tax season is officially over, it looks like IRS Commissioner Mark Everson has found something new to do with his time. The New York Times reports that the American Red Cross is set to announce today that Everson has been named its new chief executive. Everson has been a key player in the Bush administration's management reform efforts. He started as controller at the Office of Management and Budget at the beginning of President Bush's first term before being named deputy director for management at OMB in 2002. Among other efforts, led OMB's initiative to create a traffic light-style score card rating the performance of federal agencies. Everson took the top job at the IRS, which carries a five-year term, in May 2003.

Update, 4:50 p.m.: The Red Cross has put out a statement on Everson's hiring. And here's the text of his message to IRS employees:

E-Mail to All Employees from Commissioner Everson
Subject: A Personal Message

I am writing to share with you the news that I will be leaving the Internal Revenue Service in coming weeks to become the President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Red Cross. I look forward to continuing my career in public service in this new and exciting role.

I look back over the last four years with great pride and satisfaction. Together, we have rebalanced the organization, bringing to life the equation: Service + Enforcement = Compliance. This has been no small feat, and I thank all of you for doing your part to restore credibility to our enforcement programs while continuing to improve taxpayer service over this period. We have also made significant strides in modernizing the IRS.

Building on the work of Commissioner Rossotti, this has been a successful phase in the IRS’s history. I believe the agency is poised to continue progress on a variety of fronts. I have faith in the strong leadership of the IRS; my confidence extends to you, the employees, who have demonstrated tremendous dedication and hard work.

It has been a singular honor to lead this organization; I will always regard being Commissioner of Internal Revenue as a highlight of my career. I wish you and your families all the best.

Mark W. Everson

Do you enjoy sitting back and enjoying a nice meal on your lunch break? Well, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, along with the Department of Health and Human Services, wants you to get up and take a nice walk instead.

With everything that's happening these days, the last thing we need is Secret Service agents accidentally shooting each other at the White House.

From a White House personnel announcement today:

The President intends to nominate Reuben Jeffery III, of the District of Columbia, to be Under Secretary of State (Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs); United States Alternate Governor of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development at the Department of State for a term of five years; United States Alternate Governor of the Inter-American Development Bank for a term of five years; United States Alternate Governor of the African Development Bank for a term of five years; United States Alternate Governor of the African Development Fund; United States Alternate Governor of the Asian Development Bank; and Alternate Governor of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Provisions in the emergency supplemental spending bill under debate on Capitol Hill could invalidate federal contracting set-asides for small businesses, warned the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Small Business Committee today. In a letter to appropriations committee leaders, they warned that Section 5001 of the bill, which requires large agencies to promote “competitive procedures” for their contracts, would wipe out existing programs that favor small firms. To remedy the problem, they suggested that contracts awarded according to the Small Business Act and two other, set-aside-related laws be exempt from the sections in question.--Jenny Mandel

The IRS has more than tripled the number of annual audits of middle-class taxpayers since 2000, the New York Times reports today. If you're income is between $25,000 and $100,000 per year, your odds of being audited rose from 1 in 377 to 1 in 140. It's all part of an IRS plan to boost the audit rate across the board, even as the agency's staff declines. The idea is to make sure people are aware that the tax man may be watching, even if individual audits aren't as thorough as they used to be.

From Wired: "How to Get Off a Government Watch List." Hint: It's " a tedious and not-very transparent process."

Not everybody is excited about the idea of creating a U.S. Public Service Academy. Witness the following from an editorial yesterday in the Phoenix-based East Valley Tribune:

Move over, Air Force Academy. Make way, Annapolis. Watch out, West Point. If some in Congress get their way, there soon might be a National Public Service Academy, styled loosely (probably very loosely) on these older institutions, that will take America’s best and brightest and mold them into the federal uber-bureaucrats of the future. We shudder at the thought.

A better way to attract Americans to public service, the editorial argues, is to "overhaul the way the government operates, by clearing away red tape, reforming a civil service system that creates and protects deadwood, and instituting a pay structure that rewards real skills and real performance."

That's how President Bush characterized the nation's response to today's shootings at Virginia Tech. More from the brief statement:

Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community.

For now at least, the FBI is playing "an assistance role only," a spokesman says. More from the FBI.

If, like millions of other Americans, you have your income taxes on your mind today, here's who you have to thank:

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That's Rep. Justin Morrill, R-Vt., former chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Taxation, who was the architect of the nation's first income tax in 1862, enacted to finance the Civil War. The tax was repealed 10 years later, then reenacted in 1894 before the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional. That problem was solved in 1913, with the approval of the 16th Amendment. The rest is the kind of revenue history we get to make every year about this time.

It's all about the people. CIA Director Michael Hayden provided just the latest example of that truism in a C-SPAN interview that aired last night. As the Washington Post reported Sunday, Hayden noted in the Q&A session with C-SPAN's Brian Lamb that more than half of his agency's employees have been hired since 9/11, and 20 percent of its analysts within the last year. "Right now, my biggest challenge is absorbing the growth we've had inside the agency and putting these new resources to work in an efficient and effective way," Hayden said. Among the reasons for the brain drain that led to the recent hiring binge: the departure of employees to work at newly created organizations within the U.S. intelligence apparatus, the lure of employment with contractors eager to hire workers with security clearances, and the unpopularity of Gates' predecessor, Porter Goss.

Here's a pair of statistics for you: Imported food accounts for 13 percent of the national diet, but only 1.3 percent of incoming food shipments are ever inspected by U.S. authorities. With limited resources, the Food and Drug Administration focuses on foods that pose a high risk of contamination, such as fish, shellfish, fruit and vegetables, AP reports. But that leaves out products like contaminated Chinese wheat gluten that recently poisoned dogs and cats around the country.

A new Consumer Reports survey shows that 84 percent of Americans think that pharmaceutical companies have too much influence over the government officials who regulate them. The study comes as Congress prepares to reauthorize the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, under which drug companies help pay for the approval process for new drugs. The poll showed that more than 60 percent of Americans agree that the Food and Drug Administration and Congress don't do enough to protect consumers from potentially harmful drugs. (Hat tip: Pharmalot.)

Where is the Army looking for its newest soldiers? The Air Force.

So what happens when you've only got one air traffic controller working in a tower at a regional airport, and nature calls? Tell pilots to circle the airport while he goes to the bathroom, the Denver Post reports.

Evan J. Horowitz, a structural engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., gets to bring his golden retriever puppy, Aries, to work every day. That's because Horowitz is training the dog under the Leader Dogs for the Blind program. Of course, this being the federal government, Horowitz had to jump through a few hoops to get approval for the on-the-job training. Here's his description of the process:

"It took a little bit of diligence to get through to all the right people, especially trying to figure out who all the right people were. I contacted the office of safety, security, questioned legal and of course the management and my co-workers to make sure they were okay with a puppy in the office."

Oh, and if you're wondering where Aries got her name, Horowitz used to work on NASA's Airborne Research Integrated Experiments System.

Yes, the White House says, the Bush administration is looking for a "war czar" to "cut through the bureaucracy" and issue directives across agencies to coordinate America's military efforts overseas. So reports the Washington Times today. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino says the Bush administration is "talking to people" about who might fill such a position. She says they haven't offered the post to anybody yet. But that, as the Washington Post reported yesterday, hasn't stopped a series of retired four-star generals from turning down the job. Maybe they're just launching a preemptive strike in the event a formal offer is made.

From 2001 to 2006, Kristo Ivanov helped about 870 people fraudulently sneak into the United States. His scam? Preparing visa applications for them saying they were circus performers. Ivanov, who came to the country in 1980 as an acrobat for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and who is now a naturalized citizen, was sentenced yesterday to 15 months in prison for inducing aliens to enter the United States illegally and making false statements in visa applications.

Fedblog is taking a mini-spring break the first part of this week. I may post an item here or there, but will mostly be out of commission until I return on Thursday. See you then!

Ever thought it might be nice to own a lighthouse? Well, GSA's got some for sale.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are not thrilled about President Bush's continued use of recess appointments to fill key positions in his administration. But it's not like it's an uncommon tactic. Bush has used the recess option 165 times, USA Today reports. That's more than Bill Clinton's mark of 140 such appointments, but still a ways short of Ronald Reagan's record of 243.

Hey, here's an idea: Use LSD or marijuana as a weapon on the battlefield to get our enemies so stoned they can't beat us. That may sound crazy, but Army officials actually tested the concept on volunteer subjects back in the '60s, USA Today reports. Unfortunately, they decided it just wouldn't work. "LSD was rejected for weapons use," the paper reports, "because even soldiers on prolonged trips could carry out violent acts." As for pot, researchers concluded that "its effects could be overcome simply by lying down and resting."

In her interview with Defense Secretary Robert Gates this week, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham hit all the big topics of the day: whether the "surge" in Iraq is working, the release of 15 British sailors held captive in Iran, and supplemental funding for the military. But then she faced a choice: whether to quiz him on his proposal to grow the size of the armed forces, or to zero in on a more important subject: barbecue. Here's how it turned out:

INGRAHAM: Well, Mr. Secretary, we're running out of time. There are so many issues I wanted to talk to you about, including the size of our military. And I know your proposal to grow the military, which I'm so interested in. But we have to ask you a really important question before you go. Have you found any decent barbeque in the Washington, D.C. area?

SEC. GATES: No. (Chuckles.) I have to go back to Texas for that, I think!

INGRAHAM: Well, you know, Rudy's was my favorite. When I pulled out of College Station a couple of weeks ago, giving a speech down there, I was in heaven at Rudy's.

SEC. GATES: I was a regular at Rudy's.

INGRAHAM: Were you really? What was your favorite? Were you a pulled-pork man, or were you more the beef brisket? What did you do?

SEC. GATES: I'm pork ribs, period.

INGRAHAM: Oh, pork ribs. That is a fascinating look into your psyche that you're a pork ribs person, Mr. Secretary.

SEC. GATES: (Laughs.) With the regular sauce, not the sissy sauce.

Denning McTague, a 40-year old intern at the National Archives last summer, has pleaded guilty to smuggling 150 Civil War-era documents out of the Archives and putting them up for sale on eBay, AP reports. McTague snuck the papers out by sticking them in a yellow legal pad. The stolen documents, according to the report, included "telegrams concerning the troops’ weaponry, the War Department’s announcement of Lincoln’s death sent to soldiers, and a letter from famed cavalryman James Ewell Brown Stuart." A Gettysburg publishing company noticed the items for sale online and got suspicious. Moral of the story? The Archives might want to look into boosting its security procedures, and cast a skeptical eye on 40-year-olds who want to work as interns.

Here's a rundown on the news stories and blog posts we've published today from our Excellence in Government conference:

• Intelligence chief pushes security clearance reform


• OMB readies new guidance on measuring job competition savings


• Google seeks to crawl all over federal sites


• Telework as recruiting tool

So I'm officially liveblogging the Excellence in Government from the Washington Convention Center. This morning, acting at least partly out of self-interest, I sat in on a session led by JL Needham of Google about the agency's company's ongoing effort to try to convince agencies to open up their Web sites to search engine crawlers (not just Google's, Microsoft's and Yahoo's, too). Needham made his case by showing that Google searches using the terms "statistician jobs government" and "disaster housing government" turned up little, if any, relevant information from federal sites. Walter Warnick of the Energy Department's Office of Scientific and Technical Information and Brand Niemann, a Web services specialist at the Environmental Protection Agency, both noted that they've adopted the Sitemaps tool that Google is pushing.

“There were no Americans being shot at the Interior Department in 1995.”

--Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., to the New York Times on the difference between the clash involving House Republicans and President Clinton over shutting down the federal government in 1995, and the current dispute between the Democratic Congress and President Bush over Iraq war policy.

It's that time of year again, for GovExec's annual Excellence in Government conference. We've got a pretty heavy-hitting lineup this year, including Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani, Jr., vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If you can't make it to the conference, fear not: We'll be providing regular blog updates and news reports today and tomorrow.

Steve Kelman, Harvard University professor, former Clinton administration procurement policy chief and occasional GovExec contributor, has an op-ed in the Washington Post today on inspectors general. The gist of his argument: They give out too many demerits and not enough gold stars. "IGs seem to subscribe to the opposite of the theory that if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all," Kelman writes. This, he says, "demoralizes civil servants."

A park ranger near Yavapai Observation Station in Grand Canyon National Park tells a group of visitors how the canyon was formed:

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(Mark Lellouch, Grand Canyon National Park)

Attention National Weather Service, FEMA, SBA, etc.: Buckle up. Looks like you're in for a bumpy ride this summer.

Did you get everything done you were supposed to do in March? The Office of Personnel Management did.

The folks at the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program got to live out a dream shared by literally millions of members of the armed services, the civilian federal bureaucracy and, heck, the citizenry at large: They got to zap a reporter with a non-lethal pain ray. And they've got the video to prove it. (Scroll down to "ADS Media Exposure Video" under "ADS Media Day - January 24, 2007.") It was all part of a demonstration of the Active Denial System, a weapon that focuses millimeter waves on its target to produce an intolerable heat sensation, causing the reporter -- I mean, "target" -- to get the hell out of the way as quickly as he or she can move.

(Hat tip: Danger Room.)

NASA officials have found somebody to run the agency's new Office of the Chief Scientist. And they didn't have to look far: It's John Mather, who's currently at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., heading the Cosmic Background Explorer Mission. Mather's certainly qualified for his new post: He and George Smoot of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory won the Nobel Prize for physics last year for their work in explaining the Big Bang. In his new job, Mather will set mission and research budget priorities for all NASA science programs.

The General Services Administration puts on workshops around the country for would-be federal contractors. The New York Times reported on one such session yesterday, noting that for some attendees, sitting through such seminars doesn't completely clarify the process of doing business with Uncle Sam. "I wished I had walked away with a sense that it was a much less daunting task,” said Howard Epstein, executive vice president of small a management consulting firm in Brooklyn that specializes in helping companies conduct employee assessments. “But it continues to be a daunting task.”

The Transportation Security Administration wants complete control over its checkpoints, thank you very much. And airport police aren't happy about it. An organization representing police units at airports across the country has lodged a protest against a TSA proposal to prohibit airport police from closing security checkpoints in emergencies, USA Today reports. Police shouldn't have to wait around for TSA to take action in crisis situations, the cops say.

GOP presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani told ABC's "20/20" that if he's elected, he'd let his wife sit in on Cabinet meetings if she felt like it. That allowed the network's "Nightline" to spring a trap for Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic candidate John Edwards, by asking her if she'd like to become a de facto member of her husband's Cabinet if he's elected. But she didn't fall for it, AP reports. Instead, Edwards told the TV news magazine that the first lady has a "great big megaphone, and you get to talk about things you care about, and I hope I'd be busy doing that and mothering my adorable children as opposed to sitting in Cabinet meetings."