The Umbrage to Nowhere.

So Senators Obama and Biden supported the "bridge to nowhere" in the where/where it costs the taxpayers: The U.S. Senate. But who should've stopped them? Why, that person they dismiss as a small town mayor.

While running for chief executive [Govenor of Alaska], Palin backed the bridge, although with little evident enthusiasm. “The money that’s been appropriated for the project,” she told Ketchikan voters in September 2006, “it should remain available for a link, an access process as we continue to evaluate the scope and just how best to just get this done.”

A link? A link may be a bridge or it may be something like this -- a link to the above quote. But where the support counts -- in the state budget -- she found the bridge did not fit the state's priorities. They now have a different sort of link -- a ferry.

But what I love is the assumption that Senators are not responsible for what the Senate spends. When they offer hundreds of millions of dollars to governors, it is up to the governors to do the responsible thing and refuse. This is like adults (or what passes for them in the Capitol) constantly offering candy to children and blaming the children for taking it. I don't want treat the state governments like children -- the national press corps does that already (my chief objection to their Katrina coverage was their refusal to hold state and local officials in Louisiana accountable for their many screw-ups)-- but you can count on politicians to act in the predictable manner. It is up to Senators from other states to stop this nonsense -- not vote for the pork and blame someone else.

Apparently, being a Senator is like being a small town mayor except you're not responsible for anything.