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Ever feel like you just don't want to get out of bed? NASA is prepared to pay you $17,000 if you'll agree to stay in the sack for 90 straight days, Wired Science reports. It's all part of a program at the Human Test Subject Facility at Johnson Space Center to study the effects of microgravity on the human body. But you have to be willing to spend the whole three months with your body slightly tilted downward toward your head -- at least most of the time.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

School bus driver and amateur artist Steve Kreuscher of Zion, Ill., is going to court in an effort to legally change his name to "In God We Trust," the Daily Herald of suburban Chicago reports.

That's first name "In God" and last name "We Trust."

Kreuscher says he wants the new moniker because God has protected him through some difficult times. Also, he's worried that atheists will succeed in getting his chosen namesake phrase taken off U.S. currency, and wants to provide a contingency plan to keep it alive.

"Those words are an endangered species," Kreuscher said. "You might take it off the money, but you can't take away my name."

(Hat tip: OhMyGov!)

First, a press secretary comes to the aid of a reporter in distress, and now the Postal Service is honoring journalists with a series of stamps.

Admit it, federal folks: You like us. You really like us.

What happens when they get hungry at Food and Drug Administration headquarters (in the alternate universe of The Onion):

Hungry FDA Official Orders Massive Pot Pie Recall

I'm a little late on this, but there's still time to see the Earth from space on high-definition TV, courtesy of NASA. It's the agency's way of celebrating Earth Day.

This is above and beyond the call of duty for a government press secretary: Calling 911 on behalf of a reporter trapped by an attacker in his home.

I can't believe I forgot to blog about this yesterday: The Washington Post has blown the lid off the biggest Washington story in ages: An analysis of maps reveals conclusively that the city is the lair of Satan. The scoop comes courtesy of David Bay, director of Cutting Edge Ministries in Lexington, S.C.

The paper reports: "Using Dupont and Logan circles as northern points, Bay instructs, you can trace various interlocking streets to form a demonic pentagram, one that bores directly into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave."

That explains all kinds of things.

Of course, over at BoingBoing, they've reported what might be an even bigger cartographical discovery: "A giant malevolent dachshund bearing down on the Capitol."

EPA's Marcus Peacock, government's most consistently entertaining blogger, is at it again, with a post involving his dog, Greek Hedonists, poop and the agency's regional structure. Tell me you're not going to click on that.

In an annual survey conducted by a think tank devoted to assessing privacy issues, the U.S. Postal Service is rated by Americans as the most trusted government agency -- for the fourth year in a row.

In the Ponemon Institute report, which assessed 74 federal agencies, the Postal Service earned a "privacy trust score" of 86 percent, up from 83 percent last year. The other top trusted agencies were the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, the Census Bureau and the National Institutes of Health.

The least trusted agencies were U.S. Customs and Border Protection (with a score of only 20 percent), the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Justice Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That's not a surprising list, given the hot-button nature of immigration issues, recent scandals at Justice and the super-secret mission of spy agencies.

More and more federal officials are becoming bloggers. But they better be careful. If they really get into it, they might be susceptible to what the New York Times calls "death by blogging."

I don't think I'm in any danger. But you probably already knew that, since I'm not exactly killing myself in terms of sheer numbers of posts lately.

I wonder if Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, was a little late getting to the office this morning. If he was, he has a pretty good excuse: He was on the same plane I was that was stuck on the ground in Minneapolis for three hours in a driving snowstorm while a repair crew fixed a hole in the wing.

I don't travel all that much, but when I do, I trust that agencies like the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration are doing their jobs and keeping me safe from terrorists and faulty airplanes. Sometimes that involves crossing my fingers just a little, though.

Like last night, as I waited on a plane on the ground for three hours at Minneapois/St. Paul International Airport, in a driving snowstorm, staring out at the wing of an airplane with a hole about four inches across in it. The hole had been covered up by what I swear appeared to be duct tape until moments earlier, when the tape had been ripped off during the de-icing process. We taxied back to the gate and, to my amazement, a couple of mechanics came out, applied more tape (which actually seemed to involve some kind of heat-activated adhesive) and pronounced the plane ready to fly -- which it then did, all the way to Washington.

As nervous as I was watching this whole process unfold, I'm assuming, until the FAA tells me different, that this was a fully approved repair technique. And I feel just a little better about my own duct-tape-based home repair efforts.

Feeling angry about the size of your federal paycheck? Glenn Sparling of Ravenden Springs, Ark., certainly is.

Sparling says he's a former federal employee who wasn't paid what he was owed for his work. So Sunday afternoon, he decided to take out his anger on the nearest federal building he could find -- the local post office.

Sparling, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, drove his 1984 Chevy Blazer into town -- and straight through the wall of the post office.

But that apparently wasn't enough to calm him down. Because when the Blazer broke down on his way home, Sparling walked the rest of the way, then got behind the wheel of his 1972 Ford Mustang, and drove that back to the post office -- and right through the hole he had previously made.

"This time he really crammed it in there," said Ravenden Springs Police Chief Kevin Montgomery.

Luckily, nobody was in the building because it was Easter Sunday. As of Monday, the post office was open for business -- and Sparling was awaiting trial on multiple charges, including driving while intoxicated.

Will a former federal employee become the next American Idol? Chikezie Eze, who's among the finalists in this season's competition, is a former Transportation Security Administration screener at Los Angeles International Airport.

TSA reports that Raul Matute, Chikezie's former boss, says he was "a fun guy to have on staff." TSA notes that "during breaks or on his way to work in the bus, Chikezie would sing along with his iPod for everyone to enjoy."

Really? People "enjoyed" a guy -- even a guy of Chikezie's talent -- singing along with his iPod?

You can make up your own mind about Chikezie's ability -- and federal experience. Here he is talking about his work at TSA and putting his own spin on the Lennon/McCartney classic, "She's a Woman":

If you've looked at GovernmentExecutive.com today, you may have noticed a new box on our home page featuring headlines from Nextgov.com. And if you've looked even more closely, you may have seen that when you put your mouse over the word "Technology" on our navigation bar at the top of every page, it turns into a link to Nextgov.

That's because we've found a new home in the Government Executive family for our technology coverage -- and much more. As I explained in my column in the March issue of the magazine, Nextgov is aimed at serving the federal information technology community by providing not only news and information, but an opportunity for a shared conversation between and among federal IT officials, program managers, private sector officials and outside observers about building the high-performing, outcome-oriented public sector organizations of the future.

Allan Holmes, Nextgov's executive editor, provides more information about the site in a welcome message he's posted.

Nextgov is built on the idea that information technology will be the backbone of effective government in the future. Our goal is to provide a forum for the sharing of information about how that process is unfolding. We're pretty excited about it, and we hope you'll come along for the ride.

Take your mind back to the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the throes of the Cold War. Suppose somebody would've told you then that you'd live to see the day that a Finnish band called the Leningrad Cowboys would perform live with the Red Army Choir in Russia -- and that they'd be singing "Sweet Home Alabama."

Here's the YouTube proof:

(Hat tip: Russia Blog, via Danger Room.)

Attention Americans: Super Bowl-winning quarterback Eli Manning, appointed by President Bush to serve on the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, wants you to get off the couch and be more active. Manning is launching an effort to register a million people for the National President's Challenge, six-week program designed to combat obesity by raising particpants' levels of physical activity.

I wonder if this is the kind of "activity" Manning has in mind:

Attention high-ranking federal officials: EPA's Marcus Peacock is daring you to blog. So what if it almost guarantees that somebody's going to call you a "weasel"? Peacock apparently wears the name with pride.

A new survey released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that only one out of three adults in four states -- Delaware, Hawaii, New York, and Rhode Island -- said they got enough rest or sleep every day in the past month. And 10 percent reported they didn't get enough sleep every day out of the previous 30. Somewhere between 50 million and 70 million people nationwide suffer from sleep disorders, the agency says.

The National Sleep Foundation says that most adults need seven to nine hours of sleep each night to feel fully rested.

Well, it was worth a shot. When District of Columbia officials filed their application with the U.S. Mint for a design for a commemorative quarter, they made a couple of suggestions for inscriptions on the coin: "No Taxation Without Representation" and "Taxation Without Representation." Those refer, of course, to the District's lack of full representation in Congress.

Setting aside the fact that the two suggestions are diametrically opposite statements, Mint officials quickly rejected the suggestions for another reason, the Washington Post reports: They violated the agency's policy against controversial slogans on commemorative coins.

"Changing how the District of Columbia . . . is represented in Congress is a contemporary political issue on which there presently is no national consensus and over which reasonable minds differ," Mint officials said.

So what's the District suggesting as an alternative? "Justicia omnibus" -- that is, "justice for all." Given that it's Washington, it does seem fitting to get the word "omnibus" in there.

I've heard of research expeditions and cruises on the high seas. But a research cruise? Interesting. Of course, when the destination is the ocean surrounding Antarctica, it's pretty clear it's not a pleasure trip.

In case you haven't wrapped your mind around the whole global warming thing yet, consider this: The U.S. Geological Survey reports that new climate maps show that roughly a third of the United States could provide favorable conditions for Burmese pythons if current trends hold.

Such pythons were discovered in the Florida Everglades in 2003 -- presumably they were pets released into the wild -- and have been spreading ever since. Global warming models indicate that areas in the United States that would be "climate matches" for the snakes, which live naturally from Pakistan to Indonesia, could significantly expand by the end of this century.

Holy crap! Russian cosmonauts pack heat in space? Maybe they can do some target practice on that U.S. spy satellite as it falls toward the Earth.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Can auto racing go green? Two Environmental Protection Agency officials think so, and they're working to make it a reality.

Will the CIA's Mike Hayden be able to predict al Qaeda's next move? If football prognostication skills are any indication, the answer may be yes. Check out Hayden's response to a Scripps Howard News Service survey of 100 famous people last week about who they thought would win the Super Bowl:

Giants, 28-24. The spread favors the Pats, but careful intelligence work looks beyond the obvious. The Giants are hot now. Three playoff wins on the road (like the Steelers before Super Bowl XL). Regular season finale shows they match up well against the Pats. Besides, nobody's perfect!

That's as good a piece of analysis as any football expert provided leading up to the big game.

(Hat tip: Danger Room)

Secret Service agents tend to play it very close to the vest -- staying mysteriously aloof and calm is part of the job description. But sometimes even they can get a little worked up, according to Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama.

Here's what Obama said about his Secret Service detail during an appearance in East Rutherford, N.J., with actor Robert DeNiro, according to the Chicago Tribune's blog, The Swamp: "Those guys never smile. They're always cool. But I noticed when De Niro walks in, they're all like elbowing each other…They were excited."

NASA turns 50 on Monday, the same day the Beatles recorded the song "Across the Universe" 40 years ago. Space agency officials aren't letting that coincidence go unnoticed. They've arranged to beam the song into deep space at 7 p.m. It'll be aimed at the north star, Polaris.

"Amazing! Well done, NASA!" said Paul McCartney, one of the two surviving Beatles, in a message to the agency. "Send my love to the aliens." Of course, McCartney didn't actually write "Across the Universe." It's a John Lennon song.

The American people aren't the only ones getting fatter. American chickens are, too. And scientists at the Agricultural Research Service are trying to find ways to slim them down.

Fred Thompson has made it official: He's out of the presidential race. Politics aside, this means that the race has lost the candidate with arguably the strongest working knowledge of the management challenges facing the federal government right now -- certainly the strongest on the Republican side. And as I keep saying, these issues really matter -- and not just to the people who work in government, but to the country as a whole.

The Library of Congress has begun using photo-sharing site Flickr to upload about 3,000 stunning historical images from the 14 million the agency has in its collections. They include this amazing image of a real-life Rosie the Riveter during World War II:

In case you've forgotten, here's the iconic Rosie image from a poster promoting the war effort:

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

How cool is this? Japanese researchers are planning to launch a paper airplane from the International Space Station -- and they think it will reach Earth without burning up on reentry. They started testing the heat and wind resistance of a prototype this week.

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn't just about busting people at the border. Sometimes officials there get to do other stuff, like return an ancient marble sculpture of the head of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius to the Algerian government. ICE had seized the three-foot-high, 200-pound marble sculpture from Christie's auction house in New York, where it was up for sale. INTERPOL had alerted ICE that the artifact might have been stolen in a 1996 museum robbery.

ICE says it has agents in 50 locations around the world to work with host countries, the State Department and U.S. Customs and Border protection to identify stolen antiquities smuggled into the United States.

Thanks, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. As if I didn't already have enough to worry about, now I've got to start contemplating the possibility of an outbreak of dengue?

The United Nations is taking a novel approach to boosting its public image among the youth of America: BBC News reports that the organization is teaming up with Marvel Comics to produce a new comic book in which Spider-Man works with U.N. aid workers and peacekeepers. Marvel's going to produce the comic for free, and the U.N. is seeking funds to distribute it in American schools. Former United States envoy to the U.N. John Bolton isn't impressed. He calls the move an "act of desperation," saying the U.N. ought to focus its efforts on improving its performance if it wants a better image.

(Hat tip: Danger Room)

I'm a fan of the National Treasure movies, although (or maybe because) they require a hefty suspension of disbelief to accept the notion of buried loot in lower Manhattan or a city of gold underneath Mount Rushmore. So imagine my surprise when I read in the Washington Post's "Reliable Source" column today that the films aren't entirely fictitious. "Damned if Mount Vernon doesn't actually turn out to have [a] super-mysterious secret basement!" write Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts. And now the overseers of George Washington's home have decided to open the basement to the public. But curious sightseers won't see the secret tunnel leading out of it that's depicted in the movie. That's made up.

NASA and the National Science Foundation say they've set a record by launching three long-duration scientific balloon flights in a single summer in Antarctica. They're using the balloons to study ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and search for antimatter.

Larry Carr, an FBI agent based in Seattle, was four years old in 1971 when a man calling himself Dan (or D.B.) Cooper hijacked a flight that took off from Portland, Ore., demanding four parachutes and $200,000. He got them when the plane landed in Seattle, and forced it to take off again, aiming for Mexico City. Then he jumped out the back of the plane somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nev., and never was heard from again.

Now, the New York Times reports, Carr has reopened the Cooper case, and the FBI has put new details and images relating to the hijacking on its Web site in the hopes of tracking down more information about Cooper. Of course, if he's still alive, he'd be about 85 now.

Carr still holds out hope of hearing from someone who knew Cooper -- or the man himself. “Maybe one day," Carr says, "I’ll be sitting at my desk and I’ll get a call from an old man who says, ‘You’re not going to believe this story.’ ”

Have you resolved to drop a few pounds in the new year? If so, you're certainly not alone. But if you're having trouble controlling the amount you eat, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has some new research that might be at least a little bit comforting.

In a study entitled "Eating as an Automatic Behavior," Dr. Deborah Cohen of the RAND Corp. and Dr. Thomas A. Farley of Tulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine explore the question of why America's obesity epidemic is growing at the same time that being overweight is more and more socially taboo. Here's the gist of their explanation:

National efforts to treat and prevent obesity depend to a large degree on educating people to regulate their food intake through such means as publicizing general guidelines on nutrition, promoting tailored diets, and labeling foods with nutrition information. The continued growth of the epidemic despite the employment of these techniques should make people question the assumptions underlying them. The fundamental assumption is that, given the right information and motivation, people can successfully reduce their food intake to match their caloric expenditure over the long term. This assumption in turn implies that eating is a conscious act. An alternative assumption is that eating is a behavior controlled by the environment rather than by the individual.

Courtesy of my colleague Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic, here's a link to an incredibly exhaustive list, modestly entitled "Some Road Songs," compiled by Richard F. Weingroff of the Federal Highway Administration. I was prepared to nitpick, but this thing is pretty comprehensive, covering everything from AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" to (of course) Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," "Thunder Road," and "Racing in the Street."

Charlie Cameron, 60, is a federal employee who has a nice little side business this time of year. He's a traveling Santa, the Albuquerque Tribune reports. Make an appointment with him, and he'll show up at your holiday gathering and entertain the kids --or the grown-ups -- for $50 an hour. That adds up to about $1,000 per holiday season, which Cameron says is just enough to cover his travel expenses and pay for a nice dinner with his wife -- who plays the part of Mrs. Claus, naturally.

If you bought a toy from an Army and Air Force Exchange Service store for Christmas -- such as a wooden horse or a military vehicle playset -- you might want to take a close look at it. Several toys offered at AAFES stores under the brand name "Soldier Bear" have been recalled because the Consumer Product Safety Commission says the paint used on them contains excessive amounts of lead.

A dentist tried to take the position that only federal employees and residents of U.S. territories should have to pay taxes. A court saw things differently. Then the dentist saw the light, paid her bill, and said she had been coerced by her husband into endorsing crazy anti-tax schemes. She still got 33 months in prison.

(Hat tip: Fedsmith)

Memo to Deputy EPA Administrator Marcus Peacock: What's your problem with hot dogs? Have you got something against all-American cuisine?

Popular culture is full of negative role models for children, but acting Surgeon General Rear Adm. Steven K. Galson has found one in an unusual place: the North Pole. Santa Claus, he says, needs to step away from the sleigh, put down the sweets and get on the treadmill.

“It is really important that the people who kids look up to as role models are in good shape, eating well and getting exercise. It is absolutely critical,” Galson told the Boston Herald last week. NFL players work to promote healthy lifestyles, Galson said, and "Santa is no different.”

(Hat tip: Wonkette)

In case you missed it, I wanted to draw your attention to a new feature on GovernmentExecutive.com: The Basics. The idea is to provide a concise explanation of what's important about key issues, along with links to further resources online and a constantly updated list of our news articles related to the subject.

We kicked off with The Basics of the Bush administration's Lines of Business initiative and GSA's Networx contract. But we'll be adding more on both IT and non-IT subjects -- including, in the near future, one that is near and dear to many feds' hearts these days: How to decide when to retire.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has weighed in on the subject of tattoos and body piercings. They're misunderstood, NIOSH says:

For people who do not know much about the body art industry, tattoos and body piercings appear as permanent markings and decorative metal. But this industry is actually a unique form of art. Tattoo artists can honor people or memories that were an important part of a person's life. Body piercers intricately place each piercing to express a person's individuality or culture.

But, NIOSH warns, "body artists may be exposed to a bloodborne pathogen by getting stuck with a used needle or if blood splashes into their eyes, nose, or mouth." Ick.

So NIOSH officials met with a bunch of tattoo and body-piercing organizations and came up with a list of things that can be done to reduce the risk of spreading diseases. The list includes vaccinating and educating, preventing needlestick injuries and reducing cross-contamination.

Rudy Giuliani was at it again last night in the CNN-YouTube Republican debate. Asked what he would do to reduce the national debt, he once more took the opportunity to flog his pet proposal to slash federal spending and the federal workforce. Here's what he said:

I think you have to do across-the-board spending cuts like Ronald Reagan did -- 5, 10 percent per civilian agency. It should be done right now, actually. President Bush should do it to strengthen the dollar. We should commit not to rehire half of the civilian employees that will retire. That's 42 percent of the federal workforce that will retire in the next 10 years. Don't rehire half of them. Use technology -- one person doing the job of two or three. Every business has done it; the government has to do it.

Isn't it about time somebody started calling him on this stuff? Such as:

• Nobody knows how many federal employees actually will retire in the next 10 years. That 42 percent is merely a projection of people likely to retire based on estimates that have proven less than fully accurate in the past.
• Is Giuliani really in favor of a haphazard cut to federal operations based on who happens to retire? So if FEMA gets an unusually high number of retirements, he's fine with cutting our disaster response capability and potentially leaving excess capacity elsewhere?
• Government, just like the businesses Giuliani touts, already has replaced hundreds of thousands of workers with technology. Bill Clinton proudly claimed credit for slashing nearly 400,000 jobs during his administration, and agencies spent billions of dollars on technology (and contract workers) to continue to meet their missions. (By the way, does anybody think the federal government improved as a result?) Since George W. Bush took office, thousands of jobs have been added back, but mostly in the homeland security and defense areas. Does Mr. 9/11 really think that those are the jobs that we need to eliminate?

As I've said before, issues like these are simply too important to let candidates slide by with glib promises.

Looking to get a good return on the tax dollars you've "invested" with Uncle Sam? Try heading for the Dakotas. South Dakota taxpayers get back $1.53 for every dollar they send to Washington, the Sioux Falls, S.D. Argus-Leader reports. And North Dakota resident do even better, getting back $1.68. Census Bureau figures show that in fiscal 2005, South Dakota received $7.4 billion in direct expenditures or obligations from the federal government, up from $3.8 billion a decade earlier.

Yikes! The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum can't account for a whopping 80,000 of the 100,000 items it is supposed to have in its possession. The National Archives inspector general says a "near universal" breakdown in security left the facility vulnerable to theft from insiders.

The finding that Reagan's library was so poorly run, the paper reported, "may mortify fans of the late president, who often inveighed against government inefficiency."

Why do people choose to live in areas that pose risks from wildfires, hurricanes, and other threats? The "surprising" answer, according to National Science Foundation-funded researchers, is that they let their emotions get in the way of making rational risk assessments. That actually doesn't seem all that surprising to me.

"It's likely that people who live near heavily wooded areas in California focus on things they love about their location, like environmental beauty or proximity to the ocean, and simultaneously discount the risk of wildfire," says Jacqueline Meszaros, program director for decision, risk and management sciences at NSF.

FEMA apparently has found the answer to the age-old question of how to keep Washington news conferences from getting out of hand: eliminate the reporters.

The votes are in, and Americans have made their choice for which Star Wars character they'd most like to see on his or her own stamp:

That's right, it's 900-year-old Jedi Master Yoda. Tomorrow, the Postal Service will unveil a set of 20 Yoda stamps at the Fall Postage Stamp Mega-Event at New York's Madison Square Garden. And "since this 10 a.m. event is just six days before Halloween, stamp enthusiasts Star Wars fans alike are encouraged to dress up as their favorite character from the Star Wars saga," USPS says.

Tomorrow also marks the day that USPS will begin taking down the special R2D2-styled mailboxes that have dotted street corners since the Star Wars-based postal campaign began in March. Those boxes will be moved to overseas military bases.

Think you could beat those people who play in the high-stakes poker tournaments that seem to be on TV all the time? If you can, the IRS wants to know about it. The agency announced Friday that starting next March, it will require poker tournament sponsors to report any winnings of more than $5,000. If they do, they won't need to withhold taxes from players' winnings. If they don't, they'll have to pay any tax that should have been withheld if withholding were required.

Drew Carey is suddenly a busy man. The ex-sitcom star is not only the new host of "The Price is Right," but he's teamed up with the Reason Foundation to launch the Drew Carey Project on the organization's Reason.tv Web site. The idea is to create a series of short documentaries on hot-button issues of the day, from immigration to traffic congestion.

As you might expect, given Reason's status as a leading libertarian organization, there are unlikely to be any warm and fuzzy segments about bureaucrats. "We need Reason to help fight the stupid drug laws, the stupid immigration laws, and stupid big government in general," says Carey in a press release touting the new venture.

All right, let's have a little fun here. In preparing another item this morning, I noticed that a story in today's Washington Post quoted an Office of Personnel Management spokesman named Peter Graves. I assume he's not the same guy who used to star in Mission: Impossible.

That made me think of soon-to-be-departed Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson, who is emphatically not the notorious pop singer. And that, in turn took me back to the days when the General Services Administration was headed by a Steve Perry who certainly was not the former lead singer of Journey.

So now my question is, how many other current and former federal officials share their names with celebrities?

There's really nothing funny about weapons of mass destruction, but I have to admit that when I happened upon the Wikipedia entry for "Doomsday device," I chuckled when I saw the following disclaimer at the top:

This article is about the theoretical world-ending destruction. For the professional wrestling maneuver, see Doomsday Device.

If you've been following GovernmentExecutive.com for awhile, you may have noticed the byline of Greta Wodele up until late last year on some news stories. She was a reporter at our sister publication, CongressDaily, and we enjoyed publishing her work because she had a keen eye for covering homeland security stories.

Well, now Greta's over at C-SPAN, hosting its Washington Journal program from time to time, and the folks at Esquire magazine have taken notice of her as well. And they enjoy her for, um, entirely different reasons, today's Washington Post "Reliable Source" column notes. Here's the magazine's tribute to her:

"She is not hot; she's beautiful. Her hair, thick and mahogany, shows no trace of having been put through much but a brush. Her dark eyes are moist, her smile prim and pink. Each facial plane -- her high, wide brow; that long, smooth heart-shaped stretch from cheekbone down to neck -- sings in milky harmony. . . . O, Greta! I need coffee; I want you."

If you must judge for yourself, you can find a link to Greta's latest Washington Journal appearance here. Click on the 10/04/2007 edition.

“Americans clearly love the idea and practice of blogging,” says GSA Administrator Lurita Doan. So the agency has unleashed a blog of its own, known as "GovGab."

The blog features daily posts from a team of five GSA managers who post on a rotating basis (in fact, they seem to have divided up the task by each taking a different day of the week). They're supposed to "help spotlight U.S. government information and services of greatest use in Americans’ daily lives."

GSA's clearly operating under the theory that it's the young folks who are really into this whole blogging thing, because the bios of the bloggers make it clear that they don't exactly represent a generational cross-section of the agency's workforce.

And so far, their posts certainly do highlight a wide range of government information -- on everything from grass seed to shoes to Sonic Youth records.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has released an updated version of its naturalization test for would-be citizens. I took the civics section of the test and I have to say it wasn't quite what I expected. Some of the questions seem a little open-ended -- such as, "During the Cold War, what was the main concern of the United States?" (The answer provided, "Communism," seems a little too pat.) Other questions seemed painfully obvious, in the sense that the answer is embedded in the query -- "What is freedom of religion?" "What is the rule of law?"

I was embarrassed not to know the full answer to one question -- "What are two rights only for United States citizens?" Three of the potential responses occurred to me pretty quickly: vote, run for office and carry a U.S. passport. But the last one seemed obvious only after I peeked at the correct answers: "Apply for a federal job."

Naturalization applicants will begin taking the revised test on Oct. 1, 2008.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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)

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.

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?

This just in from Time magazine:

Polls show that while confidence in our democracy and our government is near an all-time low, volunteerism and civic participation since the '70s are near all-time highs. Political scientists are perplexed about this. If confidence is so low, why would people bother volunteering? The explanation is pretty simple. People, especially young people, think the government and the public sphere are broken, but they feel they can personally make a difference through community service. After 9/11, Americans were hungry to be asked to do something, to make some kind of sacrifice, and what they mostly remember is being asked to go shopping. The reason private volunteerism is so high is precisely that confidence in our public institutions is so low. People see volunteering not as a form of public service but as an antidote for it.

Time's solution is a proposal for a universal national service program. It would include the following elements: creating a Cabinet-level National Service Department; expanding programs like AmeriCorps and the National Senior Volunteer Corps; creating separate Education, Health, Green and Rapid-Response Reserve Corps; and implementing the proposal to create a Public Service Academy.

That latter effort is drawing increasing support on Capitol Hill, but is somewhat less popular in other quarters.

The $100 bill is changing again, and this time it's going really high-tech, AP reports. New microprinting techniques will result in an image of Benjamin Franklin that seems to move up or down or side to side when the bill itself is moved.

The new bill is expected to go into circulation late next year.

I hate to break it to my colleague Allan Holmes over at Tech Insider, but apparently I'm worth just a little more than he is. IRS phishing scammers e-mailed Allan to let him know that he had a $93.60 refund waiting for him, but just now they told me I'm eligible for $109.30. And that's on top of the $103.82 the scammers already said I had waiting for me.

I'm back from the beach, and ready to get back in the swing of things. So I'll be back shortly with some updates.

In a letter to various newspapers, Cmdr. Scott J. Kelly, who is heading up the space shuttle mission scheduled for launch tomorrow, says his crew will be stone cold sober, reports the New York Times. Recent reports of astronaut drinking before missions are being blown out of proportion, Kelly says, and to imply that members of his team would tie one on before launch is "utterly ridiculous."

Today's Washington Post Style section delivered the sad news: the delightfully wacky Weekly World News is no more. One of tabloid's best recurring features involved Bat Boy, the half-child, half-bat who allegedly was captured in a cave in West Virginia. He later escaped, and continued to narrowly avoid the clutches of the FBI.

Bob Lind, a former writer, for the paper, tells the Post a great story about how the WWN's managing editor, Eddie Clontz, pushed for more and more Bat Boy stories -- leading to a run-in with federal law enforcement officials:

"Eddie fell in love with Bat Boy," Lind says. "He was one of the most in-depth characters we dealt with. He could be mean, he could be spiteful, but he could also be kind. And every once in while, he would be captured by the FBI and held in an undisclosed location near Lexington, Kentucky."

One day -- Lind swears this is true -- Eddie Clontz got a call from an irate FBI agent complaining that the bureau's switchboard was swamped with calls demanding that they free Bat Boy.

"Eddie said, 'I'll never do it again,' " Lind says, "then he hung up the phone and went on to the next Bat Boy story."

There are two sides to every argument, right? Well, I thought maybe not every one, but I guess I'm wrong. I'll let Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer explain what I'm talking about. Today, he writes, "I rise in defense of drunken astronauts."

Why would it be OK for an astronaut to get a little lit up before launch? Think of it this way, Krauthammer writes:

Imagine it's you sitting on top of a 12-story winged tube bolted to a gigantic canister filled with 2 million liters of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Then picture your own buddies -- the "closeout crew" -- who met you at the pad, fastened your emergency chute, strapped you into your launch seat, sealed the hatch and waved smiling to you through the window. Having left you lashed to what is the largest bomb on planet Earth, they then proceed 200 feet down the elevator and drive not one, not two, but three miles away to watch as the button is pressed that lights the candle that ignites the fuel that blows you into space.

Under such circumstances, the columnist argues, "Would you not want to be a bit soused"?

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)

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