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Well, this is just a great: A new Gallup survey (reported by Editor and Publisher) has found that Americans "express less trust in the federal government than at any point in the past decade, and trust in many federal government institutions is now lower than it was during the Watergate era, generally recognized as the low point in American history for trust in government."

And it's not just a matter of war weariness. Only 47 percent of people say they have a fair or better amount of trust in the federal government to deal with domestic issues.

It's also not a problem with government in general. "There has been no observable decline of public trust in state and local governments" in recent years, Gallup concludes.

Some Social Security Administration employees apparently can't take a hint. Even after an agency manager at the agency's Baltimore headquarters posted several signs on a restroom urging workers to be considerate and make sure that the handicapped stall was available to an employee who was actually disabled, on three different occasions the employee was denied access to the stall and ended up urinating in his pants.

Now, the Baltimore Sun reports, an administrative judge has ordered the agency to pay the employee $6,500 in damages.

The problem, the judge said, was that managers had not directly ordered employees to "refrain from using the wheelchair-accessible stalls if they were not disabled, or did not have a compelling reason to do so."

Update: I changed the sentence above because, as the alert commenter below notes, it should have said that managers had not issued direct orders to employees.

I'm shocked and amazed that there's actually a fairly vigorous debate going on in the blog this week about whether a federal employee should be charged with a felony for ripping the head off a duck. Opinions range from "People need cut him some slack" to "He should have like treatment done to him." Check it out if you haven't seen it yet.

Update: By the way, here are some new details on the case, courtesy of the Rocky Mountain News:

• The duck decapitator in question, Scott D. Clark, has been placed on paid administrative leave from his IG auditor job.


• This isn't the first time he's run into trouble with the law in connection with a bird killing. Last year, in Missouri, he was cited for illegally killing a wild turkey without a hunting tag. He pleaded guilty and paid a $168 fine.

For several years now, Slate's Timothy Noah has been all over the sordid story of President Nixon's efforts to purge Jews from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now comes a new installment. It's based on the release of previously untranscribed White House conversations about the crusade, and a memo by then-White House personnel director Fred Malek detailing, Noah writes, "the planned transfer of three Jews to less-visible jobs and the effective demotion of a BLS deputy with a Jewish-sounding surname."

It's a stunning story about not just anti-Semitism but the depths of Nixon's paranoia about the federal bureaucracy and the lengths he was prepared to go to bend it to his political will.

Some key Nixon quotes:

• "All right, I want a look at any sensitive areas around where Jews are involved.... See, the Jews are all through the government, and we have got to get in those areas. We've got to get a man in charge who is not Jewish to control the Jewish."


• "The government is full of Jews. Second, most Jews are disloyal. You know what I mean? You have a [White House Counsel Leonard] Garment and a [National Security Adviser Henry] Kissinger and, frankly, a [White House speechwriter William] Safire, and, by God, they're exceptions. But ... generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right?"


• "There's a Jewish cabal, you know, running through this.... But there's the BLS staff. Now how the hell do you ever expect us to get anything from that staff, the raw data, let alone what the poor guys have to say [inaudible] that isn't gonna be loaded against us? You understand?"

The good news for the Postal Service is that next year it expects to increase income and reduce spending. The bad news is the agency still expects to lose $600 million.

Here's another one for the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" files: The Rocky Mountain News reports that Scott D. Clark, an auditor with the Denver office of the Health and Human Services Department's inspector general office, is facing a felony animal cruelty charge related to an incident at an Embassy Suites hotel in St. Paul, Minn., where he had traveled for work.

According to witnesses, Scott cornered a duck near an atrium pond at the hotel and ripped its head off. Announcing, "I'm hungry. I'm gonna eat it," Clark got on an elevator with the headless bird and took it up to the fifth floor.

On top of that, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports, local law enforcement officials said in an official complaint filed against Clark that after police arrived on the scene, Clark said "that he worked for the federal government and when this was over he would have the officers' jobs."

When told that he was in trouble for killing the duck, Clark told officers, "Why, because I killed it out of season? Big deal, it's just a [expletive] duck."

Jonathan Shay, a staff psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic in Boston, has been named one of the winners of this year's $500,000 MacArthur Foundation "genius grants."

The foundation describes Shay as a "passionate advocate for veterans and committed to minimizing future psychological trauma." His "imaginative interpretations of the ancient accounts of battle described in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are deepening our understanding of the effects of warfare on the individual," the organization added.

"My main teachers have been the veterans themselves," Shay says in a video on the foundation's Web site. "And the deliciousness of discovering that Homer's poems were really a mirror that I could hold up to the stories I was hearing from the veterans."

The MacArthur grants, which are paid out over five years, come with no strings attached, and are designed to fund recipients' future endeavors of their own choosing.

Purveyor of Envelope-Stuffing Scheme Banned from Selling Any Work at Home Opportunities Again (Federal Trade Commission)

Has Fred Thompson's entry into the presidential race got you wondering what a Thompson administration might look like? From a federal management perspective, it's an interesting question. Thompson would come into the job with a relatively large amount of experience in overseeing government operations, since he chaired the committee formerly known as Senate Governmental Affairs.

In an Aug. 2001 column in Government Executive, Paul Light, now a New York University professor and then a vice president at the Brookings Institution, took a look at Thompson's tenure, taking note of his presidential prospects. At that point, the senator was weighing whether to run for another Senate term (he ultimately decided not to). Thompson, Light wrote, "will have to wait for 2008 to mount his own run for the presidency. Had Gore won the 2000 election, Republicans already would be coalescing around Thompson as a front-runner for 2004. He has all the populist credentials of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., without the temper and quirkiness."

Then actor-turned-legislator, Light also noted, has "done his share to make the federal government work. He has been a tireless watchdog of agency mismanagement, but has avoided the gimmickry that has characterized so much Republican rhetoric on fraud, waste and abuse." His report on federal management, Government at the Brink (Volume 1 and Volume 2), Light wrote, "did more than just inventory the problems .... It also provided an easily accessible analysis of causes and solutions, most notably the projected retirement of between a third and a half of the federal workforce."

So what's Thompson saying today? Here are the bullet points from his campaign Web site on the subject of "Government Effectiveness":

I am committed to:

• Attracting and rewarding the best Americans to serve in government and ensuring they have the authority and resources needed to get the job done.
• Fixing government accounting so tax dollars are properly spent and the American people know exactly what they are being spent on.
• Improving government performance by making agencies accountable for accomplishing their missions on time and within budget.
• Ensuring information technology systems are secure and that they give our government the capacity and effectiveness to get the job done.

For immigrants, the path to citizenship in the United States these days can be long and difficult. But if you think you can do an end run around the process by paying some money to a guy who calls himself Grand Chief Thunderbird IV, head of the "Kaweah Indian Nation," who promises Hispanic people that they can join the tribe as a means of getting official U.S. papers, then you need to think again. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau and the Social Security Administration's inspector general have teamed up to indict the Grand Chief, whose real name, by the way, is Malcolm Webber.

We're not really going to have a government shutdown, are we? Everybody remembers 1995, right? How nobody came out looking good? Still, the fiscal year's ending in a week, almost all of the appropriations bills haven't been passed, and it seems like there's a whole lot of brinksmanship going on.

There was a great little first-person account in the Washington Post yesterday by a civil servant about trying to secure an upgrade to business class for a political appointee at an agency -- and being rescued from embarrassment (or worse) by a savvy flight attendant.

(Hat tip: IEC Journal)

Andrew Sullivan today:

My nagging worry about Obama is management capability. If we've learned anything from the debacle of the last six years, it's that managing the government and getting it to do even the most basic tasks competently should not be under-estimated as a task.

It's sad that it took some of the extreme events of the last six years to demonstrate this to us as a nation.

Nancy Finigan of Washington's exclusive Georgetown neighborhood has a bone to pick with the Secret Service. She tells D.C.'s Fox 5 News that after she rented a townhouse to a group of agents in the fall of 2005, they trashed the place, leaving filthy carpets, damaged drywall and stained basement floors when they moved out after their 18-month lease was up.

Finigan says the damage cost $19,000 to repair. The General Services Administration, which negotiated the lease for the property on behalf of the Secret Service, has now opened discussions with Finigan about a settlement relating to the damages.

So what was the Secret Service doing renting a tony Georgetown townhouse in the first place? Finigan says she was told it would be used as a safe house, but also points out that first daughter Jenna Bush lived just a few doors down.

Congratulations to the winners of this year's Service to America Medals, sponsored by the Partnership for Public Service. As some of you may know, Government Executive co-sponsored the SAM awards for several years, and it's always great to see highly accomplished civil servants get the recognition they deserve. We'll have a full story on the winners up shortly.

"If I'm elected president, I'm going to cap non-defense discretionary spending at inflation minus one percent. That would save $300 billion in 10 years. And if Congress sends me a budget that exceeds that cap, I will veto that budget. And I know how to veto. I like vetoes. I've vetoed hundreds of spending appropriations as governor."

--GOP presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in a campaign commercial unveiled earlier this year.

The Environmental Protection Agency has made some progress in setting up a privacy program to protect personally identifiable information, but it needs to do more, the agency's inspector general says. Specifically, the IG recommends that EPA:

• Identify the Privacy Program’s key goals and activities, and establish performance measures to assess their progress.
• Update its Privacy Program policies and procedures, and establish processes to manage and make all privacy policies available to EPA personnel.
• Put into place a process to monitor the Privacy Program.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wants the IRS to do your taxes for you -- if you take the standard deduction, that is. From an AP story describing tax proposals Obama unveiled yesterday:

Additionally, the IRS would send prefilled tax forms to 40 million workers who take the standard deduction and have a bank account. They would simply have to sign and return it, which Obama estimates would save more than $2 billion in tax preparer fees, 200 million hours of work and "an incalculable amount of headache and heartburn."

The question is, how much of those costs and hours of work would be transferred to the IRS workforce, and would the agency's budget and staff be increased accordingly?

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Apparently, 'tis the season for ideas to create new service academies for federal civilians. Not only is the proposal for a Public Service Academy moving along smartly on Capitol Hill, now radio talk show host and blogger Hugh Hewitt is pushing a plan for a National Intelligence Academy. Here's his pitch:

Given a chance to mandate the four year course of studies, the intelligence community would soon be welcoming graduates of such an academy into their professional life after four years of Arabic and Chinese, or Farsi and Russian, and a sophisticated immersion in history and of course security studies and intelligence practices. The natural location for such an institution is in Virginia near the alphabet agencies it would help staff, and the attraction of a free four year college education and a near-guarantee of employment afterwards would allow such an academy to stand up quickly and attract extraordinary 18 year olds immediately.

I'm on the record as being somewhat skeptical of efforts to create new institutions of higher learning to churn out the civil servants of tomorrow. I understand the CIA has some specific needs. But according to its director Michael Hayden, the agency is having no trouble attracting quality applicants. And couldn't the agency meet its future hiring goals by simply by funding scholarships at various existing institutions for courses of study important to the spies and analysts of the future? Do we really need to go the trouble of setting up a brick-and-mortar institution from scratch? After all, at the end of the day, the CIA is quite different from a military service, which has to mold its future officers to lead people into battle using specific techniques and strategies.

A New York Times piece today on President Bush's attorney general choice, Michael Mukasey, focuses on what he is not: most notably, a "movement conservative." But the story also notes that neither is Mukasey "a Washington insider with experience in managing a federal bureaucracy." He could be in for an eye-opening experience.

Eric Black, a former reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, reports on his blog today that the Office of Special Counsel is investigating allegations that Rachel Paulose, U.S. attorney for Minnesota, mishandled classified information and retaliated against career employees in her office who challenged her actions and her management style. Four top career officials already have taken demotions to non-supervisory jobs to protest Paulose's management of the office, Black reports. Investigators from two OSC regional offices have been to Minnesota to interview witnesses.

Paulose's predecessor, Thomas Heffelfinger, resigned in February 2006. Later, Black has reported, he learned that his name was on a list of U.S. attorneys targeted for dismissal by the Justice Department.

I figured the announcement of this year's health premium increases would be big news for federal employees around the country, because it always is. But apparently the new Federal Employee Health Benefits Program rates are of global interest. Even the People's Daily, the official news organ of the Chinese government, reported about them.

The General Services Administration not only wants agencies to "achieve great federal public spaces," but to make them secure as well. The agency has issued a Site Security Design Guide for security
professionals, designers, and project managers that lays out various "methods used to produce safe and productive workplaces." The guide follows security standards developed by the Interagency Security Committee.

On a day when Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was trying to draw attention to her proposal for universal health care, one of her rivals, John Edwards sought to one-up her with an out-of the-box proposal of his own. According to the Edwards campaign, at a speech before the Laborers Leadership Convention in Chicago, Edwards said:

On the first day of my administration, I will submit legislation that ends health care coverage for the president, all members of Congress, and all senior political appointees in both branches of government on July 20th, 2009 -- unless we have passed universal health care reform.

There's already some chatter in the blogosphere about the possibly dubious constitutionality of this idea, at least as it applies to members of Congress. (The 27th Amendment says, "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.")

"Senior political appointees," though, could be out of luck. But maybe Schedule Cs will get to keep their coverage.

Update: By the way, it's worth noting the first item in Clinton's plan unveiled today:

Americans can keep their existing coverage or access the same menu of quality private insurance options that their Members of Congress receive through a new Health Choices Menu, established without any new bureaucracy as part of the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP). In addition to the broad array of private options that Americans can choose from, they will be offered the choice of a public plan option similar to Medicare.

Hey kids! The General Services Administration has revamped its efforts to connect you with your government, unveiling a whole new Kids.gov page.

"The new Kids.gov site was designed with kids in mind," said GSA Administrator Lurita Doan. "It's simple to navigate and has lots of interesting, educational content on a wide array of subjects."

When I just clicked on the site, the top entry under "What's New" was called "Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright," courtesy of the Library of Congress. Interesting, but I'm not sure that'll be enough to pry kids away from Club Penguin. (In case you don't have a middle schooler in your house, it's the hot hangout for the tween set.)

Is anybody else just a little disappointed that the Chertoff-to-Justice-and-Clay Johnson-to-Homeland Security scenario didn't play out as scripted after Alberto Gonzales resigned? Those would've been some fun confirmation hearings. And it would've been fun to see who Bush would've picked to ride out his term in Johnson's slot as administration management chief. Alas, the speed with which Johnson's office shot down this rumor (which is pretty rare in Washington, where most people at least like to remain coy about their prospects of taking on higher-profile positions) was, in retrospect, a clear sign that it was never meant to be.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is not happy about a Washington Times report showing that officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services withheld facts about information-sharing problems related to the Interagency Border Inspection System from a report requested by Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner. Now he wants a "detailed explanation" from DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff.

In case you hadn't noticed, we've got a new photo gallery on the site today, based on Editor and President Timothy B. Clark's recent tour of border control operations in southern California. If you want to see what it's like to stuff six people into the trunk of a small sedan and smuggle them across the border, visit our Multimedia section to view the gallery.

Of the candidates for president, few have been more consistent and vocal in their opposition to the war in Iraq than Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Ron Paul. So it's interesting that USA Today reports that they are the leading candidates in terms of campaign contributions from people who identify themselves as working for one of the military services or the National Guard. A study by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics also shows that military members continue to devote more of their contributions to Republicans than Democrats, but the gap is narrowing. In 2002, Republicans running for president or Congress got 77 percent of military contributions. So far this time around, the figure is 59 percent.

Fewer Than a Third of Americans Know Supreme Court Rulings are Final, a New Survey Finds

The General Services Administration apparently thinks federal buildings could present a better face to the public. The agency has issued a guide for federal property managers on "achieving great federal public spaces." It provides, the agency says, "a step-by-step process on how to enhance public spaces such as plazas, lobbies, atria and grounds."

"It's important that these spaces are accessible to the public and that they convey a positive image of the federal government," says David Winstead, head of GSA's Public Buildings Service.

"China has failed. … The Consumer Product Safety Commission has failed by not providing adequate resources and staff, and Congress has failed," he said. "There are moments when we need government."

--Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., on proposals to increase the staff and budget of the CPSC in the wake of recent revelations about unsafe imported toys.

A wildlife conservation group has alleged that employees of the Agriculture Department's Wildlife Services division are killing coyote pups in Oklahoma by cutting off their heads with shovels. An agency spokesperson doesn't exactly deny it, saying the unit uses "the most humane and effective means available when dealing with predators such as coyotes, and sometimes there is a situation regarding pups."

Good news, American kiddies: The National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that a child born in 2005 can expect to live to be almost 78 years old -- a new record. Hopefully these children won't spend the last few decades of their lives on a planet grossly overheated by the effects of global warming.

(Hat tip: Docuticker)

If you work in the procurement field, and feel the need for an ethics refresher course, the Office of Government Ethics has a new publication for you: What You Need to Know as a Federal Employee Involved in the Procurement and Acquisition Process.

(Hat tip: IEC Journal)

Let the endorsement season begin! The National Association of Letter Carriers has found its candidate for president: Hillary Clinton. Clinton accepted the endorsement at NALC headquarters in Washington today.

Clinton said she was "honored" to get the nod from the letter carriers. "These hardworking men and women are part of the fabric of every community in America," she said, "and they deserve an advocate in the White House."

The New York Times presents a cautionary tale, involving a South Dakota Indian cultural and judicial center that lost its funding when its patron, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, lost his seat.

Here are two headlines that jumped out at me this morning:

• Public Sector Workers Saving Less (Fedsmith)
• Area Leads Nation in Putting Off Retirement (Washington Post)

Of course, even if that turned out to be true, it would be shortsighted of agencies to get complacent and assume they're going to dodge a bullet. At best, they'll get a little more time to plan for an orderly transition to the workforce of the future. And as we've been reporting for awhile, that process will play out differently at every agency.

The National Nuclear Security Administration's job is to issue and oversee huge contracts for managing eight nuclear weapons complexes. Now the agency is looking to its contractors (and others) to tell it how to overhaul its contracting process. The agency has issued an official request for information on "consolidation of management and operating contracts, use of other types of contracts on a single or multiple facility basis, use of function-based contracts (e.g. construction, information technology) applicable to two or more sites, and transfer of work scope from one or more current contracts to other existing or new contracts."

The idea, NNSA says, is to explore "potential contracting alternatives and associated risks and costs for achieving NNSA's mission while promoting vigorous, full and open competition."

Mystery Celebrity Jurors Help Postal Service Issue Jury Duty Stamp

We haven't heard much lately about the ongoing investigations into political briefings by White House staffers at federal agencies, but that doesn't mean they've faded into history. In fact, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., has apparently succeeded in getting House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to expand the panel's probe into the briefings to include looking into whether similar sessions were held during the Clinton administration.

Here's an e-mail from David Marin, the committee's Republican staff director, on the situation:

All-

In a letter today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman agreed with a request made earlier this year by Ranking Member Tom Davis that the Committee “would benefit from requesting copies of any political briefings that the Office of Political Affairs in the Clinton Administration may have given to federal agencies.”

Davis had suggested that the Committee seek Clinton Administration documents from the National Archives to help the Committee “better understand the practices of political officials in the previous administration…to provide bipartisan historical context.” Chairman Waxman also agreed today to support Davis’ request for information on any legal guidance that the Clinton Administration’s White House Counsel may have provided to the Office of Political Affairs about the political presentations.

Davis today said, “I am pleased Chairman Waxman agrees that for the good of this investigation and the good of the Committee, a little ‘compare and contrast’ is needed if we’re to fully understand how the White House political affairs shop operates, whether it’s under President Bush or under President Clinton. The investigation was suffering from a lack of historical context, making it appear more partisan than constructive.”

When Mitch Daniels left the Office of Management and Budget to successfully run for governor of Indiana, he might have thought that his days of having Congress meddle in efforts to outsource government functions were behind him. If so, he would have been wrong.

In December, USA Today reports, Daniels made a deal to turn over administration of his state's food stamp program to a consortium led by IBM, arguing that it would save money and improve service.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees wasn't fond of the idea, and turned to some old friends for help -- the Democrats who had recently won control of Congress. And in June, Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee inserted a provision into a comprehensive farm bill prohibiting states from outsourcing food stamp administration. The bill passed the House in July and is pending in the Senate.

In a speech Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said he has "very deep respect for journalists and for their profession." But then he devoted a healthy chunk of his address to critiquing media coverage of the agency.

"Just as they report on the terrorists, it’s the job of journalists to report on the how the war against terrorism is being fought," Hayden said. "And when their spotlight is cast on intelligence activities, sound judgment and a thorough understanding of all the equities at play are critically important. Revelations of sources and methods -- and an impulse to drag anything CIA does to the darkest corner of the room -- can make it very difficult for us to do our vital work."

"Journalists, on their own, simply don’t have all the facts needed to make the call on whether [intelligence] information can be released without harm," Hayden said. But then he went on to set up something of a Catch-22. The agency, he said, often can't give them that information, either.

"When the media claims an oversight role on our clandestine operations, it does so in an arena where we cannot clarify, explain, or defend our actions without doing further damage to our sources and methods."

The agency's true overseers, Hayden said, are in Congress, which has "full access to our operations and takes our security requirements into account."

For what it's worth, here's my two cents on this issue: I think Hayden has a point that more than a few journalists have a knee-jerk tendency to drag what the CIA or other federal agencies do to the "darkest corner of the room." But let's be honest: The agency has played a role in fostering such cynicism through its own performance historically. And I don't think that journalists should cede their role in overseeing what the CIA does to Congress or anyone else. Because it's simply not unheard of that the people's representatives on Capitol Hill would be complicit in an effort to keep vital information about the agency from the public without valid reason.

Obviously, this is an area that cries out for responsible journalism -- and the agency can help in that effort by doing everything in its power to work with journalists to explain why certain activities must be kept under wraps.

Last year, the General Services Administration decreed that the Amarillo Helium Plant wasn't any good to the government any more due to a little problem it characterized as "excessive deterioration." But that doesn't mean it was a total loss. The agency has sold the facility at auction for $480,000, the Amarillo Globe-News reports.

Speaking of the Social Security Administration's "no-match letters," the New York Times reports that SSA officials have pleaded with a federal judge to let them send out more than 140,000 letters the agency has already prepared informing employers about discrepancies between Social Security numbers provided by workers and the agency's own records.

The judge had ordered a halt to the mailings as part of a temporary ban on implementing new federal rules cracking down on the hiring of illegal immigrants. The judge said the agency could send the letters if references to the new rules were removed, but acting deputy SSA commissioner David A. Rust said doing so would place a huge new burden on the agency at a time when it is struggling to deal with backlogs of retirement and disability claims.

You know what makes it even more difficult than usual to catch a drug runner crossing the Texas-Mexico border with more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana in his truck? When somebody starts shooting with automatic weapons from the other side. That's what happened to U.S. Border Patrol agents and Hudspeth County, Texas, sheriff's deputies, the Washington Times reports.

Michael O’Rourke, district attorney for Fond du Lac County, Wis., is not happy with the Social Security Administration, according to the Fond Du Lac Reporter. O'Rourke sought SSA's help in prosecuting an identity theft case, and the agency was happy to provide a certified letter stating that a Social Security number being used by an accused man was not his. But SSA wouldn't make an employee available to testify in the case, saying that would put too much of a burden on agency resources. O'Rourke says a judge told him the letter wouldn't be sufficient to make his case, so he dropped the charges.

If you're a woman, and you're looking to get ahead in the civil service, here's a career tip: Move to Canada. But just don't expect to slide into the executive suite.

From the Daily Herald of central Utah:

A 2004 survey by the U.S. Forest Service showed that 92.7 percent of those who visited national forests over a three-year period were white, even though the country's ethnic and racial makeup includes growing numbers of Hispanics, Asians and blacks.

(Hat tip: Fedsmith)

Thank you, Al Kamen of the Washington Post. Without you, I might never have learned that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an official song. Yes, that's right. It's called "Forward With NOAA," and here are the lyrics:

Forward with NOAA
With the Corps that's got it all

Science and Service

We are always there to meet the call

We survey the oceans

And we track storms in the air

Forward with NOAA

We're the NOAA Corps, we're always there

Better yet, listen to the song for yourself:

Forward With NOAA

There you have it. Now for the key question: Besides the obvious military service tunes, do any other agencies have theme songs?

"Everybody wants to come to the fight, so to speak, and no one wants to step back and say 'No, I can't do this.' The final coup de grace was the World Trade Center. Hundreds came that were never asked. Good intentions, good hearts, and it was extremely difficult for the fire department and the other departments to deal with them."

--Deputy Assistant U.S. Fire Administrator Charlie Dickinson on a federal plan to create an ID program for rescue workers to prevent civilians from flocking to disaster scenes.

I just had to take a minute and acknowledge a milestone: This is the 2,000th post in the history of Fedblog, which dates back to Oct. 2004. (It seems like just yesterday!) Obviously, the blog wouldn't have stayed around if people didn't get something out of it, so thanks for your continued support. And thanks also for joining in the discussions (once we finally implemented some software that facilitated discussions), which really keep this place vibrant.

3,000, here we come!

The Associated Press has picked up on the story of labor strife at the Federal Aviation Administration. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association argues that the controller workforce is being put under severe stress as retirements increase, and the agency counters that air travel has never been safer.

If you want even more detail on this important issue, see Alyssa Rosenberg's feature in the Aug. 1 issue of Government Executive, "Empty Towers."