Call it another example of the law of unintended consequences not to mention government waste.

What happens when you set a minimum mileage amount for bureaucrats to keep their beloved cars?
Answer: they’ll figure out a way to run up the odometers.
Why is this even a surprise?
Here’s the back story:

A [Fairfax] County auditor first noticed […]

Finally a mayor of the people!

Mayor “Horn Dog”
Reuters:

“I had no idea what the movie was about,” [Gallatin, Tennessee, Mayor Don] Wright said on Friday. “They told me it was about a superhero woman and there was no nudity or offensive stuff in it. Other than that, I really didn’t have a clue.”
Sure you didn’t.
According to […]

Palm Beach Post:
West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd admits that he placed a “secret hold” on legislation that would make uncovering the Byzantine world of federal contracting as easy as typing a Google search.
Tom Gavin, spokesperson for Byrd, confirmed to Cox Newspapers that the senator placed the hold on legislation introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn, […]

Your Tax Dollars Indeed!
Is there a “Bridge to Nowhere” Connection?
From TMP Muckracker:
Who’s trying to stop the government from telling its citizens where their tax dollars are being spent? Help find out.
Just before the August recess, the Senate was set to vote on a bill introduced by Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) […]

From the “Dept. of Does This Really Require a Study to Know?” we learn this:
A study of low-income housing residents has documented that the more television people say they watched, the less active they were, researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and colleagues report.
“Clearly the more time a person spends watching television the less time they […]

h/t Slashdot
New system provides power, water and refrigeration from one source
Gainesville, Fla. — When hurricanes, wars or other emergencies force authorities to respond, three essentials top their list of must-haves: water, electricity and refrigeration.
Now, in a project funded by the U.S. Army, two University of Florida engineers have designed, built and successfully tested a combined […]

Moonage is exactly right when he said “look what happens when you push your own agenda”:
Conservative Republicans who pushed anti-evolution standards back into Kansas schools last year have lost control of the state Board of Education once again.
Among other things the people of Kansas became tired of being fodder for late night comedians and having […]

Rocky Petralia on Boston’s Big Dig:
The first obstacle to overcome was “The Big Dig,” the most expensive highway project in the history of mankind. Bostonians rerouted I-93 into a 3.5 mile tunnel under the city, replacing a previously elevated roadway. They also built the Ted Williams Tunnel, which goes to Logan Airport. […]

Girls as young as 13 decide that parenting offers a better life than dead-end jobs, says new study
The Independent (UK) reports:
Teenage girls who get pregnant are deliberately “planning” to become mothers in the belief that a baby will improve the quality of their lives.
…they see parenting as preferable to working in a dead-end job.
The revelation […]

Believing they have a surefired recipe for economic success lawmakers from sugar producing states have been jumping on the Ethanol fuel bandwagon. The only problem it’s too expensive to make ethanol from sugar, or at least thats the conclusion of a recent report by the USDA according to Forbes:
Making ethanol from sugar could be […]

Maybe they aren’t actually a transvestite gang. Is it possible we will soon see a manifesto from the Shemale Liberation Army (SLA)?
New Orleans City Business reports
that shop owners in the Lower Garden District have been victimized by gang of transvestites since May.
Led by a tall skinny black man dressed in pink jump […]

Why didn’t someone ask Philadelphia?
Two weeks ago the Los Angeles Times published Releasing Inmates Early Has a Costly Human Toll. The article described LA County’s early release program and the disastrous results of putting convicted criminals back on the street prior to serving their complete sentences.
As a direct result of the article and […]

Washington State makes online gaming for money a Class C felony punishable by 10 years in prison.
State Senator Margarita Prentice (D-Seattle) cares about her constituents so much that she wants to send them to prison for enjoying the joys of playing poker online in their underwear at 3:00 am. I wonder if all […]

“An apple does not fall far from the tree”
According to reports, witnesses are placing U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy at a Capitol Hill bar (the Hawk & Dove) before his automobile crash of last week. His being at a bar just before the accident is consistent with the police report of the 2:45 a.m. crash which […]

Kids and young teens won’t be able to use school or library computers to access MySpace — or much of anything else, if recently introduced legislation is passed by Congress. According to Business Week, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) (full text here) will prevent kids at school and library public computers from accessing any […]