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Defense Secretary Robert Gates continues to pull no punches in challenging the institution he leads. In a speech at National Defense University yesterday, he again took issue with the Pentagon's approach to procurement:

Support for conventional modernization programs is deeply embedded in our budget, in our bureaucracy, in the defense industry, and in Congress. My fundamental concern is that there is not commensurate institutional support -- including in the Pentagon -- for the capabilities needed to win the wars we are in, and of the kinds of missions we are most likely to undertake in the future.

"In recent years," Gates said, major defense platforms "have grown ever more baroque, ever more costly, are taking longer to build, and are being fielded in ever dwindling quantities." He questioned whether an emphasis on such systems had taken the focus away from procuring "specialized, often relatively low-tech equipment for stability and counterinsurgency missions."

And how do we institutionalize procurement of such capabilities – and the ability to get them fielded quickly? Why did we have to go outside the normal bureaucratic process to develop counter-[improvided explosive device] technologies, to build [mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles], and to quickly expand our [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capability? In short, why did we have to bypass existing institutions and procedures to get the capabilities we need to protect our troops and pursue the wars we are in?

Conventional military modernization programs, Gates said, "seek a 99 percent solution in years. Stability and counterinsurgency missions -- the wars we are in -- require 75 percent solutions in months. The challenge is whether in our bureaucracy and in our minds these two different paradigms can be made to coexist."

What happened yesterday? Well, lawmakers bailed on a bailout bill, the stock market tanked, and it snowed on Mars.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

David Axe of Danger Room writes today that the Pentagon allowed D.J. Caruso, director of the new thriller Eagle Eye, to use the Air Force's MQ-9 Reaper aerial drone. What did the Defense Department get in return? The same thing it always does: free publicity. And not only that, publicity that it likes.

As far back as 1997, we were reporting in Government Executive about how the Pentagon offers access to hardware in exchange for input into how the military services are portrayed onscreen -- and how Defense officials refuse to cooperate with films they don't like.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gets a lot more than $700 billion to spend in the financial bailout bill about to be passed in rejected by Congress. The bill also gives him virtually unprecedented authority to run a federal operation:

The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation, the following:
(1) The Secretary shall have direct hiring authority with respect to the appointment of employees 5 to administer this Act.
(2) Entering into contracts, including contracts for services authorized by section 3109 of title 5, United States Code.

Notice the "without limitation" part. And in case that's not perfectly clear with respect to contracting, the legislation further spells it out: "the Secretary may waive specific provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation upon a determination that urgent and compelling circumstances make compliance with such provisions contrary to the public interest."

The legislation creates an inspector general and an oversight board to oversee the new operation, but with this kind of authority, what could they possibly find that would be out of bounds?

Every day the government issues contract solicitations for everything from financial management systems to jet engines. But it's not every day that a government organization seeks proposals "with the goal of dramatically revolutionizing mathematics."

But that's just what the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency did today with its solicitation for "innovative research proposals" in connection with its DARPA Mathematical Challenges. Those challenges include the following:

• "Develop a mathematical theory to build a functional model of the brain that is mathematically consistent and predictive rather than merely biologically inspired."


• "Settle the Riemann Hypothesis, the Holy Grail of number theory."


• "Capture and harness stochasticity in nature."


• "Extend our understanding of symmetries and action principles in biology along the lines of classical thermodynamics, to include important biological concepts such as robustness, modularity, evolvability and variability."

So how much can a mathematician make for successfully meeting one of these challenges? DARPA's not saying just yet. "The amount of resources made available ... will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds," the agency says.

(Hat tip: Danger Room)

Over at Slate's "Big Sort" blog, Bill Bishop provides a brief history of the collapse of faith in government in America. It's not a pretty picture, but at least we're not alone. Bishop notes that growing lack of trust in government is an international phenomenon:

Journalists have blamed this "crisis in confidence" on a "crisis in competence." Who could expect a public to trust a government that had brought us Vietnam, Watergate, WMDs, and, now, a multibillion-dollar financial implosion? Government got what it deserved.

The trouble with that argument is that it ignores the scope of the problem. At the same time Americans lost confidence in their government, so did the English. And the Aussies, French, Italians, Japanese, and Germans. The decline in confidence wasn't something special to the United States, a homegrown product of our politicians' failures. It was common to all industrialized countries. The lack of trust is a function of modern prosperity.

All week, politicians have been debating a proposed Treasury Department proposal to allow the U.S. government to spend $700 billion to bail out Wall Street firms in the hopes of staving off a financial meltdown.

So where did that $700 billion figure come from? The response a Treasury spokeswoman gave to Forbes.com on that question doesn't exactly inspire confidence: "It's not based on any particular data point," she said. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Federal labor unions have so far been largely silent on Barack Obama's bold plan to fire managers, shift positions to the front lines, set up a "SWAT team" of experienced employees to root out waste, trim contract spending, boost performance bonuses and name a "chief performance officer."

But we've managed to get reaction out of some of them. The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, for example, isn't pulling any punches. Here's its statement:

IFPTE shares Senator Obama’s concerns about management bloat throughout the federal government and commends him on his SWAT team initiative. IFPTE has been arguing for years that a comprehensive review of the allocations of management versus rank and file at many government agencies is a key area for an Obama Administration to target with respect to government efficiency. We commend Senator Obama for this well thought out, and fair process for reviewing government efficiencies.

Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, was a little more measured in her response. Here's part of it:

I am pleased that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has developed a plan to free up resources to hire more frontline workers in federal agencies as diverse as the Food and Drug Administration, the Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. This does not mean losing talented and skilled employees. Positions can be moved from managerial to frontline through attrition. This is what President Clinton did and was part of his administration’s reinventing government initiative.

Remember though, that Obama didn't mention attrition in his proposal. In fact, he specifically pledged to "fire government managers who aren't getting results." And there's a bit of revisionist history involved in saying that Clinton managed to achieve its goal of shifting middle management jobs to the front lines via attrition. First of all, Clinton relied heavily on buyouts of employees, not just attrition, to thin the ranks. Second, his National Performance Review didn't exactly achieve its intended goal of cutting the ratio of supervisors to employees in government:

Here's what Allan Holmes reported on Clinton's effort in Government Executive in 1995:

Still, buyouts did not make significant strides toward meeting the NPR goal of increasing the so-called "span of control" -- halving the supervisor-employee ratio from a government-wide average of 1:7 to 1:15 by the end of fiscal 1999. In written testimony given to the House Civil Service Subcommittee in March, GAO reported that the ratio at Agriculture, which was 1:8 in fiscal 1993, will only reach 1:10 by fiscal 1996. And the average Commerce Department supervisor will oversee 8.4 employees in fiscal 1996 -- not a big improvement from the 6.6 employees under each supervisor in fiscal 1993. GAO's Kingsbury says it is unlikely the government-wide supervisor-employee ratio will reach the 1:15 goal by fiscal 1999.

From the Associated Press: Man Charged with Battery for Farting Near Cop

GovGab, the General Services Administration-run blog that aims to show Americans how the government works in their daily lives, is having a first birthday celebration. And to mark the occasion, the bloggers who contribute to the site are writing about what was happening on their first birthdays.

It's a clever idea, and I have only one complaint about it: It's making me feel a little old. So far, only one of the bloggers is in my age demographic, and I'm young enough to make the lame argument that I'm not even a baby boomer. Reading a description of babyhood way back in 1984 makes me feel closer to senior citizenship than I ever imagined.

GovExec's Alyssa Rosenberg filed this item from Capitol Hill:

I was at a hearing today at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on whether or not the federal government should extend insurance and retirement benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of federal employees. A large portion of the debate centered around whether or not extending those benefits would increase incidences of fraud, encouraging employees to fake relationships to obtain benefits for friends or to not report when a relationship ended to keep their former partner insured or in line for retirement benefits.

That conversation got a little strange, though, when Office of Personnel Management Deputy Director Howard Weizmann made reference to I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, the 2007 Adam Sandler-Kevin James buddy flick in which the two men play New York City firefighters and best friends who pretend to be a gay couple so one of the men can keep his pension. The movie, Weizmann said, showed that fraud was a real possibility.

The thing about the movie, though, is that it's a terrible argument for trying to commit insurance fraud. Chuck and Larry get caught, after being subject to an extremely intrusive investigation of their relationship by a terrifyingly cheerful bureaucrat. Larry talks Chuck into the scheme in the first place because city pension law is screwed up: after his wife's death, he's not able to name his children his beneficiaries. In other words, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry works better as an indictment of overly rigid benefit laws than as a warning of mass criminal tendencies in the gay community.

But hey, maybe Weizmann has a point about Sandler movies and policy questions. As one of my friends put it, "Maybe we should call a hearing to determine if there is much Happy Gilmore-style violence occurring in professional golf."

Here's John McCain in remarks yesterday at a campaign event in Scranton, Pa., on the proposed federal bailout of the financial services industry:

We cannot have taxpayers footing the bill for bloated golden parachutes like we see in the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, where the top executives are asking for $2.5 billion in bonuses after they ran the company into the ground. The senior executives of any firm that is bailed out by Treasury should not be making more than the highest paid government official.

That would be $400,000, by the way. That's what the president makes these days.

As Congress and the Bush administration rush to reach agreement on a bill to bail out the financial sector, here's your chance to give your two cents on what the bill should look like.

The Sunlight Foundation has launched a Web site, PublicMarkup.org, that includes the text of a bill proposed by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., (along with other pieces of recent legislation) and allows members of the public to comment on it.

Pretty big news out of the Obama campaign today on the federal management front: His manifesto on "the change we need in Washington" puts a great deal of specifics to his recent talk of making government "cool again."

At first glance, Obama's management reform blueprint looks an awful lot like a relaunch of the Clinton administration's reinventing government crusade. That's not surprising, given that Obama has been echoing REGO themes since his speech at the Democratic National Convention, and given that people associated with the NPR are serving on Obama's government reform advisory committee.

This section of Obama's reform plan is perhaps the most telling:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden will create a focused team within the White House that will work with agency leaders and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to improve results and outcomes for federal government programs while eliminating waste and inefficiency. This unit, a SWAT team, will be composed of top-performing and highly-trained government professionals and be headed by a new Chief Performance Officer (CPO) who will report directly to the president.

That brief description raises a series of similarities to REGO:

• Top-level involvement by the vice president.


• Day-to-day involvement by career government managers and employees.


• A decision to run the effort out of the White House, working "with" OMB -- as opposed to using OMB to coordinate the effort.

That last distinction is far from trivial. One of the key criticisms of the Clinton/Gore National Performance Review was that they set it up as a separate organization from OMB, making it difficult to integrate REGO initiatives into the standard budget and management processes. The Bush administration took the opposite approach, running its management agenda out of OMB and elevating the OMB management chief post to a much higher level of authority and influence than it had previously enjoyed. The appointment of a chief performance officer could have the same effect, but it still risks alienating longtime OMB staffers.

This weekend, I raised the question of whether the massive government intervention in the financial markets will turn out to be a "game-changer in terms of the way Americans view their government."

Now I'd like to throw a little cold water on that notion.

There have been three huge shocks to the national system during the Bush administration: the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the recent financial meltdown brought on by the collapse of the housing market. Each of those provoked a massive response of the federal government. Does that add up to a new era of trust in government? Not necessarily.

People want government to get them out of messes, whether they result from the actions of our enemies, the effects of natural disasters, or the mistakes of corporate leaders. But once the initial shock is over, Americans tend to go back to distrusting bureaucrats and bureaucracy. In 2002, I addressed this phenomenon in an essay in Government Executive:

At that time, polls were showing that Americans had great faith in government institutions. But I noted that Bill Schneider, a polling expert and senior political analyst at CNN, had pointed out that "it's not so much trust in government but hope in government that is triumphing." The "dirty little secret" of polling, Schneider said, is that "people try to give the right answer" to questions asked by pollsters. After the terrorist attacks hit home, he said, the correct answer was an attitude he characterized as "defiant optimism." In the event of another large-scale terrorist attack, Schneider said, "public support [for government] could very quickly evaporate."

In fact, it didn't even take a terrorist attack. Katrina wiped out a large portion of the support for government that had built up since 9/11.

Now the financial crisis has brought with it the hope that Uncle Sam can ride in to the rescue. But Americans' love-hate relationship with big government extends back more than 200 years. Don't expect it to end any time soon.

Seventy-seven days. That's the length of time between Election Day and Inauguration Day, and the New York Times reports today that the campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama are quietly trying to figure out how to make the most of it.

Obama's team is led by John D. Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton. McCain's transition work is being done under the leadership of William E. Timmons, a longtime Washington lobbyist.

While the campaigns are staying mum on their specific transition efforts, Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, says "the amount of work being done before the election, formal and informal, is the most ever.”

Elaine C. Duke, an undersecretary of homeland security, told the Times that her department was “poised and ready” to work with the McCain and Obama campaigns. But neither camp has contacted the department yet.

President Bush has requested $35 million for transition activities, but Congress has yet to approve the funding. That gives transition experts some heartburn, because a delay in funding could make it difficult for the president-elect to hit the ground running after the election.

At the end of what the Wall Street Journal called "The Week That Changed American Capitalism," it's worth asking, how much will it change government, and the public perception of federal institutions and the people who work for them?

At any point in the last, oh, 50 years, would you have expected to see the following lead paragraph to a story in the Washington Post?

The Bush administration yesterday proposed a historic $500 billion bailout of financial firms that would let the government rather than the cold judgment of the marketplace decide the winners and losers from the crisis that has shaken the U.S. economy for the past year.

"The last 20 years saw people acually mouthing the idea that government should keep hands off," Richard Sylla, a financial historian at New York University, told the Journal. "We had this free market ethos: Reagan's 'government isn't a solution, government is the problem.' Now people are saying, 'The market is the problem. The government is the solution.' "

This, of course, is hardly the first time the government has intervened in the financial markets in a pretty big way. But this was really big, and that makes it a potential game-changer in terms of the way Americans view their government. That will depend on whether the faith we are placing in public institutions now will survive the test of time, and whether it extends beyond the financial regulatory realm.

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that several top officials are leaving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after the government takeover of the mortgage companies.

No surprise there. But what was breathtaking, given all of the events of this week, was the quote from an unnamed executive at one of the institutions: "We didn't sign up to be public servants."

You got that right. The public servants are the ones we're counting on to to get us out of this mess.

The National Federation of Federal Employees took its time weighing this year's presidential candidates, but now the union is officially off the fence: Today NFFE endorsed Barack Obama.

The union had long adopted a stance of neutrality in the election, but when push came to shove, the decision apparently wasn't a close one. NFFE's National Executive Council voted unanimously to back Obama.

What does the Transportation Security Administration have to do with disaster relief? Technically, nothing. But that didn't stop 150 employees of the agency from taking it upon themselves to head to Houston voluntarily on Monday to assist with Hurricane Ike relief efforts. That's in addition to the 200 TSA officers who were sent to Houston airports before the storm to faciltitate the evacuation of residents of the area.

There's a real-world story of "bureaucracy" in action for you.

Ben Stein, a Commerce Department economist and a Federal Trade Commission lawyer before he became a writer, actor and quiz show host, really gets it when it comes to government and its place in this year's presidential election. Here's an excerpt from a piece he wrote Sunday for the New York Times:

If my poor old memory doesn’t fail me, the endless investigations of waste, fraud and abuse turn up pretty small potatoes in a federal budget approximating $2.4 trillion. And even if earmarks were totally wasteful, I read that they totaled $18 billion last year. Not pennies, for sure, but a tiny blemish on a federal budget roughly 150 times that sum.

And he finishes with this:

I know that it’s all just politics and that politicians will say a lot to be elected. But it’s good to know the truth, too. The government is just a lot of men and women. Most of them are working hard, trying to do their best and not stealing anything. Most are modestly paid, and sometimes they wear uniforms, carrying M-4s and risking their lives for us.

The federal employees who win this year's Service to America medals for distinguished contributions to the country will get an added treat: On-field recognition before the Washington Nationals game this Saturday.

What's more, other federal employees (and, in fact, anybody who supports public service), can get discounted tickets to the game via a link at the Partnership for Public Service Web site. The Partnership sponsors the awards.

The winners of the medals will be unveiled tomorrow at a ceremony in Washington.

Big day tomorrow for the General Services Administration: The agency is celebrating the 75th anniversary of the D.C. Central Heating Plant. The ceremony, the agency says, "will mark the rich history and exemplary service in providing seasonal comfort to so many of Washington's visitors and workforce."

Seven years ago today: The horror, the tragedy, the bravery and the almost unprecedented sense of loss.

Here's a look back at how the events unfolded in the early hours and days:

• Planes crash into World Trade Center, Pentagon


• Emergency agency rushes to aid victims of attacks


• Defense Secretary says casualties 'will not be few'


• Pentagon rescue efforts continue as hundreds feared dead


• New York agencies regroup after loss of offices

Plus, a look at how we covered the event and the federal reaction in the pages of Government Executive:

October 2001

September 2002

The Small Business Administration has decided to suspend Vernon Parker's company, VBP Group LLC, from the federal government's 8(a) contracting program for disadvantaged businesses. Parker is appealing that suspension, the Arizona Republic reports.

This kind of thing that happens on a regular basis in the federal contracting world. But here are two things that are unusual about this case:

• Parker is the mayor of Paradise Valley, Ariz.


• The reason the SBA suspended him is an inspector general's report concluded that he actually was a federal employee at the time he applied for 8(a) certification.

Parker says that's not true, and that he's just caught up in a political battle between SBA and Democratic members of Congress.

'Naked-Eye' Gamma-Ray Burst Was Aimed Squarely at Earth

Yikes!

The Veterans Affairs Department has decided not to ban voter registration drives at VA facilities, the New York Times reports today.

Earlier this year, VA officials issued a policy prohibiting such drives, saying they would violate the ban on political activity in the federal workplace. The reversal comes after members of Congress said they would introduce legislation to overturn the policy.

As quixotic projects go, this one's pretty cool: The Washington Times reports that a group of songwriters -- Matthew Gerken, Christian Kiefer and Jefferson Pitcher -- have teamed up on a three-CD set, Of Great and Mortal Men, that includes 43 songs, one for each of the country's presidents.

For the most part, these aren't exactly toe-tapping tunes. Dealing with the lives and (widely varying) accomplishments of the nation's presidents in the pop-song format is challenging, to say the least.

Some of the songs apparently take rather substantial liberties with historical imagination. And the project is hardly an apolitical effort. As an independent reviewer notes, Democratic presidents of recent vintage come in for more praise than their Republican counterparts. "Now, we all know that government can be a force of good,” goes the FDR tune, while the George W. Bush number declares that “history will be very cruel.”

Still, in an era when people can barely be bothered to pay attention to the race for the highest office in the land, and many schoolkids know little of their country's leaders, any attempt to summarize the country's presidential history in song is worthy of admiration.

In the New York Times this morning, former IRS commissioner and top Bush administration management official Mark Everson endorses an idea that's been kicking around for awhile now: Move the headquarters of a bunch of federal agencies out of Washington to the hinterlands.

"The concentration of top-level civil servants in Washington poses an undue risk in this age of terrorism," Everson says. In addition, he argues, "the high cost of living in and near the District of Columbia chases away talent."

The State, Treasury, Justice and Defense departments could stay in D.C., Everson argues. But the headquarters of large agencies underneath them, such as the IRS and the Drug Enforcement Agency, could go to the hinterlands -- along with whole departments such as Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security that "are more involved in operating government than in making policy." All of this, he says, would "limit the undue influence of Washington."

Everson even renews his suggestion that the IRS move to New Orleans to spur the city's revitalization. Given recent meteorological trends, that would require planning for the wholesale shutdown of the agency and temporary relocation of its employees on a fairly regular basis.

If we were starting to build a government from scratch, I guess it would make sense not to put all of it in one place. But now that much of it is in Washington, it's hard to justify the enormous expense and disruption involved in uprooting giant agencies like the IRS and plopping them somewhere else. Just to cite one problem, already stressed human resources offices are having enough trouble keeping up with changes in the demographics of the federal workforce without having to worry about shifting thousands of jobs from one city to another.

Besides, I don't think having headquarters operations here makes government as centralized as Everson seems to think it is. There already are sizeable regional federal offices throughout the country, and operational agencies like the IRS and the VA draw on talent from every region to staff far-flung operations.

An effort to amend the country's most widely used building code has ended up pitting two federal agencies against each other, the New York Times reports today.

In 2005, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, after an investigation following the attacks on the World Trade Center, issued a report on the safety of large buildings. Based on the report's recommendations, the International Code Council backed several changes, such as requiring tall office buildings to improve fireproofing and add an extra emergency stairwell.

Now a real estate industry group, the Building Owners and Managers Association, wants to repeal the provisions, saying they will cost millions of dollars per high-rise to implement. And the organization has gained an ally in the government's landlord, the General Services Administration.

“It does not take a NIST report or a rocket scientist to figure out that requiring additional exit stairs will improve overall occupant evacuation times,” David Frable, a GSA fire safety engineer, wrote in a petition to the code council. “The bigger question that needs to be answered is at what economic cost to society?” GSA and the real estate group argue that big office buildings already are very safe.

GSA generally requires that buildings it rents or buys on behalf of federal agencies honor local building codes.

The tricky balancing act inherent in John McCain's effort to position himself as both an experienced Washington hand and a reformer who will shake up the establishment was evident in his discussion of civil service and public service in his speech last night.

McCain repeatedly blasted bureaucracy and vowed to cut it down to size, making a strong case for a government that gets "back to basics." Yet at the same time, he made a pitch for public service, saying that if people don't like the "mistakes of government," they ought to "join its ranks and work to correct them."

It's sort of an "ask not what your government can do for you, but what you can do for your government" approach. And there are only two problems with that:

• McCain's view that what Americans seek is limited government may not square with the reality of a country that demands ever higher levels of federal benefits and ever-greater guarantees that government will protect them at all times and in all places against everything from terrorist attacks to natural disasters.


• Many people, especially young people, seem not to think they can contribute to change from inside the walls of government. How will McCain make working in the federal bureaucracy seem worthwhile to them?
  

Ever wonder what it's like to be vetted for a Cabinet position? Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich describes the experience on his blog:

The process took well over a month, not including the Senate confirmation hearing. I don’t recall doing anything during that interval except responding to questions from the vetting team, the FBI, and oversight committee staffers, both Republican and Democrat.

Reich uses his experience to raise the issue of whether Sarah Palin was properly vetted before being named John McCain's running mate. I'm not entirely sure that's an apt comparison. If Palin had been subject to the full Cabinet-appointee treatment, the cat would've been out of the bag pretty early on McCain's choice of her. And I bet Al Gore didn't undergo the kind of treatment Reich did before Bill Clinton added him to the Democratic ticket in 1992. Of course, Gore had a much bigger longer record of public service than Palin did when he was named.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

The National Archives and Records Administration has found a new home for the millions of personnel records of people who have served in the military or worked for federal agencies. The agency announced Thursday that it has worked with the General Services Administration to lease a new "built-to-suit" facility in St. Louis to house such records.

The facility will replace the Military Personnel Records Center and a portion of the Civilian Personnel Records Center in the city. It will house the National Personnel Records Center, which contains 56 million personnel files of 20th century military veterans, and 25 million federal civilian personnel files dating from the early part of the century to the 1970s.

The Archives expects to respond to 1 million requests a year for access to the records, from people seeking to verify service, apply for benefits and conduct historical research. About 600 Archives employees will work at the new location.

Superstar astronomer Carl Sagan was convinced that given the sheer size of the universe, it might be a good bet that there was intelligent life somewhere beyond this planet. Now NASA is seeking to test that theory with a series of scholarships issued in the name of the late scientist.

The new Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowships in Exoplanet Exploration will provide $60,000 per year, for up to three years, to selected scientists. Exoplanets are planets that have been found to exist outside our solar system. More than 300 currently have been identified.

NASA already awards the Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship in Physics of the Cosmos and the Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cosmic Origins.

I'm sitting here contemplating eating my official Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative chocolate bar, on which is printed the motto, "A Passage to Home SWEET Home." (Get it?) I received the treat courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

It looks pretty tasty, but I have to admit I find myself asking, "Why?"

If I were John McCain or Barack Obama, I'd be on the phone today begging FEMA Director David Paulison to reconsider his decision to quit the agency before the next president takes over. If we've learned anything in the past few years, it's that good FEMA directors aren't easy to come by, and the kind of experience Paulison has in the disaster response field really counts.

For a closer look at how Paulison rebuilt FEMA in the wake of Katrina, see Katherine McIntire Peters' cover story on the agency in our April issue.

I spent much of the day yesterday glued to cable news shows, trying to keep up on what was happening with Hurricane Gustav. I learned one thing: You won't find out much about what's going on that way.

In the hours and hours of coverage, precious little information was provided about how the response effort was being coordinated. Instead, the outlets focused on the derring-do of their own reporters, standing in the streets, endlessly reporting the two truisms of hurricanes:

• It's really windy.


• It rains a lot.