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The folks behind the effort to create a U.S. Public Service Academy are riding high these days. Not only did they get Hilary Clinton to endorse legislation to create such an institution, she actually mentioned it in last week's YouTube Democratic presidential debate. It's about 1:30 into the video below:

Apparently, the future is now for the Army's Future Combat Systems project. Last week, Army Times reported that the service has decided to come up with a new name for the project, under the theory that it's happening now, not at some distant point in the future. (Of course, as GovExec's Greg Grant reported in May, the jury's out on whether it will work the way the Army thinks it will.)

Now, the folks over at Danger Room have launched a contest to come up with a new name befitting the program. And, of course, along with the serious entries, there are some snarky ones. To wit:

• Fortunate Contractor Scenario


• Fantastic Cash Sink


• Future Congressional Subpoenas


• Battle-Oriented Optical Networking Data Operations Ground-Geared Linkage Elements (do the acronym yourself)

Wait just a minute: That much-ballyhooed plan to take some of the 22,000 jobs that are slated to move to Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia under the latest Base Realignment and Closure plan and instead shift them to a site that now contains some GSA warehouses in Springfield? It's not quite a done deal yet, the Examiner reports today. Congress needs to act to make the move possible, and one sticking point is that GSA says it's actually using the warehouses.

The price of becoming a U.S. citizen has just gone up, from $400 to $675, the New York Times notes. It's all part of a plan by the Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau to collect an additional $1.1 billion a year in revenue to hire 1,500 agents to cut processing time for immigration applications.

It was another record-setting year for the Combined Federal Campaign in 2006, the Office of Personnel Management reports, with more than $271 million in pledges. That's up from $268 million the year before. The largest local campaign, in the national capital area, saw pledges of more than $60 million, up $2.4 million over 2005.

Susanne Franza Valdez, executive director of the Greater St. Louis Federal Executive Board until she retired in March 2007, won OPM's CFC Leadership Award. Despite a drop of nearly 10 percent in federal employment in the St. Louis area in recent years, pledges there rose to $3.2 million in 2006, up 14 percent from their 2002 level.

USA Today hops on the story of the burgeoning backlog of Social Security disability claims this morning, a sure sign that it's reaching crisis proportions.

Early this year, SSA officials had to go hat in hand to Congress to beg for some of its fiscal 2007 funding to be restored merely to avoid having to furlough thousands of employees.

For next year, President Bush has proposed a 3 percent increase in funding for disability claims processing. The House and Senate are contemplating increases in the 4 percent to 5 percent range. But SSA managers say even that won't be enough to make a dent in the backlog.

There are a lot of things you can say about this, but one of them isn't that we didn't see it coming. Here's Eric Yoder in the September 2001 issue of Government Executive.

During the next 10 years, the Social Security Administration's retirement processing workload is projected to increase by one-fifth as the oldest of the 77 million baby boomers enter their 60s. At the same time, the disability insurance workload is projected to rise by one-half as the rest of the boomers hit ages at which they are more likely to file disability claims. By 2020, the retirement workload will increase by one-half and the disability workload by three-fourths over current levels. Meanwhile, claims under the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program for the poor, disabled and elderly are expected to grow by one-fifth by 2020.

Worse, the workload will surge just as the agency is facing a retirement wave of its own. The average Social Security employee is about 47 years old and has about 20 years of service. By 2010, 28,000 of its current 65,000 workers will be eligible to retire. Take away another 10,000 expected to leave in the next nine years for other reasons, and the agency may have to replace more than half its workforce just as it is gearing up for the increase in workload and incorporating new technologies to process applications, deliver payments and follow up on beneficiaries.

With the Democrats running the show in the first full budget cycle since they re-took control of Congress last fall, there aren't that many agencies facing budget cuts. But one Labor Department office is -- and it's the Republicans who aren't happy about it. The Washington Times reports today on the House's move to cut 4 percent from the budget of the Office of Labor-Management Standards, which oversees whether private-sector labor unions spend their members' dues legally. A little over a week ago, the House approved $45.7 million for OLMS in the fiscal 2008 Labor-HHS appropriations bill. That's $2 million less than in 2007, and $11 million shy of what President Bush sought for the agency. Now at least two Senate Republicans are seeking to undo the House's action.

Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Tom Davis, R-Va. -- the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee -- have had their share of run-ins lately over the panel's agenda. But they've found one thing to agree on: the committee's ongoing interest in the issue of steroids in professional sports.

This time, ESPN the Magazine reports, the "sport" in question is professional wrestling. Waxman and Davis have written a letter to Vince McMahon, head of World Wrestling Entertainment, demanding that he provide records about the the organization's steroids testing policies.

"WWE has a responsibility to do everything possible to eliminate the use of performance-enhancing drugs -- or the perception of such use -- by its wrestlers," the lawmakers wrote.

What?! Pro wrestlers using steroids? The next thing you're going to tell me is that the matches are fixed. This is just shocking.

I already knew that the military has more band members than the State Department has diplomats, but who knew that the Forest Service has its own "official old-time string band"?

The city of White Plains, N.Y., is not happy with the Marine Corps -- specifically, with Marine recruiters who have racked up more than $90,000 in unpaid parking tickets dating back to 2001. Now, the Journal-News reports, the city's parking commissioner, Albert Moroni, has impounded one of the Marine recruiters' cars and is threatening to sell it at auction if the service doesn't pay its fines. Moroni worked with the General Services Administration to determine exactly which federal organizations were responsible for serial parking violations in the city. And it turned out that the Marines do seem to have a problem. On the list of scofflaws, vehicles with diplomatic plates were a distant second to the Marines, with $5,910 in unpaid tickets, followed by Army recruiters, with $3,575 in pending fines.

Still, GSA has apparently warned Moroni that if he follows through on his threat to sell off a federal vehicle, he might receive a visit from the FBI.

This isn't federal, but I had to share it anyway. While reading this story in the Wall Street Journal today, I came across one of those anecdotes that takes a minute to sink in, then makes you say, "What?!?"

The tale involves Alan Huttmann, head of HA Logistics, a trucking company. With expenses soaring at his firm, Huttman sought the solace of a group of fellow CEOs, who were quick to tell him to dump managers and close one of his offices. "One CEO," the story recounts, "came to HA Logistics's Christmas party to vet the managers himself, later telling Mr. Huttmann which ones he'd suggest firing."

Really? The head of an organization actually used its Christmas party as a stealth opportunity to force managers to audition to keep their jobs in front of a total stranger, without even knowing it? Wow.

Can anybody come up with a story to top that in the federal sector?

Not surprisingly, several U.S. senators are less than satisfied with the federal response to the case of Andrew Speaker, the Georgia man thought to have an extremely drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis who was nevertheless able to sneak back into the United States after a trip overseas. Now, Government Executive columnist and National Journal correspondent Shane Harris reports on his blog, Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., are asking the Government Accountability Office for a detailed report on the government's handling of the situation.

"We should never again have a situation where delays and failures in communication between the federal government, other domestic public health officials and relevant commercial entities lead to needless exposure and risk," the senators wrote in a letter to GAO chief David Walker.

Attention, Bureau of Prisons. Some folks over in the Philippines have a new prisoner exercise routine you might want to check out.

(Hat tip: Foreign Policy's Passport, via Andrew Sullivan)

“As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm’s way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies.”

--Brig. Gen. William Troy, former interim commander at Fort Lewis, Wash., in a May e-mail message announcing that the base would shift from holding separate memorial services for each soldier killed in action after deploying from the base to holding combined services once a month. That policy has been delayed after soldiers' families and veterans protested it, the New York Times reports.

Lucky me! "Francis V" of the "Refund Operations Department" at the IRS just e-mailed me to let me know that I'm "eligible to receive a tax refund of $103.82." And not only that, he helpfully says he'll "make this refund directly to your visa and/or mastercard linked to your checking/savings account instead a check or a direct deposit."

Wow! So all I have to is give up my debit card information to my buddy "Francis" and I'll have my hands on that sweet 103 bucks? Sign me up!

Wait a minute. You say I'm not the only one who happens to have exactly $103.82 waiting for him? Damn!

What does the commissioner of the National Basketball Association have in common with the directors of the FBI and the CIA? According to the current NBA commissioner, David Stern, it's that they've all been blameless victims of rogue employees -- in Stern's case, a referee under investigation for allegedly betting on games he worked. Here's Stern at a news conference yesterday when asked whether he was surprised that the league's security apparatus didn't uncover the ref's activities:

"I guess, yes, I'm surprised; but I think no more surprised than the head of the FBI, the head of the CIA, that rogue employees turn on their country in criminal activity despite the best investigative procedures you can possibly imagine."

Imagine you're a civilian Army employee working in Iraq, riding alongside service members in your Humvee when it's hit by a roadside bomb. You receive initial treatment for your severe injuries, but then you're turned away from military hospitals for ongoing treatment. Instead, you're told to work through the Labor Department's Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, where you find out that your war wounds don't really match any of its bureaucratic workplace injury codes. You then embark on an odyssey of trying to find doctors in the civilian health care system with experience treating your injuries.

That's what happened to Mike Helms, a counterintelligence expert with the Army's 902nd Military Intelligence Group, the Washington Post reports today. Helms' description of his plight is heartbreaking:

"I did not have an 'accident' while working. I was subjected to an offensive attack by an enemy of the U.S. government who attempted to kill me. Why am I under workers' comp if workers' comp does not recognize a combat injury?"

Helms, of course, is hardly the first federal employee to run into roadblocks at OWCP. As Brian Friel reported in Government Executive in Sept. 2002:

Survivors of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, continue to deal with the workers' compensation office today. Many survivors report that dealing with OWCP has been a roller coaster ride: Responsive, competent claims examiners ease some interactions, while nonresponsive, incompetent examiners mar others.

Thanks, National Institutes of Health. I thought my addiction to Diet Coke was my least unhealthy habit. Apparently I'm wrong.

Here's Jim McBride, "chief sexecutive officer" of MrSkin.com, a Web site that provides a guide to female nudity in Hollywood films, describing to the New York Times where the site's traffic comes from:

“I see ‘.gov’ and ‘.edus’ all the time.”

McBride also notes that visits to MrSkin have increased 35 percent since the site was featured in the film Knocked Up.

The Pentagon's apparently got a lot of extra stuff. It's junking hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of gear, including combat boots, helmets, vests and aircraft parts, the Associated Press reports. That's drawn the ire of military surplus dealers, who say they'd be happy to buy some of the junk the Defense Department is throwing on the scrap heap -- and sell it back to the military services later if it turns out they actually need the stuff.

The Wall Street Journal's all over the federal contracting beat today, with a front-page piece on problems with the Marine One helicopter contract (a classic case of mission creep is dragging it out), and another story on the inside about the breakdown of the lead systems integrator concept. (Full versions of both pieces are only available to subscribers.) Neither story breaks a lot of new ground, but taken together, they provide more evidence that the government's inability to effectively manage the astronomical amount of money spent on contracts (more than $425 billion in fiscal 2006, as we'll be reporting in the Aug. 15 special Top 200 Federal Contractors issue of Government Executive) is more than just an inside-the-beltway issue.

Here's the Associated Press on the flap around massive delays at the State Department in processing passport applications:

The current passport mess is rare among government foul-ups: A top federal official has publicly taken the blame and expressed regret.

"Over the past several months, many travelers who applied for a passport did not receive their document in time for their planned travel. I deeply regret that," says Assistant Secretary of State Maura Harty, who is in charge of passports for U.S. citizens. "I accept complete responsibility for this."

But is it really "rare" that government officials accept such blame? As I wrote a few years ago, there is actually no shortage in government of people who take "full responsibility" for bad things that happen. In fact, they do it all the time. Donald Rumsfeld did it after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal came to light. President Bush did it after the failed federal Hurricane Katrina response. (And Louisiana's Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, did it relative to the state response.)

What is lacking is actual consequences for failures. Meghan Daum, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, had a great line about this in reference to L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's recent acceptance of "full responsibility" for his relationship with Telemundo newscaster Mirthala Salinas:

The "full responsibility" phrase has been uttered with such astonishing frequency by people who mean precisely its opposite that it's become conversational filler, a throat-clearing noise so inconsequential that most listeners forget that they heard it as quickly as the speaker forgets that he said it.

I won't pass judgment on whether Maura Harty actually has "complete responsibility" for the passport delays. For all I know, many people and systems were to blame. But if she insists that it's her fault, then I have to ask, what are the consequences?

In case you missed it last week, next year's military pay raise (and by extension, the civilian raise, which is typically closely linked to whatever the troops get) got dragged into the whole debate over whether and when to pull our troops out of Iraq.

First, on Friday, President Bush made the following statement at the White House:

In February, I submitted to Congress a Defense Department spending bill for the upcoming fiscal year that will provide funds to upgrade our equipment for our troops in Iraq and provides a pay raise for our military -- it's a comprehensive spending request that Congress has failed to act on. Instead, the Democratic leaders chose to have a political debate on a precipitous withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. The House and Senate are now scheduled to leave for their August recess before passing a bill to support our troops and their missions. Even members of Congress who no longer support our effort in Iraq should at least be able to provide an increase in pay for our troops fighting there.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't take kindly to the insinuation that Democrats didn't care whether troops got a salary increase next year, and quickly fired back:

While Democrats have fought for a pay raise for our troops all along, the President was against the pay raise before he was for it. Two months ago, his Administration explicitly opposed Democratic efforts to give our troops a 3.5 percent raise and threatened to veto legislation if the pay raise was passed by Congress, calling it "unnecessary."

From a Government Accountability Office report (GAO-07-907) on the processing of claims under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 by the Labor Department and the Office of Special Counsel:

Since the start of [a] demonstration project on February 8, 2005, both DOL and OSC have had policies and procedures for receiving, investigating, and resolving USERRA claims against federal executive branch employers, with DOL investigating the ones from claimants with even-number social security numbers, and OSC those from claimants with odd social security numbers as well as those with related allegations of prohibited personnel practices.

Looks like some Interior Department employees may be in for a little unwanted scrutiny. News4 in Washington reports that a hot dog vendor who operated his stand outside the Interior headquarters building was arrested yesterday in a parking meter scam. Apparently the vendor, Wahid Rafiq, offered Interior employees and construction workers renovating the building a special service: In exchange for cash payoffs, he would feed their parking meters with "a device like a quarter on a string." One suspects that law enforcement officials may want to speak to any employees who might have received such services.

In an item about the indictment Thursday of a contract worker at a nuclear material cleanup site in Tennessee, the Project on Government Oversight includes a list of major security failures of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex since the Wen Ho Lee case broke in 1999. Here's a quick summary: It ain't pretty.

From the Office of Advocacy at the Small Business Administration: "Wealthier Nascent Entrepreneurs More Likely to Start Businesses."

The Transportation Security Administration is ending its policy of confiscating cigarette lighters from airline passengers, and acknowledging that it was a waste of time. Other items, like batteries, are just as likely to be used to set off bombs, TSA chief Kip Hawley told the New York Times.

“Taking lighters away is security theater,” Hawley said. “It trivializes the security process.”

Since would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid tried to set off a bomb on a flight from Paris to Miami in 2001 (using matches, not a lighter), TSA screeners have been collecting 22,000 lighters a day, and disposing of them at a cost of $4 million a year.

"Have you met Karl Rove?"

The Federal Aviation Administration may be having all kinds of trouble negotiating with its air traffic controllers, but that's not stopping the agency from reaching labor agreements with other groups of employees. FAA announced Wednesday that it had signed a new contract with about 1,200 engineers and architects who plan, design and install facilities, systems and equipment across the country. The agency, which has broad authority to negotiate with its employees over pay and other issues, says that it has now brought 84 percent of its workers under a pay-for-performance system.

The General Services Administration has added some new hybrid vehicles to its fleet: 55 Saturn Aura sedans, to be exact. The agency plans to lease 43 of the cars to the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps
and Navy, the Departments of Transportation, Interior, Energy and Commerce, and the Environmental Protection Agency and NASA. GSA will use the other 12 Saturns itself -- some of them as demonstration models during presentations to agencies.

GSA says it's bought more than 140,000 alternative fuel vehicles and hybrids since 1991.

Among the papers recently released by the Richard Nixon Presidential Library is a gem of a memo from 1970 that the former president sent to his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, arguing that the White House staff needed to do more to convince the public that Nixon was a warm human being. It included this defensive little nugget about the president's relationships with top federal executives:

[Domestic Affairs Adviser John] Ehrlichman is constantly bugging me that I am going to have to see the Cabinet more and the sub-Cabinet more. And [Assistant to the President Peter] Flanigan, of course, is after me to see the members of the agencies. No President could have done more than I have done in this respect and particularly in the sense that I have treated them like dignified human beings, and not like dirt under my feet.

Here are some highlights from the most recent semiannual report of the Agriculture Department inspector general's office:

• Meat Processing Plant Agrees To Pay More Than $100,000 in a Civil Settlement for
  Falsifying Fat Content in Sausage Products


• Investigation Uncovers $5.2 Million in Illegally Exported Fruit


• Corporate Shareholder Sentenced for Illegal Sale of Ocelot

This just goes to show you that it's not every day that a special agent at the USDA OIG operation makes national news with a high-profile case. Then again, it's not every day that one plays a key role in an investigation leading to the indictment of an NFL quarterback on dog-fighting charges. But special agent in charge Brian L. Haaser did just that.

By the way, lest you think the whole dog-fighting thing is not that big a deal, here's a description of what allegedly went on at Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick's house, with his participation, according to the indictment:

For a particular dog fight, the participants would establish a purse for the winning side, ranging from the hundreds to thousands of dollars. Participants and spectators would also place side-bets on the fight. The dog fight would last until the death or surrender of the losing dog. At the end of the fight, the losing dog was sometimes put to death by drowning, hanging, gunshot, electrocution, or another method.

Census Bureau Director Louis I. Kincannon tried to reassure a Senate subcommittee at a hearing yesterday that the agency's plan to switch to handheld devices for the 2010 census will go off without a hitch. In the process, he noted (according to this Washington Post report) that of 1,388 handhelds the agency has tested so far, "only five had problems out of the box."

That may be an impressive number for these types of devices. But it still gives me pause. With the Census planning to use more than 500,000 handhelds, that would mean more than 1,800 wouldn't function -- and that's assuming the failure rate of the test project holds as the effort scales up. And remember, these numbers refer to devices that fail "out of the box" -- in other words, don't work at all right from the start. The figures don't include devices develop problems later on, or are dropped or otherwise damaged in the data-gathering process.

By the way, since he's too modest to mention it on his own blog, I'll note that Allan Holmes' story on the handhelds from the July 15 issue of Government Executive played a key role in the hearings, serving as a focus of questioning of Kincannon by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

"RAND Recommends U.S. Military Adopt Consumer Marketing Strategies to Reach Iraqi and Afghan Civilians"

(Hat tip: Matthew Yglesias)

Here's an interesting observation by David J. Kilcullen, a former Australian Army lieutenant colonel who is now a senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq:

At present, the U.S. defense budget accounts for approximately half of total global defense spending, while the U.S. armed forces employ about 1.68 million uniformed members. By comparison, the State Department employs about 6,000 foreign service officers, while the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has about 2,000. In other words, the Department of Defense is about 210 times larger than USAID and State combined—there are substantially more people employed as musicians in Defense bands than in the entire foreign service.

(Hat tip: Foreign Policy's Passport blog, via Andrew Sullivan)

From the National Institutes of Health: "Ability to Listen to Two Things at Once Is Largely Inherited, Says Twin Study."

My question is, what about my inability to listen to even one thing at a time? Can I blame that on genetics?

Future astronauts may want to spend a little bit more time on the treadmill and in the weight room. Because, UPI reports, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing a new skintight space suit for future Moon and Mars explorers. The idea is to move beyond traditional bulky suits to give astronauts more room to move, without sacrificing safety.

Apparently, being a rocket scientist doesn't necessarily mean you can spell.

(Hat tip: Wonkette)

When it comes to disaster response, Texas has decided that it can't count on the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Houston Chronicle reports that the state is implementing a plan that assumes critical supplies such as ice and water will be provided by "big box" retailers -- including Wal-Mart and Home Depot -- not FEMA.

"If FEMA shows up, good," says Jack Colley, chief of the Texas Governor's Division of Emergency Management. ''But we're not waiting."

The big retailers are being brought into the planning process on the front end, to glean their ideas about the best ways to move supplies if necessary. When disasters strike, they'll get advance notice of the state's response plans.

FEMA's reaction to the idea? That it sounds "great," according to a spokesman. Anything the state can get its hands on independently, the agency says, is one less thing FEMA has to worry about.

(Hat tip: Danger Room)

Administrative employees of the Office of Personnel Management's Human Capital Leadership and Merit System Accountability Division have proven their own leadership and merit by winning a public-private competition to keep their jobs. Well, not exactly all of their jobs. In order to win the competition, the employees of the unit had to form a "most efficient organization," which determined that their work could be done by 7.5 full-time equivalent employees, down from the 11 the office currently employs.

The office joins a long line of other OPM operations that have prevailed in job competitions conducted under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 in recent years.

When it comes to best practices in witness protection, the U.S. Marshals Service apparently leads the way. USA Today reports that the agency is helping about a dozen countries set up witness protection programs for figures involved in high-profile prosecutions. The agency has helped relocate about 7,500 witnesses and 9,500 family members in the past 37 years. The Marshals Service's Thomas Wight admits there is a "bit of an aura" surrounding the U.S. program due to the way it has been depicted by Hollywood over the years.

The Office of Government Ethics has a new training tool: crossword puzzles. Seriously. The agency is developing a set of puzzles on ethics issues. The idea is that agencies can use the puzzles to help with training efforts. OGE already has posted the first one, on misuse of employee position. It's available for download, or if, you're using a Java-enabled browser, you can fill it out online. It's a pretty rudimentary puzzle, and not that hard, even for someone who's never held a government job.

(Hat tip: Interagency Ethics Council Journal)

Newt Gingrich hasn't officially returned to politics yet, but that hasn't stopped him from running against the government. “We need to rip apart every single government bureaucracy,” he told Norfolk, Va.-area Republicans yesterday, according to a report in the Virginian-Pilot. “We’ve replaced government for the people with government for the government.”

It's enough to make you wonder why Gingrich didn't solve that problem when he was speaker of the House and his party controlled both houses of Congress. But actually, we know the answer to that question, don't we? First, because it's really, really hard to do. And second, because when you start pulling the lid off all of these agencies and programs, it turns out a lot of them are doing their jobs pretty well, and almost all of them have strong constituencies that even the most hardcore government-hater can't afford to alienate. That's why anti-bureaucracy talk like this (from all sides of the political spectrum, by the way) has always been more about rhetoric than reality.

If you're going to make a Web site talking about how much you don't like your federal job and your co-workers, it would be best not to do it with a government computer, on official time, and including unauthorized documents. Because if you do, you're likely to be fired, and the Merit Systems Protection Board and the courts are unlikely to show you much sympathy, FedSmith's Susan Smith reports.

As a parent, I love Father's Day. In our house, it involves presents, and it means I get to do whatever I want for a day. But Parents' Day? C'mon.

It always amuses me to think that some White House functionary has to write words like this to put in the president's mouth on these kinds of made-up occasions:

The guidance and unconditional love of parents help create a nurturing environment so children can grow and reach their full potential. Parents work to impart to their children the strength and determination to follow their dreams and the courage to do what is right. They shape the character of their children by sharing their wisdom and setting a positive example. As role models, parents also instill the values and principles that help prepare children to be responsible adults and good citizens.

Are you interested in buying Richard Nixon's former Washington home? Do you have $4.5 million? How about Gerald Ford's old place in Alexandria? It's only $899,000. Both places are available, the Washington Post's Reliable Source reports. (Look under "Surreal Estate.") And both have recently come down in price. I guess ex-presidential real estate is just like any other real estate in the Washington area these days.

Given that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has developed a "gut feeling" that terrorists may launch another strike on U.S. soil, Ryan Singel of Wired's "Threat Level" blog has developed a helpful new color- and food-coded threat level system. You have to click on the link to get the full effect, but here's the gist: it runs from "Tofu Pup" to "Danger Dog."

NASA's getting a new No. 3. The agency's associate administrator, Rex Geveden, announced Wednesday that he's leaving the agency at the end of the month to join Teledyne Technologies. He'll be succeeded by Christopher Scolese, who currently is NASA's chief engineer. Scolese has been with the agency since 1987, and previously has served as deputy director of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and deputy associate administrator in the agency's Office of Space Science.

Breathe easy, California federal employees. People who call your agency can't secretly tape their phone conversations with you, even if they want to share such a tape with your supervisor because they think you're being rude and not doing your job. Or so says Ron Sokol, who writes the "Ask the Lawyer" column for DailyBreeze.com in Los Angeles. "I do not find support for the proposition that it is legal to tape a conversation with a federal employee without his or her permission," Sokol says.

It used to be that the folks who plied their trade providing services to federal agencies could operate in relative anonymity. But now there's more scrutiny than ever of their work, and that of the agencies they work for. Here's just the latest evidence: The Washington Post has launched a blog, Government Inc., devoted entirely to procurement issues. The blog is written by Robert O'Harrow Jr., a financial reporter at the Post who has long focused on the federal contracting industry.

The corner of the defense contracting industry devoted to developing systems to secure equipment and cargo may seem mundane, but apparently it's filled with intrigue. The Washington Times reports today that Robert Fischetti, former sales director at Peck & Hale LLC in West Sayville, N.Y. -- which makes such systems -- has pleaded guilty to trying to rig bids on Defense contracts. And he's not the only one: Two Pennsylvania executives have already entered guilty pleas on bid-rigging charges in cases involving Navy contracts for metal sling hoist assemblies.

From The Hill: "Ex- Convicts and Addicts May Get DoD Clearance"

(Hat tip: Danger Room)

It's rewarding to see that Bob Brewin's story on the potential for denial-of-service attacks targeting the new virtual border fence is getting a nice little run in the blogsophere. The Influence Peddler picked up on the piece yesterday, and was followed in short order by Mickey Kaus over at Slate (you have to scroll down the page a bit to see the reference) and Instapundit.

Now if we could just get any of them to name the publication in which the story originated. Oh well...

My colleague Matt Yglesias at The Atlantic has a post today on a subject near and dear to my heart: neckties. The jumping-off point is a Mark Kleiman blog post on a move by the European Commission to ban tie-wearing by its bureaucrats in the summer. Apparently, the idea is that without ties, men will be able to tolerate warmer offices, cutting down on air conditioning use. I'm not sure I buy that logic, but anything that contributes to cutting back on the regular use of silk strangulation devices is OK by me.

Yglesias remarks that Washington remains "one of the most formal of American cities at this point." But one of his commenters says that's only true "if you are stuck in politics or law down here. You don't see people walking around NIH, NSF, and Goddard wearing suits and ties."

That's actually been my sense of federal workplaces in general for awhile. But obviously you, Fedblog readers, would know better than me. Is the tie going the way of the dinosaur, at least in the summer?

Oooh, it's a full-blown federal procurement catfight! In this corner, Harvard professor, Federal Computer Week blogger and former Office of Federal Procurement policy chief Steve Kelman. And in this corner, Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight.

I'm not even going to try to describe the issues that separate the two sides, which have something to do with the government's rules on "buying commercial." I'll just admit to being entertained by the fact that it's getting personal, which is not something you see every day in the world of federal contracting policy.

I have a feeling this news won't generate a whole lot of sympathy for people who try to enter the United States illegally, but here it is: Apparently, the phone systems used at Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities leave something to be desired. The systems are used to allow detained immigrants to make free phone calls to consulates of their home countries for help, but the Washington Times reports that the Government Accountability Office has found "systemic problems" with the phones at 16 of 17 facilities reviewed.

In its defense, ICE notes that the number of detainees has gone from 95,000 in 2001 to 283,000 last year, and says the vast majority of calls don't go through due to reasons beyond its control--like a detainee hanging up or a consulate never picking up the phone. Still, the agency says it's committed to fixing problems with the system.

Congratulations, Antonio Perez-Rodriguez! You're the 100,000th Defense Department employee to convert to the National Security Personnel System! And for that, you get a plaque, personally presented by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.

The new San Francisco Federal Building may be winning kudos from architecture aficionados and proponents of sustainable design, but it's getting mixed reviews from the federal employees who actually have to work in it, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Some love its futuristic shape and environmental friendliness. Others says it's ugly and that floor-to-ceiling windows--designed to bathe workspaces in natural light--create too much glare on computer screens.

Because the building relies on a natural ventilation system, its temperature varies from 68 to 81 degrees. And its main elevators stop only only every third floor, forcing employees to use stairs to reach the floors in between. But apparently some are cheating and using a separate elevator designed for people with disabilities that opens on every floor.

RJ Hillhouse, who writes a blog called The Spy Who Billed Me, had a piece in the Sunday Outlook section of the Washington Post on outsourcing at the CIA. The agency's National Clandestine Service is still managed by government employees (known as "blue badgers"), she writes, but more than 50 percent of the operation is made up of contractors ("green badgers").

So just how many contract employees are working in the entire intelligence community? Shane Harris hazarded a guess in the June 15 issue of Government Executive: 40,000. There are about 100,000 intelligence professionals in government employment at civilian and military agencies.

Last month, Shane Harris reported in National Journal that the Homeland Security Department faces a tough transition to the next presidential administration because so many of its top officials are political appointees. Now the House Homeland Security Committee is set to report that many of the department's top slots are vacant. As of May 1, 138 vacancies of the top 575 positions at DHS were unfilled. DHS spokesman Russ Knocke tells the Washington Post that the second problem is a result of an effort to address the first: Homeland Security, he insists, created a bunch of top jobs and is in the process of recruiting seasoned managers to fill them.

With a heat wave raising the danger of wildfires in the West, the Forest Service and other federal agencies are dealing with the effects of an exodus of mid- and upper-level employees in their firefighter ranks, the Associated Press reports. The problem apparently is that many of the people hired in an expansion in the 1970s are now departing (sort of like air traffic controllers).

California is being hit harder than other states because of its high cost of living, AP reports. Forest Service officials there have hired about 800 firefighters since last October but are still short about 470 people. And the real problem is that "there are a lot of people lower down in the system who are five or six years away from being able to compete for leadership jobs," says Ed Hollenshead, regional director of fire and aviation management.

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan links today to an important piece by Time's Joe Klein, who reports that troop levels in Iraq are destined to come down early next year, whether or not the Democrats succeed in pressuring President Bush to set firm timetables for withdrawing American forces.That's because in addition to "clocks" in Washington and Baghdad for ending the war, there's a "Broken Army clock," indicating when the force becomes exhausted.

"According to the Broken Army clock," Klein writes, "troop levels will begin to wane in March 2008, no matter what Congress decides in September; the current 20 brigade combat teams will be reduced to 15 by August 2008."

President Bush announced yesterday that he would nominate Stuart Ishimaru to serve another five-year term on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Apparently the fact that Ishimaru, a Democrat, was a vocal opponent of the commission's 2005 reorganization effort didn't stand in the way of his renomination.

I guess this can't exactly be characterized as shocking: Only one in five Americans think the federal government is doing enough to scrutinize people who come across the border, according to an AP-Ipsos poll, and only two out of five think the government's prepared to handle a disease outbreak of epidemic proportions. Post-Katrina, agencies and the Bush administration haven't succeeded in doing much to give people confidence that they can handle the next big bad thing.

Federal inspectors were able to slip a fake bomb -- but not a bottle of water -- pass Transportation Security Administration screeners during tests at Albany International Airport, the Albany Times-Union reports.

What really gets me about this story is the statement by a TSA spokeswoman explaining her refusal to talk about the tests: "We don't discuss the results because they tend to paint an inaccurate picture of the competency of our work force." Come again? Assuming that the picture is in fact inaccurate, how could you possibly corect it if you refuse to talk about it?

What's worse, the essence of this statement is that TSA won't talk about something if it thinks the subject makes the agency or its employees look bad. That simply isn't a legitimate reason for refusing to comment on taxpayer-funded public services to media organizations who report on the government's activities.

There may be other legitimate reasons for taking a no-comment policy in this case -- for example, not wanting to let potential terrorists in on the details of how we test our security operations. But simply trying to avoid any subject that might paint the agency in a bad light doesn't cut it.

It's common knowledge that many soldiers coming home from service in Iraq face severe mental health issues. And the State Department is dealing with similar issues regarding diplomats posted to the country. Now, the New York Times reports, another group is being heard from: contractors. There are more than 100,000 of them in Iraq, and in many cases they serve right alongside military forces, facing many of the same dangers. And they're often completely on their own to find help dealing with their problems after they get home.

What's NASA doing with spacecraft that have accomplished their missions, but are still out in space? Giving them new assignments.

My kids are finally old enough to demand that we avail ourselves of the opportunity presented by living just outside the nation's capital to head down to the Mall for the fireworks. A couple of quick thoughts on attending the festivities:

• The security was tight but highly efficient and downright friendly. The checkpoints moved swiftly, even though many people had to go through twice, and the evacuation of the Mall due to the threat of imminent thunderstorms appeared to go smoothly. A couple of sights that delighted me: security officials letting people hop on parked Metrobuses (which were being used to block intersections) to get out of the rain; and park rangers graciously interrupting their duties momentarily to take snapshots for visitors.
• The multiculturalism on display was downright inspiring. It was the most diverse group of races, creeds and colors that I had ever seen in my life, all gathering to celebrate the best this country has to offer.

Here's a cell phone picture that doesn't begin to do the event justice:

The Columbia Journalism Review asks a pair of important questions in its latest issue about media coverage of the State Department's effort to try to keep doing its job in war-torn Iraq:

The press ... has been more interested in the Pentagon’s effort to blame the State Department for the bungled nation-building effort—that somehow the lack of civil engineers, electricity-grid experts, and other specialists is due to State’s failure to, as President Bush said, “step up.” But this is not what diplomats do. They talk to people, negotiate, build relationships, and the like. Here are two basic questions that reporters need to unpack: Is it possible to perform effective diplomacy under such circumstances? And if not, then why is our government risking so many lives this way?

More than 78,000 American troops are still officially listed as missing in action from World War II. Another 8,100 are MIA from Korean War, and 1,750 from Vietnam. The Associated press reports today that the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, is painstakingly tracking down the remains of as many of these service members as they can -- even if that means hacking through thick foliage on Iwo Jima with machetes in search of long-abandoned caves.

The National Archives and Records Administration needs some new space to house records on military service members and civil service employees. And we're talking about a lot of new space: 900,000 square feet of it, to be exact. GlobeSt.com reports that the General Services Administration, working on the Archives' behalf, is seeking proposals to build two new facilities in St. Louis that would include both storage and office space. The buildings are designed to be more secure and modern than existing records storage facilities.

Starting now, you may notice the flag at your federal building flying at half-staff more often than it used to. That's because, as the New York Times reports, President Bush signed a law Friday saying that all federal buildings in a state have to comply when a governor orders flags lowered to honor fallen military service members. Before, some federal officials said they weren't under governors' jurisdiction, so they left their flags flying high, to the consternation of some families of troops killed in action.

The law also grants flag-lowering power to the mayor of the District of Columbia, so federal buildings in Washington will have to comply if he orders flags lowered.

Freshman Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., wants more independence for inspectors general. She's introduced legislation that would mandate that IGs be appointed for seven-year terms and only be removable for cause. IGs also would have to have management and oversight experience, couldn't take bonuses from their agencies and would submit their budget requests directly to the Office of Management and Budget. (That looks like a shot at the General Services Administration's Lurita Doan, who got in a high-profile budget spat with her agency's IG last year.)

The bill echoes a measure introduced in the House by Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., last month.

If you think those videos of Asian carp jumping into boats in the Midwest are simply hilarious, the Fish and Wildlife Service has a reality check for you. Check out this video:

And it gets even more dramatic in Part 2 of the same video:

(Hat tip: Matthew Yglesias)